The Mood Disorders Support Group of New York City

	M O O D S
Newsletter of the Mood Disorders Support Group of New York City
November 2004	Table of Contents (all articles are on this page) MDSG T-shirts More Lecture Tapes Available Ask The Doctors The Reader's Corner Holiday Schedule Get in on Our Holiday Song Writing Contest We Get By with a Little Help from Our Friends . . . Contact MDSG	When printed, this page will automatically re-format itself. Formatted for Printing

Not one to wear your heart on your sleeve? Well how about wearing your favorite support group on your back? MDSG t-shirts are now available. They’re adorable and they make great gifts. 

The shirts are white cotton with short-sleeves and come in medium and large. The cute cat picture on the right is printed on the front and the back says: 
        Support Someone www.mdsg.org. 

The $16 price includes shipping and handling. Order more for a discount: Two are $30; three are $44. Supply is limited so get them while you can. To order, send a check payable to the Mood Disorders Support Group/ New York to:

T-shirts orders
MDSG-NY 
PO Box 30377 
New York, NY 10011

Be sure to specify what sizes you need and the address to which your order should be sent.

Did you miss a lecture of great interest to you? We invite the top researchers, clinicians and authors in the field to present the latest scientific breakthroughs and cutting edge treatment options. Tapes of these popular lectures are available through the mail. Below is a listing of the most recent presentations.

Tapes are $13 each (including postage and handling) or $25 for two , $35 for three. To order, write a letter requesting any tape by number, make check out to MDSG Inc. and send to: Lecture Tapes c/o MDSG PO Box 30377, New York, NY 10011

More information about our lectures is available on the lectures page. 

Ask the Doctors  with Dr. Ivan Goldberg  and  Dr. Joe Nieder

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Dr. Ivan Goldberg, Psychopharmacologist

Q: Have non-pharmacological methods of reducing depression been studied in women who are pregnant?

A: The most important non-pharmacological technique for treating pregnant women is psychotherapy, which has been shown to be effective in pregnant women. 

There are a few others that a woman can talk to her doctor about, too. Sleep deprivation therapy (sometimes called wake therapy) is a method that has been found to be of some help. It appears to work by re-setting circadian rhythms. Another technique that has been studied is exposure to bright light in the morning. In a study, 16 women were exposed to light from a 10,000 lux light box for one hour each morning. After three weeks of treatment, the women's scores on tests for depression symptoms were reduced by an average of 49 percent. Omega-3 fatty acids (from fish oil) have been proposed as a possible treatment for mood disorders in pregnant women, too. 

For pregnant women who are severely depressed, electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is the treatment of choice. It's been successfully employed to treat women in all three trimesters of pregnancy.

Q: Since taking Prozac, my depression is better but I have felt drowsy with little energy all day despite getting adequate sleep. Can anything be done to improve my energy level?

A: Symmetrel (amantadine), a medication that has been used to increase energy in people with disorders other than depression, has been shown to increase energy in women taking Prozac. Presumably, it would also work to increase energy in men and woman taking any SSRI. Provigil (modafinil), a medication usually used to treat people with narcolepsy, has also been used to reduce the drowsiness that some people experience with antidepressants. It may also be useful.

Dr. Joe Nieder, Pediatric Psychiatrist

Q: My 11-year-old daughter is in counseling for depression, but she is still very withdrawn. I've read that pets seem to be good for mood in some ways and am wondering if getting her a dog might be a good idea. She loves animals and has expressed interest in getting a puppy, but I'm worried that the responsibility might overwhelm her in some ways. What do you suggest?

A: Pets can be very helpful for children, adolescents or adults with depression and/or mood disorders. The pet can provide a bond and support that sometimes a parent or sibling cannot provide. However, the benefit to the child or the pet will depend on the child taking and accepting responsibility for the pet. The child has to be willing to care for the pet, to avoid another area of conflict and strife in the household, but if she is ready, a puppy or pet can indeed be very helpful with a mood disorder.

The Reader’s Corner (Book Review)   with Betsy Naylor   Skywriting: A Life Out of the Blue    By Jane Pauley   264 pp. Random House  $26

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Hood ornament. Fresh-faced. Midwestern. Corn fed. Perky. Bipolar. Jane Pauley has been described as every one of these and in her recent memoir, she seeks to come to terms with all of these seemingly different sides of herself. In searching for some undefined truth about her life, her family, and her past, she reveals that when it comes to mood disorders, no one’s life is as simple as it might seem on the surface.

Best known as the popular co-host of NBC's Today show, and later, Dateline, Pauley grew up in a quiet house where "nothing happened." It was the 1950's in Indianapolis, Indiana. People were expected to be nice. Unpleasantness was kept at a minimum. Disturbing thoughts were not shared. Jane and her older sister never fought and when their mother was hospitalized for cancer, the word was never mentioned. (At 47, Pauley finally read her mother's diagnosis.) In such an environment, one could grow up with many feelings unknown and unlabelled. 

