Anger is understandable. Chances are your previous employer hurt you, and you’ll no doubt want to get even, but instead of daydreaming about ways to get them back, try to work toward the one goal that will give you lasting revenge: Find a better job.

Depression likely will seem all-consuming at times. In addition to the rejection you might be feeling, there is also a certain loss of identity or self-worth. Our jobs are often a great source of satisfaction and pride; in fact they are often a central part of who we are.

Fear is a near-universal feeling when we suddenly lose a job. There is, of course, the very real fear that comes from uncertain finances. But additionally, there is the fear of change. It is hard enough to deal with change when it is planned, but it is even more difficult when the choice is made for you.

No matter now long it takes to find a new job, you will most likely have days filled with anger, sadness and fear. Realize that these feelings are normal, but by the same token, make a real effort to avoid self-pity.

First things first: Take care of your finances.

“Don’t ignore it. Don’t think it will go away,” said David Jones, president of the Association of Independent Consumer Credit Counseling Agencies. “You don’t need to panic, but you do need to address it right away.”

Apply for unemployment as soon as you are eligible. The process takes time, and you should plan to be out of work for a year (and be happy when you find work sooner). Remember though, that unemployment benefits usually cover no more than 35 percent of lost wages (the average benefit is $300 a week).

Adjust your budget immediately. Cut out all unnecessary items such as cable TV, eating out, and cleaning or gardening services. Depending on what income remains in your household, you may have to start eating bologna, ramen noodles and PB&J sandwiches for a while.

Next, take care of your career.

It is important to get started with your job search immediately. Update your resume, and reach out to your network of contacts. Make finding a job your new full-time job. Dedicate at least 6 hours a day to it — checking listings, making calls, writing letters, and interviewing. If possible make yourself an at-home office area and ask that you not be disturbed while you are “working.”

Go to every interview possible. Even if you’re not sure you want the job, the more you interview, the better you will be at it, and you never know what opportunity you may stumble into.

Be persistent, but patient. An email or thank-you card or a phone call to remind them that you are there and still interested is fine, but don’t overdo it. Remember, it may take them weeks to make a decision.

Although you may be tempted to hang out in your sweats, don’t let self-pity take over your life. If you are done “working” for the day, perhaps you could feel useful by helping someone else. Find out if there are any volunteer opportunities in local food banks, schools, shelters or pet rescues. Doing so may be just what you need to remind you to be thankful.

Yes, you should be thankful. It may not seem like it at times, but you do need to focus on everything that is good in your life. Look at what you do have. Perhaps it’s family, a home, a savings account, an education or friends. You can even be thankful for everything that you are learning from the experience of losing your job.

Focus on family and friends. They are your support and your sustenance. Feel free to call and say that you need some of their time. But don’t forget, they probably still have jobs, family and other obligations, so don’t expect to monopolize all their time.

Go out and do something — often. Even if you are severely cutting expenses, you can still have fun. There are lots of things that you can do for very little or no money. Find a free concert in the park, go to the library or visit some store that you keep meaning to check out.

Finally, learn from this experience. Take advantage of the forced time off and reflect on your life and what you want to do with it. And remember the words of Borge Ousland, who skied 1,767 miles across Antarctica via the South Pole — alone: “Never give up, even if all seems hopeless. Never give up.”

When I was a kid, my mom would sometimes go to see a therapist. This was back when there was an actual building for health care that was simply called “HMO.” All of your health care needs were taken care of under one roof at the HMO, including therapy. I remember once going with my mother to HMO for her therapy session and hanging around the waiting room until she was done.

As a kid hanging out in the HMO waiting room, I didn’t get it. Why would you go to a stranger and talk about your problems? Why did people have issues at all? Why couldn’t they just talk to people they knew instead of paying someone to listen to them? It all seemed weird and mysterious to me.

Even after I grew up, graduated from college, and became an adult, therapy seemed like an oddball thing to me. Something that only messed up, desperate people did. I remember when I was in my mid-twenties, a co-worker telling me that she went to therapy every week. I recall thinking that it was a very personal thing to tell me and that she must have big issues. I was friendly with this woman, but didn’t know her incredibly well. It made me uncomfortable to have that conversation with her.

My ideas on therapy began to change when a good friend’s mother became seriously depressed. My friend would often talk to me about how her mother was doing. She would talk to me about different medications her mother was taking and how her mother was doing in therapy. Over time, my friend’s mother started to do better. A lot of her improvement seemed to be attributable to therapy. Maybe therapy wasn’t so strange, but it still wasn’t something normal, non-depressed people needed. Right?

When I was 25, I got laid off for the first time. For months, I searched and searched for a job. I just couldn’t find one. Also during this time period, a friendship that had been highly important to me was becoming distant. I was scared that I wouldn’t ever find a job, scraping pennies together to pay rent and eat, and was feeling lonely. I spent a lot of time by myself, brooding about my situation and steadily feeling worse and worse. It was a crappy time and I didn’t know how to handle it all. This was when my friend whose mother struggled with depression mentioned the possibility of me going to therapy.

The first thing I had to do when considering therapy was figure out if I could afford it. I checked with my health insurance provider and found out it was covered. This was good news, but did I really want to go? The more I thought about it, the more it made sense to get over my previous notions about who went to therapy. I decided to give it a try. I randomly chose a therapist from a list of providers that my insurance company sent me. I made my choice based on minimal criteria — I wanted to see a woman whose office was near my house.

My criteria was easily met and I made an appointment. I remember being weirded out when I realized that the therapist’s office was in her house. And then further wigged out when I found that her house smelled like cat pee. I don’t remember a whole lot about the few sessions I went to with this woman other than the smell. I remember that I found her vaguely helpful, but she did not rock my world and I would often run out of things to say during our sessions. I later found out that this particular therapist specialized in things like helping performers with stage fright. I’m not a performer and don’t get ever get on a stage, so it’s no wonder I didn’t gel with this particular therapist.

A few years of relative normality went by and I didn’t seek any sort of professional assistance. My general attitude at the time was that if nothing was gravely wrong in my life, I didn’t need to think about therapy. I also hadn’t been wowed by my first experience, so I wasn’t going to start over with a new therapist unless I had to.

My normality was disrupted when I broke up with my boyfriend of a few years. We had lived together, so the breakup not only meant losing him, it also meant searching for a new place to live and coming up with the money to move. It was a terrible crossroads of emotional, logistical, and financial upset.

