Mental Health: Time For A Change In How We View It All

On Monday June 3rd 2013, President Barack Obama hosted a White House conference on mental health. Participants in the conference included celebrities, veterans groups, mental health advocates and psychologists. At that conference the President announced that the Department of Veterans Affairs would conduct their own nationwide mental health summit conferences from July 1st through September 15th 2013 to focus on support for our veterans and their families as well as increasing awareness about mental health programs that are currently available.

In that conference, President Obama called for an end to the stigma that has been associated with mental health issues in our country. What does stigma mean? Consider the following definitions.

Stigma. Defined by dictionary.com as:
1. a mark of disgrace or infamy; a stain or reproach, as on one’s reputation.
2. medicine
a mental or physical mark that is characteristic of a defect or disease.

Stigma. Defined by the World English Dictionary as:
a.  distinguishing mark of social disgrace
b.  any sign of a mental deficiency or emotional upset

Stigma. Defined by the American Heritage Medical Dictionary as:
a.  mark of shame or discredit.

Noted 20th Century Sociologist Erving Goffman offered this definition of stigma:
“The phenomenon whereby an individual with an attribute is deeply discredited by his/her society is rejected as a result of the attribute. Stigma is a process by which the reaction of others spoils normal identity.”

These are the kinds of terms and words used to describe a kind of collective attitude many of us have held towards those afflicted with mental illness. Our jaundiced and arms-length view of mental illness has been this way for centuries. We fear what we don’t understand.  It is way beyond time for a change in how we view those in our society who suffer from a mental illness or disease.

Diseases such as Leprosy and AIDs were once looked upon in this fashion until the bright spotlight of education and empowerment along with improvements in treatable medications turned discrimination and devaluation into compassion and understanding.

A quick visit to the newly launched web site of the US Dept. of Health & Human Services, mentalhealth.gov, revealed the following statistics:

√  In 2011 one in five American adults experienced a mental health issue.

√  One in ten young people experienced a period of major depression.

√  One in twenty Americans lived with a serious mental illness, such as schizophrenia, bipolar  disorder or major depression.

√  Disorders such as schizophrenia and manic-depression cannot be ‘caught.’ They are genetic diseases that run in families.

√  Half of all mental health disorders show first signs before a person turns 14 years old, and three quarters of mental health disorders begin before age 24.

The above noted statistics referenced from mentalhealth.gov regarding mental health issues among our younger population members was sobering to contemplate.

As an active caregiver for the past nine years of aging parents, two of whom have passed away as a result of Alzheimer’s disease, I thought I had become used to a number of frightening stats as they pertained to AD. My own firsthand experience as a caregiver for three of four aging parents who were stricken with dementia taught me a profound lesson in compassion, patience and nonjudgmental interaction with each of them. I have now come to view others who are afflicted with mental diseases that are different from Alzheimer’s with the same compassionate, non judging mindset.

An old saying, “people are down on what they are not up on,” comes to mind here. Now is the time to educate ourselves more about mental illnesses, many of which are quite treatable and controllable, and to learn of just how many people can then lead successful lives in spite of living with  an underlying disorder.

In preparing this article, each of the following web sites were visited.

mentalhealth.gov
This is a newly created federal government level web site resource. It offers a wide variety of in-depth material including education, wellness and prevention, and what to look for signs in many of the anxiety, eating, mood, personality, psychotic, and substance use disorders.

BringChange2Mind.org
This is the site that award winning actress Glenn Close launched in an effort to bring education and empowerment to those families who have members among them struggling with a mental health challenge.

www.FoundationHouse.com
This is a web page for the renowned Foundation House Extended Care Sober Living Facilities in Portland, Maine. Their specialty is treatment of the diseases of alcohol and drug addiction.

TheBalancedMindFoundation.org
A web site dedicated to families of children and teens with mood disorders. It offers an educational library, forums and blogs for parents, support groups,  and professional resources.

EachMindMatters.org
Developed by the California Mental Health Movement, this web site is substantial, featuring a blog page and a get-help-now page link. It also features links to these other related and helpful web sites:

1. SuicideisPreventable.org
A resource web site for help with desperate folks contemplating suicide or merely exhibiting the early signs of this mindset.

2. ReachOut.com
A web site designed for young folks in mind with links and information pertaining to anxieties, eating issues, loss and grief, drugs and alcohol addiction, depression and self harm.

