If physical diseases were treated like mental illness

The Tortured Genius Just Can’t Help It, Or Why Scott And Zelda Went Mad

 http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/05/10/the-tortured-genius-just-can-t-help-it-or-why-scott-and-zelda-went-mad.html

Creative types can’t stop thinking, can’t stop second guessing and revising, and aren’t much fun to be around. But new studies show it’s not like they have a choice. 

Knowing his wife was upset with him for spending more time with his typewriter than with her, F. Scott Fitzgerald hatched a plan. He wasn’t proud of many of his short stories (he only included 46 of his 181 short stories in his published collections), but he knew that in order to win back his wife he’d have to whip up something quickly. Working from 7 a.m. to 2 a.m., he churned out “The Camel’s Back” for The Saturday Evening Post for a fee of $500. That very morning, he bought Zelda a gift with the money he had made. suppose that of all the stories I have ever written this one cost me the least travail and perhaps gave me the most amusement,” he commented in the first edition of Tales of the Jazz Age. “As to the labor involved, it was written during one day in the city of New Orleans, with the express purpose of buying a platinum and diamond wristwatch which cost six hundred dollars.”

 

This was in 1920, and Zelda’s frustrations could still be assuaged with a well-timed gift. (After all, it was only after Scott had the money and prestige from publishing This Side of Paradise that she agreed to marry him earlier that year.) It wasn’t long though until Zelda had grown so fed up with Scott’s drinking and self-isolation that she lashed out, cheating on him with a French naval aviator while Scott was working on The Great Gatsby in the South of France. From then on, their marriage devolved into arguments and a devastating cocktail of debt, drink, and manic depression.
“Zelda’s spending sprees, her ‘passionate love of life’ and intense social relationships, her melancholic response to disappointment and the relatively late onset of her illness (she was born in 1900) point toward a mood disorder, as does the alternation between frank psychosis and a sparkling, provocative personality,” noted a 1996 article in The New York Times Magazine that asked “How Crazy Was Zelda?”

The Fitzgeralds are perhaps the best—or at least the most intriguing—example of writers whose talents, when mixed with depression and vices (like alcohol and spending sprees), burned brightly then collapsed calamitously.

But of course, it’s not just the Fitzgeralds who battled depression and led lives that eventually spun out of their control. Mark Twain, Tennessee Williams, Sylvia Plath, Emily Dickinson, Stephen King, Anne Rice, David Foster Wallace, and even J.K. Rowling are just a few of the writers who have been struck by the illness that Hemingway once referred to as “The Artist’s Reward.”

The common theory for why writers are often depressed is rather basic: writers think a lot and people who think a lot tend to be unhappy. Add to that long periods of isolation and the high levels of narcissism that draws someone to a career like writing, and it seems obvious why they might not be the happiest bunch.

A study conducted at the prestigious Iowa Writers’ Workshop found that 80 percent of the residents displayed some form of depression.

Dig a little deeper though, and some interesting findings reveal themselves—findings not just about the neuroscience of writerly depression, but about why Hemingway was so awful to Hadley, why Scott and Zelda drove each other mad, and why writers, by and large, are not only depressed people but also awful lovers.

A few months back, Andreas Fink at the University of Graz in Austria found a relationship between the ability to come up with an idea and the inability to suppress the precuneus while thinking. The precuneus is the area of the brain that shows the highest levels of activation during times of rest and has been linked to self-consciousness and memory retrieval. It is an indicator of how much one ruminates or ponders oneself and one’s experiences.

For most people, this area of the brain only lights up at restful times when one is not focusing on work or even daily tasks. For writers and creatives, however, it seems to be constantly activated. Fink’s hypothesis is that the most creative people are continually making associations between the external world and their internal experiences and memories. They cannot focus on one thing quite like the average person. Essentially, their stream of ideas is always running—the tap does not shut off—and, as a result, creative people show schizophrenic, borderline manic-depressive tendencies. Really, that’s no hyperbole. Fink found that this inability to suppress the precuneus is seen most dominantly in two types of people: creatives and psychosis patients.

What’s perhaps most interesting is that this flood of thoughts and introspection is apparently vital to creative success. In Touched with Fire, a touchstone book on the relationship between “madness and creativity,” Kay Redfield Jamison, a psychiatry professor at Johns Hopkins, reported that successful individuals were eight times more likely as “regular people” to suffer from a serious depressive illness.

