I finally watched the award-winning movie Revolutionary Road.  The film stars Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio as a young married couple living in a suburb of New York in the 1950’s.  The two extremely talented actors portray a tense husband and wife who address the challenges that come when they find that their life decisions have traveled in a direction that they never really intended them to.

Image: Zuma Press

I didn’t really know what to expect when I started this movie, but I have to say that I was extremely impressed.  The movie uses the art of conversation to expose insecurities and confusion that arise in a marriage.  I felt that the film was almost Shakespearean in the way that the archetypal characters delivered heart-wrenching monologues expressing frustration and confused emotions.  The characters and their interactions were truly brilliant.  A mentally ill neighbor pops in at key moments and delivers lines of brutal honesty to the couple about the lack of truthfulness and happiness in their relationship.

Although the movie is depressing in its portrayal of married life, it does expose the real challenges that men and women face when they find themselves trapped in a life of mortages, child-rearing, monotonous work days, and household chores.

If you are in a serious relationship, I strongly recommend watching this movie with your significant other or spouse and having a conversation about it.  Your reactions to the characters may bring ideas to the surface that would be worthwhile to discuss.  The movie brings up issues about the difference between male and female roles in a family and the contrast between being emotional detachment and complete expression of extreme emotions.

Just as the characters in Revolutionary Road struggle with communication in their relationship, I encourage movie-watchers to explore the best ways to communicate with their partner in order to understand and help one another when they are going through a difficult or transitional period.  Successful communication is the key to a healthy and balanced relationship.

Revolutionary Road is now available on DVD.

Bipolar disorder, frequently called manic-depression, is a mental illness that affects almost 6 million adults in the United States - up to 2.6% of the adult population. It strikes men and women equally, although it may be that men develop it earlier than women.

This serious mental illness begins most often in the late teen or early adult years, but it can begin earlier or later. In fact, someone may have bipolar disorder for quite a while before it’s diagnosed because some symptoms can be mistaken for depression, for example.

Although bipolar disorder is serious, it can be managed with the right treatment - usually a combination of psychotherapy and medications. The problem is that it needs to be diagnosed so it can be treated. And, according to a study presented at the annual meeting of Royal College of Psychiatrists in Liverpool, England, found that more than 25% of the patients with bipolar disorder had initially had their condition misdiagnosed as depression.

However, keep in mind that the press releases that issued this information did not disclose how large the study was, which means that we don’t know how accurate this study may be.

~~~

Image: iStock

I almost want to put this one in my Duh File, where I put studies that cause a reaction from me like “Geez, no kidding!” But, I guess it has its merit. It’s just that the connection is so glaringly obvious to me and likely to the millions of people who live with chronic pain.

When you have chronic pain, how it’s managed, how it affects your life, and how you see it affects how you feel mentally and emotionally. If you see your pain as unchanging, as unbeatable, you may tend to give in to it, believing that you have no control over your pain. Pain can affect your quality of life. Read more

 Many crafters, quilters and fabric artists find their activities good for their mental health and alleviating depression.  Perhaps you’re going through a stressful time in your life.  Why not concentrate on your creative activities?

Image:sxc.hu

 In addition to giving you something to concentrate on when your thoughts could delve into darkness, crafts and related arts may bring you together with others in your field.  This helps you find new directions and boost your spirits. 

 I’ve found working with my hands a great diversion over the years.  The actual task of quilting, scrapbooking, crocheting and other crafts is relaxing.  Often you can take your work with you.

 My daughter began her serious venture into quiltmaking when her husband was seriously ill.  The small hand projects were easy to tote along to hospitals and waiting rooms.

 If you can begin to earn income through your crafts to help with the family budget during times of budget crunches, this also helps alleviate the stress of life.

How have arts and crafts helped you through tough times?

You remember Clara, the 91-year-old great-grandmother who shares her recipes for Depression-era meals?

Here’s another sweet video of Depression Cooking with Clara, preparing Pasta with Peas. While she fixes the food she recounts memories of what it was like to live through the Great Depression and how her family survived.

The inexpensive meal consists of potatoes, onion, canned peas and pasta, with a little tomato sauce added at the end. I actually think this sounds really good, though I’d use frozen peas instead of canned!

I really love watching these videos of Clara. They not only remind me of my own grandparents who also lived through the Depression and would talk about it once in a while, but also her style of cooking (cutting in the air over the pot) reminds me so much of one of my grandpas and my mom that I can’t help but smile.

Come celebrate Mothers Day with Blisstree! This month we are showing how much we love mom’s by giving away something different each day

Image: BlueMax

Today’s item is a Dawn Simulator. The new model 320 is the brightest BlueMax™ dawn simulator featuring a spectrum rich in 470nm blue light. The integral lamp mimics a natural morning sunrise or evening sunset using long-life LED bulbs. You’ll feel rested each morning with the Dawn Simulator!

For more information, please visit www.bluemaxlighting.com.

This giveaway is CLOSED.

Congrats to Erma H!

One of the heaviest weights on a persons heart and mind is Guilt. If you have a good conscience then you know what I’m talking about. Guilt can throw you in all sorts of mentally unhealthy directions. From the smallest things to the biggest things, like being part of a person losing their life.

(Image: sxc.hu)

Guilt beats us up inside every day of our lives and never seems to go away.

About 9 years or so ago I met a friend while I was in the military. At first I wasn’t really friends with him but we grew closer through mutual friends. He was a good guy, a little crooked, but a good guy to his friends. He would do just about anything for you if it was within reason. Even if it wasn’t withing reason he would try his best.

After he got out of the Army, he, his wife and daughter moved back to the Boston, Mass area somewhere within a year they started doing Heroine. I knew he was dabbling in it before he got out but I didn’t ever think things would get so bad. I lost touch with him and his family but a little over a year later I heard of his burial and that he had overdosed on Heroine. At the time I called his father and wife and expressed my sorrow and whatnot. At the time I got a little bit of the story and had thought that his wife had cleaned up, but unfortunately with the fact that she lost her husband and didn’t have custody of her daughter because of the drugs, she relapsed and things took a turn in a not-so-good direction for awhile. Read more

There isn’t a poet around who doesn’t know the story of Sylvia Plath. Known for deeply moving poetry that provides a woman’s perspective, Plath had an emotional life and marriage with fellow poet Ted Hughes. In 1963, she put her head in a gas oven and took her own life. Her small children slept in the next room.

Now her son Nicholas Hughes, just 47-years old, has also taken his own life. Hughes was single and had no children of his own. He had recently left his job as a marine biologist to open a pottery studio.

Hughes grew up with his father and sister, Frieda. Both of his famous parents have written about him in their poetry.

Frieda Hughes has struggled with depression in the past as well, and has said of Nicholas, “He was a loving brother, a loyal friend to those who knew him and, despite the vagaries that life threw at him, he maintained an almost childlike innocence and enthusiasm for the next project or plan.”

Image: Barnes and Noble.

Two announcements, one today and one last week, tell us of new drug indication approvals for medications used to treat depression.

Symbyax (olanzapine and fluoxetine HCl capsules) manufactured by Eli Lilly and Company was originally approved for treatment of bipolar depression. It’s now approved for acute treatment of treatment-resistant depression. This means if you’ve been treated with other medications for your depression without success, this medication may be tried and may work for you. It gives doctors another tool.

The FDA has also approved a change in indication for Lexapro (escitalopram oxalate ) for the acute and maintenance treatment of Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) in adolescents, 12 - 17 years of age. Before the approval, there was only one medication approved for use in teens who are living with depression.

