To Write Love - Hope for Depression, Addiction, Self-Harm, and Suicide

There is power in a story. You tell me your story. You are seen, heard, affirmed. I tell you my story. You know that I am for real. We are not alone.

To Write Love on Her Arms (TWLOHA) harnesses the power of story to offer hope to people struggling with depression, addiction, self-harm, and suicide.

The organization itself began with a story, a young woman who was suicidal but could not be admitted into a treatment program because she was also addicted and they couldn't bear the liability of her detox.

Yes, if you think you're done after you tell your suicidal friend or family member to get help, read that sentence again. Trying to get treatment can be enough of a nightmare to push us over the edge.

But that was just the beginning. A group of friends took it upon themselves to create a safe place and treatment program for this young woman for the five days it took to detox. The treatment program was admittedly unorthodox. She stayed with friends. In rotating teams they supported her, kept her safe. They also took her to concerts, Starbucks, and church. They prayed. They smoked cigarettes. They were her hospital.

Mostly, they listened.

Mental Illness Podcasts: Teaching and Tickling the Mind

I have to move a lot to manage my anxiety disorder. So why did it take so long for me to discover podcasts? I can do research and fold laundry at the same time! Here are four of my favorites:

My therapist recommended The Hilarious World of Depression, hosted by John Moe, a few years ago. And I recommended it to you as part of my Giving Thanks series last November. A depressive himself, John interviews comedians, musicians, and other celebrities, asking the question, Is depression funny? Not everybody thinks so, but that's my brand. The show was recently cancelled. Sigh. But with five seasons, that's a lot of bingeable laughter to come your way. And you can often find Youtubes of the featured comics to extend your pleasure. So have at it.

I should mention that John has just published his memoir by the same name, for when you can sit still and read.

I discovered Beyond Well, hosted by Sheila Hamilton after reading her memoir about her husband's undiagnosed bipolar and subsequent suicide. It is the cautionary tale and not so funny version of my book. Well, she wrote hers first, but I don't want to say I wrote the funny version of hers. It's not always funny.

COVID Mask Resistance and the Death Wish

Why won't people wear masks? If their answers don't make sense, maybe we need to listen more deeply.

Truth be told, I want to respond with name-calling: selfish, anti-science, "drank-the-kool-aid"... I am tired of dodging the maskless in the street and the grocery aisle. I resent being confined to my home to protect myself from my fellow citizens. I grieve the slow, and now not so slow, decimation of the population of the United States, my native land, hurdling toward third world status as our health care system collapses, our food chain folds, and our future generations head toward long-term disability.

Side comment/serious question: There is such variation world-wide in leadership and results. Some countries have got this pandemic under control. Who benefits, who is the one who gains by our abysmal mismanagement and consequent destruction of the United States of America?

But 1) name calling is not helpful, 2) I actually care about some of these people, and in general, 3) I commit to the Way of Love. So I am stuck with listening more deeply.

Is It Time to Call a Therapist?

There is a difference between feeling depressed and having depression, which makes it hard to figure out what we need right now when - doesn't everybody feel like crap?

What you are feeling right now might be the entirely normal reaction to this currently abnormal world. Here is what's happening: everybody is experiencing trauma at the same time. Exhaustion, trouble concentrating, insomnia, hopelessness, these are common physical, emotional, and cognitive reactions to trauma. They are also symptoms of a depressive episode. And depression, the illness of depression can lead to serious complications, substance abuse, relationship problems, suicide. Not to mention that it simply sucks the joy out of living. Depression, the illness needs to be treated.

So do you need to see a doctor? It depends. A recent New York Times article can help you sort it out.

Pride Month Report: What Parents Can Do for Their Trans Daughters and Sons

1.8 million LBGTQ youth (13-24) in the US seriously consider suicide each year. The numbers for trans people in particular are even more staggering. According to the UCLA Williams Institute report, 81.7 percent of those surveyed by the National Center for Transgender Equality had seriously thought about killing themselves in their lifetimes, and 48.3 percent had done so in the last year. 40.4 percent of transgender people attempted suicide sometime in their lifetime.

Suicide happens when pain exceeds resources for coping with pain. This report adds evidence to that assertion. The following statistics are pulled directly and paraphrased or quoted from this report.

Mental Health Innovators Ponder the End of the COVID-19 Honeymoon

Dear Mental Health Innovators: The COVID-19 Honeymoon Is Almost Over.

The title of a recent PsychiatricTimes.com article caught my eye. Honeymoon? Then I realized it was dated May 19, so perhaps the authors could rewrite the title with the "Almost" removed.

The authors identify predictable stages of psychological response to our current pandemic. Unbeknownst to those whose education was really less education and more training for their future jobs (so things like history were deemed a waste of time), the human family has lived through past disasters, including multiple pandemics. There are patterns to these things.

Heroic Stage

Care of the Soul and COVID-19

Ronald W. Pies is a psychiatrist, bioethicist, and professor emeritus at SUNY and Tufts. His writings often tend to the philosophical, which keeps me reading his work and occasionally engaging with him in cross conversation between Prozac Monologues and PyschiatricTimes.com, where he served as editor-in-chief 2007-2010.

Pies' recent post is one such example where our respective disciplines come along side each other, Care of the Soul in the Time of COVID-19. He identifies five assaults on the soul made by the pandemic: impotence, grief, loneliness, mistrust, and displacement. While underlining that one solution will not work for all, he proposes cognitive therapy, gratitude, and the arts as strategies for healing.

Therapy and Spiritual Direction

As a physician, it is natural that Dr. Pies would write of problems and solutions. I too have been thinking about the larger implications of the COVID pandemic. However, I do less pastoral care these days. My thinking has been more in the realm of spiritual direction. Spiritual direction is as likely to trouble the mind as soothe it, raising questions to ponder rather than soothing manifestations of distress. So my care of the soul focuses on the questions that COVID raises about identity, values, and purpose. 

Identity