At that time, I had a friend who also was going through a breakup. She had started seeing a therapist she liked a lot and recommended that I make an appointment. This particular therapist supposedly specialized in “women’s issues,” whatever that meant. After making sure that this therapist had a regular office, not a home office that possibly smelled of cat pee, I made an appointment.

Overall, I would say that the “women’s issues” therapist was a good experience. I saw her around a dozen times and she was helpful. The downside to this therapist was that I found her to be unprofessional. She would often tell me the same stories multiple times, would mix me up with other patients, and then to top it all off, she would take phone calls during my sessions. She also pushed me to take extremely high doses of an expensive fish oil pill. She would cite a study that found fish oil was a mood lifter. I took the fish oil for a few months at her recommended dosage, but saw no difference. When I got tired of paying for the fish oil, I sought the advice of one of the vitamin people at Whole Foods. She told me that it was a really bad idea to take as much fish oil as I had been taking. I ceased shelling out hundreds of dollars for the pills that hadn’t worked anyway.

In 1983, Robert Fletcher, DSW, ACSW founded an organization to serve that often-overlooked population. The result is the National Association for the Dually Diagnosed (NADD).

At the time of NADD’s founding, it seemed that neither the mental health system nor the mental retardation system wanted to take responsibility for individuals who were dealing with both sets of challenges. At that time, people with intellectual disability (ID) were routinely either misdiagnosed or misunderstood. Individual distress and challenging behaviors were often seen as a function of their intellectual disability rather than symptoms of mental illness. Dr. Fletcher and his colleagues created NADD to help bridge the gap by advocating for services and providing professional development to improve the system of available care. In the years since its inception, the organization has been at the forefront of advances in assessment, treatment, and policy for this under-recognized and underserved population.

25th Anniversary Celebration

NADD celebrated its 25th anniversary at its annual conference from Nov. 12 – 15 in Niagara Falls, Ontario. Over 500 people from eight countries including Israel, Australia, the UK, and Italy, as well as the U.S. and Canada met to exchange information and network with one another.

Keynote speaker David Hingsberger, an internationally known expert in the rights of people with developmental disabilities, spoke eloquently about the long-term effects of violence on people with ID. He called on all conference participants to become actively involved in erasing the language of hate that so often separates people with ID from their community. “Re-tard” is hate language. It stereotypes and diminishes people. Insistence on respectful speech, says Hingsberger, will go a long way toward helping people with ID feel they have a rightful place in their world.

He went on to talk about how people with disabilities are frequently told to “just ignore it” when others put them down or hurt them. Saying that is, in essence, telling a person who has been hurt to shut up. It compounds the original insult by demanding the person’s silence. This is how social brutality is reinforced and groups of people are marginalized. Equality comes from standing up instead of shutting up. Hingsberger urges us to stand up and be part of a movement that asserts the right of all people to be treated with respect. Every contact we make with people with ID, he maintains, can either continue trauma or promote healing.

Two days of seminars, symposia, and presentations followed. The conference offered over 60 different educational sessions and 22 poster sessions. Topics included cutting-edge information about psychopharmacology, best practices in interventions, family support needs, staff training programs and research.

One of the many things that makes NADD special is its encouragement of eclecticism. There is much yet to learn about the dually diagnosed population. Active inquiry and exchange of ideas among the professional disciplines as well as interested laypeople continue to bring the field forward.

Consistent with its educational mission, NADD publishes a large library of training materials, CDs and DVDs to disseminate research and support staff training. The publication of the Diagnostic Manual – Intellectual Disabilities (DM-ID) last October was the culmination of years of work and is a major step forward in providing a consistent framework for diagnosis of mental illness in those with intellectual disability (see Psych Central’s review). The NADD Bulletin started out as a two-page newsletter and is now a respected journal in the field of intellectual disabilities. The debut of a new journal, The Journal of Mental Health Research in Intellectual Disabilities, was a highlight of the conference.

Happy 25th Birthday, NADD! I’m looking forward to your 26th in New Orleans.

To learn more about NADD, please visit the theNADD.org website.

The following is an excerpt from the book Three Minute Therapy and focuses on the topic of overeating and how cognitive-behavioral techniques can be used to help a person overcome this concern.

They say that inside every fat person there’s a thin person fighting to get out. In Suzie’s case, the thin person appeared to be losing the struggle. At 5′4″ Suzie felt she ought to be 130 lbs, but was actually closer to 160.

Just about to turn 20, Suzie looked older. She had deep eyes and smooth chestnut hair beneath her floppy leghorn hat, and wore a silk print dress with an enormous string of crystal beads. She had a lively manner and was ready to laugh, but seemed imprisoned by her excess fat. She was disheartened. “I’ve tried dozens of diets over the last five years, and I work out four times a week, but I can’t seem to lose weight consistently, and I’m heavier now than I was a year ago.”

When Suzie told me her exercise regimen, I felt exhausted just listening to it. She was at the gym never less than four evenings a week; for the first 30 minutes she vigorously pedaled an exercise bike, followed by an even more demanding 60-minute aerobics class. Yet she remained overweight.

The Solution to Suzie’s Weight Puzzle

Suzie was sincerely mystified as to why she “could not” manage to reduce. On one level, the answer was obvious: She was absorbing enough excess calories to outweigh the effects of her exercise. Suzie immediately confirmed that she often yielded to impulsive temptations to drink too much alcohol and to snack on high-calorie foods. So the real puzzle was: How can someone with the drive and determination to stick to a grueling exercise program fail to control her eating and drinking habits? The answer is that addictions arise from addictive thinking.

On her first visit I gave Suzie a personality questionnaire, which confirmed my immediate guess. The test involved circling one of the three words “OFTEN,” “SOMETIMES,” or “SELDOM” after each of 50 statements. Suzie indicated “OFTEN” for these statements:

• I feel upset when things proceed slowly and can’t be settled quickly
• I feel upset about life’s inconveniences or frustrations
• I feel quite angry when someone keeps me waiting
• I feel very sorry for myself when things are rough
• I feel unable to persist at things I start, especially when the going gets hard
• I feel unexcited and bored about most things

Low Frustration Tolerance

Suzie was suffering from Low Frustration Tolerance, a very common type of “musty” thinking, which lies at the root of the great majority of overeating problems and other addictions.

