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Tag Archives: Hospitalization

After an Attempt: A Guide for Taking Care of Yourself

April 28, 2011

Recovering from a Suicide Attempt

This article was written to help you as you begin to work through the challenges that led you to attempt to take your life. It offers information about moving ahead after your treatment in the E.R and provides resources for more information about suicide and mental illness.

The Day After

Today may feel like the hardest day of your life. You have seriously thought about or perhaps attempted to end your life. You may be exhausted. A common experience after surviving a suicide attempt is extreme fatigue. You may be angry. You may be embarrassed or ashamed. The attempt itself, the reactions of other people, transportation to and treatment in an E.R. or other health care facility – all these can be overwhelming to you now. But, recovery is likely, and all the feelings you are experiencing now can get better.

After the E.R.

After you have been treated for attempting suicide and the doctors believe you are medically stabilized, you will either be discharged or you will be hospitalized. If you are released after your suicide attempt, the staff in the E.R. should give you a plan for follow-up care.

The exact steps for follow-up care will vary with each person, but your plan should include:

A scheduled appointment in the near future with a mental health provider (such as a psychiatrist or other licensed therapist). Make sure that the name and contact information for the provider is given to you before you leave the hospital and that your appointment will happen as soon as possible.
Information on any treatments that you received in the E.R. such as medications, and what if anything, you will need to do about those treatments after you leave.
Referrals to local and national resources and crisis lines for information and support.

Once you have plan for follow-up care that you understand and are comfortable with, you and, if appropriate, a family member should work closely with a therapist to ensure that your plan is meaningful and effective.

If the E.R. staff feels that you need more immediate care or longer-term care than the E.R. can offer, you will be referred for in-patient hospitalization. If hospitalization is necessary, you and your family, if appropriate, can begin to work with the hospital to develop a plan for the next steps in your care. Hospital staff (usually a social worker or case manager) should help you with this process.

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Abuse and Eating Disorders

April 19, 2011

Studies have shown that a high number of people suffering with eating disorders who have been subjected to some form of emotional, physical, or sexual abuse. I do not believe studies can give an exact percentage since many victims of abuse repress the memories or have disassociated themselves from the abuse. Many of these people have found that their eating disorders help to protect them, repress or block out the memories, and numbed their feelings. Facing issues of abuse can be very painful, so most people feel they need to forget about it or make the memories disappear.

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: Abuse, Eating Disorders

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An Overview of Borderline Personality Disorder

April 12, 2011

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a serious mental illness characterized by pervasive instability in moods, interpersonal relationships, self-image, and behavior. This instability often disrupts family and work life, long-term planning, and the individual’s sense of self-identity. Originally thought to be at the “borderline” of psychosis, people with BPD suffer from a disorder of emotion regulation.

While less well-known than schizophrenia or bipolar disorder (manic-depressive illness), BPD is more common, perhaps affecting up to 2 percent of adults, mostly young women. There is a high rate of self-injury without suicide intent, as well as a significant rate of suicide attempts and completed suicide in severe cases. Patients often need extensive mental health services, and account for 20 percent of psychiatric hospitalizations. Yet, with help, many improve over time and are eventually able to lead productive lives.

Symptoms of BPD

While a person with depression or bipolar disorder typically endures the same mood for weeks, a person with BPD may experience intense bouts of anger, depression, and anxiety that may last only hours, or at most a day. These may be associated with episodes of impulsive aggression, self-injury, and drug or alcohol abuse. Distortions in cognition and sense of self can lead to frequent changes in long-term goals, career plans, jobs, friendships, gender identity, and values. Sometimes people with BPD view themselves as fundamentally bad, or unworthy. They may feel unfairly misunderstood or mistreated, bored, empty, and have little idea who they are. Such symptoms are most acute when people with BPD feel isolated and lacking in social support, and may result in frantic efforts to avoid being alone.

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Types of Bipolar Disorder

March 15, 2011

The bipolar classifications in this post are loosely paraphrased from the DSM-IV-Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition published by the American Psychiatric Association, research by the National Institute of Mental Health, and interviews with leading bipolar experts.

Bipolar I

This is the most severe type of bipolar disorder and the classic type. A diagnosis of Bipolar I requires at least one full-blown manic episode some time during a person’s life that doctors cannot attribute to another cause, such as a medication or substance abuse. The manic episode must last at least one week, or be serious enough to require hospitalization or cause functional impairment in some aspect of a person’s life (marriage, career, finances, etc.). Interestingly, a major depressive episode is not required to be diagnosed with this form of bipolar disorder, but it is almost always present and usually even much more common than the manic episodes.

