Gratitude for Having Everything You Need

“I have everything I need.” You may think that you don’t, that you’ll only be happy if you obtain that latest doohickey or fad. Then why weren’t you happy the last time that you purchased something? Yes, you were quite pleased at first, but that feeling fizzled. Done gone to the trash heap.

Most people have:

• ·         Body parts:

o   Legs

o   Feet

o   Arms

o   Hands with opposable thumbs

o   Eyes that let you see this page to read

o   Eyes that let you see the sunset

o   Ears to hear your favorite music

o   Ears to hear your child’s or lover’s voice

o   A sexual/reproductive system

o   A brain, nervous system, heart and a circulatory system, lungs, liver, kidneys, spleen, and glands and more to make all the above able to function for you

• ·         Electricity in their home, that wonder that brings the outside world into an illuminated room

• ·         A cooking system in their home

• ·         Running water in their home, and, because of the heating system they have that fires up the boiler, hot water is there for the taking

·        You can add to this list. I challenge you! (Or, change the list if some of it doesn’t apply to you….) Take up a pen and in your Planner’s Gratitude Journal section (or on any paper,) finish out this list with six more things which you have plenty of and are thrilled with, to bring it to an even ten items.

What is the entity to which you are grateful, if you don’t believe in G-d? Try the Universe or Nature. Try: your parents who brought you into the world as a human being gifted with anatomy and physiology!And try: your community which has cooperated to provide you with all of the material conveniences!

© Copyright Deborahmichelle Sanders 2018. All rights reserved.

People with Mental Health Symptoms ("Peers") Are Needed in Mental Health Work

One Mr DJ Jaffe, the self-styled Executive Director of Mental Illness Policy Org, “a non-partisan think-tank on serious mental illness funded by people with and families of the seriously mentally ill only,” had a startling opinion piece published online in Psychiatric Times on February 14, 2018.

Permit me to quote his final two paragraphs to show you his bias, ahem, there is no other word for his opinion.

The new Assistant Secretary [overseeing the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration of the US, known as SAMSHA] has spoken about requiring peer support specialists to work in concert with medical experts. She has also taken steps to eliminate non-evidence-based programs from SAMSHA and to focus it on evidence-based programs that help the seriously mentally ill. But the leadership of CMHS…is still putting out contracts that are burdened with the expensive requirement to hire peers without sufficient evidence they improve outcomes or do so better than non-peers.

Using scarce resources to support programs like paid peer support that lack evidence they help—while so many proven programs go unfunded—makes little sense.* Research should be conducted to determine if paid peer support improves meaningful metrics in people with serious mental illness and if provision of those services by paid peers is superior to provision of the same services by others. Paid peer support should not be expanded until that research is clear. If expanded, then steps should be taken to ensure that the peer support trade associations do not lobby to make treatment for the seriously mentally ill more difficult.

*Examples of programs proven to improve meaningful metrics in people with serious mental illness include appointments with psychiatrists, hospitalization, medications, electroconvulsive therapy, assisted outpatient treatment, clubhouses, assertive case management, intensive case management, supported housing, psycho-social rehabilitation, and others.

(I’ve even quoted his footnote to his conclusion to show that he has not heard of many contemporary treatments like transcranial magnetic stimulation (tCMS), and that his ideas about what works do not include meditation/prayer as second in line—but rather, hospitalization!) 

And notice how he is authoritarian enough to want “steps… [so] that the peer support trade associations do not lobby.” 

Why is he wrong? I can be briefer than he….

1. Peer employees of mental health agencies provide consumers/patients with self-esteem. They see that various forms of employment are possible for them.
2. Those who are peer employees themselves have jobs that bring them self-respect as well as income.
3.  “Patient-centered treatment” is required by the US Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Serrvices (known as CMS) under the rubric, “Partnerships for Patients.” 

Mr Jaffe is out in left field!

(C) Copyright Deborahmichelle Sanders 2018. All rights reserved.

Pages in This Blog

Be certain to take a glimpse of the pages in this blog--besides the posts. So far, you'll find:

"Brain Fog" Help and Hints

--and--

On Your Employment as a Person with Mental Health Symptoms.

