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Beyond Blue

Here is one of my favorite posts of Sandy’s blog, about her struggle of whether or not to return to a law practice. Sherrie Sisk’s guest post at Susan Carter Liebel’s blog, Build a Solo Practice, LLC, spoke to me. Sherrie’s conflicted feelings about starting a solo law practice were met by the sound of…

I hereby apologize for my anti-Oprah remarks in past posts. Until last week’s show on depression I didn’t realize all the support she offers (online chat rooms and tons of resources via her media kingdom, which starts at www.oprah.com) to people like me who struggle with mental illness. Because she often speaks positively about “The…

On Wednesday’s show Oprah also interviewed Phil Aronson, husband of Emme Aronson, formerly the world’s leading plus-size super model and Revlon cover girl. I think his story is important to tell too because our society often thinks of depression as a women’s disease when six million American men are diagnosed with depression each year. (And…

On Oprah’s website, I found this interesting article about the difference in symptoms between women and men who suffer from depression: According to psychiatrist Dr. Gail Saltz, author of “Anatomy of a Secret Life,” major depression and dysthymia affect twice as many women as men. This two-to-one ratio exists regardless of racial and ethnic background…

Oprah lists several resources on her website for people struggling with mood disorders. Two online support groups that she offers are the bipolar support group (click here), and the dealing with depression and on meds support group (click here).

For readers like “Citizen,” I think it’s important to list the symptoms of major depression covered by the DSM-IV (the current edition of the Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) published by the American Psychiatric Association. According to the DSM-IV, a person is suffering from a major depressive episode if he or she experiences items number…

In the same Johns Hopkins White Papers on Depression and Anxiety, Karen Swartz, the Director of the Affective Disorders Consultation Clinic, distinguishes between “complicated grief” (also called traumatic grief), which occurs in approximately 10 to 20 percent of bereaved persons, from both major depressive disorder (MDD) and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). A person who is…

Click here to read Shankar Vedantam’s entire “Washington Post” article on the new guidelines for diagnosing depression. It begins: Up to 25 percent of people in whom psychiatrists would currently diagnose depression may only be reacting normally to stressful events such as divorce or losing a job, according to a new analysis that re-examined how…

Awhile back a reader asked if I would address the topic of weight gain as a side effect of medications. She feels less depressed now, but is struggling with the excess weight. In the Winter 2007 Issue of the Johns Hopkins Depression and Anxiety Bulletin, Dr. Sanjay Gupta answers several pertinent questions on this topic.…

Thanks to reader “Citizen” who posted the following question on my “Labor Pains” post: How do you distinguish depression from ordinary feelings, if it isn’t as obvious as what you have described? Separating clinical depression from the sadness and normal anxiety caused by life’s unpleasant moments must be a bit like distinguishing cow manure from…
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