Work Place Depression, Pursuit of Money, Loneliness, Exercise Addiction

Welcome to this edition of the mental health carnival. Thank you all for submitting entries and while I cannot include everyone’s submissions, you can be sure that I visit and read all of your entries.

Mother Jones RN shared a touching story of her encounter with a homeless woman who suffered from a mental illness in The Abandoned House and is my featured personal story of this edition. I enjoyed Mother Jones RN’s photographs that accompanied her story as well.

Congratulations, Mother Jones RN!

Shaheen Isabella’s Mental Illness – It’s Not Talked About reminded me of the time when I was filling out an employment application. There was a line that asked whether I had been treated for a chronic illness (or mental illness, I forget which), and I paused, wondering if my new manager would look at the form and treat me differently. At the end, I wrote down that I had been treated for depression.

Dr. Serani sent a short post about More Celebrities Who Experience Depression, but I’d encourage you to read the comments from readers, who debated whether such celebrity admissions were just another fame-fad, and some realities of the stigma still prevalent in perception of mental illness.

I found Talia’s summary about how pursuit of money has been linked to depression an interesting subject that has gotten a lot of publicity last year in the mainstream media (especially Wall Street Journal), but the angle slightly different. Instead of depression, media looked at some recent studies looking at the correlation between money and happiness. One may assume that if happiness and depression are on somewhat opposite ends of the spectrum – ignoring those people who actually delight in their own suffering from depression – then we could deduce that pursuit of money leads to less happiness. I don’t completely agree with pursuing money = depression, because I’ve been quite poor and depressed.

I liked how Mary deals with an individual aspect of depression: Loneliness and suggests different ways to overcome isolation that exacerbates depression. Angela’s article on communicating with friends with Depression is a perfect accompaniment to Mary’s article, because the truth is, even if I have experienced depression personally, I may not be equipped with the finesse of dealing with a friend’s depression.

Dr. Freedman sent a helpful differentiation between the presentations and prognosticators of depression, because it asks us to take personal accountability to track our own emotions and mood changes. It can be easy to self-label as depression and then seek medication to “fix it”, but more effort to track how we are feeling and responding to different situations.

I’ll admit that I was skeptical of how Reiki healing can work for depression submitted by TC, and even more skeptical of the post title (“reiki healing the best thing for depression”) because this claim was not substantiated beyond anedotes and thus cannot be considered evidence. I’m including the post here because I don’t know enough to discount it, but I know that there is no “best” treatment for depression.

I’ve never met Craig Harper but I consider him a colleague. From Craig’s picture (on his website) he looks tall and in very good shape. Thus I appreciate how open Craig is in sharing his experience with Exercise Addiction. I know what many would think – “that’s a problem I’d love to have” – which is why it was important for Craig to increase awareness of the real consequences that sufferers of exercise addiction faces.

Finally, I want to echo Mary’s sentiments of The Importance of Sleep to Good Mental Health – from my own personal experience!

Thank you all for sending your stories and articles to this edition of the Carnival.

Credit: Thanks to Craig Jewel for photo used in the featured post aware.