Depression

Mum and I are in the car, I am driving. She is well. It means her tongue is not tied by Depression's paralyzing lethargy.

‘What do you think of the word, anyway', I ask, ‘of the word of depression?'

It's not big enough, Mum says simply.

She's right. It's not. Big enough. Read More

Depressed people can be acutely hopeless and hard to console, making friendships difficult. Below are some of my thoughts about what friends can do for a depressed person and how friends can maintain appropriate friendship boundaries with the depressed person in their lives.  Read More

Botox Appears to Ease Depression announces a newspaper headline. The doctor who made the claim observes, "Maybe the frown is not just an end result of the depression; maybe you need to frown in order to be depressed."

Is that all it takes then? To lift a mood so catastrophically compromised it can result in hospital admission?

What can you do to help a person who is in the midst of a suicidal crisis and put them in touch with the help they need? Read More

When it comes to health care policy, we keep failing to take seriously the value of human relationships. The cost of this oversight is staggering. Read More

By the year 2020, Depression will, according to the World Health Organization and on account of high suicide rates, be the world's second biggest killer after heart disease and ahead of road accidents and Aids.

We often hear someone claim that a friend, lover, parent, or co-worker seems to have multiple personalities. For example, we may find ourselves asking why is Sarah assertive at work but so subservient to her boyfriend? Or we may think, how can Mike be meek around his family but so brazen with his college buddies? What should we make of people like these and what are the implications? Read More

Do you procrastinate about making doctor’s appointments, forgo regular checkups, avoid diagnostic tests, or fail to get prescription medications because the money for these has gone to things you’ve bought obsessively? Have you allowed your shopping addiction to so damage your supportive human web of family and friends that it feels as if there’s no one to help you with your recovery or turn to in an emergency? Does the sheer amount of clutter in your home prevent you from having people over—or perhaps even present a serious risk to your health and safety? Read More

A few years ago, my friend Ally, who had a somewhat unwarranted confidence in my knowledge of Things Psychological, asked if I knew anything about EMDR; she had suffered some severe childhood trauma, and was thinking of trying it. "EMDR?" I asked, "Is that a new street drug?" I guess that showed her what I knew. Read More