Tag: Self-care

www.bible.com/116/psa.100.4.nlt

Giving thanks to God Almighty for everything I’ve been through; the pain, growth the sad times, happy times, all I have and everything in between.

I humble myself in praise.

Borderline Personality Disorder, what exactly is it?

If you know someone who’s extremely sensitive and triggered about the smallest things, read this.

The majority of my posts bring attention to child sexual abuse, its long-term effects, and prevention. Honestly, I hadn’t heard much about Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) and didn’t begin researching it (until about a year ago) when someone close to me was diagnosed with it, presumably caused by their childhood trauma.

How is BPD different from common irritability, anxiety or depression? If you or someone you know is extremely sensitive, has explosive anger and volatile/unstable relationships, this post is worth reading.

BPD Simplified

Borderline Personality Disorder is a mental health disorder that impacts the way you think and feel about yourself and others, causing problems functioning in everyday life. It includes self-image issues, difficulty managing emotions and behavior, and a pattern of unstable relationships.

With BPD, you have an intense fear of abandonment or instability, and you may have difficulty tolerating being alone. Almost everything in your world is unstable. Yet inappropriate anger, impulsiveness and frequent mood swings may push others away, even though you want to have loving and lasting relationships.

People with BPD tend to be extremely sensitive. Some describe it as like having an exposed nerve ending. Small things can trigger intense reactions. And once upset, you have trouble calming down. It’s easy to understand how this emotional volatility and inability to self-soothe leads to relationship turmoil and impulsive—even reckless—behavior.

Borderline personality disorder usually begins by early adulthood. The condition seems to be worse in young adulthood and may gradually get better with age.

Causes

Some factors related to personality development can increase the risk of developing borderline personality disorder. These include:

  • Hereditary predisposition. You may be at a higher risk if a close relative — your mother, father, brother or sister — has the same or a similar disorder.
  • Stressful childhood. Many people with the disorder report being sexually or physically abused or neglected during childhood.
  • Some people have lost or were separated from a parent or close caregiver when they were young or had parents or caregivers with substance misuse or other mental health issues. Others have been exposed to hostile conflict and unstable family relationships.

A diagnosis of borderline personality disorder is usually made in adults, not in children or teenagers. That’s because what appear to be signs and symptoms of borderline personality disorder may go away as children get older and become more mature.

Diagnosing Borderline Personality Disorder

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) manifests in many different ways, but for the purposes of diagnosis, mental health professionals group the symptoms into nine major categories.

In order to be diagnosed with BPD, you must show signs of at least five of these symptoms. Furthermore, the symptoms must be long-standing (usually beginning in adolescence) and impact many areas of your life.

Bipolar disorder vs. Borderline Personality Disorder. Bipolar Disorder is a mental (or brain) disorder, while BPD is an emotional disorder. Both disorders are characterized by mood swings, but the length and intensity of these mood swings are different.

The Nine symptoms of BPD

1. Fear of abandonment. People with BPD are often terrified of being abandoned or left alone. Even something as innocuous as a loved one arriving home late from work or going away for the weekend may trigger intense fear. This can prompt frantic efforts to keep the other person close. You may beg, cling, start fights, track your loved one’s movements, or even physically block the person from leaving. Unfortunately, this behavior tends to have the opposite effect—driving others away.

2. Unstable relationships. People with BPD tend to have relationships that are intense and short-lived. You may fall in love quickly, believing that each new person is the one who will make you feel whole, only to be quickly disappointed. Your relationships either seem perfect or horrible, without any middle ground. Your lovers, friends, or family members may feel like they have emotional whiplash as a result of your rapid swings from idealization to devaluation, anger, and hate.

3. Unclear or shifting self-image. When you have BPD, your sense of self is typically unstable. Sometimes you may feel good about yourself, but other times you hate yourself, or even view yourself as evil. You probably don’t have a clear idea of who you are or what you want in life. As a result, you may frequently change jobs, friends, lovers, religion, values, goals, or even sexual identity.

4. Impulsive, self-destructive behaviors. If you have BPD, you may engage in harmful, sensation-seeking behaviors, especially when you’re upset. You may impulsively spend money you can’t afford, binge eat, drive recklessly, shoplift, engage in risky sex, or overdo it with drugs or alcohol. These risky behaviors may help you feel better in the moment, but they hurt you and those around you over the long-term.