Bipolar II

Most experts agree that there are versions of bipolar disorder that don’t produce full mania, yet respond very well to mood-stabilizing medications. People whose symptoms fit this category are often diagnosed with Bipolar II, sometimes called “soft” bipolar. According to Dr. Ghaemi, the primary difference between Bipolar I and Bipolar II is that the manic symptoms of the latter are not severe enough to cause functional impairment.

“With Bipolar II, the sufferer won’t become so grandiose that he or she loses his job,” says Dr. Ghaemi. “They will be much more active than normal, but they won’t have problems due to those activities.”

To be diagnosed with Bipolar II, a person must experience at least one major depressive episode that doctors can’t attribute to another cause and at least one episode of hypomania during his or her lifetime. People with Bipolar II never experience a full-blown manic episode. If they do, their diagnosis would likely be upgraded to Bipolar I. Again, usually there are many more depressive than hypomanic episodes.

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Understanding Hospitalization for Mental Health

February 2, 2011

This is not what hospitalization is like

If you have severe symptoms of an illness like depression, schizophrenia, or bipolar disorder, a brief stay in the hospital can help you stabilize. Some ideas may be useful to you; some may not. Everyone’s experience in the hospital is different. Use only the suggestions that make sense to you and help you.

When do I need to go to the hospital?
You might need to go to the hospital if you:
•    Are seeing or hearing things (hallucinations)
•    Have bizarre or paranoid ideas (delusions)
•    Have thoughts of hurting yourself or others
•    Are thinking or talking too fast, or jumping from topic to topic and not making sense
•    Feel too exhausted or depressed to get out of bed or take care of yourself or your family
•    Have problems with alcohol or substances
•    Have not eaten or slept for several days
•    Have tried outpatient treatment (therapy, medication and support) and still have symptoms that interfere with your life
•    Need to make a major change in your treatment or medication under the close supervision of your doctor

How can hospitalization help?
•    The hospital is a safe place where you can begin to get well. It is a place to get away from the stresses that may be worsening your mood disorder symptoms. No one outside the family needs to be told about your hospitalization.
•    You can work with professionals to stabilize your severe symptoms, keep yourself safe and learn new ways to cope with your illness.
•    You can talk about traumatic experiences and explore your thoughts, ideas and feelings.
•    You can learn more about events, people or situations that may trigger your manic or depressive episodes and how to cope with or avoid them.
•    You may find a new treatment or combination of treatments that helps you.

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: Treatment

: Bipolar Disorder, Change, Coping, Crisis-planning, DBSA, Help, Hospitalization, Journaling, Recovery, Schizophrenia, Signs, Stress, Tips, Unipolar Depression

Managing the Balancing Act with Bipolar Disorder

February 1, 2011

Bipolar disorder symptoms include dramatic shifts in mood and the ability to function. Successful bipolar disorder treatment typically requires a careful course of medication, psychotherapy, and discipline to stay on track–and avoid an emotional crash.

Most teens spend their time discussing their latest crush with friends, studying for college admission tests, and taking driver’s education. Not Robin Molliner. When the 26-year-old California native was 16, she was busy trying to talk car dealers into selling her a new ride — even though she didn’t have a dime to her name — and staging a two-week walkout from her high school chemistry class because she wasn’t “happy with the level of the teaching.”
But what seemed like normally high levels of energy and ambition were just the beginning of the full-blown mania that quickly followed.

“I wanted to have sex with anything, I didn’t care who or what,” she recalls. “I felt like my mom was trying to hurt me, and I had feelings of being a prophet.”

At the time, “I would go from moments of being totally happy, bubbly, and having fun to moments when pain from every point in life would come exploding out and I would lose control,” she says.

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Understanding Treatment for Bipolar Disorder

December 31, 2010

At present, treatment for bipolar disorder is most often with a combination of a mood-stabilizing drug and psychotherapy. The main mood-stabilizing drugs used for the treatment of bipolar disorder include lithium carbonate, valproic acid (also known as Depakote) and carbamazepine (Tegretol), Lamictal, Topamax, Gabitril, and many other anti-epileptics. They also include some newer anti-psychotic agents.

While drug treatment is primary, ongoing psychotherapy is important to help patients understand and accept the personal and social disruptions of past episodes and better cope with future ones. In addition, since denial is often a problem, routine psychotherapy helps patients stay on their medications. (Patient compliance is particularly tricky in adolescence.) Almost all forms of psychotherapy can be used — cognitive, behavioral, or psychodynamic; individual, family, or group therapy.

The family or spouse of a patient should be involved with any treatment. Having full information about the disease and its manifestations is important for both the patient and loved ones.

