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Mental illness and violence

I have two points to make:

1) I understand people who have mental illness can have dark impulses, especially people with schizophrenia, like James Holmes, Adam Lanza, and the Oregon shooter. But the incidence of all mental illness around the world is the same. The same, I say. So why are mass shootings so much more common in the USA? Could it have anything to do with our lax gun laws? Anything to do with the 2nd amendment nutjobs?
2) Here’s a revelation: “If we were able to magically cure schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and major depression, that would be wonderful, but overall violence would go down by only about four percent,” Dr. Jeffrey Swanson, a professor of psychiatry at Duke, told ProPublica last year. He notes a 2001 study of mass shooters that found three out of four had no psychiatric history.” This is from: http://www.newsweek.com/maybe-oregon-shooting-and-others-arent-about-mental-illness-378875
So although some people with mental illness do commit violent acts, the majority of them don’t. And stricter gun laws, hello NRA, would stop mass shootings right in the bud. When are we going to wake up to these much too numerous, tragic, wake up calls?

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Don’t believe the lies bipolar d/o tells you!

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When you are in a manic phase, skimming the world of what’s real and what’s not, your ill mind will tell you how special you are! Don’t believe it, you are not special because you can do what other people need LSD to do, you are sick, and in this state, you don’t have control of your mind. And that is not special, that is sick and scary.

When you are in a manic phase, your ill mind will tell you you are a genius! Look at all these brilliant ideas you are generating! Any one of them may very well save humanity from extinction and all of them are worthy of a nobel prize! Don’t listen to this! Yes you are getting a lot of ideas, some of them may actually be interesting, but they are only ideas, and require years of work to prove or implement. For example, I had the “brilliant” idea that mental illness was autoimmune in my manic phase in 2008. I wrote books and books about my theory, also weaving yoga ideas and psychoneuroimmunology precepts as well straight immunology. I still have pictures of those books, because I was so paranoid at that late stage of mania, that I thought my husband would steal my (groan) brilliant ideas and steal my nobel prize from me! Taking deep breaths as I write this… So I took pictures of the pages of the books and downloaded them into iphoto, kind of James Bondish… hahaha  Haven’t really looked at all those pages since that manic time, but I’m sure if I did, they will be all over town, making sweeping statements, connecting things that possibly have no connection… hell i should take a look at them jsut for fun. Of course other people have had the same idea, that mental illness is autoimmune, there certainly are autoimmune illnesses associated with mental illness, like rheumatoid arthritis, Hashimoto’s thyroiditis and others. There certainly is cell death in the brain thereby enlarging the ventricles, this is seen in schizophrenia and in bipolar d/o. This cell death could be a result of our immune cells killing our neurons… this would require many years of experimentation and documentation, not something you can do in a manic phase. Ok, I’ll grant you, one may get brilliant ideas in mania, yes it can happen, but mostly what you get is flight of ideas, flitting from thought to thought and you also get delusions of grandeur, which make it seem all your thoughts are brilliant. But they’re not. If you are intelligent before mania, you do not become a genius when you are in mania, it just seems like it, haha.

When you are in a severe depression, your ill mind will tell you you’re not worth anything, don’t believe it. You are worth a LOT! Your mind is just sick at the moment and feeling bad, don’t believe anything it says, don’t believe it if it tells you to do away with yourself. Do not! You are valuable, you are beloved, you are loving. Depression or the depressed phase of bipolar is just an illness, this phase tells you lies too. Don’t believe them. Believe what your loved ones are telling you, believe what your doctor is telling you, have faith in your medication. It will work and you will come out of this awful downturn.

Don’t believe anything bipolar disorder tells you. Take your meds and be well.

Please contribute your stories in the comments section. Thank you.

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What’s the difference between hypomana and full blown mania for me. 

 A blogger friend asked what was the difference between hypomania and mania to bipolar sufferers. This was my answer.

When I’m hypomanic, I am IN touch with reality. But I have tons of energy. I can get lots done. But I am also very anxious. And I cycle through hypomania, normal and depressed. I guess this is called a mixed phase. When I tumble into full blown mania, I am out of touch with reality a lot of the times. Still cycling through manic, normal and depressed, but out of touch with reality as in “knowing” that a witch in Eastern Europe is using black magic to damage my heart, and actually feeling chest pain! So again I have three parts to full blown mania: the depressed, the normal, and the manic. In my normal period of full blown mania, I fully realize what’s going on and call my doctor and tell him, it’s happening again, I am out of touch with reality! That’s the way it’s been with me since the beginning. Perhaps because I was given antidepressants the very first time I ever had any mood symptoms, a severe depression. Antidepressants cause mixed phases.

