End the Stigma

MSNBC reports on suicide in the Native American Community: “Let’s say that all your emotions are in a glass of water. When somebody bullies you, dump out a little bit. When somebody offers you drugs and you take those drugs, and then somebody tears you down because you used drugs, pour out a little bit. [...]

I’ve been watching with great interest and apprehension all the goings on in Japan. My family visited there a few years ago and we have friends who live there – fortunately, they were in the States at the time of the quake. Whenever anything catastrophic like this happens, my mind always goes to the survivors [...]

Paul Krugman, a nobel laureate, knows what he’s talking about when it comes to economic theory. There’s very little doubt that he’s a well-respected expert on economics and has a very specific stance with respect to government’s role in the economy. He recently discussed the impact of jobs on happiness: So are Americans happier? Of [...]

Like many, I was horrified by the shootings in Tucson. Once some information about the shooter was revealed and his history of mental problems came out, I knew that mental health care would come under scrutiny. Given the current political and economic climate, we find two strong countervailing forces pressuring mental health: an increased need [...]

Reuters reports on an issue that has been troubling me for some time: the under-treatment of serious mental health conditions. Along with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder is responsible for a phenomenon called downward social drift that we see occur as a result of major mental illness. Bipolar disorder is responsible for the loss of more disability-adjusted [...]

Slate asks: Exercise and drug use: What do they have in common? There’s another, slightly more disturbing theory for why exercise helps stave off relapse—that working out helps people (and rats) resist drugs because of its similarity to those drugs. Have you ever felt irritable after skipping a yoga class or two? Or a little depressed [...]

[Editor's note: for the first few months of this site, there will be articles cross-posted on Sammy's private practice site, www.durhamdbt.com] The New York Times had an article several weeks back describing the levels of stress students face in college as being at an all-time high. Given what I’m seeing in my DBT-U, with full groups [...]