Having seen a half dozen of psychiatrists in town, I can appreciate the differences in bedside manners, communication styles, and psychiatric strategies. I also know what makes a person a good psychiatrist, a mediocre one, and one that should have been held back in medical school, without a license to dole out antipsychotics and other...

I’m not a mental health professional. I’m a hope builder. I feel like that, more than anything else I do on this earth, is my purpose. Because hope, when you really think about it, is the only thing you need to get better (besides lots of drugs, exercise, fish oil, probiotics, friends, self-help books, doctors, sleep, therapists,...

Six weeks ago I woke up tired and depressed, like I have so often in the last year. All I wanted to do is go back to bed. The negative intrusive thoughts began before my feet touched the floor. You are so lazy, I thought to myself. You could never hold a REAL job. You...

American poet T. S. Eliot wrote: I said to my soul, be still and wait without hope, for hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love, for love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith, but the faith and the love are all in the waiting. Wait without...

I’m usually pretty good at hiding my tears from my kids, but lately I’ve been busted a few times because they come so frequently and don’t go away. How do I respond when my grade-schoolers ask me why I’ve been crying? How do I explain this insidious illness to them? Two years ago I wrote...