Whoa! I have had one hectic week! Most of it has been work-related, so I’m not complaining (when one is a freelance writer and editor, one doesn’t complain when work gets hectic), but I’ve barely been able to leave my desk long enough to take Chopper outside.

Next week is going to be just as hectic, but that’s mostly because of all the big plans I have for Mental Health Notes, as well as something special all of us in the b5media Health & Wellness Channel are cooking up.

Oooh, I bet you’re curious now.

Have patience and, in the meantime, enjoy this week’s Saturday Sanity!

This week at Mental Health Notes, Aside from telling you about brain foods for vegetarians and the history of the emoticon, as well as making a few announcements (see below), I didn’t do a whole lot of writing (I told you – it was a hectic week!). Fortunately, Airdrie Miller (remember her?) wrote a very special four-part guest series for Mental Health Notes about her battle with depression. If you missed it, backtrack and catch up with part one, part two, part three, and part four. I feel very blessed that she shared her story here.

Regarding mental health advocacy, Project Helping Hands is now also offering mental health resources to Hurricane Ike victims, NAMI has established a special fund to help Gustav and Ike victims, Mental Health America has launched its Vote for America’s Mental Health campaign, and the DBSA has launched a support group for parents of people with mood disorders.

In the world of mental health news, mental health professionals seem to be choosing methods that aren’t proven effective over methods that are proven effective when treating children suffering from PTSD, researchers are still linking pot and psychosis (did I read another study about that once?), overbearing parents may be fostering obsessive children (hmm…kind of like college students having low self-esteem because of their parents’ high expectations?), and homosexual men are experiencing poor mental health due to homonegativity (which is a “negative attitude towards homosexuality”).

Here at b5media’s Health & Wellness Channel, we’re as busy as always:

• Kelly at Grounded Fitness wants to tell y’all about her GoTrybe.com one-year membership giveaway.
• Marijke at Womb Within wants to promote National Seat Check Saturday (which takes place today!).
• Karen at Pink Ribbon Review is recruiting people to join her team for Lee National Denim Day.
• Liz and Mary Emma remind us that today is the deadline to submit to the All About Alzheimer’s Carnival.

Enjoy your Saturdays!

Image: SXC

Post from: Blisstree

Saturday Sanity: Putting An End To A Hectic Week

If you’re the parent of someone with a mood disorder, and you’re free tonight at 8 p.m. Eastern Time (or 7 p.m. Central, 6 p.m. Mountain, 5 p.m. Pacific, 12 a.m. Tuesday GMT), then I have news of interest for you.

The Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance (DBSA) is launching an online support group for parents of people with mood disorders. You can learn more about this DBSA online support group – including its regular schedule – at DBSA Online Support Groups.

You may even find another one you’d like to attend.

Oh, and the DBSA is looking for your opinions about their online community. If you’re interested in sharing, check out the Online Community Use Survey.

For more posts related to online support groups, visit:

• Online Resources For Parents Of Children With Mental Illness
• Review These Online OCD Support Resources
• National Council Uses Second Life For Mental Health Advocacy
• Who and How to Choose Your Support Group

Imae: Newscom

Post from: Blisstree

Online Support Group For Parents Of People With Mood Disorders

Today was the last day for the “Top 5 Ways To Be A Mental Health Advocate” series here at Mental Health Notes.

And, if you missed it, you don’t have to scroll through the site trying to find each post – I’ve rounded them all up for you right here!

Number One: Stop Yourself And Others From Promoting Mental Health Stigma. People with any kind of illness – mental illness included – are up against a lot. Refraining from using stigmatizing words and committing actions that contribute to stigma is a great way to be a mental health advocate!

Number Two: Get Involved With Mental Health Advocacy And Research Organizations. Nationwide (and worldwide!) mental health advocacy and research programs have their stuff together, and they can help you learn about mental health and advocate for mental health awareness.

Number Three: Get Involved With Mental Health Support Groups. Support groups have been around for a looooong time. It’s because they work. If you join a support group in your area, or create one where once one never existed, you can learn more about yourself and your loved ones as well as promote mental health awareness.

Number Four: Educate Yourself And Others About Mental Health. Education is the key to…well, everything. Stigma, abuse, and bigoted thoughts and behaviors often stem from ignorance, so educate yourself about mental health and then go out and educate the world!

Number Five: Get Involved With Mental Health Politics. Band together with other mental health advocates to make our government hear us and create useful mental health legislation.

If you have any more suggestions on how to become a mental health advocate, or personal stories about how you have advocated for mental health awareness, feel free to share in the comments!

Image: SXC and Karolina K

Post from: Blisstree

Round Up Of The Top 5 Ways To Be A Mental Health Advocate

The “Top 5 Ways To Be A Mental Health Advocate” series here at Mental Health Notes comes to an end today, and so far you’ve read about stopping mental health stigma, getting involved with mental health advocacy and research organizations as well as mental health support groups, and ways to educate yourself and others about mental health.

To wrap up, let’s muse on mental health politics, i.e. mental health legislation that deals with issues like postpartum depression, substance and alcohol abuse, and of course – MENTAL HEALTH PARITY!

Number Five: Become a mental health advocate when you get involved with mental health politics and make your voice heard.

You don’t have to be a political person to get involved with politics that affect mental health legislation. Actually, you don’t even have to leave your house.

Thanks to organizations like the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance (DBSA), and the National Mental Health Association (NMHA), you can keep informed and get involved with mental health politics right from your computer.

To get started, check out these mental health legislative action centers:

• NAMI: Take Action
• DBSA: Advocacy in Action
• NMHA: Advocacy Network

Thanks to these groups – and the Internet – it’s possible and easy for us to sign petitions and send emails to our representatives regarding mental health legislation.

It’s never been easier to make our voices heard!

Later today, I’ll round up each of the posts in the “Top 5 Ways To Be A Mental Health Advocate” series. In the meantime, tell me what kind of mental health legislation you’ve been involved with lately.

• Are you subscribed to any newsletters or RSS feeds that keep you up to date with mental health legislation? Which ones?
• Which piece of mental health legislation is currently most important to you, and why?

Image: SXC

Post from: Blisstree

Get Involved With Mental Health Politics

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

So far 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 and a list of large mental health advocacy and research organizations with which you can get involved.

Today, let’s talk about the importance of smaller mental health support groups, how you can get involved with one, and how you can even start one if there are none in your area.

Number Three: Become a mental health advocate when you get involved with mental health support groups, or start a mental health support group.

Seek out mental health support groups in your area. You may find that your community mental health center or one of the larger mental health advocacy organizations already have support groups to join. You can also check out your state’s Department of Health and Human Resources (this organization may also be called Department of Health and Human Services, Public Health Division, or Division of Public Health), or join online mental health support groups.

If your area doesn’t have a mental health support group, there are several ways you can start one. Start by contacting your local community mental health center, your Department of Health and Human Resources (or similar name), or one of the larger mental health advocacy groups. You may find that one of the larger groups would love to help you start an affiliate group in your area. (That’s how I started my area’s NAMI affiliate support group.)

Whether it’s you or someone you love who has a mental illness, mental health support groups are great ways to learn more about mental health, find resources, and talk to others who know what you’re going through.

Stay tuned for tomorrow’s information about educating yourself and others about mental health, but in the meantime, share your thoughts here about mental health support groups.

• Do you belong to a mental health support group? How has it worked for you, or helped you better understand mental health?
• Have you been successful at starting a mental health support group in your area?

Image: SXC and iofoto.

Post from: Blisstree

Get Involved With Mental Health Support Groups

Anyway, on to what went on this week in the world of mental health!

Here at Mental Health Notes, I was all over the place. From sharing a few thoughts about LiveJournal to reviewing Google’s top five results for “brain games” to offering resources for help with cyberbullies in light of Megan Meier’s suicide and Lori Drew’s indictment, the topics this week were certainly diverse at Mental Health Notes. Too, I had to lash out about the battle against abusing mentally ill patients, pass up the opportunity to present an A.S.S. Award, share a little mental health humor, and remind everyone about the current Mental Health Notes Birthday Giveaway and This Is Why I ROCK! series!

