mental health

Mental Health and the Brain in Our Gut

Dora Smith helps you connect your gut to your brain.
Mental Health and the Brain in Our Gut (by Dora Smith)

In our society today mental health has become an epidemic of vast proportions. The overly taxed mental health system struggles to reach around to the needs this epidemic has created. Our beautiful parks and our sidewalks overflow with garbage and tents, and people with no homes. Our jails and our psychiatric wards overflow with some of these same victims of mental health. Our psychiatric doctors continue to prescribe powerful but insufficient antipsychotics, antidepressants, and mood stabilizers. And yet the problem of mental health remains and many patients repeatedly cycle through the revolving door of the psychiatric ward, or worse, the criminal justice system. If psychiatric medicines truly healed an individual or gave them the ability to function normally in society, why do these individuals continue to haunt the halls of our psychiatric institutions? Individuals and families who have found psychiatric medicine to be wanting, may desire to explore alternatives. However, most psychiatrists are not versed in nutritional healing (Naidoo p. 1) and may even discourage an alternate approach to treating mental health. There are also few resources and little education available outside of traditional psychiatric treatment. But what if a focus on healing the gut could improve mental health beyond what psychiatric medicines are able to do?

Science has verified the connection between our brain and our microbiota. Read it all

Oregonians Bite the Hand That Heals Them

Unless they bit their own hands...

I see this morning that yesterday’s health tax ballot here in Oregon passed handily.

I don’t know if the yea voters did so in a fit of largesse at the public trough. Or if they poked the Yes key (is there such a thing?) out of consistency with their well-practiced personal pocketbook expressions of compassion for the needy.

Whatever the motivator, they approved a pile of new tax dollars for hospitals: Read it all

Sunshine Dad

I’m indebted to Emily Smucker for today’s unexpected food for thought.

A photo-posting error on her part triggered this reminder for me:

At times I must be a source of sunshine for my children.

If I purposed to be that more often, what effect would it have on their dark times?

And what would it do for my own dreary times? Read it all

You Can’t Just Walk By

Amid the negativity all around us, some rays of cheer and good news…

Erika Jenkins was riding her bike home when she noticed an elderly woman walking alone, eastbound on Main Street, carrying a framed picture. Her own ears were freezing, but Jenkins noticed the woman wore only sweatpants, shoes and a long-sleeved shirt, with no jacket to shield her from the cold. Read it all

Abortion and Mental Health Problems

Dear (desperate?) Mother-in-Waiting,

Please. Don’t do this to yourself:

Study finds abortion raises risk of mental health problems by 81%

Researchers behind a new study on abortion have discovered that women who have abortions experience an astonishing 81% increase in the risk of mental health problems.

Published in the prestigious British Journal of Psychiatry, the ground breaking paper also found that almost 10% of all mental health problems are shown to be directly linked to abortion.

The analysis, conducted by Priscilla K. Coleman from Bowling Green State University, Ohio, USA, is the largest study of its kind and is based on 22 published studies, with a combined number of participants totalling over 850,000.

The results also revealed that the increased risk for anxiety disorders was 34%; for depression it was 37%; for alcohol abuse it was 110%, for marijuana use it was 220%, and for suicide behaviours it was 155%.

The fetus within you is different than an organ or a mere growth. (Removing the cyst on my jaw wouldn’t have such mental health risks associated with it.)

I know. I can talk. I’m a man. And if I were a woman, I’m not in your shoes.

But right is right, not because of who we are, but because God is.

May you know Him near.

Sincerely,
Mark

Further reading on another of my sites:

While I Waited

Here I sit, waiting for my slow (31.2 KB) dial-up connection to muddle its way through Amazon’s Pro Seller (or whatever it’s called by now) site.

So I looked at headlines at Drudge and Newsmax.

Do five simple things a day to stay sane, say scientists

Simple activities such as gardening or mending a bicycle can protect mental health and help people to lead more fulfilled and productive lives, a panel of scientists has found.

[…]

“A big question in mental wellbeing is what individuals can do,” Felicia Huppert, Professor of Psychology at the University of Cambridge, who led part of the project, said. “We found there are five categories of things that can make a profound difference to people’s wellbeing. Each has evidence behind it.” These actions are so simple that everyone should aim to do them daily, she said, just as they are encouraged to eat five portions of fruit and vegetables.

Five steps to sanity. That shouldn’t be too hard.

Palin: Election Result Rests ‘In God’s Hands’

Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin describes herself as a “hard-core pro-lifer” and expresses confidence that in spite of disheartening polls, “putting this in God’s hands, that the right thing for America will be done at the end of the day on Nov. 4.”

She is right.

Above all, love God!
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