Here's an interesting article from Scientific American. Rethink Your Thoughts about Thinking: Targeting metacognition -our beliefs about thoughts- might alleviate mood disorders and even schizophreniaHow you frame any given situation in your mind has a huge effect on how you feel about it. New research is showing that how you think about your ( Read more... )

This is from a somewhat long but very good post on living with depression. Warning - may be triggery ( Read more... )

This article is a summary of recent research on earworms. Here's my summary of their summary ( Read more... )

When you're sad or depressed, you might as well get something done...
Pretty soon, you're not sad or depressed, and darned if things aren't done.

~Cathy Lamb
from Julia's Chocolates

Of course this would be easier if I'd gotten more than four hours of sleep.
:/

If you've ever had dental surgery, then spent the rest of the afternoon with your face not working quite right because the muscles are still numb, you may appreciate this-

It's only been tested in rats (poor rats - they stuck their feetsies on a hot plate to see if they said ow). However by combining capsaicin (the "hot" chemical from chili ( Read more... )

Brain Pathway May Underlie Depression

This is an interesting article on how depression effects the dentate gyrus, in the hippocampus. The hippocampus, for those who are fuzzy on what the bits of their brain do, is responsible for forming memories, for your sense of location, and for your ability to navigate through the space around you. There's ( Read more... )

Scientific American: What a Headache: Migraines in Women Are Linked to the Blues
New study shows that women with chronic headaches are more prone to major depression.

Scientific American: Sleep problems, nightmares linked to suicide

x-posted to ubergeeken

It took only a page to realize that I have, in fact, read An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness, by Kay Redfield Jamison, but I did it so long ago I thought it worth re-reading ( Read more... )

"A person has an inferiority complex only to the degree that he cannot accept himself as having or being less than conceived perfection in selected areas ( Read more... )

Possible Symptoms of DepressionAnyone who experiences 4 or more of these symptoms in a 2 week period, where the symptoms cause distress or impair work, social, or personal functioning, is suffering from depression. The symptoms may be observable to the depressed person, or to those close to him or her. (Since depression can creep in gradually, ( Read more... )