If I Don’t Talk About It, Maybe It Will Go Away

I was so ready to graduate from high school! I had been accepted to my dream college and I wanted to move away from home, meet new people, and start fresh. High school had been pretty rough. I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder my junior year and I struggled to understand the illness, how to manage it, and how to explain it to other people. People who have bipolar disorder struggle with bouts of extreme energy and euphoria and then dark depressive episodes. The depressive episodes wiped out my motivation and made me feel hopeless and worthless. I was a good student, I belonged to a lot of clubs, I played sports, and I had wonderful friends but when I was depressed I had no energy to do any of these things. Depression made me feel so lost and defeated that I forgot who I was. I felt like all I had was my depression. I really wanted to go to college because I thought everything would be different. I honestly thought I could leave my bipolar disorder and my depression behind me.

Continue reading If I Don’t Talk About It, Maybe It Will Go Away

Some Facts About Memorial Day

Decorating soldiers’ graves is a very ancient tradition, and the practice of doing it on a specific day has had all kinds of names in different communities. One of the most common was “Decoration Day.”

The name “Memorial Day” is pretty recent! In 1968, Congress passed a law that named the day “Memorial Day” and made it on the last Monday of May, so workers could have a three day weekend. (The act also includes Veterans’ Day, Labor Day, and a couple of other holidays.)

Memorial Day is about remembering and honoring soldiers who died in wars. Almost every family has at least one member who fought in some kind of conflict. Involvement in war raises risk of depression and anxiety both for the person who participates and for others in the family, especially children.

Even if you don’t have a family member who lost their life in a war, Memorial Day reminds us to be grateful that there were so many people who were willing to fight to preserve the good in society. Which means it’s a reason to express gratitude. And the discipline of expressing gratitude is a super healing discipline.

Have a relaxing and peaceful holiday.

Has your family lost members to wars? What are you grateful for this Memorial Day? Tell us in the comments.

Stories From A Woman Who Got Mental Health Help Early

Now age 40, New Orleans native and current Pittsburgh resident K. Rose Quayle was first committed to a mental hospital at the age of 15 for Bipolar II and an eating disorder. She spent her teens trying to control her mental illness through various medications, and by the time she got to her 30s, her illnesses had stopped responding to medications, so she decided to try electroconvulsive therapy (ECT).

K. Rose Quayle sitting on the right during the Q&A.

Last year Quayle released a self-published book called Look Left, Walk Green: A Shocking Tale of Losing the Past and Choosing to Gain the Future, which she says she hopes will serve as a guidebook to various mental health treatments, especially ECT—one of the most feared and stigmatized treatments, and one of the least understood. She spoke about her experiences last night at the National Association of Mental Illness (NAMI) Keystone Pennsylvania event series “Stories that Heal” at City of Asylum in Pittsburgh.

Continue reading Stories From A Woman Who Got Mental Health Help Early

Is Depression Something You Can Control?

Is depression something you can control?

Or does the brain actually change in ways that are beyond our control?

Research studies show that when someone is depressed, we can see many changes in the brain.

Of course, the brain is a super complex organ, and science is still only scratching the surface of everything there is to know about it. People who have depression can have different symptoms, different causes, and different factors that contribute to their symptoms.

It’s important to know that even though we don’t understand everything about the causes of depression, we do know something about what treatments can help. And if one treatment doesn’t work for your child, there may be another one that will, so don’t give up trying to find help! Your child and their body and mind are very special and unique—so something that worked or didn’t work for someone else will probably work differently for them.

Depression probably has a combination of different causes:

  • Gene-environment interactions: Your child’s brain and their genes can change based on what they are exposed to in their environment. Changes in genes based on environmental changes are called “epigenetics,” and they prove that, as we’ve written in a previous blog, our genes are not set in stone. And we can see big differences among different people in their emotional/psychological responses to environmental factors. For example, some people’s anxiety skyrockets if they’re in a car wreck, while other people don’t have that response.
  • Endocrine system, otherwise known as hormones: Some people’s moods fluctuate with changes in their hormone levels. Hormones are neurotransmitters that help different parts of the body communicate with each other. An example of fluctuating hormones is premenstrual syndrome (PMS)—some girls’ moods change with hormonal changes, and others’ don’t.
  • Immune system: Stress and depression can cause your child’s immune system—the part of the body that fights infections—to get weaker. And vice versa: some chronic illnesses can increase depressive feelings.
  • Neuroplasticity: Scientists talk about the brain being “plastic,” meaning the connections between neurons can change over time. In previous eras, we thought the brain’s electrical system was hard-wired. Now we know that its wiring can change based on genetics, environment, hormones, the immune system, and and medical and psychological treatments.