5. Self harm. Suicidal behavior or deliberate self-harm is common in people with BPD. Suicidal behavior includes thinking about suicide, making suicidal gestures or threats, or actually carrying out a suicide attempt. Self-harm encompasses all other attempts to hurt yourself without suicidal intent. Common forms of self-harm include cutting and burning.

6. Extreme emotional swings. Unstable emotions and moods are common with BPD. One moment, you may feel happy, and the next, despondent. Little things that other people brush off can send you into an emotional tailspin. These mood swings are intense, but they tend to pass fairly quickly (unlike the emotional swings of depression or bipolar disorder), usually lasting just a few minutes or hours.

7. Chronic feelings of emptiness. People with BPD often talk about feeling empty, as if there’s a hole or a void inside them. At the extreme, you may feel as if you’re “nothing” or “nobody.” This feeling is uncomfortable, so you may try to fill the void with things like drugs, food, or sex. But nothing feels truly satisfying.

8. Explosive anger. If you have BPD, you may struggle with intense anger and a short temper. You may also have trouble controlling yourself once the fuse is lit—yelling, throwing things, or becoming completely consumed by rage. It’s important to note that this anger isn’t always directed outwards. You may spend a lot of time feeling angry at yourself.

9. Feeling suspicious or out of touch with reality. People with BPD often struggle with paranoia or suspicious thoughts about others’ motives. When under stress, you may even lose touch with reality—an experience known as dissociation. You may feel foggy, spaced out, or as if you’re outside your own body.

BPD is treatable. Healing is a matter of breaking the dysfunctional patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving that are causing you distress. It’s not easy to change lifelong habits.

In the past, many mental health professionals found it difficult to treat BPD, so they came to the conclusion that there was little to be done. But we now know that BPD is treatable. In fact, the long-term prognosis for BPD is better than those for depression and bipolar disorder. However, it requires a specialized approach.

The bottom line is that most people with BPD can and do get better—and they do so fairly rapidly with the right treatments and support.

Help is available right now!

Borderline Personality Disorder is a mental health disorder that impacts self-image, difficulty managing emotions and behavior, and a pattern of unstable relationships.

Sources: 1. Mayo Clinic – https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/borderline-personality-disorder/diagnosis-treatment/drc-20370242. 2. Helpguide.org- http://www.helpguide.org/articles/mental-disorders/borderline-personality-disorder.html

Healing the Harm Done

Great resources, carefully selected, on key topics related to the sexual abuse and assault of boys and men

Here’s a list of carefully vetted resources on key topics related to the sexual abuse and assault of boys and men from 1in6.org. Each has been determined to offer a positive, hopeful message about the potential for healing and recovery and has been found useful by many men with histories of unwanted or abusive sexual experiences, as well as the people who care about them. 

Please note that some books may contain graphic content. If you need support, visit the free and anonymous 24/7 national helpline to chat with a trained advocate.

After selecting a category below, you’ll see a list of recommended titles and links to their Amazon pages. For men who are incarcerated, one book is available to borrow for free.

1in6.org, chat confidentially with a trained advocate, 24/7 Chat now

Please share these resources: https://1in6.org/get-information/books-films/

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9 Ways Your Parents Caused Your Low Self-Esteem

It’s not uncommon for childhood trauma to manifest itself well into adulthood. When we start to connect-the-dots, it’s clear to see a direct correlation between certain childhood events and our self-worth. Low self-esteem can be a result of a negative or dysfunctional family environment, but where exactly does it originate? There’s no one answer to this question but here’s a short list of ways your parents may be the root-cause of your low self-esteem.

1. Disapproving Authority Figures

If you grew up hearing that whatever you did wasn’t good enough, how are you supposed to grow into an adult with a positive self-image? If you were criticized no matter what you did or how hard you tried, it becomes difficult to feel confident and comfortable in your own skin later. The fear forced on you for perpetually “failing” can feel blindingly painful.

