“Up All Night” by Elizabeth Holbert, a nice piece in the March 11 New Yorker, reprises the research of Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer, an anthropologist with an alternate model to our 11pm to 7am “ideal sleep schedule.” In The Slumbering Masses” Wolf-Meyer looks at the recent history of sleeping patterns. Before electric lighting, folks went to bed shortly […]
March 18, 2013
If my hypothesis (see previous post, Part 1) proves correct that fear of insomnia increases insomnia, successful treatment should involve mastery of the fear. We know from both experience and from cognitive-behavioral theory that avoiding the source of fear makes the fear stronger rather than weaker. Conversely, facing down the fear weakens it. Why else […]
March 17, 2013
What are two major miseries of our well-off modern society? Obesity and sleeplessness. No surprise that they seem to be connected; looks like those who fail to get enough sleep are more likely to be overweight. They’re connected in another way: for some folks, no matter what they try, nothing is effective. Behavioral treatments […]
March 17, 2013
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in their paper ”Policy Impact: Prescription Painkiller Overdoses,” declared prescription drug abuse “an epidemic” in the United States. By far the biggest factor in prescription drug abuse is an eruption in prescription painkiller abuse. The shocking statistic provided by the Department of Health and Human Services is that almost three of four […]
January 29, 2013
Georgios Petrides, Adjunct Associate Professor, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, found in a study of 253 patients with severe depression that the remission rate was 87%. Interestingly the statistics split between those with psychosis and those without: those with psychotic depression had an astoundingly high remission rate of […]
January 7, 2013
“My son is miserable in his first few months of high school,” his suffering mother told me. “He’s picked on for being short again.” Jeffrey comes from short parents, but he was little even by their standards. After much thought (and more Teased in middle school, he began a body building campaign so that, […]
January 5, 2013
Last week I received the following question: “I’m undergoing tests to determine if my cancer has recurred. I won’t have the results for a week or two. Is it best to tell my adult children that I’m worried, or keep the situation from them until I know for sure?” This topic is a 3-fer for […]
January 4, 2013
My last post stated firmly that you can’t tell your kids what to do since you can’t make them do it. You can, however, make yourself do something (such as go to your room). Only a couple days after the post, a teenage client reported with pride that he did exactly what his father told him to […]
December 30, 2012
According to the Bowker Books in Print database (courtesy of the WSJ article “New Ways to Get Kids to Behave”), the number of parenting books published or distributed rose from 2,774 in 2007 to 3,520 in 2011. I’ll bet most folks reading these are not trying to learn to have more fun with their already […]
October 20, 2012
This week’s version of ”Staying Current With Bipolar” provides a selection of reviews of the best apps for bipolar disorder, including Healthline’s review of the 10 Best iPhone and Android Apps for BD. See if there’s anything helpful–and please do let me know if you’ve been consistently using an app that you find useful. (A tip […]
October 8, 2012
Wednesday, October 10th, is the 20th World Mental Health Day, part of Mental Illness Awareness Week, October 7-13th. What, pray tell, does World Mental Health Day actually mean? you may be asking. Lucky for you the World Health Organization has come along as the answer to your prayers. They write pithily on their site: “World Mental Health […]
July 1, 2012
We are currently Guest Editing Madam Bipolar (“Living With and Supporting Others With Bipolar”) a blog that has set the standard for excellence in bipolar writing for some time now. Our guest post, “Medical Comorbidity in Bipolar Disorder: Just the (Unpleasant) Facts,” deals with the surprisingly high co-occurence of physical illnesses with bipolar. Check it out for […]
April 4, 2013
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