Topic: antidepressants

Why Stress Management Should Be Part Of Your Beauty Routine

It’s no secret that stress can cause pimples, but according to dermatologist and clinical psychologist Richard G. Fried, stress management should be a big part of your daily beauty routine. His research reveals a complicated cycle by which stress makes skin conditions—such as acne, rosacea or psoriasis—worse, and subsequently, the worsened skin condition causes increased stress, making it even harder to get your beauty rest. More »

Too Many Non-Psychiatrists Prescribing Antidepressants?

Almost 80% of antidepressants are prescribed by non-psychiatrists—and almost three-quarters of these prescriptions aren’t accompanied by a formal psychiatric diagnosis, Psych Central reports. More »

Why Depression Could Be Good For You

A group of doctors are saying that depression can lead to better mental health. So does that mean those of us who are suffering from depression should just resolve to feeling blue? According to a recent article published in Prevention, maybe. More »

Prof Says ‘Academic’ Lit on Antidepressant Paxil Just Pharma PR

It’s one thing to suspect the psychiatric and pharmaceutical industries of shady ties, and a more frustrating thing entirely to see a University of Pennsylvania professor of psychiatry say colleagues let GlaxoSmithKline add their names to a report they had nothing to do with which “unduly promotes” one of it’s own antidepressant drugs, Paxil. More »

Feeling Depressed? Avoid These 10 Culprits

The Daily Mail just announced a list of items, including spending too much time on your computer, that can trigger depression. As if we need to tell you: Sitting around all day playing World of Warcraft on the internet will make you depressed. (Not to mention, earn you a geeky reputation in your social circle… if you still have one.) In general, their list of depression triggers is pretty straightforward, but there were a couple that surprised us — and one that we have a hard time buying. More »

Are We in the Midst of a Psychiatric Drug Backlash?

Last week, we wrote about research claiming antidepressants could make you more depressed. Italian professor of clinical psychology Giovannia Fava found antidepressants used over long periods of time can actually increase a patient’s chances of relapse more than if they were to take a placebo. More »

Research Says Antidepressants Could Make You More Depressed

Everyone goes through a time (or two or more) when they’re “down,” but a growing percentage of the world’s population is actually depressed and seeking help for it, often in the form of medication. But new research says that antidepressants could make you sad; apparently, popular meds are often no better than placebos, and could even be worse for patients’ overall happiness in the long-term. More »

Study Links Depression To Chemicals In Our Blood, But Treatment Remains The Same

A new study from Japan has revealed the possible links between depression and the chemicals found in our blood. The medical research group Human Metabolome Technologies studied the concentration of phosphoric acid in the blood of 66 people. When 31 subjects were diagnosed with depression, the team found that many of them were low in ethanolamine phosphate, which could account for their depression. What are these chemicals? How do they play a role in our feelings? And is this treatable? More »

Arianna Huffington Shares Her “Joy Triggers” and Why She Refuses to Skimp on Sleep

Arianna Huffington isn’t known for her mental health advice, but last week at an Urban Zen event, “The Politics of Sustainable Wellness,” put on by Donna Karan, the media mogul sounded off about what makes her happy and ultimately, keeps her in good mental and physical health. So what makes one of Forbes’ Most Influential Women in Media feel good? Sleep, mostly. And a few things she likes to call her “joy triggers,” too. More »

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10 Steps to Lasting Health and Happiness From a Medical Expert

At Blisstree, we’re all about trying to get happier and healthier in order to live better, and we hope to help you do the same every day. But, of course, it’s not always easy to know how to make that intangible dream of happiness a reality. And even if you do know how to do it, it’s pretty challenging to keep all the parts of your life in balance so that often-elusive health and happiness last as long as possible. So I asked M.D., board-certified psychiatrist, and Blisstree contributor Dale Archer to give us ten steps we can take to promote and achieve lasting happiness in our own lives (and these are tactics he actually shares with his patients). So what are we waiting for? Let’s get happy — and healthy.
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Depression Isn’t A Prozac Deficiency: 6 Natural Reasons You Might Be Depressed

Blisstree’s no enemy of prescripion meds when you need them; in fact, some of us are of the opinion that the demise of talk therapy might be good for depressed patients, who seriously just need a psychiatrist to meet their needs. But proponents of functional medicine, like Dr. Mark Hyman, say that attitude isn’t the best approach. Instead of treating depression like a Prozac deficiency, he says, we need to figure out what’s causing our mood shifts (and other chronic symptoms) in the first place.