This is not amazing, it is not extraordinary, I am not special because this happens to me. I am simply ill. Well not simply ill, there’s nothing simple about having bipolar d/o, except maybe the need to take mood stabilizing medications such as Lithium, Seroquel, etc.

So the main difference is whether I’m in touch with reality or not. And how disorganized and “magical” my thinking is. Also I didn’t mention sleep, but when you are manic you cannot go to sleep. No sleep or very little sleep is also a characteristic of mania.

Since I manifested bipolar d/o in 1985, I have had two full blown manic phases and two subsequent hospitalizations. Pretty good batting average against this hellish disease. Hope to keep the stats on my side.

Sent from my iPhone

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My baby brother Farooq, born on October 3rd, 1964.

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October 3rd, 1964, Farooq was born. I was 4 years old and I picked his name. I remember when he lay in his bassinet, a chubby, beautiful, rosy cheeked baby. I remember him as a toddler, a cherub, with pouty, red lips. My parents got divorced before he was a year old. We moved from Karachi to Islamabad to live with my aunt and uncle. My mother who was an obstetrician and gynecologist, found a job in Lahore, so within a year we moved again. My grandmother, aunt, and uncle came with us. My beautiful little brother was so young and was traumatized by all these moves and no longer having a father. But he rallied, my uncle played games like 20 questions and cricket with us. My aunt took care of us, and my grandmother loved us to bits. Then my mother met my stepfather to be, and she married him, and left my brother and me in Pakistan, with her older sister, for a year, while they moved to the States to find medical training, my stepfather wanted to train to be a heart surgeon, and he did. They found residencies in Buffalo NY, and called us there. My little brother and I came to Buffalo in June of 1972. We settled in, started school in September. My gorgeous, little, sensitive brother, trying to be brave, wanting to be loved. My mother had two more children in Buffalo, my new baby brother and sister. My brother Farooq was a loving older brother, always looked to be loved. He was sensitive, intelligent, with gorgeous, movie star looks. He had friends who loved him. So unfortunately, he had no relationship with my step father and he was always looking for a father figure. But that would have been fine, if only in his late teens he hadn’t developed bipolar disorder. From there on, his life unraveled. He go married, had two children, and never had the chance to fully accept the fact that he was ill. He refused to take his medication. I always wonder what would have happened if he had had a chance to only deal with his illness, in peace (if there can be such a thing), without the responsibility of a wife or family. There was so much upheaval, and tortuous drama in his life after he got married, how could that have been good for him? I wonder if he would have come to some understanding with himself about his illness and realized that he needed to take his medications. I am incredibly, incredibly grateful for my beautiful and most beloved niece and nephew.

This was his life. This incredibly beautiful, sensitive, kind, considerate, loving baby brother of mine. His loss is a tragedy, in the purest form of the word. He came into this world looking for love, as we all do, and he left this world much too soon, looking for love. The last thing he said to me was “I love you.” And I love him and miss him so, incredibly much, everyday.

The things we have to live through, if someone had told me this was going to happen to me, to us, I would not have believed it. I may have declined the penalty.

Irony! We landed at Washington National airport on June 20, 1972. And Farooq left us on June 21st, 1991. (Before his 26th birthday.) What if we hadn’t settled 20 minutes from Niagara Falls? What would he have walked into then? I wanted this post to be a celebration of his life, because it is his birthday today, he would have been 51 years old!!! Can’t even imagine that. But oh how wonderful that would have been. My mother spared the almost unbearable heartache of losing her son. We, all of us, specially his children, spared such a tragic loss. Yes I wanted this to be celebratory post, in celebration of his life. But I can’t. I don’t have it in me, his name, the thought of my poor little brother is laced with sadness and tears. That is how it is when you lose someone precious to suicide.

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Forgiveness

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This is a post about forgiveness and how forgiving can contribute to your mental health.

Even if you have been through hell, and someone has committed an egregious act against you, forgiving this person is in your best interest. Let me explain.

Of course, you are upset, angry, maybe even rageful that a person has done x, y, z to you, or your loved ones. Yes our first reaction is probably anger. That’s normal. Perhaps you want revenge, that too is normal. You may even dislike, or hate this person. Even that is normal.

But, when days, months, maybe even years go by, and this hatred and anger, and negative emotions in you continue, then who do you think this is harming? I have news for you: this is harming YOU, not the person you hate. Hatred and anger, and fantasies of revenge cause stress hormones in your body and mind to surge, these harm your body and mind. They do nothing to the person you hate.

So, you don’t have to like this person, you don’t have to have anything to do with them, but forgive them. For your own sake. So you can get over the upheaval of feeling hate, anger, and revenge against them. This gives you your peace of mind back, you are then, not controlled by your emotions against this person. You are free and can be at peace. Your stress hormone levels are low, and your mind and body are not being assaulted by them.

Forgiveness, for your own sake.