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Schizophrenia 101: For Family Members and Friends of a Schizophrenic

December 14, 2010

Table of contents for Schizophrenia 101:

A patient’s support system may come from several sources, including the family, a professional residential or day program provider, shelter operators, friends or roommates, professional case managers, churches and synagogues, and others. Because many patients live with their families, the following discussion often uses the term “family.” However, this should not be taken to imply that families ought to be the primary support system.

Patients with schizophrenia may need help from people in their family or community in many situations. Often, a person with schizophrenia will resist treatment, believing that delusions or hallucinations are real and that psychiatric help is not required. At times, family or friends may need to take an active role in having them seen and evaluated by a professional.

The issue of civil rights enters into any attempts to offer treatment. Laws protecting patients from involuntary commitment have become very strict, and families and community organizations may be frustrated in their efforts to see that a severely mentally ill person gets needed help. These laws vary from state to state; generally, when people are dangerous to themselves or others due to a mental disorder, the police can aid in getting them an emergency psychiatric evaluation and, if necessary, hospitalization. In some places, staff from a local community mental health center can evaluate an individual’s illness at home if he or she will not voluntarily go in for treatment.

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Coping with Bipolar Disorder

December 9, 2010

Table of contents for Bipolar Disorder 101:

As people become familiar with their illness, they recognize their own unique patterns of behavior. If individuals recognize these signs and seek effective and timely care, they can often prevent relapses. Individuals who live with bipolar disorder also benefit tremendously from taking responsibility for their own recovery. Once the illness is adequately managed, they must monitor side effects, changes in mood, and changes in lifestyle. The health care provider and consumer should be able to discuss, with respect for each other, changes in medication, dose, or any other aspect of fine-tuning treatment.

Acceptance

Recovery is an ongoing, daily process. No one can manage an illness as well as the person who is living it. Every day, give yourself credit for having the courage to make the necessary changes in your life. Acknowledge that this process is hard. The changes you may have to make, and the changes to your external life you may have to accept, are major ones. These changes are the necessary price for living well. Celebrating successes you claim, learning from any setbacks, and refusing guilt or frustration about mistakes are all part of the recovery process.
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Treatment for Bipolar Disorder

December 7, 2010

Table of contents for Bipolar Disorder 101:

While medication is one key element in successful treatment of bipolar disorder, psychotherapy, support groups, and education about the illness are also essential components of the treatment process. The most useful psychotherapies generally focus on understanding the illness, learning how to cope with it, and changing ineffective patterns of thinking or interacting. Each of these components serves a critical role in helping people recognize the specific factors that can trigger their episodes. It is important for individuals with bipolar disorder, and their families, to play active roles in learning about the illness, and in developing and carrying out a treatment plan of the person’s choosing.

Many of the recent advances in the treatment of bipolar disorder reflect what researchers are learning about the nature and courses of this illness. If repeated episodes cause greater severity over the lifetime of the illness, then acute episodes of the illness must be treated effectively to halt its progress. Given that half of those developing bipolar illness start with depressive episodes, and that most experience depressive symptoms much more than they experience the “high” mood state of mania, placing them at increased risk of suicide, effective treatment for bipolar depression is a top priority. The ideal course of research is to identify medication that, used alone or in combination, effectively prevents episodes and offers maximum periods of symptom-free maintenance coverage during periods of remission. It is also important that these medications are tolerable enough for people to take, so that they will stick with a daily dose (adherence) as the cornerstone of being well and staying well.

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Common Symptoms of Bipolar Disorder

December 4, 2010

Table of contents for Bipolar Disorder 101:

Symptoms of the Depression Phase

The symptoms of depression experienced in bipolar disorder are almost identical to those of major depression, the primary form of unipolar depressive disorder. They include:

Sad mood
Fatigue or loss of energy
Sleep problems such as insomnia, excessive sleeping, or shallow sleep with frequent awakenings
Appetite changes
Diminished ability to concentrate or to make decisions
Agitation or markedly sedentary behavior
Feelings of guilt, pessimism, helplessness, or low self-esteem
Loss of interest or pleasure in life
Thoughts of, or attempts at, suicide

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Diagnosis of Bipolar Disorder

December 3, 2010

Table of contents for Bipolar Disorder 101:

Many people with bipolar disorder do not know they have it. Some do not seek treatment because they are ashamed of what they feel, while others are incorrectly diagnosed with other illnesses, such as depression, anxiety, or schizophrenia. Without the appropriate treatment the disorder could become more difficult to treat. Bipolar disorder is more common than previously thought, but this illness, particularly bipolar disorder II, is still poorly recognized in the family-practice setting.

