Recovery Michigan

4. Have a good sleep routine

3. Take your medicine properly

2. Properly managing your consumption of alcohol

1. Make efforts to reduce stress

I would add that too much fluid intake can increase seizures and, in particular, if you take a medication that consistently makes you sleepy, you also have to watch your coffee intake. Talk to you physician about ho fluid can influence your seizure rate.

For you older folks that might remember from the early 70's maybe? This is an animated film, produced and directed by Francis Ford Coppola, using William Burroughs as narrator reading his own work, The Junky's Christmas. The whole thing is about 20 minutes. This is part 1, a little less than 5 minutes. It's on Youtube and the other parts are listed on the right....

https://goo.gl/mns4S1

My name is Addison Dean.

I write over at TwentySomethingAndSick and as a contributor for TheMighty about my experience with physical and mental health issues. 

I was diagnosed with Schizoaffective Disorder when I was 25 years old. 

I was diagnosed with Schizoaffective Disorder when I was 25 years old: probably having had it for a much greater part of my life without knowing it. It noticeably started though, a few years earlier, and I remember the first time “hearing” a voice. I was on the treadmill, and I heard someone calling my name through the walls, I thought, perhaps, from another room. I was in the gym alone, and got off the treadmill to go have a look out in the hallway, but nobody around. 

I thought I had been given a psychic ability. 

Around the same time, I started hearing people’s thoughts. I was in the line at Starbucks and could hear the thoughts of the people in front of me, as though they were being projected from their head’s into mine. I thought I had been given a psychic ability, and didn’t think much of it or tell anyone about it, because, I thought maybe it was a cool power, and I didn’t want anyone to think I was nuts. These special powers would come and go over the years, until it came, very severely one year, all at once. 

I also believed that I was on a mission from god. 

During this episode, I was hearing voices. I also believed that I was on a mission from god, where I was receiving messages about this mission through various outlets– like code in the newspaper and on billboards, that would aid me on my mission to write the next great book that would change the world.

I thought that I could hear people’s thoughts, and that I had magic abilities—mind reading powers, that nobody else had. 

I heard this special code in the way people talked, I heard it in music, I heard it everywhere, and it made it very hard to interact with people. I thought that I could hear people’s thoughts, and that I had magic abilities—mind reading powers, that nobody else had. I was exceptionally paranoid, and was eventually hospitalized as a result of my paranoia, and illness, at which point I went through the mental health system and received my diagnosis and medication and began the road to recovery.

When I get paranoid, today, or am struggling, I will feel a bit of this “code” again, but not like I did back then, as severe as it once was, or to that degree. Mental Illness is like chronic illness in that it waxes and wanes, and to stay in recovery you have to put constant effort in. 

It was a long, hard, battle to get the voices and paranoia under control 

I felt very alone when I was diagnosed with Schizoaffective. It was a long, hard, battle to get the voices and paranoia under control, and sometimes, it pops back up, and I feel those feelings all over again. Stress, is a big factor in this, and so managing your stress is important. 

People don’t understand about paranoia is the sheer terror and isolation of it. 

What people don’t understand about paranoia is the sheer terror and isolation of it: simply because you don’t know what’s real and what isn’t. You don’t know who to trust, and you firmly believe in the thoughts behind in the paranoia, and so it puts you in a world all by yourself with the thoughts and the fear. 

It made me laugh, because I felt understood. 

I was actually going through a slightly harder time when I discovered Schizophrenic.NYC’s brand on Instagram. My meds had been lowered as I was doing well, but my symptoms popped back up, and I had been having paranoid moments which is when I saw their T-shirt ad, with their motto emblazoned across the chest: “Don’t be Paranoid: You Look Great.” It made me laugh, because I felt understood.

One of the more informative revelations in our quest to understand autism is the wide ranges that exist in behavior and effect. Journalist Steve Silberman opens his tour de force, Neurotribes, by detailing just how varied what is now known as “the spectrum” can be. One hundred people could feasibly have one hundred different genetic causes, resulting in a popular sentiment in the autism community: “If you meet one person with autism, you’ve met one person with autism.” 

