Mental Health

scale with uneven balance

Letters from Generation Rx—Weighing Medication Risks & Benefits

January 31, 2019 / , , , , / 8 Comments

I recently watched the documentary Letters From Generation Rx, which looked at instances of people experiencing significant side effects while on psychiatric medication, including people who took the lives of either themselves or others while on psychiatric meds. One man featured in the film was a Canadian Member of Parliament (MP) whose teenage daughter had […]

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Applying Spoon Theory to Living with Mental Illness

January 28, 2019 / , , , , / 50 Comments

One of the many things I’ve learned about through blogging is Christine Miserandino‘s spoon theory. In a 2003 essay, she described using the metaphor to explain to a friend what it felt like to have a chronic invisible illness (in her case, lupus). She and her friend were in a restaurant, and spoons were easily

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Out of Mind, Out of Sight: A Forensic Psychiatry Close-Up

January 27, 2019 / , , , / 7 Comments

I first heard of the documentary Out of Mind, Out of Sight when I saw it recommended on the Bipolar, Uninvited blog. It sounded interesting, so I wanted to check it out. NCRMD It’s shot at an inpatient unit in a forensic psychiatry facility in Brockville, Canada. All of the patients had committed a criminal

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Fluctuating motivation in depression: anhedonia can get in the way

Fluctuating Motivation in Depression

January 24, 2019 / , , , , / 42 Comments

Fluctuating motivation in mental illness means that sometimes, things are happening, while other times, the wheels just fall right off. Motivation follows activation? A basic element of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) for depression is behavioural activation. The idea is that motivation follows activation, meaning if you force yourself to do stuff, you’ll start to feel

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Can vitamins cure mental illness? Hint: no

Why Do People Think Vitamins Can Cure Mental Illness?

January 17, 2019 / , , , / 9 Comments

Being listed on the Scientology website is never a good sign, and after seeing the documentary Letters from Generation Rx, I can see why it’s listed there. There were a lot of things that concerned me about the film, which you can read about in this post on weighing medication risks and benefits, but what

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How do we fight stigma most effectively? Education? Contact? Language change? Protest?

The Stigma Effect: How to Fight Mental Illness Stigma Effectively

January 10, 2019 / , , , , / 21 Comments

I was inspired to write this post after reading the book The Stigma Effect by psychologist Patrick Corrigan. The book looks at what research has to say about what works and what doesn’t to fight stigma. Corrigan is a prolific stigma researcher, and I first encountered his work when I was doing my master’s thesis.

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Mental Health @ Home book review: The Inflamed Mind by Edward Bullmore

Book Review: The Inflamed Mind

January 2, 2019 / , , , , , / 10 Comments

The Inflamed Mind: A Radical New Approach to Depression by psychiatrist Edward Bullmore presents inflammation as a new frontier in tackling depression. The author’s bio at the beginning of the book reveals that he works at pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline. He doesn’t try to be subtle about disclosing this, and I didn’t pick up any overt

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Why I hat the 1-10 mood rating scale for depression

Why I Hate the 1 – 10 Mood Rating Scale for Depression

December 30, 2018 / , , , , , / 22 Comments

I became a nurse in 2004, which was before I became mentally ill. Even then, I wasn’t a fan of using a 1-10 mood rating scale with my patients. It struck me as a bit of a cop-out, and a poor substitute for actually exploring with the person how they were feeling. Adventures in hospital

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