Tag: Mental Health

Depression and Summer

Often, when Dr. Rosenthal talked about his research, someone would approach him to say that the same thing happened to them — but in the summer. In 1987, he and his colleagues published a report of 12 people who experienced a pattern of seasonal depression between March and October. This and subsequent work suggested that summer SAD presented differently than its winter counterpart, and might have different causes.

“Summer SAD is more of an agitated depression,” said Dr. Rosenthal, a clinical professor of psychiatry at the Georgetown University School of Medicine. While those with winter SAD tend to oversleep and overeat, summer SAD often shows up with insomnia and lowered appetite.

Seasonal Affective Disorder Isn’t Just for Winter
Feeling blue even though everyone seems to be basking in perfect summer weather? There might be a good reason for that.
Cameron Walker
NYTIMES

Skid Row Los Angeles

Andy Bales, the CEO of the Union Rescue Mission, requested a security guard accompany himself and host Tonya Mosley during their interview. And as the interview started, they came across a person agitated by their presence.

Bales says this happens just about every day, especially during the pandemic. The lack of sidewalk space in front of the Union Rescue Mission demonstrates that Skid Row is “the worst it’s ever been,” he says.

“This whole street was completely clear. But now it’s rare that you can find a sidewalk that you can pass,” he says. “It’s packed with people devastated by homelessness.”

Legal Minds Clash On How To Fix The Homeless Crisis On LA’s Skid Row
Here & Now

50 Years of the War on Drugs

Hinton has lived his whole life under the drug war. He said Brownsville needed help coping with cocaine, heroin and drug-related crime that took root here in the 1970s and 1980s.

His own family was scarred by addiction.

“I’ve known my mom to be a drug user my whole entire life,” Hinton said. “She chose to run the streets and left me with my great-grandmother.”

Four years ago, his mom overdosed and died after taking prescription painkillers, part of the opioid epidemic that has killed hundreds of thousands of Americans.

Hinton said her death sealed his belief that tough drug war policies and aggressive police tactics would never make his family or his community safer.

Brian Mann
Morning Edition

20 Tips to Handle the Blues / Low Spirits – Sydney Smith

In February of 1820, on learning that his good friend, Lady Georgiana Morpeth, was suffering from a bout of depression, noted essayist and clergyman Sydney Smith sent her the following precious letter, in which he listed twenty pieces of advice to help her overcome “low spirits.”

Foston, Feb. 16th, 1820
Dear Lady Georgiana,

Nobody has suffered more from low spirits than I have done – so I feel for you.

1st. Live as well as you dare.
2nd. Go into the shower-bath with a small quantity of water at a temperature low enough to give you a slight sensation of cold, 75° or 80°.
3rd. Amusing books.
4th. Short views of human life—not further than dinner or tea.
5th. Be as busy as you can.
6th. See as much as you can of those friends who respect and like you.
7th. And of those acquaintances who amuse you.
8th. Make no secret of low spirits to your friends, but talk of them freely—they are always worse for dignified concealment.
9th. Attend to the effects tea and coffee produce upon you.
10th. Compare your lot with that of other people.
11th. Don’t expect too much from human life—a sorry business at the best.
12th. Avoid poetry, dramatic representations (except comedy), music, serious novels, melancholy sentimental people, and every thing likely to excite feeling or emotion not ending in active benevolence.
13th. Do good, and endeavour to please everybody of every degree.
14th. Be as much as you can in the open air without fatigue.
15th. Make the room where you commonly sit, gay and pleasant.
16th. Struggle by little and little against idleness.
17th. Don’t be too severe upon yourself, or underrate yourself, but do yourself justice.
18th. Keep good blazing fires.
19th. Be firm and constant in the exercise of rational religion.
20th. Believe me, dear Georgiana, your devoted servant, Sydney Smith

https://lettersofnote.com/2013/07/03/live-as-well-as-you-dare/

(Source: The Selected Writings of Sydney Smith)

Drug Use in San Francisco

SAN FRANCISCO — In early 2019, a formerly homeless man named Tom Wolf posted a thank-you on Twitter to the cop who had arrested him the previous spring, when he was strung out in a doorway with 103 tiny bindles of heroin and cocaine in a plastic baggie at his feet.

“You saved my life,” wrote Wolf, who had finally gotten clean after that bust and 90 days in jail, ending six months of sleeping on scraps of cardboard on the sidewalk.

…
Drug overdoses killed 621 people in the first 11 months of 2020, up from 441 all last year and 259 in 2018. San Francisco is on track to lose an average of nearly two people a day to drugs in 2020, compared with the 178 who had died by Dec. 20 of the coronavirus.
…
“If we didn’t have Narcan,” said program manager Kristen Marshall, referring to the common naloxone brand name, “there would be no room at our morgue.”

San Francisco struggles to stem ‘horrific’ uptick in opioid overdoses, drug abuse
Rachel Scheier
Los Angeles Times

Happiness Ted Talk – Dan Gilbert

We should have preferences that lead us into one future over another. But when those preferences drive us too hard and too fast because we have overrated the difference between these futures, we are at risk. When our ambition is bounded, it leads us to work joyfully. When our ambition is unbounded, it leads us to lie, to cheat, to steal, to hurt others, to sacrifice things of real value. When our fears are bounded, we’re prudent, we’re cautious, we’re thoughtful. When our fears are unbounded and overblown, we’re reckless, and we’re cowardly.