In the study, the team describes the five subtypes as:

Tension: This type is defined by irritability. People are overly sensitive, touchy, and overwhelmed. The anxiety makes the nervous system hypersensitive.

Anxious arousal: Cognitive functioning, such as the ability to concentrate and control thoughts, is impaired. Physical symptoms include a racing heart, sweating, and feeling stressed. “People say things like ‘I feel like I’m losing my mind,” Williams says. “They can’t remember from one moment to the next.”

Melancholia: People experience problems with social functioning. Restricted social interactions further cause distress.

Anhedonia: The primary symptom is an inability to feel pleasure. This type of depression often goes unrecognized. People are often able to function reasonably well while in a high state of distress. “We see it in how the brain functions in overdrive,” Williams says. “People are able to power through but at some time become quite numb. These are some of the most distressed people.”

General anxiety: A generalized type of anxiety with the primary features involving worry and anxious arousal — a more physical type of stress.

• Feelings of sadness, hopelessness, or irritability on a nearly daily basis.
• Lack of interest or pleasure in activities almost every day.
• Experiencing significant weight loss or appetite loss that results in weight loss.
• Difficulty sleeping or sleeping excessively.
• Experiencing psychomotor agitation, restlessness, or feelings of being "slowed down."
• Feeling fatigued or having a lack of energy nearly every day.
• Feeling worthless or having excessive and unexplained guilt almost every day.
• Difficulty thinking clearly, concentrating, or making decisions on a daily basis.
• Experiencing thoughts of death, thinking of harming one's self, or creating a specific plan for committing suicide.

• angry outbursts
• clenching fists
• disruptive behavior
• excessive talking
• feeling as if a person cannot sit still or focus
• pacing or shuffling feet
• tension
• wringing of the hands
• violent outbursts

OBJECTIVE:

RESULTS:

At baseline, both groups had moderate depression and no hypomanic or manic symptoms. Compared with the placebo light group, the group treated with bright white light experienced a significantly higher remission rate (68.2% compared with 22.2%; adjusted odds ratio=12.6) at weeks 4-6 and significantly lower depression scores (9.2 [SD=6.6] compared with 14.9 [SD=9.2]; adjusted β=-5.91) at the endpoint visit. No mood polarity switches were observed. Sleep quality improved in both groups and did not differ significantly between them.

CONCLUSIONS:

In fact, they say, no one genetic change, or chemical imbalance, or life event, lies at the heart of every case of the mental health condition once known as manic depression.

Rather, every patient’s experience with bipolar disorder varies from that of others with the condition. But all of their experiences include features that fall into seven classes of phenotypes, or characteristics that can be observed, the team reports in a new paper in the International Journal of Epidemiology.

The team, from U-M’s Heinz C. Prechter Bipolar Research Program, collected and analyzed tens of thousands of data points over years about the genetics, emotions, life experiences, medical histories, motivations, diets, temperaments, sleep patterns and thought patterns of research volunteers. More than 730 had bipolar disorder, and 277 didn’t. Three-quarters of them are currently active research participants in the Longitudinal Study of Bipolar Disorder.

The seven phenoclasses, as the U-M team has dubbed them, include standard measures doctors already use to diagnose and track the progress of bipolar disorder.

I found another article on the same study that has more detail

https://goo.gl/STZXM7

In addition, they include:

• Changes in cognition, which includes thinking, reasoning and emotion processing

• Psychological dimensions such as personality and temperament

• Measures of behaviors related to substance use or abuse — called motivated behaviors

• Aspects of the person’s life involving family, intimate relationships and traumas

• Patterns of sleep and circadian rhythms

• Measures of how patients’ symptoms change over time and respond to treatment

Some of the key findings the U-M team made in the Prechter cohort include:

• Migraine headaches are 3½ times more common among people with bipolar disorder than those without. Eating disorders, anxiety disorders and alcohol problems are also more common in those with bipolar disorder, as is metabolic syndrome.

• More people with bipolar disorder have a history of childhood trauma than those without the condition. It is associated with changes in self-control and attention.

• People with bipolar disorder had higher levels of saturated fats in their diets, and the research also found associations between levels of certain fat molecules in the blood of patients and their mood or level of symptoms.

