A loss always seems fresh, even when the calendar tells me otherwise. Depression can really sneak up on you. It’s not like you wake up one day with all of the symptoms, pull out your checklist, make an appointment with a doctor, talk it out for 30 minutes, swallow a pill, and call it a[…]
A most heartfelt thank you to everyone that supported the Benny Fund in 2016. A special thank you to our board member Margo Giambarresi, Nicole Laino, Capital One, and the Pay It Forward program for an incredibly generous donation of $5,000. Last week in New York, I had the honor of meeting wonderful people from an organization that not only strives to be great, but good.
There were 42,773 suicides in the last reported year in the US, 117 a day, one every twelve minutes. Each statistic is a mother, father, son, daughter, sister, friend, and in my case, my little brother. For me, this mission is clearly personal. The Benny Fund was borne in response to a tragedy that I, quite frankly, had no idea how to deal with. It was something I could focus on to get me through my days when I was utterly lost and heartbroken. Turning grief into action was the only way that I could move forward.
“Several studies have shown that depressed people are especially likely to regret their decisions, so the anticipatory regret handcuffs them and they can’t make future decisions. According to the authors of the Cognitive Therapy and Research study: Anticipatory regret likely serves as a warning mechanism, protecting a decision-maker from bad decisions and prompting them to reevaluate possible[…]
“Veterans Day is a day to remember and reflect on the sacrifices of our military veterans and also to thank them for their service. It’s a celebration that honors America’s veterans for their patriotism and willingness to offer their lives for the common good. Veterans in this country come from different eras, fought in different[…]
“We’ll go to the doctor when we feel flu-ish or a nagging pain. So why don’t we see a health professional when we feel emotional pain: guilt, loss, loneliness? Too many of us deal with common psychological-health issues on our own, says Guy Winch. But we don’t have to. He makes a compelling case to[…]
“I mean, I think one of the scariest things about depression is that it exists along with the happiness and the joy, and it kind of plays with it and sucks the color from it. So, it’s not like — I still see all the benefits of that time in Sleater-Kinney and it was some[…]
“I was in the middle of a very long depression. I had lost a couple of friends, and I was at a point where I had no emotions that I could feel except anger. I thought, I am going to be furiously happy out of spite as soon as this depression lifts. I thought it[…]
“Each year, nearly three times as many Americans die from suicide as from homicide. More Americans kill themselves than die from breast cancer. As Dr.Thomas Insel, longtime head of the National Institute of Mental Health, prepared to step down from his job in October, he cited the lack of progress in reducing the number of[…]
“The definition of postpartum depression is broad. The symptoms can range anywhere from feeling exhausted and disconnected from your baby to paranoia that someone else might hurt your child or, even worse, that you yourself might do your baby harm. While this wide-ranging spectrum makes it hard to diagnose, the CDC says between 8 percent[…]
“Depressed patients act physically sick,” says Canli. “They’re tired, they lose their appetite, they don’t want to get out of bed.” He notes that while Western medicine practitioners tend to focus on the psychological symptoms of depression, in many non-Western cultures, patients who would qualify for a depression diagnosis report primarily physical symptoms, in part[…]
