May is Mental Health Awareness Month. The month is about realizing how common mental health issues are, supporting each other through them, and removing the stigma about them. A few statistics: 21% of U.S. adults experienced mental illness in 2020…
Art Therapy
Looking for ideas for the “self care” that’s so important? Try some of these art therapy exercises,
Review: Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression – and the Unexpected Solutions by Johann Hari
Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression – and the Unexpected Solutions by Johann Hari I just finished this book, which I listened to while driving. I find myself wishing that I’d read it on my Kindle, instead, in…
Book Recommendation: The Mindful Way Through Depression
I’ve been responding to writing prompts instead of writing personal posts because I haven’t had a lot to say publicly. I feel a need to stop now, though, and strongly recommend a book that I’ve been reading. The Mindful Way…
Review: New Moon by Stephanie Meyer
I finished reading New Moon, which was much, much more dramatic (emotionally) than Twilight. As in, Bella goes into a zombie state for months, and the book just has blank pages with the names of each month as placeholders–October, November,…
No! Don’t Wanna!
My therapist, L, is no longer with the practice I’ve been seeing for the last couple of years. It took a year to get to her—first, they assigned me to M, who was a total pain in the ass and…
I’d link to it just for this phrase
“Mental illness robs you of your right to be a weirdo.” But actually, the whole danged thing is a good read. There are many parallels to the discrimination that fat people face, too, especially women. If we’re carrying any extra…
Dammit!
One of my cousins killed himself today. We weren’t close, by any means. R was older than me—only 7 years, as it turns out, but it always seemed much more. I didn’t even know that he’d been hospitalized last year—few…
Teenage Depression and Domestic Violence
From LifeScript: Recently published in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, the study was based on surveys of hundreds of teenagers at middle and high schools across the country. Based on their findings, researchers conclude that all depressed teenagers,…
About Depression
People who haven’t experienced serious clinical depression are seldom able to understand how different it is from “being down” or “the blues,” those dips every adult human has felt at some point. They’re often judgmental, and see those who are…