2. Uninvolved/Preoccupied Caregivers

It’s difficult to motivate yourself to want more, strive for more, and imagine that you deserve more when your parents or other primary caregivers didn’t pay attention – as if your greatest achievements weren’t worth noticing. This scenario often results in feeling forgotten, unacknowledged, and unimportant later. It can also leave you feeling that you are not accountable to anyone, or you may believe that no one in the here and now is concerned about your whereabouts, when that’s actually a carry-over feeling from the past. Feeling unrecognized can result in the belief that you are supposed to apologize for your existence.

3. Authority Figures in Conflict

If parents or other caregivers fight or make each other feel badly, children absorb the negative emotions and distrustful situations that have been modeled for them. It’s scary, overwhelming, and disorganizing. This experience can also occur when one parent is deeply distraught or acts unpredictably around the child. When you were subjected to excessive conflicts between authority figures, it can feel as if you contributed to the fights or to a parent’s painful circumstance. Intense conflicts are experienced as extremely threatening, fear driving, and you may believe you caused it. This feeling of being “tainted” can be carried into adulthood.

4. Bullying (with Unsupportive Parents)

If you had the support of a relatively safe, responsive, aware family you may have had a better chance of recovering and salvaging your self esteem after having been taunted and bullied as a child. If you already felt unsafe at home and the torture continued outside home, the overwhelming sense of being lost, abandoned, hopeless, and filled with self-loathing pervaded your everyday life. It can also feel like anyone who befriends you is doing you a favor, because you see yourself as so damaged. Or you may think that anyone involved in your life must be predatory and not to be trusted. Without a supportive home life, the effects of bullying can be magnified and miserably erode quality of life.

5. Bullying (with Over-Supportive Parents)

Conversely, if your parents were overly and indiscriminately supportive, it can leave you feeling unprepared for the cruel world. Without initial cause to develop a thick outer layer, it can feel challenging and even shameful to view yourself as unable to withstand the challenges of life outside the home. From this perspective, you may feel ill prepared and deeply ashamed to admit this dirty ugly secret about you, even to your parents, because you need to protect them from the pain they would endure if they knew. Instead, you hid the painful secret of what’s happened to you. Shame can cloud your perspective.

Eventually it can seem as if your parents’ opinion of you is in conflict with the world’s opinion of you. It can compel you to cling to what is familiar in your life, because it’s hard to trust what’s real and what isn’t. You may question the validity of your parents’ positive view of you, and default to the idea that you are not good enough or are victim-like and should be the subject of ridicule.

6. Bullying (with Uninvolved Parents)

If your primary caregivers were otherwise occupied while you were being bullied and downplayed your experience, or they let you down when you needed their advocacy, you might have struggled with feeling undeserving of notice, unworthy of attention, and angry at being shortchanged. When the world feels unsafe, the shame and pain are brutal. These feelings could also be evoked if parents were in transitional or chaotic states – so that what happened to you wasn’t on anyone’s radar. If there’s chaos at home, it can be hard to ask for attention or to feel like there is room for you take up space with your struggles. Instead, you may retreat and become more isolated and stuck in shame.

7. Academic Challenges Without Caregiver Support

There’s nothing like feeling stupid to create low self-esteem. If you felt like you didn’t understand what was happening in school – as if you were getting further and further behind without anyone noticing or stepping in to help you figure out what accommodations you needed – you might have internalized the belief that you are somehow defective. You may feel preoccupied with and excessively doubt your own smartness, and feel terribly self-conscious about sharing your opinions. The shame of feeling as if you aren’t good enough can be difficult to shake, even after you learn your own ways to accomodate for your academic difficulties.

8. Trauma

Physical, sexual, or emotional abuse may be the most striking and overt causes of low self-esteem. Being forced into a physical and emotional position against your will can make it very hard to like the world, trust yourself or trust others, which profoundly impacts self-esteem. It may even feel like your fault when it couldn’t be less your fault. Obviously, in these scenarios, there is so much going on at one time that you might need to check out, dissociate, go away. It can make you feel like nothingness. In an effort to gain control of your circumstances, in your head you may have convinced yourself that you were complicit or even to blame. You may have found ways to cope with the abuse, to manage the chaos in ways that you understand are unhealthy, so you may ultimately view yourself as repulsive and seeringly shameful, among a zillion other feelings. 