Low Frustration Tolerance arises from the third “must,” the belief that life MUST be fair, easy, well-ordered, comfortable, exciting, pleasurable, interesting, or hassle-free. In any situation where life does not conform to such demands, the addict compulsively looks for a quick escape from these “unbearable” circumstances.

Suzie told me more about her problems. She was moody and often depressed about weight, friends, and boyfriends. She had broken up with Sammy a year earlier, but continued to see him off and on. (She had a demand about this situation: “I MUST know for sure if it’s on or off with Sammy.”)

The Power Of Negative Thinking

A specific technique has often been found effective in undermining Low Frustration Tolerance and thereby curing addictive thinking. This method is to maintain a clear and constant awareness of the disadvantages of any particular behavior or outlook. I explained the idea to Suzie:

“Whenever you do anything that is under your voluntary control, even getting out of bed in the morning, all the way to getting into bed at night, you make the decision to do it. And every decision largely consists of a weighing of benefits against costs, or advantages against disadvantages.

“When you get up in the morning, you’re demonstrating that at that moment you believe the advantages of arising outweigh the disadvantages (skipping breakfast, rushing to work, arriving late, and so on). If you had decided that the disadvantages of getting out of bed were greater, then you would have stayed in bed. This process–often operating semiautomatically–repeats itself throughout the day in making large and small decisions.

“It’s exactly the same with your eating or overeating. Whenever you choose to eat pizza, or any other high fat food, it’s because you’ve decided, for the moment, that the advantages of doing so outweigh the disadvantages. Just before making such a decision, you might be thinking something like: ‘This pizza is fattening (disadvantage 1), but it tastes so delicious (advantage 1), I’ll feel so good (advantage 2), I HAVE TO have it (advantage 3), and I won’t really gain weight because I’ll diet later (discounting disadvantage 1).’

“If you can convince yourself that the calculation is reasonable and that the advantages outweigh the disadvantages, you will indulge. If we can get you to realize, strongly and clearly in such situations, that the disadvantages outweigh the advantages, then you will reject the pizza.”

Yesterday, I ran into my ex-boyfriend, JR. Around six months ago, we went through a major breakup. We hadn’t seen each other since I showed up crying on his doorstep a week after we broke up. I was angry and upset about the situation for a long time and it was difficult for me to get past the breakup.

JR and I live three blocks away from each other and go to many of the same places. I had feared this run-in for some time; it was bound to happen eventually. When we first broke up, every time I left my house I was afraid I would see him. When I started dating other people and going with my dates to bars in our neighborhood, I was terrified that JR would show up. In my paranoid mind, this scenario always had him appear at the bar with his own, completely beautiful, brilliant date that he was obviously completely in love with.

As time passed and I didn’t run into JR, I began to relax a little. I went to all the restaurants, bars, and events he would typically be at, but he wasn’t at any of them. I was forced to drive past his house every day, but I never saw him going in or out. I started to believe that he had handed over our neighborhood to me. That he’d vanished from the usual places.

Although I still looked at JR’s house every time I drove by, it started to fall off my radar that he could be anywhere at any time. Even though I knew he was still lurking about my neighborhood, I didn’t think about it as often. I began to go about my business without anxiety of an encounter.

Then I spotted JR at a subway station. It was early in the morning. I was on my way to a class, he was on his way to work. I was standing on the platform when I saw him coming toward me. There was no expression on his face, but he had seen me and was headed my way. I stayed relatively calm as he got closer, my heart was only beating a little faster.

We opened our conversation with an update on his work and had an awkward hug. JR told me how he wasn’t completely happy with his new job and that he worked a ton. He told me that his brother and sister-in-law had had their baby. I told him I was no longer at the same job because I’d gotten laid off. We had further “catch-up style” small talk. When the subway arrived, it surprised me because I had forgotten we were waiting for a train. We got on the crowded subway and there were no seats available, so we stood and continued talking.

JR inquired about my friends and how they were doing. I asked about his family and his friends. I had liked his family a lot and missed them after we broke up, so I was particularly curious about their wellbeing. He explained that his family was doing well, but he hadn’t seen much of his friends. We reminisced about a vacation we had taken that had gone all wrong. He told me he’d thought of sending me a note on my birthday.

The conversation continued. Then I noticed that I started talking a lot more than he was.

I told him about an interesting job I’d been offered where I would have been paid to play video games in malls. I talked about volunteer work I had been doing with our community and a festival I had helped plan. I told him about my new job, which is drastically different than anything I have done before. I even told JR a story of my friends and I attempting to go to an anniversary party at a beer hall, but being thwarted by traffic. This was a beer garden my ex and I had gone to a crazy wedding at, so I knew he would be interested.

JR needed to get off the subway before I did, so as his stop approached we quickly hugged goodbye and said it was good to see each other. I watched him get off the subway and walk away. The person who I used to sleep next to at night and say I loved had become an awkward hug and small talk. A strange thing.

I expected to feel sad and upset when I finally ran into JR. That it would be a reminder that although we had always gotten along smashingly, our relationship had failed, just like all my other relationships had failed. I expected that my day would be overshadowed by the morning’s subway ride. But surprisingly it wasn’t. When I got off the subway, I called a friend and told her about the encounter. After explaining what had just happened, we moved on to other subjects. I then went to my class and paid attention all day. My head only wandered to the run-in a few times.

It wasn’t until that night that I really stopped and thought about the encounter. It surprised me greatly that it hadn’t completely thrown me off and left me pining. I realized that although the chance meeting with JR had been anticipated for a long time, it wasn’t that big of a deal. I didn’t even feel any anger toward him.

I recounted our conversation in my head and noticed that he hadn’t shown any emotion or given any sort of real feedback to anything I had said. Not even a “that’s great!” when I told him about my career change. This had been one of the many downfalls of our relationship — his robotic-ness and inability to express any sort of encouragement or emotion. It had always frustrated me immensely.

Then I thought about the information I had shared versus what he had shared. I had a ton of things to say about my life over the past six months. It made me see that although my life has been tumultuous since we broke up, I have done a lot of fun, interesting things, and have a lot to say.

The run-in made me see that I had weathered the difficult time and come through a more positive, happy person. That I had taken control of my crappy situation and kicked its ass. I had reached the moment where I was able to look back on a bad time in my life, label it “completed” and see that I handled things well. I had moved on for the better.