• Looking at the microbes living in the gastrointestinal tracts of patients and comparison volunteers, the researchers found lower levels of a key bacteria type and less diversity of microbes in patients taking antipsychotic medications.

• Poor sleep appears to play a key role in bipolar disorder, with links found to severity of depression and mania in female, but not male, participants with the condition. Other gender differences emerged in other aspects of the study.

• People with bipolar disorder who have a strong neurotic tendency in their personalities are more likely to have severe illness, especially among men.

• A range of cognitive abilities — including memory, executive functioning and motor skills — were poorer in participants with bipolar disorder than those without, in general. The study also found a link between the cognitive abilities of people who carried a particular genetic trait and were taking newer antipsychotic medicines.

• Two genes, called CACNA1 and ANK3, appear to play a role in susceptibility to developing bipolar disorder. But many genetic variations have been found to be associated with bipolar risk, and more recent findings have explored the role of having a mix of these variations in the chances a person will develop bipolar disorder.

• Stem cells grown from skin samples taken from participants, and then coaxed to grow into nerve cells called neurons, have proved useful in studying cellular aspects of bipolar disorder. For instance, neurons derived from bipolar patients’ cells were more excitable than comparisons — but calmed down when exposed to lithium, a common treatment for bipolar disorder. Also, the cells show differences in how they interact and function.

• Key features of speech patterns predict mood states and may be useful outcome measures to predict the need for intervention to prevent episodes of mania or depression.

Although bipolar disorder tends to run in families, the long-term study revealed no one gene explains it, says McInnis, who is the Woodworth Professor of Bipolar Disorder and Depression in the U-M Medical School’s Department of Psychiatry.

I am very excited to announce that Voice Collective, a UK-based project supporting children and young people who see, hear or sense things others don’t, has launched the first-ever online forum dedicated to supporting young people who hear voices.

The online forum is a safe, confidential space for young people aged 25 and under who hear voices, see visions or have other unusual sensory experiences or beliefs, as well as their parents, carers and supporters.

In many ways, the forum is like a Hearing Voices peer support group online — but available to young people and their parents or carers around the world, regardless of geographical location. This feels really important, as so many people aren’t able to access support or groups because of where they are based; in some rural locations for example, or simply because there isn’t a group nearby. Another way it’s similar to a group is that it’s facilitated by trained members of the Hearing Voices team at Mind in Camden in London, UK, where Voice Collective is based. To help this forum stay safe for users, only registered forum members can see what’s posted.

The role of sleep changes with every stage of life, from infancy to old age. The latest neuroscience is discovering how crucial sleep is to an infant’s growing brain, while the latest epidemiology is discovering how irregular sleep doubles the risk of death as we grow older. To mark National Sleep Week, Thrive Global spoke with some of the top researchers in sleep science to give you a map of how sleep changes through your lifespan.

What scientists are discovering about sleep through the ages is fascinating, like how sleep helps the brain lay down the equivalent of fiber-optic cable before you’re even born to the way “social jet lag” affects the lives of primary schoolers to why you have trouble staying asleep as you get older.

With that said, let’s dive in.

Infancy: When sleep helps build your brain.

The need for and power of sleep starts showing up before you even properly enter the world. Beginning in the third trimester of pregnancy, a fetus starts exhibiting what looks like rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, which, in adults, is when dreaming occurs and memories are stored. For fetuses, neurons are growing rapidly — it’s like “an internet service provider laying down high-speed fiber optic cable within the brain,” says Matthew Walker, PhD, the principal investigator at the University of California, Berkeley’s Sleep and Neuroimaging Laboratory. Even before a baby is born, it already has circadian rhythms, or the “body clock” that determines your wakefulness and sleepiness throughout the day.

Once we’re out in the world, sleep becomes our primary activity. On average, a newborn infant sleeps 16–17 hours a day and a six-month-old sleeps 13–14 hours a day. In that first year of life, a baby spends more than half of its time sleeping. As Thrive Global founder and CEO Arianna Huffington notes in her book The Sleep Revolution, infants spend about half of their sleep in REM, a rate that falls to about 20 percent after their first birthday and stays stable into adulthood.