Here I am again with another mental health miscellany for you! It’s not all tragic, either — there’s some right good humor mixed in!

But first: a birthday announcement. On June 25th, Anxiety, Panic & Health celebrated its first year of existence. During that time I’ve posted 132 articles and have had 834 comments on them. The top 5 articles were:

• “A National Shame: The Mentally Ill Homeless” with 5158 readers
• “I’m Dying: What a Panic Attack Feels Like” with 3484 readers
• “Questions and Answers: Antidepressants for Anxiety Disorders” had 3467 readers
• “Obama’s and McCain’s Positions on Mental Health Care” was read 2793 times
• “What Can I Do? Helping a Friend or Family Member with a Mental Illness” had 2440 readers

Rather than bore you with any more introductory blather, let’s get right to it. You’ll get a taste of what’s in store for you from the headlines of the sections:

• A Pioneer of brain imaging talks about her career and research
• Eyewitnesses may be more witness than eyes
• A touch — well, more of a whack — of psychiatric humor!
• Senior citizens may quit taking their medicine when the Medicare “Doughnut Hole” hits
• Materialistic people form strong brand connections when they fear death — really!
• Finally, another “Where have you been?”

A Pioneer of brain imaging talks about her career and research

Nancy C. Andreason is a neuroscientist and psychiatrist at the University of Iowa. She has pioneered the use of imaging technology for learning about the physiology of the brain. She has studied such questions as:

• How do the nervous systems of extremely creative people differ from those of the rest of us?
• How is the brain physiology of the mentally ill different from that of normal people?
• Why do people with schizophrenia lose brain tissue at a more rapid rate than healthy people of comparable age?
• Why is it that the more drugs you’ve been given, the more brain tissue you lose?
• At what point is human brain maturation complete and at what point do our brains naturally decline and lose tissue?

In the New York Times article, she speaks about the policy and ethical implications of her research, her research with schizophrenics, and the progress of imaging technology over her long career. It’s a very interesting, though brief, interview that I’m sure you’ll enjoy. The article is “Using Imaging to Look at Changes in the Brain: A Conversation with Nancy C. Andreason”

Eyewitnesses may be more witness than eyes

Research at the University of London shows that stress and fear reduce the likelihood of a witness’ ability to identify a perpetrator. They found that the higher a witness’ anxiety and stress at the moment of an event simulating a crime, the less likely they will be able to identify the “criminal” in a lineup.

The head of the research team, Tim Valentine, says that, “The research doesn’t suggest there is anything wrong with the identification procedures that the police use, but does demonstrate just how difficult it can be for a victim to identify the offender.”

Read more at “Eyewitnesses May Misidentify Perpetrator Of A Crime Due To Stress Or Fear.”

A touch — well, more of a whack — of psychiatric humor!

Have you ever looked at the personals section of a newspaper or magazine? There are some really strange ads to be found there!

Well, this article purports to be selected personal ads from the American Psychiatric Association’s dating website. It’s got such gems as:

Female with adult attention-deficit disorder seeks male for—look at that bird! What is that? An egret? I love their long necks.

Guy with self-defeating personality disorder thinks he’s funny but isn’t. Seeking alcohol-free/drug-free female. Must be willing to treat me poorly, undermine any happiness I may experience, and stop me if I’m about to accomplish something I could potentially be proud of.

Read the rest at “Selected Personals from the American Psychiatric Association’s Dating Website.”

Senior citizens may quit taking their medicine when the Medicare “Doughnut Hole” hits

A short article in the Wall Street Journal reports that a sizable proportion of the 3.4 million Medicare patients who hit the “Doughnut Hole” in coverage quit taking their medication rather than pay full price out of pocket. The piece also describes exactly what the “Doughnut Hole” is.

It’s sad — no, more than that: tragic — when the elderly have to stop taking their medications because they can’t afford them. So many people need a regular dosage to maintain acceptable health, particularly diabetics, heart patients, and those with other chronic conditions. I’m hopeful that, among all the other plans for health care now being discussed, the “Doughnut Hole” in drug coverage can be stopped up!

