change therapy

my brain is still only functioning at 42.718% capacity (as opposed to the usual 60 7/8th) so i don’t find myself to be able to say much. what little brain power i had went to work today and another fabulous mental health chat on twitter. but i feel guilty for not blogging enough [...]

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hey everyone – if you’ve been wondering why i haven’t done lots of updates lately, it’s because i was getting ready for what is the most significant voyage for me since 33 years ago, when i took my 4-year-old son and emigrated from germany to paraguay.  my mother is moving into a seniors’ home and [...]

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@abeeliever from una vita bella on twitter just started a regular mental health chat on twitter (tuesdays at 9pm CST – hashtag #mhsm). for a taste of what happened there, go to my post on the MentalHealthCamp blog.

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unhealthy habits and demographic changes are combining to place an unprecedented burden on the health-care system that may not be manageable, the heart and stroke foundation said in its 2010 annual report on canadians’ health.
so says the CBC about an alarming increase in heart disease and the potential for heart disease, adding `most of this [...]

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by now you must have cottoned on to the fact that i really like therese borchard’s beyond blue: surviving depression and anxiety and making the most of bad genes.
one of the things she talks about in that book is her run-ins with eating disorders. in the chapter BMI (body mass issues) – depression in [...]

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this is a guest post by one of my twitter friends, the barking unicorn.
“the only normal people are the ones you don’t know very well,” said alfred adler, a colleague of sigmund freud.
“most people live in a myth and grow violently angry if anyone dares to tell them the truth about themselves,” said robert [...]

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you don’t have to spend a lot of time leafing through therese borchard’s beyond blue: surviving depression and anxiety and making the most of bad genes to find some mention of suicide. here, for example
i understand why people who haven’t experienced severe depression believe that a mother who commits suicide is extremely selfish and totally careless [...]

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i’m sitting here checking my email after a lovely weekend away. my daughter is doing the dishes to hedley’s “for the nights i can’t remember”. my husband is exercising on the Wii.
and i just opened an email from an artists’ email list i belong to. norm tucker, a fellow vancouver artist [...]

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therese borchard, who wrote the fabulous book beyond blue, has a dream about mental health.  i think dr. martin luther king would be totally okay with her being inspired by his famous words.
i have a dream that one day i won’t hold my breath every time i tell a person that i suffer from bipolar [...]

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the CMHA (vancouver-burnaby branch) will be holding a depression and anxiety screening the evening of monday, january 18th 2010, which they call ‘blue monday.’ blue monday is traditionally the third monday in january, a date chosen because it occurs after the holidays but when the days are still dark and dreary, new year’s resolutions may [...]

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as you know, i am a proud member of the canadian mental health association. i am even prouder to announce that a participant advisory committee, that is, individuals who are using the services of the CMHA vancouver/burnaby branch, is hosting an event for people living with mental illness and those affected by it [...]

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last week, the british columbia government (the one that pumps millions and millions of dollars into the 2-week olympics next year) made cuts “changes” to the budgets of about 90 (ninety!) health agencies in the vancouver coastal health region alone. the changes cuts will mean no harm to services, says minister kevin falcon.
it’s hard [...]

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today marks the end of mental illness awareness week. here are some bloggers who wrote about it, and a poem

a rant against mental illness awareness week and the desire to decrease stigma around mental illness
about childhood schizophrenia, by a blogger who wants to set yo head straight
this week appears to be supported [...]

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the robert wood johnson foundation has joined forces with ashoka’s changemakers to launch “rethinking mental health: improving community wellbeing”, a competition for new ideas and practices that challenge the status quo in terms of how we think about and address mental health care needs.
the foundation invites you to join this important conversation and put forward [...]

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invisible illnesses are, by definition, not seen. there are two parts to this: the (un)seen, and the (non)seer. i’m not sure that invisible illnesses are in fact invisible.
the man with chronic pain sits on his bed at 3:00 am, a gun in his mouth, ready to pull the trigger. he makes sure [...]

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