Bipolar Disorder

More than 11 million Americans experience a serious mental illness in a given year. While the terms borderline personality disorder (BPD), bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia are often used interchangeably, Dr. Bella Schanzer, a psychiatrist with Baylor College of Medicine, says it’s important to know the differences between these conditions. Borderline personality disorder BPD …

Getting the right diagnosis often isn’t easy for psychiatric conditions. In our field, we don’t yet have biologic tests that can easily define one condition from another. If your blood pressure is 140 over 90, you have hypertension or high blood pressure. In mental health, we have to rely on …

Sometimes, when I get stressed, anxious or frustrated, I break down. The hard part is, it’s not just from things most people would find stressful. In fact, I deal pretty well with the big things: death, breakups, loss of a pet. I know these things are bad and I feel …

As most folks struggle and stress to get through this messy mishmash we call pandemic, there is a certain group of people who are living a whole different sort of life. These folks are actually doing the opposite of struggling and stressing. There is, in fact, something about the current situation that …

I often wish I could be a “normal” wife. I wish I could keep a clean house, cook dinners, bake and have people over. I wish I could keep up on laundry and be organized. But no, the house is always a mess, I hardly ever cook, I rarely bake …

By:Angie Schultz   The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is …

I am poor. It feels strange typing it, because I am blessed with many things, but it is the truth. I am terrified an emergency will come one day and all of my savings suddenly will be depleted. I also struggle with depression and anxiety as a result of genetics and abuse. When low on …

“Everyone is fighting a battle you know nothing about. Be kind. Always.” While this quote is true for anyone you may come in contact with, it may be especially true for those of us with “high-functioning” mental illnesses. You come in contact with people in this category every day, even …

“I would never take medication.” It’s something I’ve heard a lot in my life. At age 20, I lost my mind overnight, but this isn’t really about that. It’s about what resulted in the following years. After this incident happened in college, I sought psychiatric help. I went through years of med …