As the coronavirus pandemic continues to turn our lives upside down, it doesn’t surprise Dr. Anne Marie Albano that an increasing number of people are experiencing new or worsened mental […]
Psychiatry
Social Distancing Stress
Life as we knew it changed in mid-March. The regular hum of the hustle and bustle now seems like a distant memory. To be able to hug a loved one, […]
The Journey to Recovery from Anorexia and Bulimia
According to the American Psychiatric Association, eating disorders are illnesses in which people experience severe disturbances in their eating behaviors and related thoughts and emotions. People with eating disorders typically become preoccupied with food and with their body weight. An eating disorder takes over one’s thoughts, body and life. As someone who has recovered from […]
Fighting the Stigma of Postpartum Depression
Five years ago, Mount Pleasant mom Elaine DeaKyne went to her obstetrician’s office. She’d given birth to her first daughter two months prior, and DeaKyne wondered if she might have postpartum depression. The nurse asked her a series of questions about how she was doing as a new mom, including “Do you think you would […]
Support for our Peers at the VA
Tyrone Jarmon said that if anyone would have told him 10 years ago that he would be a peer support specialist with the Ralph H. Johnson VA Medical Center’s Substance Treatment and Recovery (STAR) Program, he would have thought they were crazy – mainly because he started his own sobriety treatment program in Asheville, North […]
Help with Remaining Sober in College
If your idea of an alcoholic is a stupefied bum in a trench coat, slurping out of a brown paper bag, a quick glance around the cozy lounge in the College of Charleston’s Recovery Center will set you straight. The bright faces and animated chatter of a dozen or so students show hope. They also […]
Chronic Stress and it’s Effects on the Body
Have you ever noticed the almost perverse pleasure we adults take in either bemoaning or bragging about our hectic work schedules and lifestyles? Psychologists suggest that our deliberate “hyper-busyness” may be a way to say to the world, “See me: I am productive and useful. Therefore, I have value and I matter.” Today’s excessive work […]
Making Sense of Behavioral and Developmental Disorders
Behavioral and developmental disorders have become more common in recent years. While the jury is still out on whether those numbers can be attributed to better diagnoses or a toxic environment – or perhaps a combination of both – understanding these disorders is the first step toward helping those affected by them to live as […]
Depression in the Golden Years: Finding the Silver Lining
It can happen more easily than you think: a once-healthy, active and social person may experience any number of issues as a senior which could open the door for the development of depression. Often, the symptoms of depression are overlooked, and, according to the nonprofit group Mental Health America, the condition is commonly left untreated […]
Senior Dating/Senior Sex
Most young people sigh sentimentally when they see an elderly couple walking hand-in-hand. Just don’t ask them to envision anything more overt between people old enough to be their parents or grandparents. But the truth is, love, romance and even sex can (and should be) still very much a part of later life. There is […]
A Dog’s Purpose
They Make Life Better for the Humans They Serve Some dogs undergo extensive training so they will be able to complete tasks that people can’t handle themselves, while others help out simply by being dogs. There obviously is a distinct difference between service dogs and therapy dogs, but the end result is generally the same: […]
Study Aims to Assist Suicidal Veterans
Suicide. It’s a subject that few people want to talk about. We either don’t know how to help those who are unfortunately plagued by thoughts so awful that they would want to end their life, or we refuse to acknowledge that suicide is a real problem that affects so many people. The problem is particularly […]