~~~

I have suffered from anxiety my entire life. I like to say I’m the melting pot for the assortment of issues that fall under the “anxiety disorder” hat – panic attacks, phobias, OCD, depression. You name it – I’ve experienced it. I’m not proud to admit it. It still lingers on me like soap scum and I am constantly trying to wash it off. But it is a part of me, a part of who I am whether I like it or not.

Flickr: shoebappa

Months before I became pregnant with, well, with the “blighted ovum” that preceded my son, I weaned off the antidepressant that saw me through the death of my mother. I felt fine, really…amazingly so. And I became pregnant almost immediately and then, after the miscarriage, pregnant one more time. Because of my past history of being prone to anxiety issues, I was prepared to fall into the troughs of post-partum depression. I really was. But I didn’t. I am deeply thankful for that.

I had a therapist friend mention to me once the possibility of raging hormones causing the crazy ebb and flow of chemicals in the brain. I give a lot of merit to that, for one, because after my pregnancy, many of the anxiety issues that plagued me seemed to wane, remarkably. Not all, but many.

Shortly after I gave birth to Truman, I went back to work part-time with the March of Dimes, a nonprofit dedicated to preventing birth defects, prematurity and infant mortality. Our chapter was sponsoring a multi-state conference for the infant death review, which is a depressing thought in and of itself. I sat in on one discussion – the autopsy report of the children of Andrea Yates, the Texas woman who killed her five children in June of 2001 while in the midst of postpartum depression. The autopsy photos still hang unpleasantly in my mind and I will always second-guess my decision not to walk out that conference hall.

Earlier this week my old friend Tom – we had be reunited by LinkedIn and thankfully he has forgiven me for being young and stupid when we first met years ago. He now hails from the PR offices of the University of North Carolina where there is a wealth of information for any mother to feed on. He sent me this link from the Star News featuring the University of North Carolina’s Center for Women’s Mood Disorders. It is one of the few – if not the only – in-patient programs of its kind in the country that treats women suffering from severe postpartum depression in a hospital-type setting.

According to UNC, about 10 to 15 percent of new mothers experience postpartum depression, and some fathers experience it as well. It truly is much more common than you would think, and more severe and lingering than the usual “baby blues.” Rarely, about one in every 1,000 pregnancies, a woman is diagnosed with postpartum psychosis, a most severe form of postpartum depression expressing itself with more aggravated symptoms that may involve hallucinations or delusions. Andrea Yates would fall into this category.

My good friend Hannah had a friend who took her life and that of her infant daughter because she just couldn’t cope with her depression. Hannah had no clue her friend was suffering. No one did, she said. I wonder how many people were friends with the Yates and didn’t know Andrea was in misery.

That’s just it. Depression feels wrong. It may not feel like sadness or what you think depression should feel like. It is uncomfortable and irrational, even if somewhere in your clouded mind you give it merit. And it is nothing to be ashamed of. Find your help, or find help for your friends in need. There are so many resources available for us now. Use them. Make your babies grow up to be proud. You will be thankful forever.

More on JWJourney