Harmony at Home

You will be much healthier if you provide yourself with a true refuge in your home. You will be happier when you return to it. Moreover, those you invite in will remark on how cozy It is. You need to seek a home that speaks, “harmony.”

• Designate one area—just a chair if you live in tight quarters—for “transit.” This is a home for items for which you are awaiting help from others, or which you plan to take with you on your next excursion. In all other parts of your home, having everything arranged nicely will enable you to avoid wasting time searching for items. Even more to your benefit, it will give you serenity. Much safer than benzodiazepines!
• The set of neutral colors with blue and green from sky and oceans highlights is the scheme I prefer for my own home. I have accents of rust and gold, as well as some purples. Those latter are the colors of Autumn leaves turned, and they are in my photographs of Nature.
• Try to live with only one background stimulus at a time—TV or music. It’s best to choose music that reverts to a body rhythm such as respiration or your heart rate. If you choose to read while you enjoy your meals, it’s best to turn the music off entirely. Multitasking is hard on your body, interferes with the depth of your sleep later that day, and can lead to mental health symptoms.
• If you have a smart phone, ideally keep it on only from the time you are ready for your new day (being dressed and having had breakfast) until just before dinner. This is about a twelve-hour period for most people. Those who contact you can always leave a message via text or voice-mail during your daily respite. This is especially important if you do not have a weekly 24-hour sabbath from electronics.
• It is also best, especially if you are prone to depression, to sleep in a completely darkened room. This permits your pineal gland to manufacture, at its highest diurnal level, the hormone melatonin. The result? Deeper sleep.

© Copyright Deborahmichelle Sanders 2018. All rights reserved.

Hang On Till Tomorrow--Your Attention Will Probably Have Deflected from the Present Despair

Hang on until tomorrow because it can’t be the same bad as it was today, even if you don’t achieve a decent day. Why?

Your life is not over yet. Life is change, and even if all events were random ones, 50% of them would be for the better. But in actuality, the odds are in your favor. For your body seeks homeostasis, a return to its normative state of decent health. Homeostasis seeks a steady state, such as in your blood pressure and respiration. Even when you are ill, not only the intervention of a physician, but also your natural defenses, seek to return you to the normative.

Notwithstanding the truth of that last sentence, there are a number of auto-immune diseases, likely including in many people depression itself, in which your body attacks itself. But these are the exceptions that prove the norm. And your immune system and feedback loops in your central nervous system that underlie homeostasis are always ready to respond in your favor, given appropriate treatment. (Of course, many treatments—certain neuromodulation techniques and all genomics—are still in development.)

Indeed, your brain’s twenty neurotransmitters that are small molecules (as well as the more than one hundred neuropeptides) are directed according to the needs posed by your environment and your choices, through the activity of your messenger RNA, to compute what you need this very instant to increase your health.

You “habituate.” You get used to a situation and its impact upon you lessens. This isn’t only a human response—even flatworms alert to novel stimuli after showing faded or no response at all to familiar aspects of their environments. Due to habituation, you naturally will notice the source of your initial pain to a lesser degree as time passes by—and this effect usually occurs in terms of minutes—even seconds—not in terms of hours.

Nothing is sustainable without a reprieve. Eventually, you fall into a microsleep even if you are wired into manic insomnia. Eventually, even an extremely depressed you will find yourself able to get out of bed for a couple of minutes if you need to use the bathroom.

Your attention will probably have deflected from the present despair. A new terror or pain at least has the benefit of novelty. While having something new as your concern may give you the sense of being beset by many troubles, you will find if you meditate or pray over this problem, now at hand, that you have been successful in actuality. You will find that you have modified for the better your initial concern, even though you probably have a new one. Life presents us at every moment with challenges. You are stronger than you often think you are. Every hour you solve myriad cognitive and emotional dilemmas. Every minute, you rectify many thousands of physiological challenges. You are an overcomer.

© Copyright Deborahmichelle Sanders 2018. All rights reserved.