If you think about it though, this “mad success” makes sense. Great writing requires original thinking and clever reorganization of varied experiences and thoughts. Whether it’s Adam Gopnik’s first piece for The New Yorker that related Italian Renaissance art with the Montréal Expos or Fitzgerald trailblazing the “Jazz Age” with his combination of Princeton poems and socioeconomic class sensibilities in This Side of Paradise, a writer’s job is to reshape a hodgepodge of old ideas into brand new ones. By letting in as much information as possible, the brains of writers and artists can trawl through their abundance of odd thoughts and turn them into original, cohesive products.
It’s not a surprise then that Tim Burton, Quentin Tarantino, and the most wildly creative writers of our generation have such bizarre ideas: they cannot stop thinking, and whether pleasant or macabre, their thoughts (that can turn into masterpieces like The Nightmare Before Christmas and Pulp Fiction) are constantly flowing through their minds.

Although this stream of introspection and association allows for creative ideas, the downside is that people with “ruminative tendencies” are significantly more likely to become depressed, according (PDF) to the late Yale psychologist Susan Nolen-Hoeksema. Constant reflection takes a toll. Writing, editing, and revising also requires are near obsession with self-criticism, the leading quality for depressed patients.

In fact, a study conducted by Nancy Andreasen at the prestigious Iowa Writers’ Workshop found that 80 percent of the residents displayed some form of depression.
“One of the most important qualities [of depression] is persistence,” said Andreasen. “Successful writers are like prizefighters who keep on getting hit but won’t go down. They’ll stick with it until it’s right.”

While Fitzgerald liked to boast of his raw talent that allowed him to come up with clever stories for the Post or The Smart Set in mere hours, biographers have noted that he spent months poring over drafts—a perfectionist making revision after revision. For better or for worse, creativity and focus are inextricably linked. As Andreasen said, “This type of thinking is often inseparable from the suffering. If you’re at the cutting edge, then you’re going to bleed.”
This mishmash of unremitting rumination and self-criticism means that writers are always working. Even quotidian life is a writerly task. In an interview with The Paris Review, Joyce Carol Oates said, “[I] observe the qualities of people, overhearing snatches of conversations, noting people’s appearances, their clothes, and so forth. Walking and driving a car are part of my life as a writer, really.”

Now, for just a second, put aside the recent news that journalism/writing was ranked as the sixth most narcissistic job by Forbes. And don’t think about the fact that writing is not only a lonely job, but it is also one that can turn a pleasant walk or a drive into a form of work. Instead, focus on how writing is about being able to create and control a world.
For what is writing, but an amalgamation of our thoughts and experiences finished off with a wax and a shine?
This need for control often translates to real life too, and it comes at the expense of the feelings and wishes of nearly everyone around them. Writers are often such terrible lovers because they treat real people as characters, malleable and at their authorial will.
When Charles Dickens was 24 (and allegedly a virgin), he married Catherine Hogarth, then 21. Almost immediately after they married, he became infatuated with Mary, her younger sister (so much so that she would later become the basis for Little Nell in The Old Curiosity Shoppe). Mary died shortly thereafter, which proved a devastating blow for Charles, and for the rest of their marriage Catherine futility tried to live up to her sister. After 22 years and 10 children with Catherine, Charles met Nelly Ternan, a young actress, and deciding that he was quite tired of his wife, tossed her aside in favor of this new mistress.
Like so many authors, from Fyodor Dostoevsky to Ezra Pound to V.S. Naipaul, Dickens wasn’t much of a good person. In fact, he was a rather terrible person and had history not bowed at the beauty of his fiction, he would have been remembered poorly.
Writers can be rather awful people, and their blend of depression, isolation, and desire to control not only their own characters but the “characters” of their real lives has been a relationship-killer for centuries.

(As for the other relationship-destroyer—writers’ infamous penchant for alcohol—Gopnik postulates, “Writing is work in which the balance necessary to a sane life of physical and symbolic work has been wrested right out of plumb, or proportion, and alcohol is (wrongly) believed to rebalance it.”)
Trying to balance vice, borderline mental illness, and a disregard for the real world in favor of fictitious ones is perhaps a noble but Sisyphusian act for many writers. Try as they might, the greatest creatives in history have too much neuroscience working against them, too many ideas fluttering around their minds.

