Until this point in the “Top 5 Ways To Be A Mental Health Advocate” series here at Mental Health Notes, I’ve given you reasons to stop promoting stigma, a list of large mental health advocacy and research organizations with which you can get involved, and advice on how to get started with mental health support groups.

Today, I want to tell you how important it is to educate yourself and others about mental health. It’s more unlikely that you or anyone else will stigmatize mental illness once you understand it, after all.

Number Four: Become a mental health advocate when you educate yourself and others about mental health.

Regardless of your age, education level, or where you live in the world, there is no reason you can’t be educated and up to date with mental health.

Support groups are great places to learn more about mental health, and the websites of the larger mental health advocacy groups are goldmines for educational mental health information.

In addition to those, you can visit websites like those for the American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychological Association. (Or, if you live in another country and would prefer to read information from your country’s organizations and associations, a quick “google” of your country’s name and words like “psychiatric” and “psychological” may bring helpful results.)

You can also check out news websites like Science Daily, msnbc’s Mental Health news page, PsychCentral’s Psychology & Mental Health News, and the Mental Health page of Yahoo!News to stay on top of the latest mental health research.

And speaking of the Internet, it’s a great place to make your voice heard. You can start a blog to advocate for mental health awareness and help bust stigma. There are so many free blog sites out there (Wordpress, Blogger, LiveJournal, and the blogging features with MySpace and Facebook, to name a few), and if you have a few extra bucks to spare, you may even consider purchasing your own domain.

Tomorrow, I’ll wrap up the series with the fifth way you can become a mental health advocate (politics, anyone?), but in the meantime, tell me what kinds of experiences you’ve had with mental health education.

• How have you educated someone about mental health?
• What successes (and failures) have you had with the current mental health-related websites out there?
• Do you run a mental health blog or mental health website?

Image: SXC

Post from: Blisstree

Educate Yourself And Others About Mental Health

And by “one thing” I mean prescribing medication.

Aside from the cost of mental health care, one of the biggest patient complaints I’ve heard since beginning Mental Health Notes and becoming involved with NAMI is the way in which appointments with psychiatrists seem to go these days.

It’s become the norm for a patient to take a half or whole day off work to sit in a waiting room for an hour or more only to see a psychiatrist for a few minutes in order to discuss whether or not a particular medication is working, grab a new or adjusted prescription, and leave in time for another patient to take the seat before the butt warmth has had time to cool.

When did psychiatrists decide it was okay to cut their services in half? Why are psychiatrists now merely tending to “medication management” (i.e. doling out drugs and monitoring their success) and leaving the “dirty work” to psychologists, social workers, and other non-doctor mental health professionals?

Read on.

From the Reuters article Move over Freud: Psychiatrists embrace pill power:

The shift to briefer visits for medication management, reported in the Archives of General Psychiatry, appears to be linked to better psychiatric drugs and pressure from managed care companies, which offer richer financial incentives for brief office visits.

“Psychiatrists get more for three, 15-minute medication management visits than for one 45 minute psychotherapy visit,” said Dr. Ramin Mojtabai of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and formerly of Beth Israel Medical Center in New York, where he did the research.

Up for a nice greedy round of money-grubbing, anyone?

Dr. Mojtabai also states that treatment from psychologists and social workers is most likely “short-term cognitive behavioral therapy” rather than the “analysis psychiatrists have traditionally offered.”

Of course, not everyone has dollar signs in their eyes.

While Dr. Mojtabai admits seeing a psychiatrist strictly for medication management and a psychologist or social worker for actual therapy “might not be as efficient” (as what? having a psychiatrist who actually knows more about you than what dosage of Zoloft you’re currently taking? and didn’t he just say the treatment from psychologists and social workers was different from what we can get from the analysis of a psychiatrist?), Dr. Eric Plakun, leader of an American Psychiatric Association committee on psychotherapy, notes that a shift in focus from psychotherapy to the biology of mental illness accounts for some of our psychiatrists’ current unwillingness to do more than drag out the prescription pad.

Plakun said in a telephone interview it is not clear if patients are getting therapy from other providers, or not at all.

“Either way, I’m worried about our patients,” he said. “Patients need the best help we can give them.”

For Plakun, that means offering a range of services, including psychotherapy, and not just medication. “If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail,” he said.

Yes, everything does indeed start to look like a nail. If the only skills today’s psychiatrists are coming out of school with (or are willing to use) are the skills to properly medicate someone, does that mean more people than actually necessary are being medicated?

What about you? How would you describe your trips to the psychiatrist’s couch office? How happy are you with the various members of your mental illness management team?

Image: SXC

Post from: Blisstree

Is Your Psychiatrist Only Good For One Thing?

We’ve hit the halfway point and it’s all downhill from here. Feeling any more educated about obsessive-compulsive disorder? Sure you are.

Now that you know the signs, symptoms, causes of, and risk factors for OCD, how do you know when it’s time to talk to a doctor? And on that note, how will a doctor even determine whether or not you have OCD?

Sometimes people mistake perfectionism for OCD, and vice-versa. Sometimes people mistake little quirks or odd habits for OCD, and vice-versa. However, if your “perfectionism” or “little quirks or odd habits” are taking over your life, i.e. interfering with your ability to function, work, sleep, have relationships, etc., it’s best to see a doctor.

Very simply put, and in my very unprofessional opinion, it’s time to see a doctor whenever the symptoms of any mental illness are affecting your life in a negative way. Given how much control OCD can claim over a person’s life, anyone who thinks s/he has OCD should schedule an appointment with a mental health professional. Period.

Doctors rely on the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) published by the American Psychiatric Association when it comes to diagnosing mental illnesses. But let’s set the medical jargon aside and cut to the chase – your doctor will most likely diagnose you based on three main points:

1. You have either, or both, obsessions and compulsions that meet certain criteria (recurrent, persistent, intrusive, excessive, and, in the case of compulsions, being used as ways to alleviate stress and anxiety).
2. The obsessions and compulsions significantly interfere with your life.
3. You recognize that your obsessions and compulsions are unreasonable and excessive.

And how will your doctor come to these conclusions? By talking to you and asking questions about your obsessions and compulsions; looking for any physical symptoms/consequences of your compulsions (such as skin irritation from frequently washing your hands or bald spots from pulling your hair); and maybe even talking to your family members and friends about your behavior.

Stay tuned for information about OCD treatment and management options! And, in the meantime, feel free to share your own experiences with being diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder, or even perhaps what you thought was obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Image credit.

Post from: Blisstree

How Will Your Doctor Diagnosis Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder?