Did you know September is National Alcohol and Drug Addiction Awareness Month?
I didn’t, and I usually stay on top of such things.
Fortunately, the kind folks at the National Council for Community Behavioral Healthcare informed me about it, and after telling my fellow Health & Wellness Channel bloggers here at b5media, we decided to hold a special blogging “event.”
To start things off, Mark, our resident 12 Step blogger, has presented us with September: National Alcohol and Drug Addiction Awareness Month.
Then, throughout the day, various bloggers within the Health & Wellness Channel will post either their own personal spins on one of …read more

This post is part of Celebrity Health Week at the b5media Health & Wellness Channel. For more information about Celebrity Health Week posts here at Mental Health Notes, visit Introducing Celebrity Health Week: Celebrities And Mental Illness.
In this Celebrity Health Week post, we’ll take a look at some female celebrities who have a mental illness – or had, in the case of the deceased. We’ll look at actresses, singers, and other well-known female figures.
Please note that I am not an authority on celebrities and mental illness. For a celebrity to be on this list, either she or a spouse or …read more

Can you believe the first week of June 2008 is coming to an end? Where does the time go?
Stop wondering about that, and enjoy this week’s Saturday Sanity!

This week at Mental Health Notes, I provided a very brief overview of self-medication and dual diagnosis resources, updated you on Sen. Edward M. Kennedy’s brain surgery and future plans, shared a funny video on herd behavior and one on refocusing your mental energy, directed you to a PETA resource for grieving and feeling guilty over your pets, participated in the first ever Healthbolt Carnival, griped about one man’s predictions on how we’ll …read more

Yesterday evening’s NAMI meeting was a complete success!
The evening was filled with useful information about self-medication and dual diagnosis thanks to the information I gathered, talks from my state’s NAMI Outreach Coordinator and a case manager from our local community mental health center, and of course the guest speaker who’d lived it all.
I learned so much.
My only wish is that more people attended, because this is such a prevalent issue in my area. (I was once told that attendance would pick up even more in the summer months because people are more willing to leave their houses in warm weather, …read more

Preparation for June’s NAMI meeting this evening has kept me pretty busy for the past couple of days.
The topic is self-medication and dual diagnosis, and it’s a topic I chose because it’s so rampant in this area.
I’ve gathered up information for and compiled a list of all facilities, services, and other resources for individuals with both mental health and substance abuse problems, as well as comprehensive lists of all Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and Narcotics Anonymous (NA) meeting times, dates, and locations as well as
None of that information would be relevant to any of you (unless you’re a reader from my …read more