Pauley went on to become the beloved television journalist, as well as a wife and mother. But beneath that lovely, even-tempered demeanor, she was a deeply conflicted celebrity supermom. The long hours spent doing the work she loved competed with the time she wanted to spend with her terrific husband and three children. This certainly was not the way she was brought up to be a mother and the strain and guilt began to take a toll.

When the family cat died Pauley cried a bit too much. Sometimes she cried for no reason at all. Antidepressants helped, until she had a recurrence of childhood hives. The hives were treated successfully with steroids. But the steroids had an unexpected side effect: they made her high. To the surprise of everyone who knew her, Pauley had to spend three weeks in a psychiatric unit. Her diagnosis was manic depression.

Though it’s relatively rare for prescription drugs like steroids to trigger manic depression, the reaction seems a little less mysterious when looked at in the context of Pauley’s family history and the way it reemerged near the time of the incident. In 1999 Dateline had been doing a piece entitled “Roots” in which Pauley delved into her past. She found letters her parents exchanged during WWII and the Korean War. Evidence of depression in her father, and to a lesser extent, her mother, jumped out at her. Thinking back, she remembered that her father kept a stash of vodka in the basement and that her mother denied his alcoholism. 

Pauley's illness forced a deeper understanding of her quiet childhood. She could no longer know herself as an "uncomplicated Midwestern girl." "My idea of my past had been something of a fantasy," she writes. 

"Skywriting—being actively available to moments of recognition, to the portals of insight—has enabled me to discover what was hiding in plain sight." Pauley intended to help others with her book, and readers will see how long suppressed feelings and conflicts can jump start the process of getting better. As enlightening as it was for Pauley to find out about her parents, I think she actually changed her life. As she explains, "Self knowledge won't eliminate the burdens of life, but it can lighten the unnecessary baggage we drag around.”

You can purchase (and read more about) Skywriting: A Life Out of the Blue by Jane Pauley from Amazon.com. Doing so will result in a referral fee being paid by Amazon to MDSG, at no cost to you. The hardcover edition sells for $15.57 as of November 2004 (the price can change at any time). 

Friday East Side/Downtown Group

There will be a regular meeting Christmas Eve, Friday, December 24, but there will not be a meeting New Year’s Eve, Friday December 31. 
 

By Howard Smith

(sung to the tune of White Christmas)

Ah, Christmas time. There’s nothing like the holidays to inspire ...uh, well, deep sadness and unhappy anxiety a lot of times. That’s why we’ve dreamt up a parody contest based on one of the most popular songs ever written, White Christmas. Now some people might find punning about the jolly fat guy, the elves and the snowflakes in bad taste, but we think humor is a great antidote to the great negativity scene many people with mood disorders face when ‘tis the season.

Our take on the classic Christmas carol may inspire a giggle or two, but we are asking you to write an even better one. Just take your least favorite aspects of mood disorders, summon your inner Bing Crosby, and set your thoughts to the tune of the original White Christmas.

How to win 

1. Be clever. When twisting the original, use words and phrases out of the mood disorders lexicon—fun stuff like depression, psychosis, electroconvulsive therapy and so on. 
    
2. Be funny. Now that’s the real challenge for your imagination. But be careful, scientific research shows that writing humor can be so taxing that it is the main cause of spontaneous brain explosions. 
    
3. Be accurate. This means stick to the cadence and rhyming pattern of the original White Christmas. Your parody version has to fit. Try singing it before you mail in your entry.

Once you’ve got your song ready, send your name and phone number and as many entries as you like to: 
    Song Parody Contest c/o MDSG-NY PO Box 30377 New York, NY 10011. 
    Or e-mail it to  newsletter@mdsg.org 

You must include your name and phone number. Entries must be received by December 20, 2004. The decision of the newsletter editors is final and winning entries will be published in our next issue.

What you can win

• First prize: Dinner for two at Mumbles restaurant (on 3rd Avenue and 17th Street in the city).
• Second prize: A tin of Nate’s famous brownies
• Third prize: a copy Jane Pauley’s Skywriting 
• Fourth prize: one year in the North Pole making toys in Santa’s Sweatshop

MDSG provides award-winning services to New York’s entire mental health community---over 600 individual support group meetings a year, the distinguished lecture series, our telephone information service, web site and this newsletter. And all at the lowest possible cost, through volunteers.  The $4 contribution for meetings doesn’t cover all our expenses. We need your help to pay the phone bill, print the newsletter, promote MDSG in the media, and meet other needs.

Annual membership is $35 for individuals, $50 for families. Your membership card is a free ticket to support groups and most lectures. Contributions are tax deductible. So be a friend of MDSG--support us as we support you! Memberships and contributions to MDSG are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law. MDSG is an IRS-recognized 501(c)(3) organization.

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Letters to the editor and other submissions are welcome and will be printed at the discretion of the newsletter editor. Contributions can be mailed to our Post Office Box (see above), please address them to "Newsletter Contributions".  E-mails should be sent to newsletter@mdsg.org  

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