• Challenge your thoughts. “Rather than assuming one’s beliefs are true, we encourage people to question their beliefs,” he said. Does a work project have to be done perfectly, even if it is past deadline? Does the house always have to be spotless or can you let it go a bit, especially if you have been sick?
• Step back. Antony asks those who are perfectionists to ask themselves: “How might someone else look at this situation?” or “Would I hold the same high standards for someone else as for myself?”
• Imagine less-than-perfect situations and outcomes. He suggests people ask themselves what would happen if a situation were less than perfect. Back to that out-of-place pillow. He suggests asking “So what?” As people walk through their reactions, and expose themselves to more and more imperfect situations, they become desensitized, he finds. Eventually, they can lower their standards.

“Treatment usually takes 10 or 15 sessions,” Antony said. Some people see improvement much more quickly; others take longer.

Reducing Perfectionism: Self-Help

Getting help from a mental health professional in addition to following the self-help strategies may be the best approach, Antony said, citing research from Flinders University in Australia that compared self-help strategies such as those suggested by Antony with guided self-help, with the same strategies guided by a mental health professional.

Both approaches — self-help alone and guided self-help — were found to be effective in reducing perfectionism in the group of 49 people, equally divided between the two approaches. But the guided group had more improvement in reducing their perfectionist-associated depression and obsessive-compulsive symptoms, according to a report published in 2007 in Behavior Research and Therapy.

Delusions

Delusions are false or erroneous beliefs that usually involve a misinterpretation of perceptions or experiences. Their content may include a variety of themes (e.g., persecutory, referential, somatic, religious, or grandiose).

Persecutory delusions are most common; the person believes he or she is being tormented, followed, tricked, spied on, or ridiculed. Referential delusions are also common; the person believes that certain gestures, comments, passages from books, newspapers, song lyrics, or other environmental cues are specifically directed at him or her.

The distinction between a delusion and a strongly held idea is sometimes difficult to make and depends in part on the degree of conviction with which the belief is held despite clear contradictory evidence regarding its veracity.

Although bizarre delusions are considered to be especially characteristic of schizophrenia, “bizarreness” may be difficult to judge, especially across different cultures. Delusions are deemed bizarre if they are clearly implausible and not understandable and do not derive from ordinary life experiences. An example of a bizarre delusion is a person’s belief that a stranger has removed his or her internal organs and has replaced them with someone else’s organs without leaving any wounds or scars. Delusions that express a loss of control over mind or body are generally considered to be bizarre; these include a person’s belief that his or her thoughts have been taken away by some outside force (”thought withdrawal”), that alien thoughts have been put into his or her mind (”thought insertion”), or that his or her body or actions are being acted on or manipulated by some outside force (”delusions of control”).

An example of a nonbizarre delusion is a person’s false belief that he or she is under surveillance by the police.

Hallucinations

Hallucinations may occur in any sensory modality (e.g., auditory, visual, olfactory, gustatory, and tactile), but auditory hallucinations are by far the most common. Auditory hallucinations are usually experienced as voices, whether familiar or unfamiliar, that are perceived as distinct from the person’s own thoughts.

The hallucinations must occur in the context of a clear sensorium; those that occur while falling asleep (hypnagogic) or waking up (hypnopompic) are considered to be within the range of normal experience.

Isolated experiences of hearing one’s name called or experiences that lack the quality of an external percept (e.g., a humming in one’s head) should also not be considered as symptomatic of Schizophrenia or any other Psychotic Disorder.

Hallucinations may be a normal part of religious experience in certain cultural contexts. Certain types of auditory hallucinations (i.e., two or more voices conversing with one another or voices maintaining a running commentary on the person’s thoughts or behavior) have been considered to be particularly characteristic of Schizophrenia.

This article uses material summarized from the DSM-IV.

Fifteen-year-old Joel wakes up two hours before school to begin cleaning his face and covering up his bad skin. Many days this means he’s either late to school or doesn’t show up at all. He spends his entire allowance on skin care products and tanning to cure or camouflage his acne.

When he does make it to school, he sits in the back of the classroom and takes frequent breaks to scrutinize his skin in the bathroom mirror. He convinces his parents to visit several dermatologists, to no avail.

Joel can’t stop thinking that no one likes him and he’ll be alone for the rest of his life because of his appearance. No matter how many times his parents try to reassure him, Joel doesn’t buy it and continues to stress over his obvious flaws.

When Joel and his parents arrive at Jennifer Greenberg’s office, she immediately observes that Joel’s skin has no “noticeable acne or scarring.” Greenberg is a Clinical and Research Fellow in Psychology at Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School, who specializes in clients — like Joel — who suffer from body dysmorphic disorder (BDD). BDD is a crippling condition that leaves individuals obsessed with an imagined or minor defect and severely impairs their lives.

Prevailing Myths

Though it’s received some media attention, many have difficulty grasping BDD and misconceptions remain. In fact, even health professionals and physicians largely overlook BDD.

Several myths regarding body dysmorphic disorder continue to circulate:

• It’s not a real disorder. “Many fail to understand that BDD is a real psychiatric condition,” viewing it “as vanity, narcissism or being overly self-involved, and, as a result, don’t take it seriously,” Tom Corboy, M.F.T., director of the Obsessive-Compulsive Disorders Center of Los Angeles said.
• It’s rare. Though many think BDD is an uncommon condition, “community and clinical settings have suggested BDD affects about 0.7 percent to 3 percent of the population,” Greenberg said. Research in medical settings suggests even higher rates, she said.
• It occurs only in the extreme. BDD isn’t always a case of cat woman or Michael Jackson — quintessential cases often sensationalized in the media. Instead, a person might obsess over one birthmark or a skin discoloration on one area of the body, said Los Angeles clinical psychologist Sari Shepphird, Ph.D, who regularly works with BDD clients. “It might seem minute to someone who isn’t suffering, but the obsessiveness and torment can be extreme,” she said.
• It occurs only in women. We tend to associate body image issues with women, but BDD occurs equally in both sexes.

Symptoms of Body Dysmorphic Disorder

All of us in some way are dissatisfied with our looks, especially in today’s appearance-crazed society. So what makes BDD all that different? Two things, according to Shepphird: intensity and impairment.

• Intensity. On average, individuals with BDD spend three to eight hours a day thinking about their deformity (Phillips, 2006), which typically involves the face and head, including acne, ear size, nose, teeth, hair and overall appearance, though it can be directed toward any body part. BDD sufferers wholeheartedly believe that others can’t help but stare at their hideous defects and judge them.
• Impairment. Because of their intense thoughts and severe anxiety, BDD patients avoid social activities, school and work. This impairment leads to a poor quality of life — poorer than the general population, individuals with depression and those with recent heart disease, Greenberg said. They’re also at greater risk for psychiatric hospitalization and suicide, she said.