It would be cliché to quote Jack Kerouac in saying, “The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved”—and yet it is a platitude for a reason. The most fascinating people in history, the ones who make a difference, who create, might be depressed, perhaps miserable romantics, yet they have contributed more to society than many of them ever knew.

In fact, Fitzgerald died thinking he was a failure. He was in Hollywood doing “hack work” while his wife was in a Swiss sanitarium, and he often felt as though he were holding the ashes of his life in his hands. Only 44 years old but looking weathered and much older, he sat in his armchair listening to Beethoven, scribbling in the Princeton Alumni Weekly and munching on a Hershey Bar. It was a wintery morning in 1940, and as if propelled by a ghost, he leapt from his chair, grasped at the mantle piece, and collapsed on the floor. He died from a heart attack.

Zelda was too ill to make it to her husband’s funeral, but only a few months before, she had written to Scott with surprising lucidity, “I love you anyway—even if there isn’t any me or any love or even any life—I love you.”

She knew that they were mad, that their creativity and vice and entirely unique perspective on the world would be both their greatest high and their most agonizing low. To the letter, she added, “Nothing could have survived our life.”

5-things-no-one-tells-you-about-taking-antidepressants

http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-things-no-one-tells-you-about-taking-antidepressants/

#5. They Can Make You More Depressed

 Recent studies have found that prolonged use of antidepressants actually promotes depression.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21459521

#4. They Can Make You Suicidal

...all antidepressants that warned of increased suicidal thoughts, particularly in children (later extended to the 18-to-24 age group), and especially in the first two months of use.

#3. Combining Them With Common Medications Can Kill You

"Time gets fuzzy when depression takes you into the valleys".

#2. Finding the Right Medication Is a Guessing Game

Certain types of depression require specific types of medication. Couple that with the fact that each person reacts to those chemicals differently, and you basically have to set up a dartboard, prescribe whatever you hit, and see what happens.

 #1. Meds Alone Often Don't Fix the Problem

Many people don't understand that medication alone is often not enough. Relying solely on pills is usually a disappointment; although they do help relieve some of the anxiety and stress caused by depression, they don't address the underlying mental issues. 

Depending on the cause and severity of the condition, many people need counseling in conjunction with the medication. Because let's face it: Unless you have an incurable, chronic problem, you can't keep taking pills for the rest of your life as your go-to coping device. 

There are often things outside the realm of a physical chemical imbalance that need to be addressed.

But that idea of pills = cures gets us every time, and we end up confused about why we still feel like shit months later. 

Medication will help fight infections after leg surgery, but physical therapy is what gets you walking again. 

Counseling is physical therapy for your brain. Go get it some exercise and then kick the world's ass with it.

How RUBY WAX regained her sparkle: The comedian on training her brain to beat depression

 How RUBY WAX regained her sparkle: The comedian on training her brain to beat depression

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/you/article-2332818/How-RUBY-WAX-trained-brain-beat-depression.html

Brain science is still comparatively in its infancy. For most of the previous century it was assumed that after early childhood, the brain structure remained more or less unchanged. Now scientists have shown that the brain is constantly adapting because of changes in behaviour or environment. What’s more, it is an effect that we can achieve deliberately. Focus on your worries and you’ll develop neural structures of anxiety; but engaging in relaxing activities can rewire your brain for calm. 

‘It’s about working-out the brain like a muscle,’ explains Ruby. ‘You’re not stuck with what you were born with. Gloria Gaynor is going to have to change those lyrics, because I’m not who I am. But what rhymes with neuroplasticity?’ she cackles.

Medication has helped, but not cured her.

And she had so much therapy that she says she grew sick of her own story. But eventually her researches into mental health led her to discover mindfulness. This ancient meditation practice has its roots in Buddhism and, put simply, requires you to spend time paying attention to your thoughts, feelings and sensations – such as, for instance, that whirring noise we heard earlier. ‘You have to train your attention. Once you train that, you can regulate your focus and you won’t stay up all night listening to the voices in your head,’ explains Ruby. 

Since she started practising MBCT, she has not had a full-blown attack of depression. ‘You still have a disease but you can hear it coming before it takes over and take precautions – such as cancel every dinner party, go somewhere quiet, not make so many phone calls. This means it won’t be as intense.

Everyone who has killed themselves probably had depression. 