All of this means there are ways to get better!!

References: Medscape;  Nature

Watch for Symptoms

The SOVA Project is happy to feature this blog post written by one in our team of fantastic SOVA Ambassadors—these are young people who help create meaningful blog posts from adolescents’ perspectives.

Are you or any of your friends struggling with symptoms of depression? Are you confused as to why you feel like you’ve fallen down into a big deep pit?

Many teenagers find themselves in very low places and often wonder how they arrived there. The good news is for some more common mental illnesses like depression and anxiety, there are signs and symptoms that we can become aware of and look out for in ourselves and in others we care about.

The key to recovery is developing awareness and becoming knowledgeable enough to be able to point out signs that don’t seem right—this can possibly prevent suffering and/or catch a problem before it gets worse.

Psychiatry.org lists some signs that something might be up.

Continue reading Watch for Symptoms

Make A Sunshine Box

For many years I have kept a file on my hard drive called “Raves.” This is a folder in which I have saved emails, letters, screenshots, and other files that have spoken positively about me and my work. The file has moved from computer to computer—and I also have hardcopies of notes in a file drawer.

Looking at the file now is like opening a box of sunshine. It helps me understand the good that I’ve tried to do in the world, and it reminds me to be positive about life even when life puts stones in the road.

(There’s a great song called “Stones in the Road,” you can listen below! It talks about how the stones can look like diamonds—depending on how we look at them. And how going home helps us stay balanced—”going home” can mean coming home to ourselves.)

You can keep a Sunshine File, and it can help you switch from focusing on negative aspects of life to focusing on the positive. Your collection could be a file like mine with nice notes from colleagues, strangers, friends and family. It could be a special box of messages or quotations that you collect and look at from time to time. It could be a drawer in your bedroom where you keep comforting and uplifting items like a pillow full of lavender buds, a scented candle, your favorite tea, or notecards on which you can write sunshiney messages to your friends or family and pass along the light.

On another note, since spring is here, you can also go outside and get some actual sunshine, which is so good not just for our bodies but also for our minds. Sunlight can actually counter depression.

What kinds of positive messages or items have you collected? How does virtual or real sunlight affect your mood and attitude? Let us know in the comments.

Getting Help: Where to Start

As a parent or caregiver, you want the best for your children or other dependents. You may be concerned or have questions about certain behaviors they exhibit and how to ensure they get help.

A wonderful place to start is the site “For Parents and Caregivers” at MentalHealth.gov.

This website gives some information about signs to look out for, how to get help and how to support your child.

Do you think this is a good resource? What about it was helpful? 

Turning Social Media Negativity into Positivity

The SOVA Project is happy to feature this blog post written by one in our team of fantastic SOVA Ambassadors—these are young people who help create meaningful blog posts from adolescents’ perspectives.

Have you ever seen a negative, hurtful comment on a picture or a post online?

Have you ever scrolled past some super opinionated comments that were posted anonymously?

These days, everybody has some connection to social media. And social media platforms enable people to express their opinions without filter, without thought for the feelings and reactions of others—and without accountability or responsibility, because people can post anonymously, and they use that anonymity as a way to hide.

I recently came across a TED talk that confronts and even engages with these types of comments that have touched all of us—regardless of whether they were meant for us, for our friends, or even harsh comments of strangers on posts we happen to come upon.

Continue reading Turning Social Media Negativity into Positivity

Change As A Teacher

The SOVA Project is happy to feature this blog post written by one in our team of fantastic SOVA Ambassadors—these are young people who help create meaningful blog posts from adolescents’ perspectives.

Change can be one of the hardest challenges in a person’s life. It might be reassuring to know that everyone experiences some type of drastic change during their lifetime, and in most cases more than once.

These changes can range anywhere from experiencing loss, going through an illness, or dealing with a family divorce, to changing schools or hard adjustments in friend groups and social circles. Every person experiences their own version of change; some changes can be harder and take longer to adjust to, while others can be fairly simple and figured out in a short time span.

Since I was a little kid, I always feared change. I was always attached to my life in every aspect at each moment. I wanted to stay my young age, stay in my same position, with my same friends and teachers. I simply never wanted to grow up. I always wished that time would just stop so that I could live without having to worry that the time was passing and life was changing.

Continue reading Change As A Teacher