How to Cope with Job Loss When You Have a Mental Illness

By Jennifer Steele

Losing a job is difficult to handle and the challenges it presents can be overwhelming and devastating, especially for someone with bipolar disorder, depression, an anxiety disorder or other mental illness. It is important that you don’t lose your motivation or allow yourself to get discouraged. If you don’t know what to do or how to remedy the situation you may make some choices that have negative repercussions for months or years to come. The following strategies will help you avoid common pitfalls associated with job loss.

1. Address your emotional challenges.

Typically, when a person loses their job unexpectedly or unfairly a majority of his/her decisions are based on his/her emotions. Negative emotions tend to lead them astray and when this happens they have less power to change their situation. Therefore, negative emotions need to be addressed first and foremost.

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The Anatomy of a Psychopath

By Rick Nauert, PhD.

Jack the Ripper, Dr. Hannibal Lecter, Charles Manson, the list goes on. We all wonder if something happened in the life of an individual to produce psychopathic tendencies, or was it a hardwired characteristic that lay dormant, awaiting an environment stimulus to explode and begin a cascade of terror?

A trio of British researchers may have found an answer as they discovered differences in the brain which may provide a biological explanation for psychopathy. The results of their study are outlined in the paper ‘Altered connections on the road to psychopathy’, published in Molecular Psychiatry.

The research investigated the brain biology of psychopaths with convictions that included attempted murder, manslaughter, multiple rape with strangulation and false imprisonment.

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Can Sex Be a Primer for Love?

By John M. Grohol, PsyD.

According to research published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin in August, the answer is “Yes,” sexual cues can directly influence a person’s relationship-oriented behaviors.

The researchers conducted a number of experiments to try and determine whether an association exists between erotic stimuli (sexually explicit words and pictures) and attributes that might increase a person’s tendency to want to be in a close relationship with another person.

Participants were divided into four groups — two were shown sexual photos, and two were shown neutral photos. Within each set of groups, one group was shown the photos for 30 ms (subliminal) and the other was shown it for 500 ms (supraliminal). The sexual photos shown were erotic but not pornographic pictures (an attractive naked, reclining man shown from the groin up for the female participants; an attractive, naked, kneeling woman photographed from behind for the male participants). The neutral photos were abstract pictures.

The effects of “sexual priming” on the tendencies to initiate and maintain a close relationship were measured using a variety of psychological and self-report tests.

The researchers’ findings? Subliminal exposure to these sexual stimuli increased participants’:

• Willingness to self-disclose
• Accessibility of intimacy-related thoughts
• Willingness to sacrifice for one’s partner
• Preference for using positive conflict-resolution strategies

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Are You a Victim of Emotional Abuse?

By Cathy Meyer

Emotional abuse in a marriage is such a covert form of domestic violence and abuse that many people aren’t able to recognize they are a victim. A spouse may have a feeling that something is wrong. They may feel stressed out; a sense of depression; anxiety but they can’t quite identify what is causing those feelings.

Emotional abuse is used to control, degrade, humiliate and punish a spouse. While emotional abuse differs from physical abuse, the end result is the same…a spouse becomes fearful of their partner and begins to change their behaviors to keep their partner happy. The happier their partner, the less domestic violence the spouse has to suffer. By the time a spouse identifies the true problem they have begun to feel as if they are crazy. They will doubt themselves and their own sense of reality because emotional abuse is meant to cause the victim to question their every thought and behavior.

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Passive Aggressive Behavior, a Form of Covert Abuse

By Cathy Meyer

Passive Aggressive (adj.) Of, relating to, or having a personality disorder characterized by habitual passive resistance to demands for adequate performance in occupational or social situations, as by procrastination, stubbornness, sullenness, and inefficiency.

Covert (adj.) Not openly shown, engaged in, or avowed : VEILED

Passive Aggressive Behavior Defined:

Passive Aggressive behavior is a form of cover abuse. When someone hits you or yells at you, you know that you’ve been abused. It is obvious and easily identified. Covert abuse is subtle and veiled or disguised by actions that appear to be normal, at times loving and caring. The passive aggressive person is a master at covert abuse.

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Understanding the Effects of Domestic Violence

Domestic violence physically, psychologically and socially affects women, men and their families.

Initially, the abuse usually is an attempt by one partner to exert control through intimidation, fear, verbal abuse or threats of violence. Victims of domestic violence may be isolated from friends, family and neighbors and lose their network of social support. With time, the abusive partner, or batterer, may use increasingly severe methods to maintain control. Eventually the violence may lead to serious injury and can result in hospitalization, or death.

Domestic violence robs victims of their fundamental right to maintain control over their own lives. Individuals who are abused live in fear and isolation in the one place they should always feel safe, their home. With tremendous courage and strength, they struggle each day to keep themselves and their children safe.

