Why is it so Hard for Us to Recover from Being Suicidal?

By David L. Conroy, PhD

Combat veterans, sexual assault survivors, and other victims of trauma are vulnerable to a condition called Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). People with PTSD suffer from a range of symptoms that interfere with their capacities to enjoy normal life.

People who suffered suicidal conditions, particularly conditions that were chronic, recurrent, or included one or more attempts, may also be victims of PTSD. According to its definition, PTSD may result when a person suffers an event or situation that is outside the range of normal experience, exceeds the individual’s perceived ability to meet its demands, and poses a serious threat to the loss of life.

Suicidal people meet the formal criteria for PTSD. Severe and prolonged suicidal pain is not something that most people suffer. People in suicidal crises feel that they are at the breaking point of what they can cope with. Since 30,000 people die by suicide each year in the United States, it is a condition that poses a serious threat to the loss of life.

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Writing about Trauma Can Produce Health Benefits

By Jane Collingwood

It’s well established that talking about traumatic incidents with a therapist, supportive family or friends can be therapeutic, producing improvements in psychological and physical health. People who open up about traumatic events they have experienced have been found to benefit from a variety of health improvements, including improved mood, lower rates of infection, and lower blood pressure. And it has been established that not talking about traumatic experiences is associated with poorer health outcomes.

As helpful as talking about trauma maybe, it is often difficult for the victims to discuss it. Particularly difficult traumas, such as sexual abuse and rape—events which victims frequently perceive as shameful—make victims more vulnerable to poor health, including chronic diseases and headaches. Useful alternatives to talking about trauma are available.

Scientists have studied whether writing about trauma might be as effective as talking about it. Typically, this type of study asks trauma victims to participate in a structured writing task where they are encouraged to write about the thoughts and feelings associated with their trauma for about twenty minutes a day, three to five days a week. Several studies of this type have produced similar results, finding that written disclosure of emotional reactions to trauma leads to a wide variety of positive health consequences.

Scientists are unsure how this works. One possibility is that writing about traumatic experience serves as a stress release, decreasing the overall level of bodily stress that victims carry and thus reducing their vulnerability to diseases brought on due to chronic stress.

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Psychological Growth from Extreme Trauma

By Rick Nauert Ph.D.

People who survive an extreme traumatic experience may rebound and experience personal growth. In fact, individuals may savor a higher level of personal strength and function.

This position statement, provided by a University of Buffalo researcher and expert in the effects of horrifying trauma may calm fears of lifelong stress after an event such as 9/11.

At the heart of the findings is a surprisingly optimistic conclusion: Most people recover well following devastating events, and even among those who struggle with the experience, many of them can find some benefit from the experience, despite the negative effects of the event in their lives.

“Even when people go through a horrible life-threatening event, or endure huge losses and very difficult circumstances, many of them actually find some positive aspects to the experience and are able to grow from it,” says Lisa D. Butler, associate professor in UB’s School of Social Work, whose multiple studies on the trauma following 9/11 and other severely disruptive life events have been published in numerous professional journals, including the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease.

“That does not negate the pain of what they have been through or the lingering effects in their lives, by any means,” Butler says. “But there is room for some positive changes as well.”

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Anger Management

By Lynn Ponton, Ph.D.

Anger is an emotional state that varies in intensity from mild irritation to intense fury or rage. It is accompanied by physiological and biological changes, like increased heart rate and blood pressure, as well as hormonal changes.

Anger is a natural response that all people have. It is generally caused by two basic things:

1. Frustration. Not getting what we want, especially if we were expecting to get it;

2. Feeling that others do not respect us or care how we feel.

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Anger Therapy

By Sonia Neale

Aristotle said: Anybody can become angry, that is easy; but to be angry with the right person, and to the right degree, and at the right time, and for the right purpose, and in the right way, that is not within everybody’s power; that is not easy.

