Depression

Suicidality: Impulsivity vs. Planning

People had a lot to say in response to my recent post Suicidality and Other People’s Perspective, so I thought it would be good to have another down and dirty chat about the reality of dealing with suicidal thinking (and sometimes attempts). In this post, we’ll talk about the tendency to be impulsive and engaging …

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Mental Health @ Home book review: Are We There Yet? by Elizabeth Jones

Book Review: Are We There Yet?

Are We There Yet? is a memoir by my lovely blogging friend Elizabeth Jones about her recovery from depression. I like how she conceptualizes recovery: “Recovery is a lifelong journey, not the destination. Recovery is the wrong word. There’s no going back to my former state. If I did, that wouldn’t be progress.” Liz’s journey …

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A Display of Public Ignorance About Depression

People are dumb; there’s nothing new about that. Public ignorance about depression in particular was on display recently in a news article I came across, and it annoyed me, so I thought I’d write about it. First, let’s start with some background. The news related to the findings of an article published last month in …

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Irritability in Depression: When Mean Bitch Comes Out to Play

Depression can affect mood in a number of ways, including causing irritability. This is sometimes a feature of my own depression, and it can get pretty ugly. In the DSM-5, adults must have at least one of depressed mood or anhedonia to receive a major depressive disorder or bipolar depression diagnosis, but in children, irritable …

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What Is... Series (Insights into Psychology)

What Is… Atypical Depression

In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms. This week’s term is atypical depression. “Atypical features” is a specifier that describes individual depressive episodes. While the name suggests it’s not particularly common, that’s not actually the case. The atypical name comes because of the way it differs from depression …

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Depression, Anhedonia, and the Brain

Anhedonia, which refers to decreased ability to experience pleasure in normally pleasurable things, is a core symptom of depression; in fact, you can get a diagnosis of major depressive disorder without depressed mood if you have anhedonia. Anhedonia is a part of the melancholic features specifier for depression, as opposed to atypical features, which involves …

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Tips on Dealing with Depression in Relationships: Guest Post

This guest post on dealing with depression in relationships, either as the depressed or the non-depressed person, comes from Marimeia of Through Anxiety and Beyond. We’ve done a guest post tradesies, and you can read my post about how fabulous all of you are on her blog here. I have recently been to visit a …

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Mental Health @ Home book review: I Died So I Could Live by Wendy Shipman

Book Review: I Died So I Could Live

I Died So I Could Live is a memoir by Wendy Shipman in which she shares the hardships that she has dealt with, including mental illness, and her recovery process in the hope of showing others that they too can overcome adversity. Poems are interspersed throughout the narrative. The book begins with the challenges she …

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Mental Health @ Home book reviews: The Depression Toolkit by William J. Knaus et al. book cover

Book Review: The Depression Toolkit

The Depression Toolkit by William Knaus, Alex Korb, Patricia J. Robinson, Lisa M. Schab, and Kirk D. Strosahl offers a combination of evidence-based tools to help readers with depression feel better. It contains 46 activities divided into 5 sections: find refuge from negative thoughts, get unstuck when you’re down, beat hopelessness and low motivation, make …

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