9. Belief Systems

When your religious (or other) belief system puts you in a position of feeling as if you are perpetually sinning, it can be similar to the experience of living with a disapproving authority figure. Whether judgment is emanating from authority figures or from an established belief system in your life, it can evoke shame, guilt, conflict and self-loathing. Many structured belief systems offer two paths: one that’s all good and one that’s all bad. When you inevitably fall in the abyss between the two, you end up feeling confused, wrong, disoriented, shameful, fake, and disappointed with yourself over and over again. 

It is important to understand that experiencing any of these early circumstances doesn’t mean you must be bound by them as an adult. They will be woven into your fabric and absorbed into your sense of yourself in different ways over time, but there are many paths to feeling that you are better prepared, less fragmented, and more confident moving forward.

As an adult, when you examine your history, you can begin to see that in some cases the derision or intense negative messages you encountered weren’t necessarily meant for you. Rather, they flowed from the circumstances of the people who delivered them. That perspective can help you to dilute the power of the negative messages about yourself you received and formed.

There are some circumstances you may have suffered that may be impossible to understand. You can’t and aren’t expected to understand, empathize or forgive in these circumstances. What matters most is continuing to find ways to feel as okay and as safe as you can in your own life right now.

The more you understand the sources of your low self-esteem and can put them into context, the more you can use your self-understanding to begin the process of repairing self-esteem and living the life you’ve always wanted.

Source: Original article, psychologytoday.com- 2013, by Suzanne Lachmann Psy.D.

Have you suppressed bad childhood memories? How to Tell

The body remembers what the conscious mind chooses to forget.

This article isn’t meant to make anyone paranoid. But recognizing the signs of abuse may help you heal and/or provide support to someone close to you.

Wouldn’t I remember it if I was abused?

Child-victims of sexual abuse often do not remember the experience. In fact having no memory of certain parts of your childhood is often an indicator trauma of some form took place.

The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) estimates that in the UK, almost one in four children (24.1%) experience sexual abuse. It’s a terrifying statistic, made more sobering considering that being sexually abused as a child can cause lifelong negative repercussions if victims do not find the support they need to heal.

What is sexual abuse?

It’s important to understand what qualifies as sexual abuse before dismissing an experience you might have had.

Sexual abuse does not have to be between a child and a ‘grownup’. It can, for example, be an older sibling who abuses you. Or it might have been a child of a similar age forcing you to do things against your will.

It is now recognized that sexual abuse does not even have to involve physicality to be extraordinarily damaging to a child and the future adult they will become.

Sexual abuse can can be any situation where a child is exploited for the sexual pleasure of another. Non-contact or ‘covert’ sexual abuse, can be things like an adult who constantly exposed their body to you, forced you to expose your body, showed you pornography, or an adult who constantly talked about sexual things to you.

Non-contact sexual abuse can be something like a child whose father always talks about her body being too sexual when she is going through puberty, or whose mother strips her and makes her stand naked in her room for hours as ‘punishment’ for ‘being bad’, can both result in the same symptoms of other forms of sexual abuse.

Psychoanalytical psychotherapy came up with the still popular idea that when things are too traumatic for the conscious brain they are delegated to the hidden ‘unconscious’ mind. Nowadays we understand the brain is not composed of clearly marked ‘closets’, and that trauma affects the brain in far more complicated ways.

Sexual abuse can cause many issues, not just in your behaviors, but in your relationships, your sex life, the way you treat yourself, personal identity, low self-esteem, stress management, it might be harder to reach goals or move forward in life. It can also cause long-term symptoms of trauma, similar to or including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Have I been sexually abused? Knowing the signs.

Healthy relationships tend to be very challenging if you experienced sexual abuse as a child.

Do you experience some of the following?

  • Foggy thinking
  • Restlessness
  • Memory loss around trauma
  • More jumpy with noises and surprises than others
  • Emotional outbursts
  • Not liking certain places, situations, smells, sounds without knowing why
  • Deep feelings of shame and guilt

Trust issues

  • Fear of intimacy
  • Trouble setting boundaries and saying no
  • Fear of being alone
  • Easily stressed by relationships
  • Often overwhelmed by emotions
  • Resentment and anger issues

Sexual abuse as a child can also really affect the way you approach sex.

Do you recognize yourself in the following?

