Dr. Fred Goodwin Sliced N Diced

A year ago, Dr. Fred Goodwin, world’s leading authority on mood disorders, sat in a comfortable chair and propped his broken leg up to answer questions from my local cause DBSA NCA (Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance of the National Capital Area) and the general public at George Washington University Medical Center.  John McManamy was there reporting.  Please visit John’s blog and  see his interview with Dr. Goodwin on video in bits and pieces:

http://www.healthcentral.com/bipolar/videos-273200-46.html

http://www.healthcentral.com/bipolar/c/15/45873/interview-frederick-1/

Dr. Goodwin will be back this spring speaking to DBSA NCA  live and uncensored at George Washington University.

Dr. Donna Holland Barnes, a Research Associate and Instructor to Howard University Department of Psychiatry who lost her own son, Marc Jamal Barnes, to suicide, gave a heartfelt presentation to DBSA NCA last month about doing anything and everything within our power to prevent suicide. Dr. Barnes is founder and president of the National Organization for People of Color Against Suicide (NOPCAS at http://www.nopcas.com/ ).

Dr. William B. Lawson, Professor and Chair of the Department of Psychiatry at Howard University,  who serves on the Scientific Advisory Board of national DBSA, talked to DBSA NCA earlier this month about depression and public policy, racism and psychiatry, the economy and mental health.

Neil Owens, founder of the Sunbox Company at http://www.sunbox.com/ recently visited DBSA NCA to discuss Seasonal Affective Disorder (  SAD ) and demonstrate light boxes and light therapy.

Coming attractions in the DBSA NCA speaker program include:

March 2009 Dr. Francis Mondimore

Dr. Mondimore is a professor at Johns Hopkins Medical School and the Director of the intensive substance abuse treatment unit there.  International best selling books written by Dr. Mondimore include: Depression, The Mood Disease, Bipolar Disorder: A Guide for Patients and Families, Adolescent Depression: A Guide for Parents, A Natural History of Homosexuality (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996).

April/May 2009 Dr. Fred Goodwin

Spring 2009 Victoria Maxwell comes to do a performance and several workshops on being crazy for life.  More information on this Canadian performer here:  http://www.victoriamaxwell.com/services.asp

Dr. Wayne Drevets of NIMH on Brain Imaging (PET and MRI technologies)

Bill Emmet on Activism

Dr. Fred Jacobson, Chapter advisor to DBSA NCA, Live From APA (American Psychiatric Association)

Some dysfunction with your pathophysiology?

Apologies for abandoning this blog for several weeks there while I coped with the end of the school year at work, my own youngest son’s high school graduation, my husband’s return from overseas, and other fill-in-the-blank.

Here I’ve been meaning to share some recaps of some of the sensational speaker programs arranged by my friend Kathy and sponsored by my local cause, DBSA NCA.  Last year, former New York Times reporter, Jayson Blair, attended the annual presentation of our DBSA chapter adviser, Dr. Fred Jacobsen.  Dr. Jacobsen offers the low down on research trends and treatments presented at the annual American Psychiatric Association convention.  Within 24 hours of attending Dr. Jacobsen’s presentation, Jayson published this recap on the DBSA Northern Virginia website:
http://www.dbsanova.org/news/n00001.html

How does Blair do it?

I’ve got nine pages of notes from Dr. Goldstein’s talk from several months ago on psychotherapies for mood disorders.  I’ve got a notebook full of scribbles under a big pile of mental health conference swag on Dr. McMahon’s talk on the genetics of mood disorders (that talk was over a year ago),  I’ve got doodles from Dr. Norman Rosenthal on seasonal affective disorder, SAD, from last fall.  I’ve got a hot link to Dr. Kay Jamison’s spring talk transcribed word for word by another friend, Cristina.  I’ve got the life saving wisdom of Dr. Fred Goodwin from two talks, one strictly Q & A with the audience…I blogged about some of that in my Mood Garden blog, but the language in there is too informal for this blog.

Struggling with the recap of Dr. Jacobsen’s presentation of the findings from unpublished research studies and brain imagery slides (brain images of mice and men), I came across something Depakid wrote in Mood Garden, my online home:

“Bottom line: looks like we have dysfunction in our prefrontal-limbic-subcortical circuitary with pathophysiology in our hypothalamic-pituitary-thyroid axis … geek.”

That’s exactly what Dr. Jacobsen was saying!  LOL  Dr. Jacobsen offered many useful treatment approaches and tips for better living.  I’ll share these soon.  My recaps tend to be untimely and incomprehensible because this is brain science, you know?

And now for something completely different.  Here’s a nifty little poster generator from Despair Inc.:

http://diy.despair.com/motivator.php

Simply browse through photos stored on your PC, upload one to the Despair Inc. poster generator and compose a de-motivational message.   Here’s my first attempt:

Enjoy!

Open-Mic Night This Saturday

Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance

Open-Mic Night!

Express Your: Poetry, Fiction, Music, Comedy, Film, Artwork, Memoir, Theater, Improv, Dance, etc.

Perform or just come enjoy the show.

Saturday May 17^th

7:00 pm – 9:30 pm

George Washington University Auditorium

900 23^rd St. NW Washington D.C.

For more info or to sign up contact Andy:

Awazzy7@netzero.net and www.dbsanca.org

Sponsored by: DBSA National Capital Area, DBSA Northern Virginia, DBSA Howard County