JANE'S MHSP ARCHIVES: 2008

Courage to Hang On and Live

“Catching a darkness” has been one of my favorite bipolar disorder personal websites. I first visited in 1998.

The haunting images captured by the Jessica’s brother is more telling of the suffering endured by patients with bipolar disorder than any amount of scientific papers I can read. Every couple of years, I’d visit the site; I’d be encouraged about updates of Jessica doing well. Then Jessica committed suicide in May of 2003.

We can easily judge a person’s pain and condemn a person for being a coward or taking an easy way out. Judging comes easy when we have not experienced constant and perpetual psychological pain. For some living with a mental illness, Hell sounds like a welcome relief.

Living in the shadow of mental pain is torture. Sometimes we make it through the abyss. Sometimes we break. Even for those of us who have “made it”, we are not guaranteed a relapse free future. For many, living every day is like punching a time card, two or three times a day. You don’t get leniency when you missed a punch or showed up late.

I don’t know what makes one person give up in utter despair while another person hang on.

I am no stranger to this darkness – the “utter” kind of despair – the kind that makes people step away from you ever-so-carefully.

I have learned to appreciate the courage to hang on and live.

Click to visit Boris Dolin’s photo essay and tribute to his sister, Jessica Dolin, in Catching a Darkness.

A Gift (?) of Depression

I think one of the ways that we can save our own lives is when we decide to believe that we DESERVE to live a good life, and that we CAN create a passionate life for ourselves.

When I experienced clinical depression many years ago, it was this belief that motivated me to ask for help, and to persevere through the different “trial periods” of medication and/or counseling.

It has been more than 12 years since I first sought help for clinical depression, and about 4 years since I experienced – and recovered from – a relapse.

For a very long time, this website has been my salvation, allowing self-expression while feeling less alone in the world as a person who had first-hand experience of the abyss that many of you reading this know about. I had long wanted to share more with you – not only about the darkness I had lived through – but also the light within that showed me the way.

In 2002, shortly after I had recovered from the depression relapse, I drafted an outline from which I wanted to write a book. In a moment of inspiration, I wrote out 3 pages of outline in what seemed like minutes.

The impulse for that outline was a feeling of, “NEVER AGAIN!” I had once gotten complacent; I thought clinical depression would never return to my life. When I was proven wrong, I knew that I could not slip into complacency again, and that “self care” should be my #1 priority.

Then, as if that inspirational creativity had served its purpose, it got up and left. I didn’t do anything more with this outline. The outline disappeared into multiple stacks of paper on the desk, until one day, I completely forgot that this outline ever existed…

Until 2009.

I was cleaning out boxes of paper and found the outline. It had been so long, I felt as if I was looking at someone else’s outline; I almost don’t remember drafting it!

But I knew that my desire to share the “gift of depression” remains. That flicker may have waned, but it never died.

And I know that this year, 2010, is the time when I am ready to do something about it.

sure-footedness

when you are on the right track,

the ground underneath you is solid and secure,

even as the sounds of the thunderstorms approaching

threaten you with a fearful row.

and you’ve been doing it most of your life:

you put one foot in front of another,

and move forward on the path

that you have paved with

all your acts of courage.

by jane chin

august 30, 2009

Managing projects like a polypharmacy list

If you list your projects out like an Rx, will you find that you’re about to OD (overdose) on work?

Well, then… Jane’s tips on safe project administration -

- check to see if there are any Rx interactions (are there priorities that conflict and at odds? does one hinder the other somehow? maybe there are “positive” Rx – one enhances the other and builds upon the other)

- check wash-out periods. some projects just need more down time once you’re done with it because it’s taken so much out of you. factor that into your planning and schedule.

- withdrawal symptoms? some projects give you a high and then you experience some post-project letdown afterward. factor that into your planning schedule too!

- ramp up phases. some projects need to be ramped up slowly to make sure they don’t overwhelm you… once you’re adjusted for the lag phase – go for the log phase and get going with it!