“Just knowing you have depression isn’t helpful,” he said at a recent event hosted by New York City’s Urbanzen Foundation. He and other proponents of functional medicine say that diagnosing patients with a disease doesn’t bring them any closer to a cure. Instead of racing to a diagnosis and prescription meds, we should be searching for the source of our symptoms, which he says is often easy to cure without prescriptions or extreme treatment measures. More »

Don’t Rely on Your GP for Advice About Ambien

A couple weeks ago I wrote a Blisstree post called Drug Addiction: I Was an Ambien Junkie and Didn’t Know It. A few days later, I was talking to Dale Archer, an M.D. and board-certified general psychiatrist, about another post (Drug Addiction on A&E’s Heavy: There’s No Such Thing as a Partial Relapse), and we got to chatting about my Ambien tale of woe. He had read my post, and had taken particular interest in the part where I said that I could’ve sworn my GP at the time had told me that Ambien was not an addictive sleep aid. Turns out, my doctor later said she’d actually told me that it was, in fact, addictive. (Or, at least, she claimed to have told me that.) At the time, I thought maybe I was going crazy (perhaps as a result of sleep deprivation or my newfound prescription drug addiction?), or that I’d just absorbed the medical info that had sounded good to me, or that my doctor was just plain incompetent. More »

Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords May Be Superwoman

With everything else that’s going on in the world (most of it negative) including, but not limited to: the recent earthquake and tsunami in Japan, the protests in Wisconsin over Governor Scott Walker’s hi-jinx, chaos in Libya, and violence in Ivory Coast, you could be forgiven for forgetting about Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and her ongoing recovery from a gunshot wound to the head in Tucson this January.

Obviously, it’s nothing short of a miracle that Representative Giffords survived almost having her brains blown out at close range in the first place. Then it was unreal that she survived all the surgeries that followed. Fast forward just a little more than two months later: According to a recent article in The New York Times, doctors recently removed Giffords’ tracheotomy tube, which means that she can talk. She can also walk. She can see out of both eyes, even though her left eye socket had been fractured by the bullet. She has memory and cognitive skills. She recognizes and remembers her family and friends. She can laugh, smile, and demonstrate her personality to staffers. She has enough stamina to spend three to five hours a day in therapy. She hasn’t exhibited any signs of depression, or even frustration. (Who could be frustrated and depressed by this kind of extraordinary progress?) She knows that her husband, astronaut Mark E. Kelly, will be going into space on the shuttle Endeavor in April. And she plans to travel from the rehabilitation facility in Houston to Florida to be there. More »

Talk Therapy’s Demise Isn’t Such a Bad Thing for Depressed Patients

I’m anti-overmedicating. I’m pro-talk therapy. Or so I thought. Thanks to Dr. Freud, I’ve paid for my fair share of talk therapy sessions in my adult life (from clinical psychologists and social workers), and, thanks to the pharmaceutical industry, I’ve taken my fair share of antidepressants and anti-anxiety medications (from a psychiatrist). Now, I don’t think talk therapy and medications are mutually exclusive; nor do I think that one is inherently better or more effective than the other. When employed in tandem, they can be a winning combo for some patients. But that’s the problem: What works for one patient doesn’t necessarily work for another. And in recent years, fewer and fewer psychiatrists in the U.S. have been offering talk therapy (just 11% in 2005), in favor of 15-minute visits during which they figure out how to alter the patient’s meds and send them on their way. Maybe the shrink will see the patient again in a week, maybe a month, maybe longer. Of course, the reason for this isn’t because psychiatrists are mean and heartless; it’s because the insurance companies are — because they’ve significantly reduced the amounts and types of services for which they’ll pay doctors. More »

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