Bipolar disorder can be difficult to detect and it is more common than previously thought. It is still poorly recognized in the family-practice setting. It is estimated that only a third of affected people are accurately diagnosed. Some people go as long as 10 years or more before being correctly diagnosed. The reason for this has to do with the dual nature of the disorder.

Getting the appropriate treatment for bipolar disorder can help alleviate the following risks:
* Suicide
* Alcohol and substance abuse
* Problems at school/failing out of school
* Divorce
* Not being able to function at work
* Alienating oneself from friends and family

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Types of Bipolar Disorder

December 2, 2010

Table of contents for Bipolar Disorder 101:

The bipolar classifications in this article are loosely paraphrased from the DSM-IV-Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition published by the American Psychiatric Association, research by the National Institute of Mental Health, and interviews with leading bipolar experts.

Bipolar disorder is classified according to the pattern and severity of the symptoms as bipolar disorder I, bipolar disorder II, or cyclothymic disorder. Patients with one type may develop another. Nevertheless, they are distinct enough to merit separate classifications, and some experts believe these conditions are actually separate disorders with different biologic factors that account for their differences.

Bipolar Disorder I

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Schizophrenia 101: Types of Schizophrenia

November 21, 2010

Table of contents for Schizophrenia 101:

The kinds of symptoms that are used to make a diagnosis of schizophrenia differ between affected people and may change from one year to the next within the same person as the disease progresses. Different subtypes of schizophrenia are defined according to the most significant and predominant characteristics present in each person at each time. The result is that one person may be diagnosed with different subtypes over the course of his illness.

Paranoid Subtype

The defining feature of the paranoid subtype is the presence of auditory hallucinations or prominent delusional thoughts about persecution or conspiracy. However, people with this subtype may be more functional in their ability to work and engage in relationships than people with other subtypes of schizophrenia. The reasons are not entirely clear, but may partly reflect that people suffering from this subtype often do not show symptoms until later in life and have achieved a higher level of functioning before the onset of their illness. People with the paranoid subtype may seem to lead fairly normal lives by successful management of their disorder.

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: Mental Illness, Schizophrenia

: Delusions, Episodes, Hallucinations, Help, Hospitalization, Mental Health, Relationships, Schizophrenia, Stress, Symptoms

Severe Shortage of Psychiatric Beds Sounds National Alarm Bell

November 15, 2010

Report finds US deficit of nearly 100,000 inpatient beds; result is increased homelessness, emergency room overcrowding, and use of jails and prisons as de-facto psychiatric hospitals.

A report by the Treatment Advocacy Center reveals that for every 20 public psychiatric beds that existed in the US in 1955, only one such bed existed in 2005.

According to results cited in The Shortage of Hospital Beds for Mentally Ill Persons, in 1955 there were 340 public psychiatric beds available per 100,000 U.S. citizens. By 2005, the number plummeted to a staggering 17 beds per 100,000 persons. Mississippi was found to have the most beds available in 2005 (49.7 per 100,000 people), while Nevada (5.1) and Arizona (5.9) had the least.

“The results of this report are dire and the failure to provide care for the most seriously mentally ill individuals is disgraceful,” said lead author, Dr. E. Fuller Torrey, president of the Treatment Advocacy Center. “Our communities are paying a high price for our failure to treat those with severe and persistent mental illness, and those not receiving treatment are suffering severely. In addition, untreated persons with severe mental illnesses have become major problems in our homeless shelters, jails, public parks, public libraries, and emergency rooms…”
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Tag Archives: Hospitalization

After an Attempt: A Guide for Taking Care of Yourself

Abuse and Eating Disorders

An Overview of Borderline Personality Disorder

Symptoms of BPD

Types of Bipolar Disorder

Understanding Hospitalization for Mental Health

Managing the Balancing Act with Bipolar Disorder

Understanding Treatment for Bipolar Disorder

Schizophrenia 101: For Family Members and Friends of a Schizophrenic

Table of contents for Schizophrenia 101:

Coping with Bipolar Disorder

Table of contents for Bipolar Disorder 101:

Treatment for Bipolar Disorder

Table of contents for Bipolar Disorder 101:

Common Symptoms of Bipolar Disorder

Table of contents for Bipolar Disorder 101:

Types of Bipolar Disorder

Table of contents for Bipolar Disorder 101:

Schizophrenia 101: Types of Schizophrenia

Table of contents for Schizophrenia 101:

Severe Shortage of Psychiatric Beds Sounds National Alarm Bell

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Tag Archives: Hospitalization

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