Easing Anxiety

Individuals with body dysmorphic disorder use various ways to alleviate their appearance-based anxiety. They may:

• Request reassurance. “Does this seem big to you? Doesn’t it bother you?” By asking such questions, they regularly seek reassurance from others or discuss their area of concern, Shepphird said.
• Use camouflage. They’ll often try to cover up their concerns with cosmetics, clothing, dark glasses, hats and other items.
• Undergo cosmetic surgery. Instead of seeking mental health services, many BDD patients reach out to dermatologists and cosmetic surgeons, because sufferers believe fixing their flaws will fix their lives. According to one study, 77 percent sought cosmetic surgery and about 50 percent sought dermatological treatments, Shepphird said.

  In desperation, some patients will play doctor. In his study, Veale (2000) described several DIY cases: one man used sandpaper to lighten his skin and eliminate scars; another used a staple gun on his face to tighten loose skin; a woman, who wanted liposuction, cut her thighs with a knife and tried to squeeze the fat out.

  Repairing the deformity rarely relieves anxiety, however. In fact, anywhere from 76 to 83 percent don’t see changes in symptoms, Shepphird said. Others feel worse and regret the procedure. “More often individuals may subsequently blame themselves for having had a procedure they feel made them ‘look worse than before,’” Greenberg said. Some patients might obsess over a new area. In severe cases, BDD patients “have committed suicide and threatened harm against or acted violently toward the treating physician,” Greenberg said.

• Compulsively exercise. Many BDD sufferers exercise excessively — common in muscle dysmorphia, a subtype of BDD, that affects mostly males. Because of an intense obsession with muscle shape and size, these individuals spend hours exercising, weightlifting, dieting and using steroids or supplements.
• Engage in other behaviors. BDD sufferers might also compare their concerns with the same area on others; check their reflection in mirrors or windows; tan excessively; pick at skin, which can lead to scarring and, in severe cases, life-threatening wounds.

Psychotherapy for Bipolar Disorder

Psychotherapy can be helpful for someone grappling with bipolar disorder, because it can help the person learn to deal with the psychological aspects of this disorder that aren’t helped by the medication. Therapy can help a person learn to change inappropriate or negative thought patterns and behaviors associated with the disorder.

Both individual or group therapy are appropriate and recommended for someone with this disorder. Therapy is usually supportive in nature, helping a person learn how to increase their coping skills and education about the disorder. With specific episodes of depression or mania, additional therapy can focus on the treatment of those disorders. For instance, therapy can help a person learn to better predict his or her own fluctuations in mood (which may be related to situational or seasonal changes). This in turn can decrease the likelihood of relapse in the future.

Prevention of future relapses is often a focus of therapy, with medication compliance as an important topic. This is especially true with individuals who may be experiencing a manic episode (or may be more predisposed to being on the manic side), but is can also be an issue for those who are experiencing no specific episodes of mania or depression.

Therapy should be flexible in its approach, since the needs of people suffering from bipolar disorder are diverse. Family therapy is sometimes warranted. For instance, bringing in a family member or close friend (or spouse) who keeps track of the patient can be beneficial to touch base with and ensure that everyone is clear about appropriate behavior and treatment. People with bipolar disorder can sometimes wreak havoc in their own personal lives when in a manic stage. This sometimes spills over to the person’s family or friends and should be an aspect of treatment in psychotherapy. Education of family members or significant others can help them better manage the patient at home and ensure medication compliance.

Followup care for someone with bipolar disorder is imperative. Whether this takes the form of regular group therapy sessions, case management, medication appointments, or the like, touching base with a professional will help a person to remain compliant in taking their medication as directed.

Discharge planning should take these factors into account; failure of a person to appear for the next scheduled appointment can be an ominous sign. Unfortunately, many such individuals easily fall between the cracks in the mental health system because followup is either not conducted or not conducted in a timely manner. This is especially true when the client is moving from an inpatient or day-treatment program to an outpatient program.

Self-Help Strategies for Bipolar Disorder

A person with bipolar disorder can help themselves stay balanced by taking an active approach in their treatment. Most people with bipolar disorder experience a relapse when they discontinue mood-stabilizing medication prescribed for the disorder because they “feel better — I don’t need to keep taking the medication any longer.”

Support groups offer an excellent adjunct to continuing medication check-ups once a month, and a way to gain emotional and social support through the community. These groups also allow others to ensure the client is doing well and promotes the client’s independence and stability. Many online bipolar support groups exist that are devoted to helping individuals with this disorder share their commons experiences and feelings.

Such support groups are recommended to individuals suffering from this disorder, especially if they have found therapy unhelpful or too expensive. Self-help mutual support groups, though, are unlikely to benefit a person with this disorder as much as they could, unless they are also under the care of a psychiatrist or another mental health professional.

That’s what this heartfelt book accomplishes by wandering into the fields of mental illness, so often misunderstood, so often stigmatized and dismissed. This book provides first-person accounts of people with emotional disturbances and mental health issues, and does so in the best short story-telling tradition. Each story gives us a glimpse into the life of another person, a person who is living a life few of us can imagine. Each narrative is paired with a black-and-white photograph by the editor, who is a mother of a daughter with bipolar disorder.

The book contains 36 such vignettes, many of which will touch your heartstrings. The challenges faced by people who live daily with a mental illness are simply not contemplated by most of us. This book brings us face-to-face with these challenges in an engaging and inspiring manner. At the end of the it, you feel like you’ve gained real insight into the depths of mental disorders and how people deal with it every day.

Because each story is relatively short and the book is illustrated with exquisite photography, it’s an easy read. Some will find the photography as moving as the stories themselves, and you can count me among them.

If you know someone in your life who grapples with a mental health issue, or just wondered what it must be like to wake up every day dealing with a deep, dark depression, this is a book worth your time. I will recommend it to everyone who asks me what it’s like to experience a mental illness, because it paints a picture far more clearly than almost anything else I’ve come across.

Softcover, 144 pp.

The best treatment approach for people with dysthymia appears to be a combination approach — psychotherapy combined with antidepressant medication. One large multisite study in the New England Journal of Medicine by Keller and colleagues (2000), for instance, had patients randomly assigned to one of three treatments: a depression-focused cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) program, the antidepressant Serzone (nefazodone), or to a combination of the two. About three-quarters responded to the combination, compared with about 48 percent for each individual condition.

