In this political season I couldn't help but think of one of my favorite scenes from Modern Times, the Charlie Chaplin masterpiece. Charlie sings "Charabia" -- a messed up amalgam of French, Italian and English lyrics to a crowd in a bar that can't understand a word of it. He's completely forgotten the words and just blathering nonsense. But the crowd loves it anyway.
Top Ten Depression Blogs
From Psych Central
We’ve been indexing and reviewing online resources since 1991. In 1995, we began awarding Web awards to recognize those online resources that really stood out. Flash forward 12 years later and a lot has changed. We aim to give you the best of the best, so you know where to go when you need information, opinion, and support.
With the invaluable assistance of regular blog contributor Sandra Kiume, I present to you 2007’s Best of the Web - Blogs for Depression. Depression is a difficult category, because there are innumerable blogs that talk about depression, some even on a fairly regular basis. But there aren’t many that are reliably engaging, post regularly, and keep up for months or years on end. We scoured the web for those rare jewels, some of which you’ll find below:
An anonymous “25-year-old black female” writing about her struggles with depression, suicidal thoughts and simply life, magnified. It’s quite personal and chatty, you can have dialogues with her. Also, commentary on depression in the news, celebrities and research news. She was first diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) but apparently that may have been a misdiagnosis, as she was recently diagnosed as having bipolar disorder instead. The focus of her blog remains the depressive side.
Unfortunately, she hasn’t blogged since September, but we hope to see her take up the keyboard again soon and continue her interesting writing on mental health topics and her own life.
It could have been on our Top Ten Bipolar Blogs list but is here instead since, although author James Bishop is bipolar, his posts are about general mental health, positive psychology and depression treatment topics. A wee bit saccharine in its optimism at times, it’s still interesting and he shares lots of great links. Especially good at writing lists, he’s done a Top Five Blogs on Depression list of his own. Furious Seasons tops his list and we had it ranked highly as a bipolar blog, since Phil identifies as bipolar. The lines can be so blurry…
3. Beyond Blue
Hosted at Belief.net, this popular blog by Therese J. Borchard is on spirituality and how it relates to depression, in “a spiritual journey to mental health.” She has a warm, welcoming, mashed-potatoes-and-gravy style and writes with consumers in mind, with a CV full of books and articles in major magazines. In this blog she comments on treatments, Bible scriptures and welcomes discussions like, “The Depression Debate: Biological? Spiritual? Both?” If you’re looking for a regular spiritual read on depression and mental health topics in general, this is the blog for you.
“Most widely read blog” on perinatal mood disorders and it’s easy to see why. Katherine Stone maintains a comprehensive, well-linked, and archive-heavy blog that seems to catch every news item and research article on the subject, including postpartum depression, postpartum obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), postpartum psychosis, and more. This blog is brightly written, reliably updated, easy to read and very informative. Kathleen is a former marketer turned advocate who is applying the blogging skills she developed with her award-winning first blog to this newer venture. Although it’s narrowly focussed on a specialized field of mood disorders, Postpartum Progress definitely deserves to be recognized among all the top blogs.
LiveJournal is home to thousands of personal blogs that delve into depression, but this one by early adopter Erika (she began blogging nine years ago, when she was just twelve) is consistently exceptional. Powerfully written, intimate and evocative, we can’t help but be sucked into her life just as she is sucked in by depression. Be forewarned, however, that her language more accurately reflects real life, profanity and all.
An example of her writerly prowess: “Being severely depressed is having things in your brain randomly light on fire. If you’re severely depressed, these fires happen so frequently that all you have time to do is run around trying to get the fires to go out. Sometimes you have water for the fires, sometimes all you can do is try to light a backfire. Sometimes nothing works, and you want to die. Sometimes nothing works, and you live. You can’t tell what’s going to happen, but you can’t ignore the fires because they’re FIRES. You have to put them out. Trying to get back to normal is like building a house. To build a house, you need blueprints, materials, labor, and know-how/experience. I have some of these things, but not all at the same time. And all my experience is in putting out fires. Not building.” But, she is managing to build a brick house regardless.
This is an outstanding creative writing blog filled with “depressed doodles” by Andre Jordan. His blog is not so much about depression as maybe an extension of its emotional effects. Talented and rare jewel in the blogosphere. His doodles have been published in a hardcover book (Amazon UK link, couldn’t find the book on U.S. Amazon.com); they are funny and poignant. It is infrequently updated.
A cheery blog from Douglas Cootey, who has anxiety alongside depression (which is common). Distilled news, funny anecdotes and images, all with an optimistic and practical viewpoint. We enjoy his regular blogging and thoughtful insights. His anecdotes paint a picture that you easily get lost in.
Using Ian McKellar’s splendid and hilarious LOL Feed converter, Douglas also allows his blog entries on the The Splintered Mind with headlines as text over Flickr cat pictures. One of his posts in September sums up his approach: “Why Be Sad When You Can Be Silly?”
(This entry has been corrected to give proper attribution to the creator of the LOL Feed converter. - Ed.)
Easy reading, generally optimistic posts about depression and depression news, with a bit of advice mixed in. Anonymous mental health consumer blog. I like his writing but like one the blog features even more: each post has a footer with details about the post. Example: “Read the full post (812 words, 2 images, estimated 3:15 mins reading time).” Very convenient!
An anonymous blog by a presumably white hetero male, described as, “My journey through self help techniques and herbal remedies for depression.” It’s a new blog written by someone fairly new to treating his depression and social anxiety and it’s nice to follow fresh eyes as he tries various treatments. He’s just started on St. John’s Wort, for example. Cheer him on.
