Happy 2008, everyone

This year is a special one for the Mental Health Source Page, because it marks the 10th year of its existence. I created this website in 1998, to share personal stories and resources about depression and bipolar disorder. This website gave me a voice to sort out my personal experiences with depression. Little did I know how much sharing with others helps me find strength and reminds me that I’m not alone. For this, I thank you, readers of this website, for being with me over the years.

I’m a bit late with the blog carnival that was supposed to be published yesterday. Rest assured I will get to this within the week, probably during the weekend. Being a mom to a newborn proved a challenge unlike any I’ve experienced (and I thought going through a PhD program was hard; I think this is harder)! Here’s a picture of my little one when he was 2 weeks old… he’s now 5 weeks old and learning to propel himself on his tummy.

When I was pregnant, I knew that I needed to get ready for sleep deprivation and for this major life transition, but honestly, until I actually experienced it, I did not truly understand sleep deprivation. And of course, given my history of depression I’ve been watchful during pregnancy and now, in the postpartum period, to make sure that I keep healthy. For this I’m very grateful to my husband, for his outstanding support. He took 5 weeks off work to take care of me and to help with our baby. If you are interested in postpartum depression from a first-person perspective, be sure to visit Katherine Stone’s blog.

During the winter holidays, I came upon a wonderful public radio program called “To the Best of Our Knowledge”. Recently they aired a segment on sadness and depression, and whether “normal” sadness has been stripped of its human context and made into a chemically-based disease. You may listen to the streaming audio (requires Real audio player) of the December 16, 2007 program here.

Suni at BULLETPROOFsoul awarded this site the Thinking Blogger Award. Thank you, Suni.

This award was created by Ilker over at The Thinking Blog, who said, “Please, remember to tag blogs with real merits, i.e. relative content, and above all - blogs that really get you thinking!” (You can also get the silver version of the TBA at Ilker’s site)

Here are the rules if you’d like to award a deserving blogger the Thinking Blogger Award:
1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think,
2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme,
3. Optional: Proudly display the ‘Thinking Blogger Award’ with a link to the post that you wrote (here is an alternative silver version if gold doesn’t fit your blog).

My 5 blog picks are:
1. Therapydoc of Everyone Needs Therapy
2. GrrlScientist of Living the Scientific Life
3. Cheng Leng of Notes from the Heart
4. Albert of Urban Monk
5. Sichitku of SCKU

I’ve been asked to review a website called FindCounseling.com, which was first born in 1996 as Mirconnect.com then evolved in 2000 to Therapistfinder.net. When C.J. Newton founded FindCounseling.com, he wanted to create a search engine specific to mental health professionals. This was quite forward-thinking on Newton’s part, as resource websites at the time mainly tried to be generalists trying to cater to as many people as possible (”mass marketing”).

According to FindCounseling.com, Newton’s original template website became the model upon which all therapist directories have been built. So why this continued evolution to FindCounseling.com? FindCounseling.com is reinventing itself to go beyond just a searchable directory. It wants be an intelligent engine that responds to your queries so that your search is more focused to the help you need. Here are my 3 key observations about the website: (more…)