The lesson I want to leave you with, from these data, is that our longings and our worries are both to some degree overblown, because we have within us the capacity to manufacture the very commodity we are constantly chasing when we choose experience.

Noped Out – Examples of

What was your “Fuck this shit I’m out” moment? from r/AskReddit

greenburg
Some young woman and an old lady were arguing about stolen underwear in our communal laundry room. Young woman called for her cracked out boyfriend who came running in with a gun drawn screaming bloody murder.

Noped right out. Then moved out that weekend.

Therewasab34m
I was a shift lead at a fast food joint located inside of a gas station. Our manager was worthless at hiring people, so we were perpetually understaffed for months. I was working 50-60 hours a week. Absolutely ridiculous. However, company policy was that there HAD to be two people working at all times.

This particular day, someone called out. Nobody would come in to cover the shift, so the manager was forced to stay and work a double. She decided that since the only reason she was there was because we would have to close otherwise, she was just going to hang out in the office and chat with the gas station employees. 3 hours into my shift, and I have been single handedly running the front counter, the drivethru, making all the food, doing prep and doing dishes. The dinner rush hit, I had like 4 cars in the drive thru, 8-9 people inside, and then I ran out of onions. (Because I couldn’t get the prep done) My mind just quit. Brain turned off, emotions went cold. I ripped off my headset, told the people inside that they weren’t getting their food, walked into the office and tossed my name tag, manager card, and hat at my boss. When she turned around in shock all I said was good luck and walked out the back.

Edit: Yoooo my fast food homies got my back. I can only wish I did something more badass.

LCBlevins
A while back I was getting my food at a McDonald’s drive thru after school. This McDonalds shared half the building with a gas station. Around the edge of the gas station there were large bushes. I glanced between two pumps near the road outside and see a sketchy dude loading an AR while frantically glancing in random directions. He looked like he was on something and let’s just say I got the hell out of there. I don’t think he ever shot anybody, but it was still scary

thunderclouds1997
I was a temp worker in a factory that made mayonnaise, during my break I get a call from my mom’s work. She’s had 5-6 strokes at the same time. I went to my supervisor and told him what happened. When he replied with “can’t you wait until your shift is over?” I took of my uniform and left the building without another word.

Ehrre 459
My first job was at a grocery store and my department manager was a fucking asshole.

One day he was throwing a fit in the back room and threw a box of red wine vinaigrette dressing to the ground as I was walking past. Broken glass and nasty smelling dressing all over the place. He just turned, named me and said “clean this shit up” to which I was like nah. I’m out.

What Went Well – Three Blessings Exercise

Every night for the next week, set aside ten minutes before you go to sleep. Write down three things that went well today and why they went well. You may use a journal or your computer to write about the events, but it is important that you have a physical record of what you wrote. The three things need not be earthshaking in importance (“My husband picked up my favorite ice cream for dessert on the way home from work today”), but they can be important (“My sister just gave birth to a healthy baby boy”).

https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/02/18/martin-seligman-gratitude-visit-three-blessings/

Former Parole Officer Reflects On His Time Supervising ‘The Second Chance Club’

Four and a half million Americans are on probation or parole — more than twice the nation’s jail population. Parolees and probationers are required to check in regularly with officials, who are charged with helping them rebuild their lives.

I got the book after hearing this interview. It was quite good.
The Second Chance Club: Hardship and Hope After Prison
Jason Hardy
Amazon

How to Handle Coronavirus Isolation and Anxiety – WebMD

Take a break from news.
The 24-hour news cycle can make anxiety spike. Give yourself a limit. Stick with what you need to know and what’s happening in your community.

Change your mindset.
Avoid thinking too much about the future or worst-case scenarios. Forecasting can trigger anxiety. Instead of saying, “I’ll never recover,” tell yourself, “I’ll make it through this.”

https://www.webmd.com/lung/handle-isolation-and-anxiety#1

Talking about Depression – Fresh Air Interview with John Moe

TERRY GROSS, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I’m Terry Gross. For people prone to depression, especially if the depression is triggered by stress, this is probably a really difficult period. That’s one of the things I’m going to talk about with my guest John Moe, who you might know from his public radio podcast “The Hilarious World Of Depression,” which is also the name of his new book. He’s a humorist who’s dealt with clinical depression much of his life. On his podcast, he interviews people – mostly comics – who have depression. In his book, he writes about his own depression and the history of mental illness in his family. His older brother died by suicide. Throughout the book, Moe quotes relevant passages of his interviews with comics. In the preface, he writes that the book is about how he’s been tortured by depression but also found the absurd humor in it.

Fresh Air

Keeping Your Mental Health Up in Hard Times

“One of the keys to becoming more resilient is to practice compassion both toward ourselves as well as toward others,” Ms. Marston said. “One of the keys to doing so is to interrupt recurring cycles of negative inner dialogue.”

When we find ourselves cycling through negative thoughts that don’t go anywhere, it’s important to take a step back to disrupt the cycle of anxiety, Ms. Marston said. “This can include stopping and focusing on our breath rather than on our thoughts, changing our physical environment to help create distance from our initial mental space, or having a conversation with someone we trust to get a fresh perspective.

Dr. Sarah Kate McGowan, an assistant clinical professor in the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, suggested coming up with coping statements to help you get through dark moments. This might be something like, “I can take this one day at a time” or “This is frightening, and I can handle it.” You can even write these statements on index cards to refer to when you find yourself back in the negativity loop, she said.”

Kristin Wong, NY TIMES
How to Stay Optimistic When Everything Seems Wrong