10. Depression: Art and Expression
Not exactly a blog, not quite a vlog (no RSS), but oh so web 2.0. A YouTube group with about 40 members who submit creative projects, music and their personal experiences on video. Cool mix of views and culture.
EZDrain method (for mattresses with EZDrain feature)
Before you begin, unplug your waterbed heater.
Attach
a hose connector to your garden hose. Walk the other end of the hose to
a window, bathtub or anywhere LOWER than the mattress.
Unzip the cover and pull it back. Fold sides and corners down over foundation or pedestal.
Lift foam bolster and insert garden hose. Pop-up the EZ Drain valve and remove the cap and plug.
Secure the hose connector to the EZ Drain valve. Lower the waterbed mattress corner back into the cover to start draining.
Drain mattress until it is flat. If your mattress still feels heavy when you lift a corner, take the following steps.
Leave
the hose connected. Open the upper valve and allow air to enter. Recap
the valve after 30 seconds. Carefully grasp the vinyl and baffle
material inside and lift the top 1/3 of your mattress. Keep mattress
raised for about 30 seconds.
Compulsive hoarding is a form of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), a neurobiological condition, most likely genetically based. OCD comes in a wide variety of forms, of which hoarding is only one. Compulsive hoarders may collect only certain types of things, or they may indiscriminately save everything. We are not talking here about collecting things that are valuable or important such as art, coins, or stamps. (…)
Some of the things most commonly saved include newspapers, magazines, lists, pens, pencils, empty boxes, pamphlets, old greeting cards, junk mail, old appliances, outdated books and even assorted labels, string, rubber bands, plastic containers, bottles, and bottle caps. In the most extreme cases, people have been known to save such things as empty matchbooks, used tissues, old cigarette butts, bird feathers, old cars, discarded paper cups, used aluminum foil, paper towels, lint, and hairs. Some of these sufferers will even rummage through other people’s trash, and bring home obvious junk that to them, seems quite useful or repairable. (…)
In 1932, Homer Lusk Collyer (1881–1947) purchased a building across the street at 2077 Fifth Avenue for $8,000. He planned to divide it into apartments and to rent them. This plan was never realized, as he suffered a stroke in 1933, becoming blind as the result of hemorrhages in both of his eyes. With one exception, he was reportedly never seen outside of his home again.
Homer’s brother, Langley Collyer (1885–1947), gave up his job to nurse his brother back to health. No physician was ever consulted. Langley apparently believed that the cure for his brother’s blindness was for him to eat 100 oranges a week, and to keep his eyes closed at all times, in order to rest them. The brothers possessed a large library of medical books, and it would seem that Langley felt he had the information and knowledge necessary to treat his brother. { OC Foundation | Continue reading }
Burglars tried to break into the house because of unfounded rumors of valuables, and neighborhood youths had developed a fondness for throwing rocks at the windows. As the brothers’ fears increased, so did their eccentricity. They boarded up the windows, and Langley set about using his engineering skills to set up booby traps. Their gas, telephone, electricity and water having been turned off because of their failure to pay the bills, the brothers took to warming the large house using only a small kerosene heater. For a while, Langley attempted to generate his own energy by means of a car engine. Langley began to wander outside at night; he fetched their water from a post in a park four blocks to the south (presumably Mount Morris Park, renamed Marcus Garvey Park in 1973). He also dragged home countless pieces of abandoned junk that aroused his interest. In 1933, Homer, already crippled by rheumatism, went blind. Langley devised a remedy, a diet of one hundred oranges a week, along with black bread and peanut butter. He also began to hoard newspapers, so that his brother could catch up with the news once his sight returned. (…)
On March 21, 1947, an anonymous tipster phoned the 122nd police precinct and insisted there was a dead body in the house. A patrol officer was dispatched, but had a very difficult time getting into the house at first. There was no doorbell or telephone and the doors were locked; and while the basement windows were broken, they were protected by iron grillwork. Eventually an emergency squad of seven men had no choice but to begin pulling out all the junk that was blocking their way and throw it out onto the street below. The brownstone’s foyer was packed solid by a wall of old newspapers, folding beds and chairs, half a sewing machine, boxes, parts of a wine press and numerous other pieces of junk.
A patrolman, William Baker, finally broke in through a window into a second-story bedroom. Behind this window lay, among other things, more packages and newspaper bundles, empty cardboard boxes lashed together with rope, the frame of a baby carriage, a rake, and old umbrellas tied together. After a two-hour crawl he found Homer Collyer dead, wearing just a tattered blue and white bathrobe. (…) But Langley was nowhere to be found. For weeks there was no sign of Langley.
On Saturday, March 30, false rumors circulated that Langley had been seen aboard a bus heading for Atlantic City, but a manhunt along the New Jersey shore turned up nothing. Two days later, the police continued searching the house, removing 3,000 more books, several outdated phone books, a horse’s jawbone, a Steinway piano, an early X-ray machine, and even more bundles of newspapers. More than nineteen tons of junk had been removed, just from the ground floor of the three-story brownstone. Still unable to find Langley, the police continued to clear away the brothers’ stockpile for another week, removing another 84 tons of rubbish from the house.
On April 8, 1947, workman Artie Matthews found the dead body of Langley Collyer just ten feet from where Homer had died. His partially decomposed body was being eaten by rats. A suitcase and three huge bundles of newspapers covered his body. Langley had been crawling through their newspaper tunnel to bring food to his paralyzed brother when one of his own booby traps fell down and crushed him. Homer, blind and paralyzed, starved to death several days later.