  • Promiscuity or, in some cases, fear or dislike sex
  • Saying yes to sex you don’t even want (being a ‘pleaser’)
  • Secretly not knowing what you really like sexually, confusion around your sexual identity
  • Dissociation during sex, feeling like you ‘leave your body’
  • Needing to escape into fantasy in order to enjoy sex
  • Having sexual fantasies where you are abused or raped
  • Constantly using sexual innuendo in conversations

You might also constantly attract relationships which ‘re-enact’ abuse. This can look like:

  • Co-dependency
  • Emotional abuse
  • Attracting those with traits of narcissism or narcissistic personality disorder (NPD)
  • Always playing the victim

Being sexually abused as a child or adolescent can lead to physical symptoms as well, or issues with your body. These can include:

  • Obesity
  • Constant low grade illnesses like cold or flue
  • Unexplained medical symptoms
  • Disconnected from your body, not knowing how you got bruises or high pain tolerance
  • Feeling dirty all the time, like you can never get clean enough
  • Feeling you can’t trust your body

The trauma of sexual abuse leads to many other psychological issues. Do you feel you might also suffer from some of the following?

  • Depression
  • Anxiety/ social anxiety
  • Sleep disorders
  • Eating disorders
  • Self-harm
  • Suicidal thinking
  • Low self-esteem
  • Identity crisis
  • Addictions
  • Sexual problems
  • Panic attacks
  • OCD around cleanliness or self-care

And finally, sexual abuse is linked to the manifestation of certain personality disorders, in particular borderline personality disorder and histrionic personality disorder.

Now I’m worried this might be me – what do I do?

The symptoms above are comprehensive, and many are also symptoms and signs of various other psychological issues. So the first thing to do is not to panic.

Unearthing previous trauma can lead to falling into a ‘vortex’ of research and worry. You can spend days or weeks in front of the computer or on forums and lose sight of the rest of your life. Try to stay balanced and practice good self-care until you can find support.

If you suspect you were sexually abused as a child, you might find yourself suddenly experiencing large waves of anger and fury. It is highly advised you don’t react by immediately contacting and accusing all the people who might have abused you.

You will be doing this from a vulnerable place, and can put yourself at risk of attack, psychological manipulation, and emotional abuse. You might even in the process alienate yourself from other family and friends whose support you count on.

Again, seek professional support first. A qualified mental health professional will help you process the experience and reach a more stable place. Then you will be better prepared to decide if, how, and when you will approach those involved.

Click here for a list of resources.

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Source: Original, unedited article by Wade Harris. https://www.harleytherapy.co.uk/counselling/were-you-sexually-abused-as-a-child.html. Accessed October 7, 2019.

Mom Gave Baby to a Stranger Saying; ‘He’d be better off with you’

Mom gives toddler away to a stranger. Scranton Police Department: what the woman did does not constitute a crime.

This article gave me so many mixed emotions. First, I felt sad thinking of the child and how scared an alone he must feel; then I felt relieved that the mother didn’t hurt her child.

A distressed mother handed her baby boy to a stranger on the street and told the woman ‘he’d be better off with you.’

The mother passed her little boy – believed to be between 12 and 15 months old – to the stunned stranger outside a laundromat in Scranton, Pennsylvania, on Tuesday. She then walked away.

The stranger she gave the baby to immediately contacting police. Scranton Police Department said what the woman did does not constitute a crime. Continue reading…

Please share your thoughts.

Source: Metro.co.uk. Read more: https://metro.co.uk/2019/09/26/stricken-mother-handed-baby-stranger-street-saying-better-off-10815041/?ito=cbshare

Adult Survivor: It’s Never Too Late to Begin the Process of Recovery

If you are an adult concerned for a friend or loved one who you know or suspect has experienced sexual abuse as a child, your support and understanding can be critical to their recovery.

Adults who have had experiences of sexual abuse as children need and deserve a chance to speak about their experiences with those who understand and can help.

Survivors of child sexual abuse can also play a critical role in the prevention of further abuse to other children. If you or someone you love needs support to recover, now is the time to reach out for help. Find the support you deserve.

If you are a survivor of sexual abuse as a child, it is very important to seek professional support and guidance for your recovery.

The impact of sexual abuse by another child, teen or adult can change over time. The changes unfold as a young person grows into adulthood and continue throughout a lifetime.

Even if you were offered support and resources earlier in life, if you are feeling the need for support at this time, we encourage you to seek the help you need and deserve. You can find resources and support here.

