Read This Book and Call Me in a Week
Doctors in England are prescribing self-help books for mild depression instead of medication. This practice, bibliotherapy, provides patients with non-medication option. For patients with severe depression symptoms, medications are warranted. I’m sure the U.S. is watching and waiting to see how well this model works, and as a nation we already love self-help books and tapes and gurus. However, U.K.’s adoption of bibliotherapy may stem from a practical fact:
In Britain, the National Heath Service covers everyone’s medicines and doctor visits, free of charge.
Bibliotherapy also helps free up physicians to treat seriously depressed or mentally ill patients. Bibliotherapy also allows patients who has a long wait to see a physician (what you get for “free” you often pay with time) to have an alternative “prescription.”
Source: Wall Street Journal, August 9, 2005. “For Mild Depression, Some U.K. Doctors Prescribe Reading”
Is anger its own disorder?
Anger problems now has its own name: Intermittent Explosive Disorder. Many treatment regimens in depression and bipolar disorder address anger and rage that patients often experience during an episode or during the course of the illness.
I don’t dispute anger being a critical issue to address, but I am not sure that our continual splitting off symptoms into its own “disorder” is a good idea. It takes us farther away from addressing the person as a whole, and closer to treating the individual disorders almost as if these are unrelated to each other and therefore warranting its own medication. I think this brings us even closer to overmedicating.
SOURCE: Out of control anger
By Carey Goldberg, Globe Staff | August 8, 2005
They used to just call it a bad temper and tell you to count to 10. Then came bunches of guys sitting around in circles and learning ”anger management.” Now, increasingly, the catchphrase is ”Intermittent Explosive Disorder.” Researchers delving into pathological anger report that it is more widespread than anyone had suspected. And that their understanding of its biological roots is deepening, raising prospects of better treatment. A national study found that at some point in their lives, about 5 percent of people have such frequent, serious blow-ups that they qualify as suffering from Intermittent Explosive Disorder, a full-fledged psychiatric diagnosis. It is twice as common in men as in women and tends to begin before age 20.
Symptoms of Depression
What are the symptoms of depression?
* continuous feeling of sadness and emptiness
* feeling worthless (”if I were to die in an accident, no one would notice.”), hopeless (”there’s no future for me.”)
* sleeping too much or too little
* eating too much or too little
* no longer enjoying activities you used to enjoy (”everything seems dull and I can’t feel joy in doing things I used to enjoy doing.”)
* persistent tiredness and loss of energy
* suicidal thoughts (”living is not worth the pain.”)
Information source: U.S. National Institutes of Mental Health or NIHM at http://www.nimh.nih.gov/publicat/bipolar.cfm.