Never, Ever Make a Major Life Change if You are Depressed
So let’s say that you’re dissatisfied with something about your life, and you’re thinking of making a big change. Your job isn’t satisfying, your marriage or relationship isn’t working out or maybe you don’t like where you live. You’re pretty sure there’s something better waiting for you if you…
Depression Rarely Strikes on its Own
I have clinical depression. I also have mild Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). I always feel a little silly rattling off the laundry list of my mental illness disorders. It makes me feel like I should add “hypochondriac” to the list as well. My depression…
10 Tips For Overturning Denied Health Insurance Claims
Knowing how to handle your healthcare insurer is one way to be a smart patient. Knowing how to handle denials is obviously a big part of that, since it’s the one time most of us have a problem with our health insurance. You probably will see denials more often…
What’s wrong with calling depression “madness”?
“Our perhaps understandable modern need to dull the sawtooth edges of so many of the afflictions we are heir to has led us to banish the harsh old-fashioned words: madhouse, asylum, insanity, melancholia, lunatic, madness. But never let it be doubted that depression in its extreme form is madness.” –…
Childhood Bullying and Depression
I was bullied through much of my childhood, beginning when I was seven years old, which was when we moved from New Jersey to a wealthy town in Connecticut in which sports were worshipped. I was, to put it mildly, not very good at sports. Not only was I…
Roadblocks to Effective Psychotherapy Treatment
As I’ve mentioned before, I am a big fan of psychotherapy. Although medication has had a greater role in my successful depression treatment, psychotherapy helped me to recognize my inner demons and banish or deal with them, thereby leading to my becoming a much happier person overall, which I…
4 Reasons Depression is Hard to Spot in a Child
Most of my childhood was blighted by clinical depression. After I was diagnosed at age 27, my parents told me that they knew something was wrong but didn’t know what. Not surprising, since I grew up in the 1960s and 70s, and depression in children wasn’t even considered a…
10 Ways to Help When Your Child is Depressed
Being a parent is rewarding, but tough. One of the hardest things to deal with is your child’s pain. If your child is depressed, you probably are scared and feel helpless. Even I, with years of writing about and researching depression, have felt this way in the face of…
What are the Risk Factors for Childhood Depression?
I had untreated clinical depression starting from a young age. When I was finally diagnosed at age 27, I started trying to figure out why this had happened to me. Why would a child suffer from depression? What are the factors that can combine to create depression in a young…
5 Excuses that Might Prevent You from Getting Help for Depression
So you know you have depression, or you’re pretty sure you do, but you’re putting off doing anything about it. Procrastinating is a fairly common state of affairs for people with depression. I once put off renewing the registration for my car (before I was diagnosed with depression) and…