“The combination of the two was whoppingly more effective than either one alone,” noted the researchers. “People suffering from chronic depression often have longstanding interpersonal difficulties, and the virtue of combined treatment in this case may be that it simultaneously targets both depressive symptoms and social functioning.”

Psychotherapy

There are many different types of psychotherapy available to help someone with dysthymia.

Before psychotherapy beings, a mental health professional will conduct a thorough evaluation to evaluate the individual’s current state of functioning, to assess mood type and severity, check for suicidal ideation and plan, etc. No matter which specific type of psychotherapeutic approach is utilized, a supportive, change-oriented environment and good rapport should be established by the therapist. A cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) that is client-centered should generally be considered, as it offers a therapy environment tailored to the patient’s need for unconditional acceptance and support. Non-specific factors will like be an important component of therapy. Therapy should be generally conducted with respect to the client’s pace and level of functioning. Attempts to focus on change too early in therapy could lead to early termination of therapy. This likely occurs because the patient feels the therapist didn’t respect or care enough about him or her to move at their rate.

Psychotherapy approaches for this disorder vary widely. Short-term approaches are preferred, however, because they emphasize realistic, attainable goals in the individual’s life which can usually bring them back to their normal level of functioning. This level, however, may be markedly less than what is expected in the average person. A person who suffers from dysthymic disorder has generally learned to live with a fair amount of chronic unhappiness in their lives. Realistic goals should be established early-on and the focus of therapy, instead of focusing on the person’s mood state.

Group therapy has been shown to be an effective modality for individuals suffering from this disorder. A group can be more supportive an individual than any one therapist can and help point out inconsistencies in the patient’s thinking and behavior. It should be considered, if not initially, then later on in treatment as the client regains his or her own self-confidence and can interact in a social context. Issues of self-esteem often accompany individuals who have dysthymic disorder, so care must be employed not to place the person into a group situation (where failure may be imminent) too soon. Family therapy may also be helpful for some individuals. Couples therapy can bring the individual’s spouse or significant other into the therapeutic relationship to create a therapeutic (and more powerful) triad.

Goals will vary according to type of therapy. Cognitive therapy emphasizes changes in one’s faulty or distorted way of thinking and perceiving the world. Interpersonal therapy focuses on an individual’s relationships with others and how to improve and strengthen existing relationships while finding new ones. Solution-focused therapy looks at specific problems plaguing an individual’s life in the present and examines how to best go about changing the person’s behavior to solve these difficulties. Social skills training focuses on teaching the client new skills on how to become more effective in social and work relationships. Usually, psychoanalytic and other insight-oriented approaches will be less effective because of their focus on the past and emphasis on lengthy therapy. While incorporation of therapy into a person’s chronic condition might be quite financially lucrative for the therapist, it is not the most change-effective and timely approach to help the individual overcome his or her difficulties.

Because the clinician must move at the client’s pace, progress with any type of therapy can be slow. Therapists should resist the temptation to try and “speed up” the process or force the client in a direction he or she is not yet ready to try. Closely related to this issue of the pace of therapy is being aware of the clinician’s frustration with lack of progress or boredom within the therapy session. It can be an emotionally draining experience for some therapists.

Medications

People with dysthymia often take an antidepressant medication, one that they find helps keep their energy levels up and keep them from reaching the lowest depressive moods. A class of antidepressants called selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors (SSRIs) are the most commonly prescribed medication for chronic depression today. Prozac (fluoxetine), Paxil (paroxetine), Zoloft (sertraline) and Luvox (fluvoxamine) are the most commonly prescribed brand names. SSRI medications should not be prescribed in conjunction with the older MAOIs (more popular in Europe than in the U.S.).

The large-scale, multi-clinic government research study called STAR*D found that people with depression and who take a medication often need to try different brands and be patient before they find one that works for them.

Results from the STAR*D study indicate that if a first treatment with one SSRI fails, about one in four people who choose to switch to another medication will get better, regardless of whether the second medication is another SSRI or a medication of a different class. And if people choose to add a new medication to the existing SSRI, about one in three people will get better. It appears to make some — but not much — difference if the second medication is an antidepressant from a different class (e.g. bupropion) or if it is a medication that is meant to enhance the SSRI (e.g. buspirone).

The most commonly prescribed antidepressants generally take 6 to 8 weeks before a person will start feeling their therapeutic effects.

Self-Help

Self-help methods for the treatment of this disorder are often overlooked by the medical profession because very few professionals are involved in them. Adjunctive community support groups in concurrence with psychotherapy is usually beneficial to most people who suffer from dysthymic disorder. Caution should be utilized, however, if the person also suffers from social anxiety. A group like A.A. or N.A. may also be appropriate, if the underlying cause of the dysthymia is a substance abuse problem. Many support groups exist within communities throughout the world which are devoted to helping individuals with this disorder share their commons experiences and feelings.

Patients can be encouraged to try out new coping skills, assertiveness skills, cognitive restructuring, etc. within such a support group. They can be an important part of expanding the individual’s skill set and develop new, healthier social relationships.

Since this is a chronic disorder, your mental health professional should be sensitive to not using previous treatment approaches (especially medication) which have proven ineffective in the past. A careful and thorough history should be conducted at the onset of treatment to ensure this is evaluated. Specific attention should also be given to diagnostic issues, such as the existence of an alcohol or substance abuse problem, or social anxiety or other phobia, underlying or causing the dysthymic condition.

“I went to see my family doctor and he prescribed me an antidepressant after I talked to him about feeling down for the past few weeks and unable to motivate myself to do anything. He didn’t mention anything about psychotherapy. Do I need it? Would it help? I’ve been on this medication now for 3 weeks and still feel depressed.”

The answer in almost every case is that psychotherapy is a valuable treatment component to anyone suffering from clinical depression. Doctors who don’t bring it up may either do so out of ignorance or embarrassment, but put their own patients’ well-being and health at risk.

Don’t believe me? Back in the 1990s, the American Psychological Association’s Monitor on Psychology wrote a nice article that summarizes the research in this area of the combination of psychotherapy and medications in the treatment of depression. Their conclusion? People get better, faster on combination treatment than on either treatment by itself.