Are you concerned that the person who abused you will harm another child?

If you feel that the person who abused you currently poses a risk to a child or teen, it is important to share your concerns with others who can be allies to you in taking steps to protect this young person. We can help you find allies who share your concerns.

Perhaps you are recognizing signs of risk in the child or the adult. Maybe this child is near the age when you yourself suffered abuse. We urge you to trust your intuitions and act on your instincts by speaking to other adults who can take steps to protect this child.

There are many steps that can be taken before a child is harmed. You don’t have to wait until there is “proof” that abuse has occurred to act.

As a survivor, your experience can help everyone involved.

Learn about the statute of limitations in your state for reporting child sexual abuse. Filing reports about your own abuse (with the support of a counselor) can be a step to take if you believe that the same person who harmed you may have abused someone who is now a minor.

If others are already concerned, your coming forward can help ease the burden of disclosure the child or teen may be facing.

I know an adult survivor.

Care enough to take the risk and talk about it. If you are an adult concerned for a friend or loved one who you know or suspect has experienced sexual abuse as a child, your support and understanding can be critical to their recovery.

There are many resources that can help you to better understand what an adult survivor may be experiencing now and how the recovery process evolves over time. Sharing the resources you find here with the person you’re concerned about is a great place to start.

Support resources for family, friends and partners are important as well – by acknowledging how a loved one’s abuse can personally affect you, you are taking a step in becoming a safe adult for those who experienced sexual abuse.

Source: Stopitnow.org. https://stopitnow.org/help-guidance/online-help-center/adult-survivor. Accessed- September 19, 2019

Teen Siblings Create notOK App for Peers in Distress

Charlie said his motivation for building the app came from watching his sister spiral into depression.

What a great idea! This may be old news to some but I’m just hearing about it.

If one button could change everything, save a life or help a teen, wouldn’t you tell everyone about it?

When Hannah Lucas was diagnosed last year with a medical condition that caused frequent fainting, she felt scared and alone.

“I started passing out more and more often and I was terrified of going anywhere,” Hannah, 15, told ABC News. “Because what if I passed out and no one was around or what if someone took advantage of me?”

Hannah, a high school sophomore from Georgia, became anxious and depressed and started to self-harm, she said.

From that dark point in her life, Hannah and her younger brother, Charlie Lucas, 13, created an app to help people in distress.

The idea for the notOK App came from Hannah, who told her mom she wished there was an app she could use to quickly alert her family and friends when she needed help either physically or emotionally.

Charlie heard his sister’s idea and used coding skills he learned in summer camp to design the app.

“I helped illustrate it out so he would know what to do,” Hannah said of her brother. “He looked at my drawings and he coded it to tell the coders exactly what I wanted and how I wanted it to look.”

Charlie said his motivation for building the app came from watching his sister spiral into depression.

“I saw Hannah depressed, and she told me about her idea, and I started wire-framing it,” he said. “Making this app made her feel better and that made me feel better.”

Hannah pitched the app while taking a summer class on entrepreneurship at Georgia Tech. Professors there were so intrigued by the siblings’ creation that they connected the family with a development company in Savannah.

Over the course of five months, Hannah and Charlie worked side by side with the developers, often over Skype, to see their idea for the app turn into reality.

They also compiled research on mental health statistics to make the case that their app would find an audience.

Mental illness is defined by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) as a mental, behavioral, or emotional disorder. One in six U.S. adults lives with a mental illness, the institute reports.

Among adolescents, an estimated 49.5 percent between the ages 13 to 18 have a mental disorder, according to NIMH.

NotOK was launched in February 2018, both iOS and Android versions. The app, was originally came with a $2.99 monthly fee, but is now offered for Free. It allows users to press a button that sends a text message to up to five preselected contacts.

The text, along with a link to the user’s current GPS location, shows up on the contacts’ phones with the message, “Hey, I’m not OK. Please call me, text me, or come find me.”

“The reaction we’ve heard has been really positive, especially from parents and kids suffering with anxiety,” Hannah said. “Those kids don’t know the words to tell somebody.”

Hannah added of the app, “It definitely gave me a sense of comfort.”