When I entered therapy thirteen years ago, I was very angry; only I didn’t know it. I thought everyone else was the problem. My limbic system was out of kilter and went Chernobyl if I was crossed in any way; be it by my family, my mother, my co-workers, the vacuum cleaner, the dish-washer or the video machine, I would have a well-deserved brain snap. I could literally feel the poisonous, toxic hormones exploding, flooding and melting down my brain in a mushroom cloud of fear, loathing and impending catastrophe.

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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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10 Rules for Friendly Fighting for Couples

By Marie Hartwell-Walker, Ed.D.

For some people, this is a truly radical idea: There is no need to fight with your partner. Ever. Accusations, recriminations, character assassination, threats, name-calling, and cursing, whether delivered at top volume or with a quiet sarcastic sneer, damage a relationship, often irrevocably. Nobody needs to be a monster or to be treated monstrously. Nobody who yells will ever be heard. In the heat of a moment, it is always a choice whether to go for a run or run your partner down.

On the other hand, no two people in the world, no matter how made for each other they feel, will ever agree about everything at all times. (It would be quite boring if they did.) Couples do need to be able to negotiate differences. They do need to have room for constructive criticism. They do need a way to assert opinions and to disagree. And they do need to have a way to express intense feelings (that the other person may not understand or support) without feeling that they will be judged as lacking for doing so.

A healthy relationship requires knowing the skills necessary for “friendly fighting” — dealing with conflict respectfully and working together to find a workable solution. Friendly fighting means working out differences that matter. It means engaging passionately about things we feel passionate about, without resorting to hurting one another. It helps us let off steam without getting burned. Friendly fighting lets us “fight” and still stay friends.

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Bright Light Therapy for Bipolar Disorder

By Rick Nauert, Ph.D.

A recent study finds bright light therapy can ease bipolar depression in some patients.

Researchers from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine’s Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic studied nine women with bipolar disorder to examine the effects of light therapy in the morning or at midday on mood symptoms.

“There are limited effective treatments for the depressive phase of bipolar disorder,” said Dorothy Sit, M.D., assistant professor of psychiatry and the study’s first author. “While there are treatments that are effective for mania, the major problem is the depression, which can linger so long that it never really goes away.”

The study is published in the journal Bipolar Disorders.

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7 Ways to Keep Going

By Therese J. Borchard

A woman who lives with chronic pain said to my mom the other day, “You can’t sit around and wait for the storm to be over. You’ve got to learn how to dance in the rain.”

That’s a perfect description of living with depression, or any chronic illness. But what do you do on the days you don’t think you can take the pain anymore? When you want so badly to be done with your life … or at least be done with the suffering? What do you do when anxiety and depression have spun a web around you so thick that you’re convinced you’ll be trapped forever in those feelings?

I’ve compiled a few tools for moving past that harrowing darkness, suggestions on how to emerge from a place of panic, and techniques on how to dance in the rain.

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12 Ways to Make Friends

By Therese Borchard

I was really sad to read that so many readers don’t have four friends whom they could ask to compile lists of positive qualities in order to star a self-esteem file. It seemed that almost one-fourth of the comments on the message board of my “Video: My Self-Esteem file” pointed to the sad reality that many people are without a large group of friends.

Although I have experienced almost every other symptom of depression, I have been able to, for the most part, escape loneliness–except for those months when I couldn’t describe my thoughts and feelings to anyone because they were so ugly.

I think that I have been blessed with so many good friends throughout my life not because I’m so popular, but because I’m really nosy and I lack many of those social graces and proper boundaries that a polite person has.

In the first five minutes of meeting someone, I usually cover my entire psychiatric history. That can be good and bad. It works those afternoons like yesterday when a mom approached me and said, “You look so calm with your children,” and I laughed out loud and said, “I don’t think so, I’m just heavily medicated.” We talked for another hour and covered what meds we were taking, our dosages, what doctors we see, what psych wards we had visited, how long our menstrual cycles last, and what we tell other people with regard to our mood disorders: me … everything, her … nothing.

A success!

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