The preponderance of the available scientific evidence shows that psychological interventions, particularly cognitive-behavioral therapies (CBTs), are generally as effective or more effective than medications in the treatment of depression, even if severe, for both vegetative and social adjustment symptoms, especially when patient-rate measures and long-term follow-up are considered (Antonuccio, 1995 [43]).

Yale psychiatrists (Wexler & Cicchetti, 1992 [50]) conducted a meta-analysis (a large, comprehensive review of the research literature). When dropout rate is considered with treatment success rates, pharmacotherapy alone is substantially worse than psychotherapy alone or the combined treatment.

The review concluded that in a hypothetical cohort of 100 patients with major depression, 29 would recover if given pharmacotherapy alone, 47 would recover if given psychotherapy alone, and 47 would recover if given combined treatment. On the other hand, negative outcome (i.e., dropout or poor response) can be expected in 52 pharmacotherapy patients, 30 psychotherapy patients, and 34 combined patients. This meta-analysis suggests that psychotherapy alone should usually be the initial treatment for depression rather than exposing patients to unnecessary costs and side effects of combined treatment (Antonuccio, 1995 [43]).

Moreover, a consistent finding across studies is a higher dropout rate among those receiving medication, either because of side effects or because the medication has not helped. These patients are treatment failures but are not included as treatment failures in the data for their studies (Karon & Teixeira, 1995 [48]).

Often times you will find doctors and researchers discussing “double-blind placebo controlled” studies as being the “gold standard” within this area of study. This simply is either ignorance or naivete. Seymour Fisher and Roger Greenberg (1993 [50]) among others, have shown the double-blind placebo controlled study is not blind. Side effects are so obvious that more than 80% of the patients know whether they are on active medication or placebo, patients are equally accurate about other patients on the ward, and nurses and other personnel are privy as well. In some studies the only people who claim to be blind are the prescribing physicians, and in other studies the prescribing physicians admit being as aware of the patients’ condition as everyone else (Karon & Teixeira, 1995 [48]).

Greenberg, Bornstein, Greenberg, and Fisher (1992 [47]) conducted another meta-analysis, covering 22 controlled studies (N=2,230). This study calls into serious question the perceived efficacy of tricyclic antidepressant medications, which are shown only to be more effective than inert placebo and only on clinician-rated measures, not patient-rated measures. If patients cannot tell that they are better off in a controlled study, one must question the conventional wisdom about the efficacy of antidepressant drugs. The newer selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs, such as Prozac, Paxil, and Zoloft) do not appear to fare much better (Antonuccio, 1995 [43]).

With active placebos, so that the patients and psychiatrists are not easily informed, the empirical data show that medication effect sizes are hard to distinguish from the placebo. Also not mentioned is that most antidepressant medications habituate, and the patients’ symptoms return. Most patients believe they would feel even worse if they were not taking their medication (Karon & Teixeira, 1995 [48]).

While everyone knows that it often takes years to provide evidence of safety and effectiveness and be approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). But what is not known is that although these studies often have large number of participants, patients may have been given the medication for only short periods of time — much shorter periods of time than in clinical practice.

Prozac, for example, has been advertised as having been administered to either 11,000 or 6,000 patients in preapproval clinical trials. But in all the controlled preapproval trials there were only a total of 286 patients on Prozac, and the controlled trials lasted only six weeks (Breggin & Breggin, 1994). In all the preapproval data submitted, 86% of the patients received Prozac for less than three months. Only 63 patients out of thousands had taken the drug for two years or more — the way it is used in clinical practice (Karon & Teixeira, 1995 [48]).

Some important points that can be taken from the article:

• Combined treatment of psychotherapy and medication is the usual and preferred treatment of choice for depression. This is likely the most commonly-used treatment for depression today and there is absolutely nothing wrong with it, since it, too, has been proven very effective. Never go against professional advice given with regards to your treatment, unless you have first discussed it with your treatment providers. Especially with depression, it is better to play it safe, than be sorry.
• Psychotherapy is likely the second treatment of choice for depression, regardless of the depression’s severity or symptoms. Multiple meta-analyses have come to this conclusion, so it is not a conclusion based on just one lone case study or the like. (No one study, even the NIMH study on depression, should ever be used to draw far-reaching, generalized conclusions about a treatment’s effectiveness. Meta-analyses are always preferred by research scientists.)
• Medication alone should be your last choice and only used as a last resort. Although you will likely gain some short-term relief of the most outward symptoms of your depression, the above-cited meta-analyses and multiple studies have shown that medications don’t work very well in the long-term.
• Always consult your physician or psychiatrist before beginning or stopping any medications. This article is not meant as advice to your specific situation, but as overall education.
• People who are taking psychotropic medications should better inform themselves as to the negative and adverse side effects of those medications. Ask your physician about these, or consult the insert for the medication (which you can also request from your doctor if you do not already have one). Also, drug handbooks found in many larger bookstores in the medical section might come in handy, as will the PDR. You might also benefit from a more thorough understanding of how political and un-scientific the drug approval process is in the United States by reading Breggin & Breggin’s book, Talking back to Prozac (1994 [45]). I don’t usually like Breggin or the positions he takes, but I found this to be a fascinating account of the FDA workings and the actual numbers used in the Prozac trials, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. They concerned me and they should concern you too.

As Consumer Reports noted in their two articles, Pushing Drugs (Feb., 1992) and Miracle Drugs (March, 1992), physicians are actively marketed to by drug companies, given free gifts and vacations. That “professional” you think you’re paying to receive the best and most thorough treatment available may be in the pocket of a pharmaceutical company. So don’t be too surprised that when a new antidepressant medication is marketed that you suddenly see a whole host of psychiatrists prescribing it, not based upon the medical research, but because it’s new.

Additional research conducted since a version of this article was first published online confirms the findings discussed here. For instance, the government’s large-scale STAR*D study found that most people may have to try 2 or even 3 different antidepressants before finding relief. And the U.K.’s NICE Guidelines for Depression (PDF) emphasize the importance of psychotherapy in the treatment of most types of depression, in most people.

Unlike most adults who have bipolar disorder, however, children who have pediatric bipolar disorder are characterized by abrupt mood swings, periods of hyperactivity followed by lethargy, intense temper tantrums, frustration and defiant behavior. This rapid and severe cycling between moods may produce a type of chronic irritability with few clear periods of peace between episodes.