Read the rest of the story: “Some Seniors Quit Taking Medicine When Medicare Doughnut Hole Hits.”

Materialistic people form strong brand connections when they fear death — really!

A study by the Journal of Consumer Research has found that materialistic people tend to form strong connections to particular product brands when their level of anxiety about death is high.

This finding is counterintuitive: We thought all along that materialistic individuals are weakly connected to brands and use them only as superficial status badges. Well, weren’t we wrong?

A short and interesting article from Science Daily. Well worth the read just for the incredulity it produces: “Materialism And Death Anxiety Lead To Brand Loyalty.”

Finally, another “Where have you been?”

I’ve had another long absence from the blog: about two months. You may recall I was AWOL for a bit longer earlier in the year. There were no new articles written during the last period, and I was barely able to keep up with the comments — in fact, I’m still catching up.

The hiatus was caused by another bipolar cycle that dipped into a deep depression for a while. I have the rapid cycling variety of bipolar disorder, and it’s not unusual for me to swing wildly from high to low to high again within a matter of days. What’s more unusual for me is that the cycles are lasting much longer recently.

I enjoyed a 9-month period of feeling “normal” last year, and I’m hoping that my current mood will last just as long, if not longer.

I’m not asking for anything more than your understanding of why I disappear for a month or two at a time. I’ve come a long way, but I’m still learning how to be productive when I don’t feel like it. But I’m learning, slowly but surely, and some day I will be able to bridge across the bad cycles.

©2009 Anxiety, Panic & Health. All rights reserved.

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Sometimes there can be just too much of a good thing!

Part 3 of the current series, “Surviving the Recession, Part 3: Things You Can Do to Regain Control,” provides you with over 25 great tips to help you proactively deal with the recession. 

The only problem is that the article has grown to over 4,000 words, which is way too long for a single post. You would be scrolling into next week!

So I’ve decided to split the article into 2 parts to be posted tomorrow and the next day. I’m reformatting it to make it easier to read and use while I’m splitting it.

Thank you for reading parts 1 and 2! I hope you’re looking forward to parts 3 and 4 as much as I am!

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As you probably know, I do very few personal posts on Anxiety, Panic & Health.

There’s a simple reason behind it: I want to provide you with the best information possible concerning the Anxiety Disorders, not moan and groan over my own mental state. However, I have had a couple of interviews on other sites that might be of interest to you.

Alec Satin has an excellent blog called Making Project Management Better. He covers all aspects of project management and also discusses personal development topics. I did a podcast interview with him in October, “Dealing with Stress at Work.” It covers such subjects as how to know if your stress level is out of hand, what to do to manage stress, and whether admitting a problem with stress is a sign of weakness. If you ever wanted to hear my voice, now’s your chance!

Pro Writing Tips is John Roach’s blog about grammar and writing help. I have greatly enjoyed reading his blog, and he always has easily-understood, humorous posts on various aspects of writing and grammar. His post today is an interview with me entitled “The power of research: Interview with Mike Nichols.” He asked some very good questions about my preparation for writing this blog, why I write about mental health issues, and my actual writing process.

As a lagniappe I direct you toward a story I wrote for Time Goes By’s Elder Storytelling Place. Its title is “The Night I Was a Leprechaun.” It details a humorous incident when I played in the orchestra in a little town in Mississippi.

So now I’ve tooted my own horn enough. I hear sighs of relief from around the globe!

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This is Mental Illness Awareness Week, a time when we pause to reflect on the state of mental illness in America.

Congress authorized Mental Illness Awareness Week in 1990 as the first week in October in recognition of the National Alliance on Mental Illness’ (NAMI) efforts to raise mental health awareness. In NAMI’s words,

Real recovery from mental illness requires community action, understanding, and teamwork. Recovery is possible because of improved science, better community supports, and reduced stigma. But significant barriers still exist. Services are at risk, insurance can be insufficient, and stigma, though less today than when Mental Illness Awareness Week was founded, is still prevalent.

You can learn more about Mental Illness Awareness Week by visiting NAMI’s website. Another worthy organization is Mental Health America. Both are grassroots organizations that fight for the rights to compassionate, non-discriminatory treatment of the mentally ill, and against the stigma of mental illness that still imprisons them.

