I haven’t had a Mental Health Monday article in a while, but this is one that I’d been thinking of doing for some time. One of the most accessible and free tools for addiction recovery is Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous. AA and NA provide a safe space for addicts to recover, to depend on…
This is the fourth of a four-part series on mental health disorders and how real people handle them. These people are your neighbors, brothers, sisters, children, parents, even your grandparents. You know them. They’re around you every day. Well, not specifically these interviewees, no, but you get the idea. They are perfectly normal people facing…
This is the third of a four-part series on mental health disorders and how real people handle them. These people are your neighbors, brothers, sisters, children, parents, even your grandparents. You know them. They’re around you every day. Well, not specifically these interviewees, no, but you get the idea. They are perfectly normal people facing…
This is the second of a four-part series on mental health disorders and how real people handle them. These people are your neighbors, brothers, sisters, children, parents, even your grandparents. You know them. They’re around you every day. Well, not specifically these interviewees, no, but you get the idea. They are perfectly normal people facing…
This is the first of a four-part series on mental health disorders and how real people handle them. These people are your neighbors, brothers, sisters, children, parents, even your grandparents. You know them. They’re around you every day. Well, not specifically these interviewees, no, but you get the idea. They are perfectly normal people facing…
This is the final in the series of all-about-psychotropics: how to stay on your medications and hang in there. Perhaps the toughest part of staying on a medication is getting through the first few weeks. There’s little reward out of it because of the initial side effects that can be bothersome. Now, there’s no point…
This blog post will overview when it’s time to check in with your doctor/prescriber for an adjustment or a new medication altogether, as promised. There are so many medications out there as discussed in my last post that most people only try two or three from any given class to find the one that works.…
Last time with Mental Health Monday, we explored the different classes of psychoactive medications and how they work on neurotransmitters in the brain. Now you know there’s a lot to consider when prescribing these medicines, and when it’s necessary to see a psychiatric NP or psychiatrist. When I worked at the psychiatric hospital in social…
This post is part of the Psych Writer series on how psychopharmaceuticals work. They’re also called psychoactive or psychotropic. Those all mean the same thing: they’re medications that work to change your brain with what it’s missing so that you can get back your functioning. This post is for educational purposes only, and doesn’t cover…
Let’s talk about what it means to have a mental illness. Mental Illness has stigma written all over it. Let’s work on changing that. On Quora, I liken having any kind of mental illness to having a chronic medical condition such as diabetes. Diabetes is probably one of the better analogies. Here’s one of my…