I suspect she won’t have time. She has a new stage show to write based on this book, and having set up a website, blackdogtribe.com, for people with mental health issues, she hopes to establish a British network of drop-in centres, along the lines of AA. ‘The trouble is, everyone’s too ashamed to admit to having mental illness, and if they come out, their job is affected,’ she says.

What is mindfulness?

The founder of modern-day mindfulness is Jon Kabat-Zinn, who developed the mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) programme at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in the late 1970s, to help with conditions as diverse as chronic pain, high blood pressure, cancer and cardiovascular disease.

Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy — which Ruby studied — was adapted from MBSR in the 1990s by clinical psychologist Mark Williams and colleagues to aid patients with recurrent depression by helping them to relate differently to their distress.

MBCT has been shown to be as effective as antidepressants in preventing a
relapse into depression and the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) has recommended it for people who have experienced three or more episodes. 

Now MBSR and MBCT are also used to help anyone with normal everyday anxiety and low mood.
Regular mindfulness meditation has been shown to develop thicker layers of neurons in the attention-focused parts of the brain, and to boost the activation of the left prefrontal cortex which suppresses negative emotions.

 

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-courage-be-present/201001/how-practice-mindfulness-meditation

Ruby Wax - How to Tame Your Mind

Ruby Wax - How to Tame Your Mind 

http://youtu.be/P1iVE8wxGwA

Dec 18, 2013

Ruby Wax - comedian, writer and mental health campaigner, visits the RSA to explain how and why our busy, self-critical thoughts drive us to anxiety and depression, and to provide ways of taming our out-of-control minds.

Apparently if it's not physical it doesnt count

http://themetapicture.com/apparently-if-its-not-physical-it-doesnt-count/

Top 6 Tips To Beat Depression

 Top 6 Tips To Beat Depression

Posted by Stella X on November 22, 2013 in Top 6 Tips To Beat Depression

 

http://www.uncoverdiscover.com/health/top-6-tips-to-beat-depression/get-to-know-yourself/

To be depressed, is not necessarily a mental disorder. There is a form of “every day” depression, which can be a normal symptom, and a form which is called “clinical depression”, which is much more serious and requires getting professional help. The difference between those two forms is the duration and the severity of the negative feelings. To a person with more serious problems, a happy event is not able to change the sad feelings or lift their spirit. Also, when depressed, the person often feels worse at the morning than at the evening, in contrary to a person who is just in a bad mood, who feels better after a good night’s sleep. Fortunately, there are things one can do in order to change their negative state of mind.

#1 – Get to Know Yourself

Try to study your feelings and your thoughts by writing them down into a journal and taking notice of what is happening, what makes you feel better and what makes you feel worse. That way, you can deal with what is bad for you or avoid the people or things that make you feel that way. Take the time to think about what you like about yourself, what you did good during the day and what you will make good tomorrow.

#2 – Choose Your Words Wisely

If you use words like “must”, “should”, “never”, “bad”, “I have to”, those words will make you feel stressed, anxious and put you down if you don’t succeed in living up to them. Replace those words with more positive and open-ended words like “maybe”, “I might”, “it is better to”, “I want to”.

#3 – Talk to Others

Don’t keep your feelings to yourself. As soon as somebody hurts you, tell the person who is responsible for that. To surround yourself with trustworthy, supportive and loving people is a huge help in fighting the negative feelings.

#4 – Know That It’s OK to Be Sad Sometimes

Don’t judge yourself for feeling what you feel. Sometimes, being sad and even depressed is something we have to go through in order to process events and eventually to learn to appreciate the happy moments in our lives.

#5 – Do What is Good For You

Whenever some negative feeling seems to get over you, try to do whatever makes you feel better. Try a loved hobby or listening to music that uplifts you. Watch your favorite movies, take a walk or drive the car along a beautiful route. Also, even a mild exercise can help keeping those negative thought out of your head. Take the stairs and not the elevator or park your car further away so you get a chance to walk a little. Get out in the sun and seek out a little green surroundings, like a lake or a park. Try to have those activities in your daily or at least weekly routine. It can be difficult to overcome the urge to stay all day inside and isolated, so be patient and give yourself the necessary time.

#6 – Set Small & Realistic Goals

Take little steps and try to achieve simple goals each day. It is better to say that you will take a little walk around the block tomorrow, than to say every day that you will begin next week going to the gym.