I'm proud to say that the depression support group I started through Meetup.com is going strong. As you can see in this screenshot, I started it on October 10th and we now have 111 members. Between seven and ten of us meet every Monday evening in Rogers Park and we...
[NOTE: the name of our Meetup has since been changed to Depression: Friends Supporting Each Other because people thought the original name was too negative. Of course it was negative! We're talking about depression. But I listened to the members and we voted on a...
Wait! Start with Part One! Eleventh Session (Oct. 17, 2017) I'm bored with this program and bored with blogging about it. Usually 10-15 people show up, but today there were only eight. The first exercise was to write letters to ourselves about how we've changed...
Presence St. Joseph Hospital in Chicago, Illinois USA Start with Part One please! Ninth Session (Oct. 13, 2017) There's one man who consistently dozes in group and I feel for him because it sounds like he's on too strong a sleeping pill prescription....
Hey, start with Outpatient program for depression and anxiety, part one! Seventh session (Oct. 9, 2017) Today was weird. It was clear that at least some of the staff had read last week's blog posts and changed their behavior accordingly (on my third day there I...
One thing I like about mental illness support groups, outpatient programs and the nut house itself is that I can be myself 100%. Unlike anywhere else, I can take off my public face, express exactly what I'm feeling and say what's on my mind or stare dully into the...
Don't read this until you read Outpatient program for depression and anxiety, part one. Fifth session (Oct. 5, 2017) This morning I found the first hour disturbing. We did the usual check-in with the facilitator asking everyone about sleep, appetite,...
Please! Read this first Outpatient program for depression and anxiety, part one. Fourth Session (Oct. 3, 2017) The St. Joseph Hospital outpatient program did get better this week. It's like they really heard our criticisms of the heavy focus on handouts and the...
First, please read: Outpatient program part one. Third Session (Sept. 29, 2017) Today was better. The first hour of checking in was conducted by a facilitator I'd actually seen before. I've finally made it to the repeats! One woman said she'd had a hard...
First Session (Sept. 26, 2017) I've been accepted into Saint Joseph Hospital's Intensive Outpatient Program (IOP) in Chicago (where I live). It's for adults struggling with mental illness. I'm one of the depressives. It goes from 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Monday...
You might be clinically depressed if: you're back on cigarettes or junk food or alcohol or shopping or whatever your addiction is that you've been trying to kick for decades. you can't concentrate on work for more than a few minutes at a time. the long minutes you...
On July 26th, Stephen Colbert commented on El Idiota's tweet that transgender people will no longer be allowed in the U.S. military. He said, "Today I really think he's off his meds because today he went from crazy to cruel." To anyone reading this: please stop making...
Here's an update on how my attempt to lose some fatness is going: it's...kind of...going. Since I last posted about my continued fatness two months ago, I had some pretty discouraging weeks. This is what I filled them with: 1. I tried to exercise more, which is...
Previous post on fat & heath: Obesity crisis is mental health crisis Here's some interesting stuff: 1. A 2008 documentary called My Big Fat Body shows comedian Frank Payne undergoing a series of tests to find out the health status of his over 300-pound body (over...
I've suffered from depression for most of my life and have had a couple of major episodes. There have been times when I decided dying would be better than living and while I'm not proud of that, I'm also not ashamed of it. My illness has caused lots of irrational...