Top 10 Myths About Mental Illness

It’s the myths about mental illness that keep it shrouded in secrecy and shame making it terribly difficult for people to get the information and help they need. The following is a post by Pamela Kulbarsh, RN, BSW, a psychiatric nurse for over 25 years. She has worked with law enforcement in crisis intervention for…

Read More

Preventing Suicide Among People Who Abuse Alcohol or Drugs

Preventing alcohol or drug abuse can be critical to preventing suicide, primarily because of the chemical and structural brain changes caused by substance abuse. These sorts of brain changes interrupt neural networks responsible for judgment, memory, emotion, logical thinking – the very areas of the brain a person needs in order to “think straight.” The…

Read More

Borderline Personality Disorder

Borderline personality disorder and the substance abuse | addiction connection explained. The importance of understanding is, in part, due to the role mental illness plays as one of the five key risk factors for developing an addiction. Often people who suffer from a mental illness, such as borderline personality disorder, also suffer from substance abuse…

Read More

Veterans, Suicide and the Substance Abuse Connection

Veterans, Suicide and the Substance Abuse Connection. It’s real, and it’s rooted in the brain changes caused by the mental health impacts of war – anxiety, depression, PTSD, for example. These impacts often cause a veteran (and any person with a mental illness, for that matter) to turn to drugs or alcohol to self-medicate the…

Read More

The Oprah Winfrey Show – The Diane Schuler Story

I watched The Oprah Winfrey Show – The Diane Schuler Story, yesterday, and I was struck on so many, many fronts, but the two I’m going to talk about in this post have nothing to do with the Diane Schuler Story. They relate to the portions of the show that followed that segment. [Beyond] The…

Read More

Dual Diagnosis – Explanation & Treatment

Dual Diagnosis – what is it and how is it treated? or can it be treated? One of the repeated concerns I hear when giving my presentations is the lack of satisfactory treatment for a dual diagnosis, which occurs when a person is diagnosed with both a mental illness (PTSD, Anxiety, Bipolar, ADHD, schizophrenia) and…

Read More

So What is a Dual Diagnosis?

Dual diagnosis – what is it? One of the terms I’ve frequently heard in the various “recovery” circles I’ve encountered over the past five years is “dual diagnosis.” People would talk of their loved one or themselves as having a “dual diagnosis.” I was curious what that was about and learned that a person who…

Read More