Mental health advocacy group news was definitely a challenge to keep up with this week – there was so much! The Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance (DBSA) is reminding everyone about registration discounts for their Power of Peers conference in September, as well as their upcoming June webinar course Not a Pity Party: Effective Peer Support Groups. Mental Health America sent around a reminder for us to urge our House representatives to support including a delay on the Medicaid regs in the war funding supplemental bill. And TIME Magazine has named Jill Bolte Taylor, Ph.D., who speaks at many National Alliance on Mental Illness conferences and is president of NAMI Indiana’s Greater Bloomington affiliate, one of “the world’s 100 most influential people.”

Of course, keeping up with mental health in the news is always a busy time. Ira Katz, the VA’s director of mental health, has apologized for his email discussing veterans’ suicide attempts – you know, the one that read “Shh!” in the subject line. An study published in the Archives of General Psychiatry suggests low levels of vitamin D and high levels of the parathyroid hormone could lead to depression in older adults. After recent studies, researchers are paying more attention to the role a distinctive pattern of the genetic variations single nucleotide polymorphisms may be playing in the onset of Alzheimer’s Disease. And, assistant professor of neurosciences at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, Roberto Fernández Galán, Ph.D., used math and a computer model of brain activity (and no rats) to show new looks at the dynamics of the brain’s cortex.

And finally, perhaps the easiest thing to keep up with this week was the b5media Health & Wellness Channel’s involvement in the world of mental health. Because May is Mental Health Month, our monthly theme day was focused on the topic of mental health. I hosted the event, so make sure you check out what all my fellow bloggers had to say! Also, the Health & Wellness Channel bloggers got together and shared their versions of “Top 5″ posts. Find out which posts I chose, and check out the rest of the channel’s lists courtesy of Kendra James!

That’s all for this week’s Saturday Sanity. If you have any news you’d like to share, send it my way for next week!

All images (except for the b5 logo) courtesy of Newscom.

Remember! You have until May 31, 2008 to enter the Mental Health Notes Birthday Giveaway, and forever to join the This Is Why I ROCK! series!

Post from: Blisstree

Saturday Sanity: Light Your Fire

Let’s see how much you know about mental health and factors that can actually predict the status of a person’s mental health.

Choose which of the following factors you think is the most effective in predicting a person’s mental health status:

• Race/ethnicity
• Age
• Education
• Income
• Literacy skills
• Employment

If you chose literacy skills, you’re absolutely correct. And it’s deeper than just being able to read and write – it’s also being able to understand health-related information. In other words, it’s your health literacy.

According to The Partnership for Clear Health Communication, or PCHC, individuals are more likely to have trouble with their health if they aren’t able to read and understand things like prescription medication instructions and self-managed treatment materials. They’re also less likely to seek medical help when they suspect a problem, as well as less likely to ask the doctor questions if they don’t fully understand the steps they need to take to get well.

Having health literacy issues doesn’t mean you’re uneducated, too young or too old, or poor. You could be a 30-year-old millionaire attorney, and still have trouble understanding health material.

At the same time, issues such as shock, fear, and stress can impair your health literacy. It’s not shocking to imagine someone who has a stressful home life and has just been diagnosed with more than one health problem might have difficulty understanding what they must do to treat or manage the problems.

Today’s Mental Health Month tip? Brush up on your health literacy.

The PCHC has developed a program called Ask Me 3, in which patients are encouraged to ask their doctors three questions: What is my main problem?, What do I need to do?, and Why is it important for me to do this?

I have a few suggestions of my own to help boost your health literacy:

• Upon diagnosis of your mental health condition, ask your doctor for information about support groups in your area. Not only will support groups help you deal with your diagnosis, but they’ll also help you better understand it – as well as your treatment – since they’re full of “veterans,” so to speak.
• If you’re not comfortable joining a local support group, consider an online group. You can do this through email groups, message boards, and even chat rooms.
• Soak up as much information about the mental health condition as possible. Visit websites dedicated to providing easy-to-understand information, as well as tools designed to help you manage your condition.

Have you had issues with health literacy? How did you remedy the problem?

Image: Newscom

Post from: Blisstree

Mental Health Month Day 24 – Brush Up On Your Health Literacy