Please join with me in both celebrating the advances in treatment of mental illnesses and thinking about the barriers to treatment this week.

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I have some very good news: The mental health parity bill passed Congress just a couple of hours ago, and it is predicted that President Bush will sign it into law!

This means that insurance companies are now forced to offer the same coverage and copays for mental health services as they do for physical health.

To quote Mental Health America:

Mental Health America today hailed as “a great civil rights victory” the approval of a mental health parity legislation that will broadly outlaw health insurance discrimination against Americans with mental health and substance-use conditions in employer-sponsored health plans.

The legislation, which recognizes the importance of mental health to overall health, bans employers and insurers from imposing stricter limits on coverage for mental health and substance-use conditions than those set for other health problems.  It will provide parity for 82 million Americans covered by self-insured plans and another 31 million in plans that are subject to state regulation. 

It is estimated that roughly 67 percent of adults and 80 percent of children requiring mental health services do not receive help, in large part because of discriminatory insurance practices.

For more information, see Mental Health America’s press release.

Murphy’s Law rides again!

If it can go wrong, it will!

Murphy, he of the Law, has been hard at work at Anxiety Central this week! It seems that everything that could go wrong did go wrong!

I was under the weather for several days, and I could not concentrate enough to write. “That’s OK,” I said to myself. “I’ve got enough research and work in progress to write several good posts this week.” How wrong I was!

My old reliable computer, the workhorse that I’ve bragged about in the FAQ, has decided to start crashing unpredictably several times a day. The database that I keep my research in and where I do all my writing has become corrupted twice this week, forcing a rebuild that takes six hours each time. Checking the boot drive for errors takes another hour. To make matters worse, programs that used to stay open for days keep quitting unexpectedly every few minutes, making life very frustrating. This program quit once while I was writing this post, and my browser quit while I was posting it!

It reminds me of Flagle’s Law of the Perversity of Inanimate Objects:

Any inanimate object may be expected at any time to behave in a manner that is entirely unexpected and totally unpredictable for reasons which are completely unknown or thoroughly obscure.

As a result, I have lost three days worth of work, both research and writing, along with the time it took to fix things. Even though I back up daily, Murphy’s Law says that the crashes will happen right before the appointed time for the backup.

The bottom line of this tale of woe: That’s the reason that there’s been only one other post this week, where I usually post four.

The hippies had it right

Incense: ancient antidepressant

Burning incense, it turns out, can alleviate Anxiety or depression. So says a new study from Johns Hopkins University and Hebrew University in Jerusalem. The frankincense incense activates poorly understood ion channels in the brain and causes antidepressant-like behavior. This suggests an entirely new class of depression and Anxiety drugs that, literally, might be right under our noses! Gerald Weissman, editor of the journal in which the study was published, says,

This study … provides a biological explanation for millennia-old spiritual practices that have persisted across time, distance, culture, language, and religion — burning incense really does make you feel warm and tingly all over.

Read more about the study in Science Daily.

Have a great weekend!

As always, your comments are welcome!

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• Shameless Self-Promotion

Every blog has to have a first post, and I think it’s the hardest one. I’ve been thinking about, planning and working on Anxiety, Panic & Health for over a year. After all that time, you’d think that the first post would be easy!

There’s so much I want to say, so much I want to share, and no first post can possibly do that. Besides, a lot of it is contained under the “Information” heading on the right.

I’m still filling in the “Anxiety Reference” section, and it ought to be finished in a few days. But I wanted to get this blog going, and finally decided that I would just go ahead and start posting before all the background material was up.

Above all, I am anxious that you find this blog to be informative and helpful. It’s not meant as an ego trip, so personal posts will be limited. It will continue to expand its offerings over time. For example, I intend to add a section where you can tell your own stories, and hope to add a forum as time goes on.

Your comments are more than welcome: They are essential to this blog’s success. I want you to tell me what you’re interested in, what information you wish you had, what your questions are. I promise to address your concerns and issues in a timely fashion, and to the best of my ability.

Welcome to Anxiety, Panic & Health!

 

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