Because the current diagnostic manual of mental disorders doesn’t recognize childhood bipolar disorder, there is no official symptom criteria. However, researchers have used criteria similar to that of adult bipolar disorder, requiring a child or teen to meet at least four or more of the following:

• an expansive or irritable mood
• extreme sadness or lack of interest in play
• rapidly changing moods lasting a few hours to a few days
• explosive, lengthy, and often destructive rages
• separation anxiety
• defiance of authority
• hyperactivity, agitation, and distractibility
• sleeping little or, alternatively, sleeping too much
• bed wetting and night terrors
• strong and frequent cravings, often for carbohydrates and sweets
• excessive involvement in multiple projects and activities
• impaired judgment, impulsivity, racing thoughts, and pressure to keep talking
• dare-devil behaviors (such as jumping out of moving cars or off roofs)
• inappropriate or precocious sexual behavior
• grandiose belief in own abilities that defy the laws of logic (ability to fly, for example)

Keep in mind that many of these behaviors, in and of themselves, are not indicative of a possible disorder and are characteristic of normal childhood development. For instance, separation anxiety, by itself, is a normal fear of being separated from one or both of the parents (for instance, attending the first day of first grade or if the parents want to go out for a night).

Childhood bipolar disorder is characterized by many of these symptoms, taken together, and marked by rapid mood swings and hyperactivity. These symptoms must also cause significant distress in the child or teen, occur in more than just one setting (e.g., at school and at home), and last for at least 2 weeks.

Because the existing diagnostic manual doesn’t recognize pediatric bipolar disorder, and there is still debate within the professional community about the validity of this diagnosis, insurance companies may not reimburse for treatment of this disorder. In addition, some professionals may not recognize the disorder and misdiagnose the child or teen with attention deficit disorder or depression.

“Suicide Junkie,” Westwood’s autobiography, details his long-term struggles with body dysmorphic disorder, borderline personality disorder, depression and self-harm and all his attempts at giving back the gift of life.

Westwood exhibited signs of mental illness from an early age. As a young student he complained of “phantom” pains. His parents divorced. Bullies heightened his insecurity about his appearance. The opposite sex made him feel inadequate. And so he chose to cope with it all by using alcohol, recreational drugs, and self-harm.

“I knew there was a world out there somewhere, people having lives — people doing things,” Westwood writes. “I wracked my brain to work out what made them so different. What were they doing right that I was doing wrong?”

Readers ride along with Westwood through his ups and downs, love affairs and failed suicide attempts, hours spent in front of the mirror trying to correct with makeup all the blemishes he saw, his fear that it simply wasn’t good enough. It is not an easy ride by far, but one worth taking for anyone seeking a greater understanding of mental illness.

“I am in love with misery, constantly embracing death, yet as with any love it bears such a resemblance to hate,” Westwood writes. “But happiness is an alien thing to me and after years of seeking it, its poison now runs through my veins and threatens to kill me. All those years waiting for pleasure’s taste only to find it bitter. It was not worth waiting for… And so, I will not wait much longer.”

Westwood’s passion for speaking out about mental illness is apparent in his willingness to share his story with the world, a story for which he tries to find a positive ending.

“My wish to die might never leave,” Westwood writes honestly. “The jealousy I feel each time I hear of someone’s death might always be there. The envy I have for those that successfully kill themselves might play on my mind until the day of my own death. Yet I still do this, I still choose life.”

The book is not an easy read. If you’re not willing to put in 234 pages before you’re able to muster a smile for the plotline, “Suicide Junkie” is not for you. There is no easing into the pain of Westwood’s life; readers are introduced from page 1 to the anguish Westwood has felt all his life.

As a spokesperson for mental illness, Westwood serves his purpose well, holding nothing back and offering a window into the soul of a mentally ill individual. At times he instills in readers a sense of hopelessness he himself has so often felt. If you’re looking for answers or tips on how to cope with mental illness, though, you’ve come to the wrong place. “Suicide Junkie” doesn’t offer any surefire ways of quashing mental illness, but helps readers to better identify and empathize with the daily lives of the mentally ill. Westwood easily meets his goal of reaching out to those struggling with mental health issues, but the unrelentingly heavy subject matter may turn off those just looking for a good read. In the end, readers have the same choice Westwood’s family and friends do: Stick with him through his struggles, or simply close the book.

S. Westwood, Suicide Junkie
January 2007: Chipmunkapublishing
281 pages
Paperback

What is this method? Classical Homeopathy.

Homeopathy has been shown to be beneficial for those seeking treatment for anxiety, depression, grief, phobias, and trauma, along with other types of psychological challenges.

Many people are familiar with the effectiveness of homeopathy for first aid or acute situations, such as using arnica for a bruise or a sprain. But the most powerful way to use homeopathy is called constitutional, or classical homeopathy, where one remedy is chosen by a professional homeopath based on all your physical symptoms, along with your personality and temperament.

A homeopathic remedy is chosen after on an extensive two hour interview which covers one’s present day symptoms along with a psychological and physical history of one’s entire lifetime. The information is then analyzed and a remedy is chosen which most closely matches the symptom picture the client is presenting.

Homeopaths and psychotherapists are similar in their view that most physical or emotional upset is rooted in trauma which happened earlier in a person’s life. Homeopathic medicine stimulates an innate healing process at a deep physiological, emotional, and spiritual level which allows an individual to release trauma and realign to a more optimal state of health.

Over the past ten years I have witnessed the way a well prescribed homeopathic remedy acts as a powerful catalyst for elevating a person’s level of wellbeing. Often times after taking a remedy, old memories surface, dreams and situations from the past are activated, and feelings that have long been buried are brought to life. These are signs that show the remedy is working at a deep level. Normally these reactions are mild and short term, and they are followed by a significant improvement in overall health.

For people undergoing psychotherapy, homeopathy is an excellent form of complementary medicine. It can be of value for people taking pharmaceuticals and in some cases it is possible for the client to reduce and eventually discontinue their drugs, under the guidance and direction of their prescribing physician.

The length of treatment varies with each person depending on one’s age, overall vitality, durations of symptoms, and number of medications one is using. The healing process can only be evaluated over a period of weeks and months-and sometimes it can take multiple remedies to find one that works well.

People who have been treated successfully with homeopathy not only have their presenting problem significantly improved, many clients report feeling better overall and living with greater vitality and ease.

Will Cassilly MA CCH is a Certified Classical Homeopath with a Masters degree in Counseling Psychology. Will maintains a private practice in Soquel, CA . Call 831.477.7782 or visit his website at SantaCruzHomeopathy.com.