Spiders, Vampires and Jail Keys by Brooke O'Neill is a compelling story of one woman's life with bipolar disorder. Like me, Brooke is a nurse. When she returned to work after her period of acute illness, she was able to have positive conversations self-disclosing to some of her patients who had bipolar disorder in addition … Continue reading Book Review: Spiders, Vampires and Jail Keys
The emerging blogger series is aimed at community building through giving mental health bloggers who are early in their blogging evolution the opportunity to have their work seen by a wider audience. It's also a way to introduce you as a reader to some newer members of our community. This post is by Brittany of BiPolarMania. … Continue reading Emerging Blogger Series: Brittany – Part II
The emerging blogger series is aimed at community building through giving mental health bloggers who are early in their blogging evolution the opportunity to have their work seen by a wider audience. It's also a way to introduce you as a reader to some newer members of our community. This post is by Brittany of … Continue reading Emerging Blogger Series: Brittany – Part I
In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms. This week's term: malingering Most of us living with mental illness end up spending quite a bit of time trying to act as though we're not mentally ill. However, sometimes when there's sufficient incentive people will fake mental illness for secondary … Continue reading What is… Malingering
In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms. This week's term: folie à deux Folie à deux is the more commonly recognized name for what's known as shared psychotic disorder in the DSM-5. It's a rare condition that involves shared delusions between two or more people who are in … Continue reading What is… Folie à deux
Bring Me To Light: Embracing my Bipolar and Social Anxiety by Eleanor Segall describes her journey with mental illness, from pre-diagnosis through her work on recovery. It's written in clear, simple language, making it easy to understand for readers with no background knowledge of mental illness. She begins by talking about her Jewish heritage and … Continue reading Book Review: Bring Me To Light
In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychological terms. This week's term: paranoia Kind of like anxiety and depression, the word paranoia often gets tossed around fairly loosely in common parlance, but in a psychological/psychiatric sense it has far more significance. Google Dictionary defines paranoia as: "a mental condition characterized by … Continue reading What is… paranoia
People tend to fear the unknown. Psychosis is arguably the group of symptoms that the average person finds the most frightening when it comes to mental health problems. There is stigma associated with many/most/all mental health conditions, but psychosis kicks it up a notch. As a quick explanation, psychosis refers to a cluster of symptoms … Continue reading Why psychosis scares people
In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychological terms. This week's term: reality This week's term may seem a bit silly at first glance, but bear with me. Some of us may experience psychosis at times due to mental illness. In the simplest terms, psychosis involves a disconnect from reality. … Continue reading What is… reality?
Alien Boy: The Life and Death of James Chasse is a documentary, available on Amazon Prime, about a man with schizophrenia who was killed by police in Portland, Oregon. This film was funded by The Mental Health Association of Portland and over 1500 individual supporters, which I thought was pretty impressive. It's an extremely disturbing example … Continue reading Alienation and brutality
The disturbing documentary God Knows Where I Am tells the story of Linda Bishop, and her death after being released from a state psychiatric hospital. The film includes readings from Linda's journal, and commentary from people who knew her, including her sister and her daughter. Their words powerfully captured the pain and frustration of a … Continue reading God Knows Where I Am: Death by mental illness
Here are a few great TED Talks I've found on a variety of topics related to mental health and illness. Eleanor Longden: The Voices in My Head https://embed.ted.com/talks/eleanor_longden_the_voices_in_my_head A psychiatrist once told Eleanor Longden that she would be better off having cancer than a psychotic illness, because it would be more curable. Having the … Continue reading TED Talks: Mental Health & Illness
We work so hard on our mental health, but sometimes we can get knocked down by an unexpected source: prescription medication. Sure, we all know that some street drugs can adversely affect mental health, but there are also a number of prescription medications for conditions totally unrelated to mental health that can trigger symptoms of … Continue reading Medications That Can Make You Crazy (Literally)
I have always been a big fan of the documentary program The Passionate Eye on CBC, Canada's public broadcaster. Until now. On January 6, 2018, they aired "A Prescription for Murder?", which was originally shown on the BBC. The program focused on James Holmes, the young man who shot and killed 12 people and injured 70 … Continue reading A Prescription For Murder?