PS

There are many reasons you might come up with to not do this. You can say “Oh I can’t do this, the crime against me was too heinous!” Or you may say you are too angry, you cannot let go of it, that person doesn’t deserve forgiveness. Fine everything you say is valid. But just let go of all your reasons to stay angry and harming yourself, let go and for your own sake, forgive them.

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Keep Taking Your Meds!

Today, something reminded me that when we, people with mental illness, are feeling better, we still have to take our medication. We can not think “Oh, I am feeling fine, I don’t need to take my medication anymore!” Because the reason we are feeling better is because we are taking our medication. If we stop, we will start to feel bad again. If we stop our antidepressants. we’ll start feeling bad again, if we stop our mood stabilizers, we may become manic or depressed, and for people with schizophrenia, if medication is stopped, they might become psychotic (out of touch with reality) again.

So please remember that your symptoms have abated and you are feeling better because you are on your medication. Again a comparison to a physical illness will illustrate this: If you have diabetes and you’re taking insulin and your blood sugar is in the normal range, that’s all well and good. Now, would you think “Oh, I’m feeling fine, I’ll come off the insulin”? Well what would happen if you do stop taking insulin? Well your blood sugar would go sky high again! So what happens when you stop taking the medication that is helping keep your depression and other mental illness symptoms at bay, if you stop, they will come back!

So friends, fellow bloggers, readers, please stay on your medications. If you are having problems with side effects, please talk to your doctor. Don’t just come off the meds, because then the symptoms you were taking the meds for will resurface.

Just some advice.

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Study assessed the effect of chemicals, BPA and EE found in water bottles, on mice’s desire to exercise and found that it makes them lazier.

BPA, which is bisphenol A, disrupts endocrine hormone systems of mice and that appears to make them more inactive. Mice exposed to BPA were lazier and had slower metabolisms! BPA and EE (ethinyl estradiol, yes a form of estrogen) are known as obesogens, yes, obesogens! This is bad news people! BPA is in everything plastic, except for the recently BPA free plastic containers you can buy, and these have problems of their own (In 2012 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration banned the sale of baby bottles that contain bisphenol A (BPA), a compound frequently found in plastics. The ban came after manufacturers’ responded to consumer concerns of BPA’s safety after several studies found the chemical mimics estrogen and could harm brain and reproductive development in fetuses, infants and children.* Since then store shelves have been lined with BPA-free bottles for babies and adults alike. Yet, recent research reveals that a common BPA replacement, bisphenol S (BPS), may be just as harmful: reference: http//www.scientificamerican.com/article/bpa-free-plastic-containers-may-be-just-as-hazardous/).

So all that water we drink in plastic bottles is not only bad for the oceans and for the earth, it is really bad for us. Time to stop drinking out of those bottles. Really!

http://www.treehugger.com/health/bpa-could-be-affecting-desire-exercise.html

Study assessed the effect of endocrine disrupting chemicals on mice’s desire to exercise and found that it makes them lazier.

A new study out of the University of Missouri has assessed the effect of bisphenol A (BPA) and ethinyl estradiol (EE) on mice’s desire to exercise. Researchers published the study in the Journal of Developmental Origins of Health and Disease, explaining that mice exposed to these chemicals were lazier and had slower metabolisms.

These chemicals are known hormone (endocrine system) disruptors and are thought to affect mammals in many different ways, from tumors to birth defects to developmental disorders to prostate and ovarian cancers. They are also considered to be obesogens (tending to cause obesity).

This study is one of very few to consider whether BPA and EE actually create a tendency toward physical inactivity, which is a leading cause of obesity.

Cheryl Rosenfeld, associate professor of biomedical sciences and study author,explains:

“Mice exposed to endocrine disruptors move around less, are more likely to sleep, and engage in less voluntary physical activity… Female mice exposed to BPA and EE were less active than the control mice. They moved around less at night – when these mice are most typically active – and moved more slowly, drank less water, and spent more time sleeping.”

It’s an interesting discovery, since it leads to obvious questions about how exposure to endocrine disruptors affects human behaviour. Lacking the desire to exercise can predispose people and animals to metabolic disorders, cardiovascular diseases, and even cancer, according to Rosenfeld.

Bisphenol A is found in many plastics, can linings, and receipts. Ethinyl estradiol is the estrogen in birth control pills. Both are chemicals with which humans come into contact frequently, which makes these findings even more alarming. Despite various claims that BPA is safe at the low levels typically consumed by people (which is what the FDA says), it seems there’s always new evidence showing that endocrine disruptors are better to avoid than to ignore.

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About antidepressants and Aral the antidepressant and bloopers hahaha

Reposting because of technical difficulties.

I am sorry  got a little frustrated at the end of the video, my son is hilarious, funny, adorable and very photogenic, just like his mom, hahaha!!!