- can’t forget this one – some drugs have nasty side effects (i.e. antidepressants have the added bonus of giving sexual dysfunction) – and you can add antidotes or take drug holidays or adjunct therapies to counter these side effects. so if one of your projects has a nasty side effect – don’t forget to build in side effect management with project antidotes, adjuncts, and holidays! Having a trusted personal posse helps

The Misunderstood Epidemic: Depression by Susan Polis Schutz

I can’t believe that I once lived submerged in those shadows and thought it was a natural part of life. I’d made a drawing similar to the one that one of the patients (the MD) drew – all black with a spot of bright color to signify hope.

My friend John has written his view of the documentary here.

You’re Too Sick to Get an Education

A young woman has parents who want her to stop going to school because they claimed that school stress is making her sick; she wants to continue school and feel as if her parents have given up on her and the message she feels she is getting from them is: “Sorry sweetie you make good grades but your too sickly for us to care about your future.”

Speaking as someone who appears to pathologically love school (I kept myself in school for more than 20 years up to a Ph.D. degree), I will echo what others have said here about education being one of the most important investments you can make for yourself.

And I am not even using the Ph.D. degree that I spent 7 years getting – I decided that I did not like doing science research and went into the business side of healthcare industry. Yet not for one second did I ever see my education as wasted. Getting an education exposed me to a scope about the world and about life and about people that I can never get otherwise.

Yes, we want to couple education from life experience! We aren’t going to become surgeons just by reading surgical textbooks – we have to actually pick up a scalpel and practice – and get experience.

But, we learn that an idea such as “surgery” exists – and all these many other ideas we otherwise would not know about – through education. Sometimes education helps us come up with new ideas that others have not thought about.

Now, there is the reality of responding to the parents’ suggestion that she drop out of school, for whatever reason they sincerely believe in.

My suggestion is – don’t fight them. They are entitled to their own opinion, but so is she. This young woman has a right to her own opinion, and what she wants for her own life.

So the next time her father tries to talk her out of it… she can say something like,

“Dad, school is important to me. It is one of the few things I can truly do for myself – for my life. Even if I were to drop dead tomorrow, I would want to go to school today. I am sorry you cannot understand, and I am ok with us not agreeing on this matter.”

Then give him a smile and a hug, and know that she is committed to giving herself the gift of knowledge no matter what other people say.

Compassion, Happiness, Medication, and Genetics

Albert writes about self esteem and three stages of cultivating compassion towards yourself. When you consider the concept that “depression is anger turned inward”, cultivating compassion becomes a critical component of healing the self. For Albert,

“When I found out I was a Highly Sensitive Person – reading the psychological research on the character and biological trait – I cannot describe how healing it was to my self-esteem. Understanding and realising there was nothing wrong with me – it was just a character trait, one the world had shunned.”

I’m also a sensitive person, although I’ve found that with practice, I’ve developed some protective callouses around my sensitive muscle. I’m now better at letting other people’s emotional baggage bounce off me instead of internalizing it. On the other hand, I can get highly stressed and high-strung, and that’s something I’ve learned to accept and work with instead of trying to “fix”.

Andrew writes about shortcut to happiness and two ways to find and maintain happiness: choosing happiness and maintaining happiness as an ongoing process. I was just speaking with a colleague today about a lecture I’ll be delivering in April on figuring out what we want to do with our lives. My colleague said that it’s important to do what makes us happy, and I agreed with the caveat that many of us haven’t figured out what “happy” means for us personally. If you don’t define “happiness” for yourself, you may not recognize it even if you tripped over it. Andrew writes:

Remember there are no shortcuts to happiness. You have to take some alone time and start writing what it is in your life right now that makes you unhappy. Make a big list, and then prioritize all the issues you come up with.

(Let me throw a wrench in this one: if the law of attraction asserts that what we focus on, expands, then would making a big “unhappy” list keep these unhappy things in our consciousness, even if it is meant to help us rid of these unhappy things?)

Rena believes that she is a poster child for Prozac, after being put on medication and light therapy following a failed suicide attempt:

So, to make a long blog post short, I used affirmations, Prozac and the love of a good dog and great family to dump the abusive guy, go back to America and start my own freelance writing business. I look forward to getting out of bed now.