3. SpeakOurMinds.org.
A resource that features a statewide speakers bureau that can provide speakers to your business, school or organization.

Make the decision today  to empower yourself with straightforward knowledge about mental health. Get the facts instead of walking about harboring  ignorance and fear.


Jeff Dodson
June 29th 2013

The Honeymoon Effect: A Book Review

As a long time fan and reader of the writings of Dr. Wayne Dyer, I first learned of author Bruce Lipton and his book, The Biology of Belief, from him. Curiosity got the best of me, so when a chance came up to review Dr. Lipton’s new book, The Honeymoon Effect, I pursued it.

The author invites us to look back upon our  most memorable and unforgettable love affair and to recall all of those electrifying emotions and the sense of bliss that it instilled within us.  What was it that was going on with us neurologically and hormonally that accounted for that profound lasting experience? How might that same experience be relived once again in a new relationship or within one you are already in?

The Honeymoon Effect is a book that lays out the compelling and factual science of why and how we became so smitten and entranced with that other person in that love affair of long ago. It all comes down to how we have evolved at the biochemical  and cellular level while residing on our planet.

Some  of the underlying science in this book includes:
Nature’s drive to form community among its many species. Pair coupling. The drive to bond trumps the drive to procreate. This is true for all the mammalian species of earth include ourselves.

The most fundamental form of communication among organisms are energy vibrations. The catchy  “good vibes”, or “bad vibes” slang of the Sixties turns out to be rooted in hard science and physics. Positive outgoing enthusiastic people generate higher level attracting energy vibrations while negative, unhappy and/or deceitful individuals emanate lower negative energy vibrations. As young children, we all intuitively sensed this distinction in others. It was only when we entered adulthood that many of us learned to ignore messages we received energetically: “Don’t listen to your feelings. Listen to the words.”

Brain waves. There are five different frequencies. Our ability to learn, to imagine as children, to relax, and to operate at an optimum or peak performance level (in what some athletes refer to as ‘the zone’) is all related to which specific brain wave frequency state we are in and how we can alter them.

The biochemistry of love. We are “self-biologists” who create with the thoughts in our minds the love potions that control the cells and tissues in our bodies. Whether you’re in love or running from danger, your mind calibrates your blood’s biochemistry, which in turn controls your biology and genetics. The mind interprets your perceptions of the world, and your brain goes to work to produce the biochemistry that compliments your perceptions.

Between couples, you actually have four minds to contend with. Your conscious and unconscious minds and her conscious and unconscious minds. It is when the subconscious mind arises after a blissful love relationship that the glow begins to fade. Neuroscientists have found that we are able to utilize our creative conscious minds to control our behavior regulating cognitive activities about 5 percent of the time. The remaining 95 percent  remains within the control of the subconscious mind.

I was surprised to learn about this conscious/unconscious mental tug-of-war that goes on in our minds and the disparity ratio of power each holds over us.

The conscious mind’s prefrontal cortex can process and manage a relatively measly 40 nerve impulses per second. The 90 percent of the brain that constitutes the subconscious mind’s platform can process 40 million nerve impulses per second. The subconscious mind’s processing ability is thus 1 million times more powerful than the conscious mind.

The subconscious mind is primarily a record/playback mechanism, unlike the conscious mind, expresses little creativity and has no sense of time. It operates always in the present moment, doesn’t see a future, and doesn’t listen or care when you yell at it.

The challenge is to bring your two subconscious minds into alignment with the conscious ones. Though the subconscious mind is a very powerful part of each of us, Dr. Lipton shows us how to set about re programming the subconscious mind via habituation , hypnosis, subliminal tapes, and energy psychology.

At the end of his book Dr. Lipton lists twenty seven different resource web sites to visit that offer tools and assistance in changing the accumulation of negative, disempowering  beliefs that we have filed away in the subconscious mind cabinetry.

The factual science behind how we have evolved, how we are wired and why we teeter-totter between conscious and unconscious minds in our relationships is all presented in understandable and often humorous terms.

The Honeymoon Effect is a thought provoking and educational book that offers the promise and the tools necessary for recapturing and injecting the emotional supercharging of an unforgettable love affair into relationships we now are in or wish to initiate.

This is a great read for couples, for singles and even for parents who want to know how to better parent and nurture their children.


Jeff Dodson
June 17th 2013

FTC Disclosure: I received this book for free from Hay House Publishing for this review. The opinions expressed in this review are unbiased and reflect my honest judgment of the product.