Sharing your mental health with the world can backfire sometimes. There are stories across the Internet where people have lost jobs, severed relationships, and been severely criticized because they admitted to having a mental illness like depression, bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder or you name it. Of course, that's why most people use a false identity when posting on the web, so others won't know it's them.

In January the FDA had a meeting about whether electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) machines should be moved from the most dangerous category of medical devices (Class 3) to the less dangerous Class 2. And the freak outs began. I saw people screaming about how wrong it was and writing petitions and wanting to go to the FDA meeting to voice their opinion. I mostly ignored this issue because, well, I didn't care. I have so many important issues on my plate there just wasn't room for one more. That is until I can across an article in Psychiatric Times by Charles H. Kellner, MD. Kellner explains why the move from Class 3 to Class 2 is important and its possible effect on patients. What if you didn't have access to ECT anymore?

Monday, I took Bob to the water park with my sister and her daughter, who is Bob's age. The kids get along well, and my sister and I saw this as our opportunity to beach ourselves at the wave pool while they did their "kid" thing. Later, I recounted our day to my husband. "You let them go off by themselves?" he asked, incredulous.

Hi. Thanks for joining us as we expose the biggest myths in mental illness. Today's myth: a bad childhood causes mental illness.

Recently I became very depressed for no apparent reason. My therapist and I decided I needed to be evaluated, and that's when the nightmare started. I live in a cluster apartment, so staff called hospital security to take me to the Crisis Intervention Unit (CIU). Hospital security said no officers were available, so staff called the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department. The police called for a medic, but both the medic and the police refused to transport me, saying that transporting me was hospital security's job. They made me sign a form refusing transportation, and said that all the psychiatric beds in Indy were taken. I was taken to the emergency room, evaluated, diagnosed with suicidal ideation, and sent home because there were no beds available.

A few days following the death of Amy Winehouse, I am still at a loss for words. When I read comments like “Well she had so many opportunities to recover,” it makes it even harder to explain why that bothers me. I feel a huge loss, for her family, friends, and this is a tragedy, just as it is a tragedy when this happens to anyone, from any background.

The two dissociative symptoms that, once described clearly, are the easiest for people to relate to and understand are also the ones that have earned Dissociative Identity Disorder its undeserved reputation as a bizarre aberration. Identity alteration (experiencing the self as multiple) and dissociative amnesia (gaps in memory) are the two manifestations of dissociation that are mythologized the most. But it’s not because they’re too foreign for most people to grasp. On the contrary, in their mildest forms they’re downright normal.

Although unseen in the tumultuous immediate aftermath of The Day I Left Him, justice was served. Nevertheless, in my pain, I felt slighted by my son who ran from me betrayed by my husband who wouldn't admit the truth punished by the judge who gave custody to my abuser unable to see where my actions caused him any tragic feelings remotely similar to my own (I wanted him to hurt, and he didn't) It seemed he'd won. I felt justice wasn't only blind, but also the stupidest philosophical idea ever imagined by mankind.

In part one of this series, I talked about the lure of anorexia and how, at first, I didn't think of anorexia as an addiction. But it is and, of course, the first step to breaking the chains of addiction to starving is both very simple and complex at the same time. I needed to eat and reach a healthy weight. That required me to eat three meals and drink three Ensure Plus daily, and watch as the scale slowly climbed upward. This is very frightening for those of us struggling with anorexia nervosa. But there is no other way. Until I achieved full and consistent nutrition, the eating disorder part of my brain was going to keep telling me to starve myself. I would be forever chained to anorexia.

Fear denied, repressed, suppressed, or put out of mind is not fear extinguished. Treating anxiety: 'as if' I've been told that acting 'as if' I'm not nearly as anxious as I am is a helpful thing. It's also dangerous. As with almost any technique sometimes is fine but if you're anything like me and you'll do whatever you have to do to be able to put your anxiety aside and function, and if what you want is to go on with as much of life as you can, uninterrupted by fear, then it can become destabilizing.