The average patient with bipolar disorder takes approximately 10 years to get a proper diagnosis. About 56 percent are first diagnosed with unipolar depression. I imagine the stats for depression and other diagnoses aren’t pretty either. Working with a good doctor can save you 15 years of pain and misery. Trust me, I know. I...
Some sobering statistics:Depression has a much greater impact on marital life than rheumatoid arthritis or cardiac disease. Ninety percent of marriages where one person isbipolar ends in divorce. Persons diagnosed with bipolar disorder have three times the rate of divorce as the general public, which is about 50 percent. This is all to communicate this message: marriages...
A new study by researchers at Washington School of Medicine in St. Louis offers new insight into why vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) is so successful in treating persons with severe depression. VSN involves inserting a device into the upper left area of the chest to stimulate the left vagus nerve, which originates in the brain....
I’ve always found it curious that more suicides happen in the spring than in any other season. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Center for Health Statistics, suicide rates are lowest in the winter months and highest in the springtime. What’s so bad about April and May? The sun...
No four words felt better when I was depressed than these, spoken by so many friends so often: This too shall pass. It didn’t matter who said them: my mom, who I figured was lying; my friends, who I knew were being nice; or my therapist, who I suspected wanted to get paid. When my...