Original source: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.goodmorningamerica.com/amp/wellness/story/teens-struggle-depression-led-brother-create-app-52791054. By KATIE KINDELAN. Accessed September 12,2019.

Good News: Reaching Suicide Prevention Lifeline Will Get Easier

Reaching the nation’s suicide prevention hotline will soon become much easier.

The Federal Communications Commission is working to institute a new three-digit phone number — 988 — to access crisis counselors.

The number would function like 911, which is used for emergencies, and 311 which, in many parts of the country, connects citizens with city services, NBC’s “Today” says.

The move is gaining traction during September, which is Suicide Awareness Month. It would make crucial, life-saving services easier to access, according to advocates. Currently, to reach the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, callers must dial (800) 273-TALK. You can also text TALK to 741741.

There’s no way most of them are going to remember the 800 numbers,” Lynn Bufka, with the American Psychological Association, told The Associated Press. “988 makes it much easier to remember.”

An estimated 45,000 Americans committed suicide in 2016, according to the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control. Those are the most recent figures available.

There is no official timeline for when “988” would become active.

Source: www.onlineathens.com/news/20190904/suicide-prevention-month-new-3-digit-hotline-on-way-for-those-who-need-help

How Someone Else’s Depression Can Affect You

As is often said, depression is depressing to be around.

The word depression can mean very different things to different people. When someone says “I feel depressed” to describe everyday blues that come and go, these transient blues are not what mental health professionals mean by the depression.

Generally, clinical depression refers to symptoms that significantly affect a person’s functioning and last for a substantial amount of time.  Most of us go through periods of dysphoric moods with temporary symptoms of depression, but we continue to function normally and recover without professional treatment. 

What causes depression?

Most mental health professionals agree that usually a number of factors, both biochemical and psychological, work together to trigger a depression. Some people, because of their biochemical and genetic makeup, are inherently more vulnerable to depression when they experience life stress than other people who face the same stressors. For example; siblings can grow up in the same household but respond to family dysfunction in completely different ways.

Depression is often missed by either patient or family members because it’s hard to identify. Diagnosing depression often goes hand-in-hand with other mental and physical illnesses. If someone has a physical problem, it could be easy for the depression to be overlooked.

How does your loved one’s depression affect you?

You may be so intent on helping the other person, that you become blind to ways in which you’re being affected.

As time goes by, your own mind and body can also become filled with negative feelings. As is often said, depression is depressing to be around.

Effect on Spouse

As the person closest to the depressed individual, the spouse is often affected first and most. He/she may notice the signs before anyone else; indeed, some people are so good at hiding the signs of their depression that their spouses are the only ones to ever know anything is wrong.

The spouse is also most invested in the depressed person’s happiness. This is a source of strength, insomuch as it gives the spouse reason to help the depressed individual. Unfortunately, it can also be hard on a spouse if treatment is refused or unsuccessful. Prior to a diagnosis, the spouse might feel that they’re a failure for not making their spouse feel happier.

Effect on Children

Children are very malleable. This can be a good thing because it allows them to more easily recover from traumatic experiences, but it also means they are more susceptible to negative emotional environments in the first place. Because they need more positive encouragement and attention as they grow, children are less likely to thrive when one or both parents are depressed.

Like the spouse, children may feel compelled to help take up the family activities that their depressed parent is neglecting, forcing them to “grow up early”. Also like the spouse, children of depressed parents are more likely to develop depression or other mental illnesses in childhood or later In life.

Effect on Extended Family

Away from the nuclear family, depression can still have effects. Family that lives far away may experience anxiety about not knowing how the depressed person is doing or fear of not being kept in the loop. Meanwhile, family that lives nearby may stop visiting due to the negative atmosphere. Concern over the children growing up in such an environment, while justified, can lead to confrontations and acrimony between family members.

Conclusion

Ultimately, if you are depressed, the best thing you can do for yourself and your family is to seek or accept treatment. Don’t be afraid that you will not be able to take care of them while you take care of yourself. By focusing on your own healing, you are helping them.

It helps to think of the family as one entity. If one part (you) is sick, the whole suffers, and the emphasis should be on healing the sick part.

Source: http://www.medicaidmentalhealth.org/_assets/file/Guidelines 2017-2018%20Treatment%20of%20Adult%20Major%20Depressive%20Disorder.pdf