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Types of Domestic Abuse and How to Recognize Them

Adapted from an article written by Cathy Meyer

Whether domestic abuse is overt or covert, it is about control. Aggression is primitive and immature reactions to a sense of helplessness and feeling a loss of control. Domestic abuse, violet or non-violent is used to keep a sense of safety for the abuser.

Covert abuse is sly and underhanded. It is hard to identify and requires long term observation in some situations. It is made up of a few actions and creates an atmosphere of intimidation, uncertainty and perplexity in its victim.

There are many types of domestic abuse a spouse can inflict upon another spouse. Physical abuse, emotional abuse, verbal abuse, sexual abuse and financial abuse are some common ones.

Below are some guidelines that will help you identify some of the different types of abuse.

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Schizophrenia 101: Schizophrenia and Psychosis

By Michael Bengston, M.D.

Throughout recorded history, the disease we now know as schizophrenia has been a source of bewilderment. Those suffering from the illness once were thought to be possessed by demons and were feared, tormented, exiled or locked up forever. In spite of advances in the understanding of its causes, course and treatment, schizophrenia continues to confound both health professionals and the public. It is easier for the average person to cope with the idea of cancer than it is to understand the odd behavior, hallucinations or strange ideas of the person with schizophrenia.

As with many mental disorders, the causes are poorly understood. Friends and family commonly are shocked, afraid or angry when they learn of the diagnosis. Expectations become more realistic as schizophrenia is better understood as a brain disease that requires ongoing treatment. Demystification of the illness, along with recent insights from basic neuroscience, gives new hope for finding more effective treatments for an illness that previously carried a grave prognosis.

Schizophrenia is characterized by a broad range of unusual behaviors that cause profound disruption in the lives of the patients suffering from the condition and in the lives of the people around them. Schizophrenia strikes without regard to gender, race, social class or culture.

One of the most important kinds of impairment caused by schizophrenia involves the person’s thought processes. The individual can lose much of the ability to rationally evaluate his surroundings and interactions with others. There can be hallucinations and delusions, which reflect distortions in the perception and interpretation of reality. The resulting behaviors may seem bizarre to the casual observer, even though they may be consistent with the schizophrenic’s abnormal perceptions and beliefs.

Nearly one-third of those diagnosed with schizophrenia will attempt suicide. About 10 percent of those with the diagnosis will commit suicide within 20 years of the beginning of the disorder. Patients with schizophrenia are not likely to share their suicidal intentions with others, making life-saving interventions more difficult. The risk of depression needs special mention due to the high rate of suicide in these patients. The most significant risk of suicide in schizophrenia is among males under 30 who have some symptoms of depression and a relatively recent hospital discharge. Other risks include imagined voices directing the patient toward self-harm (auditory command hallucinations) and intense false beliefs (delusions).

The relationship of schizophrenia to substance abuse is significant. Due to impairments in insight and judgment, people with schizophrenia may be less able to judge and control the temptations and resulting difficulties associated with drug or alcohol abuse.

In addition, it is not uncommon for people suffering from this disorder to try to “self-medicate” their otherwise debilitating symptoms with mind-altering drugs. The abuse of such substances, most commonly nicotine, alcohol, cocaine and marijuana, impedes treatment and recovery.

Schizophrenia 101: Schizophrenia and Substance Abuse

Substance abuse is a common concern of the family and friends of people with schizophrenia. Since some people who abuse drugs may show symptoms similar to those of schizophrenia, people with schizophrenia may be mistaken for people “high on drugs.”

While most researchers do not believe that substance abuse causes schizophrenia, people who have schizophrenia often abuse alcohol or drugs, and may have particularly bad reactions to certain drugs.

Substance abuse can reduce the effectiveness of treatment for schizophrenia. Stimulants (such as amphetamines or cocaine) may cause major problems for patients with schizophrenia, as may PCP or marijuana. In fact, some people experience a worsening of their schizophrenic symptoms when they are taking such drugs. Substance abuse also reduces the likelihood that patients will follow the treatment plans recommended by their doctors.

Schizophrenia and Nicotine

The most common form of substance use disorder in people with schizophrenia is nicotine dependence due to smoking. While the prevalence of smoking in the U.S. population is about 25 percent to 30 percent, the prevalence among people with schizophrenia is approximately three times as high.

Research has shown that the relationship between smoking and schizophrenia is complex. Although people with schizophrenia may smoke to self-medicate their symptoms, smoking has been found to interfere with the response to antipsychotic drugs. Several studies have found that schizophrenia patients who smoke need higher doses of antipsychotic medication.

Quitting smoking may be especially difficult for people with schizophrenia, because the symptoms of nicotine withdrawal may cause a temporary worsening of schizophrenia symptoms. However, smoking cessation strategies that include nicotine replacement methods may be effective. Doctors should carefully monitor medication dosage and response when patients with schizophrenia either start or stop smoking.

Source: National Institute of Mental Health

Delusions of Spring

This cartoon really sums up how mania can present itself.

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