What I found interesting was that in the same blog, by a different author, was a short article on “treating depression with minimum medication” and focusing on managing the environment stressors in the person’s life.

Walter is “a PhD-trained biochemist working in genomics and cancer biology who’s interested in understanding the molecular and cellular mechanisms that control health and disease.” He sent an interesting article on the genetics of panic disorder by citing studies looking at the blood cells of people with- and without panic disorder. Walter’s article is written at a level that not everyone may understand, even though most of the concepts on there should have been covered in high school biology – for example, “phenotype, lymphocyte, gene expression, functional cluster analysis”. (I read somewhere that we should be writing at an 8th grade level.)

It’s also important to note that the study cited uses a very small sample size – less than 20 patients in each study group (or “study arm” as clinical trial researchers call them). This was not listed among the problematic factors of a study looking at genes that may be different in people who experience panic disorder, but I think the small sample size is a big problem especially when the study was then used to create a predictive test. The potential consequence is causing people to panic about possibly having a panic disorder and maybe even receiving unnecessary or inappropriate treatment for their (mis)-diagnosis.

Thank you for submitting your best blog articles and personal stories on depression, bipolar disorder, and mental health to my blog carnival. Due to the large number of submissions, I am unable to include all submissions for this edition, but personally visit and read each entry.

A New Year, the Tenth Year

Happy 2008, everyone

This year is a special one for the Mental Health Source Page, because it marks the 10th year of its existence. I created this website in 1998, to share personal stories and resources about depression and bipolar disorder. This website gave me a voice to sort out my personal experiences with depression. Little did I know how much sharing with others helps me find strength and reminds me that I’m not alone. For this, I thank you, readers of this website, for being with me over the years.

I’m a bit late with the blog carnival that was supposed to be published yesterday. Rest assured I will get to this within the week, probably during the weekend. Being a mom to a newborn proved a challenge unlike any I’ve experienced (and I thought going through a PhD program was hard; I think this is harder)! Here’s a picture of my little one when he was 2 weeks old… he’s now 5 weeks old and learning to propel himself on his tummy.

When I was pregnant, I knew that I needed to get ready for sleep deprivation and for this major life transition, but honestly, until I actually experienced it, I did not truly understand sleep deprivation. And of course, given my history of depression I’ve been watchful during pregnancy and now, in the postpartum period, to make sure that I keep healthy. For this I’m very grateful to my husband, for his outstanding support. He took 5 weeks off work to take care of me and to help with our baby. If you are interested in postpartum depression from a first-person perspective, be sure to visit Katherine Stone’s blog.

During the winter holidays, I came upon a wonderful public radio program called “To the Best of Our Knowledge”. Recently they aired a segment on sadness and depression, and whether “normal” sadness has been stripped of its human context and made into a chemically-based disease. You may listen to the streaming audio (requires Real audio player) of the December 16, 2007 program here.

One Comment

Katherine Stone wrote: Thanks for the shout out! And PLEASE PLEASE reach out should you notice any signs of PPD. We are here for you!!! Thursday, January 10, 2008 at 8:22 am

News and Views on Mental Health and Depression

Spanish-only Latinos respond more poorly to antidepressants than English-speaking Latinos “For Latinos who speak only Spanish and who suffer from depression, the road back to mental health is longer and rockier than for those who speak English, a UCLA study has found.”

Study finds link between faith, depression “A study released by Temple University found that people who feel close to a higher power and pray often are more likely to be depressed, while people who attend religious services and feel that their lives have purpose are less likely to be depressed.”

Repligen Initiates Phase 2b Clinical Trial of RG2417 in Bipolar Disorder “This study is designed to assess the safety and efficacy of RG2417 as measured by the Montgomery-Asberg Depression Rating Scale (MADRS) and the Clinical Global Impression of Change in Bipolar Disorder Scale (CGI-BP-C).”

Bipolar disorder also afflicts children, study finds “Some experts have been skeptical that bipolar disorder exists in children. Yet, increasing numbers of children are diagnosed as bipolar, a phenomenon that has been attributed in part to diagnostic confusion. Certain characteristics of bipolar disorder, such as aggression or irritability, also are symptoms of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and other conditions.”