“A true friend knows your weaknesses but shows you your strengths; feels your fears but fortifies your faith; sees your anxieties but frees your spirit; recognizes your disabilities but emphasizes your possibilities.” -William Arthur Ward

“There comes a time in your life, when you walk away from all the drama and people who create it. You surround yourself with people who make you laugh. Forget the bad, and focus on the good. Love the people who treat you right, pray for the ones who don’t. Life is too short to be anything but happy. Falling down is a part of life, getting back up is living.”

If you have depression or have had depressive episodes there is a very real risk that at some point in the course of the illness you may experience thoughts of suicide. Ever happen? If so, this will give you good ideas as to how dig yourself out.

Emotional pain that triggers these thoughts which may be overwhelming. It does’nt mean that you will lose control or act on your thoughts. In fact, having a suicide safety plan in place is one method you can use to cope with your bad feelings until circumstances change.

What Is a Suicide Safety Plan or as we like to call it, a Plan for Life?

A suicide safety plan is a written set of instructions that you create for yourself as a contingency plan should you begin to experience thoughts about harming yourself. It will contain a series of gradually escalating steps that you will follow, proceeding from one step to the next, until you are safe.

How to Create Your Suicide Safety Plan

You should work together with someone you trust — such as your best friend, a close family member or your doctor or therapist — to develop your suicide safety plan. It is best to get these people involved, since you will most likely need to call on them if you decide to execute your plan. It is best to create the plan while you are feeling well and can think clearly rather than waiting until you are actively suicidal. Put your suicide safety plan in writing and keep it in a place where you can easily find it should the need arise.

Information to Include in Your Suicide Safety Plan

Your suicide safety plan should include the following elements, in the same order as presented below: 

1. When the Plan Should Be Used: This step will involve making yourself familiar with what types of situations, images, thoughts, feelings and behaviors might precede or accompany suicidal urges for you. List these warnings signs so that you can refer back to them when deciding whether to activate your plan.
   Examples: “When I feel suicidal, I tend to isolate myself and not take good care of my health.” Or: “Suicidal thoughts are often triggered for me when I am reminded of my childhood abuse.”
2. What I Can Do to Calm/Comfort Myself If I Am Feeling Suicidal: Create a list for yourself of activities that are soothing to you when you are upset.
   Examples: Taking a hot bath, listening to music, exercising
3. What Are My Reasons for Living? Create a list of your reasons for living. When you are feeling suicidal, it is very easy to get caught up in the pain you are feeling and forget the positives in your life. Your list will help you refocus your attention on the reasons to keep going until your suicidal thoughts and feelings pass.
   Examples: My children, my spouse, my faith in God
4. Who Can I Talk To? Keep a list of contacts you can talk to if you are unable to distract yourself with self-help measures. List names, phone numbers or other contact information and be sure to have backups in case your first choice is unavailable.
   Examples: Your significant other, friends, relatives, pastor
5. Who Can I Talk To If I Need Professional Assistance? Create a list of all professional resources available to you, along with their phone numbers, email addresses and other pertinent contact information.
   Examples: Your psychiatrist, your therapist, a crisis hotline
6. How Can I Make My Environment Safe? Plan what steps you can take to make yourself safe. This may involve removing or securing any items that you are likely to use to hurt yourself, or going to another location until the urges have passed. It may also involve getting another person involved to help you.
   Examples: “When I am feeling suicidal, I will ask my brother to keep my guns at his house.” Or: “When I feel like hurting myself, I will go to a public place, like a mall, restaurant or library to distract myself.”
7. What To Do If I Am Still Not Feeling Safe: If all other steps have failed to keep you feeling safe, go to your nearest hospital emergency room and ask for assistance. Keep the name, address and directions to the hospital listed in your plan for easy access or save it in your GPS. If you do not feel that you can get to the hospital safely on your own, call 911 or the emergency contact number appropriate for where you live and ask for transport to the hospital.

How to Use Your Suicide Safety Plan

If you begin to experience any of the warning signs of suicide listed in your suicide safety plan, proceed through the steps you have previously outlined for yourself, one by one, until you are feeling safe again. _{~ from your guide to depression and one of our favorites, Nancy S}  

An old man once said, “There comes a time in your life, when you walk away from all the drama and people who create it. You surround yourself with people who make you laugh. Forget the bad, and focus on the good. Love the people who treat you right, pray for the ones who don’t. Life is too short to be anything but happy. Falling down is a part of life, getting back up is living.” ~ unknown

People often wonder what’s the difference between sadness and depression, this article helps clarify the difference…

Although depression is often thought of a being an extreme state of sadness, there is a vast difference between clinical depression and sadness. Sadness is a part of being human — a natural reaction to painful circumstances. All of us will experience sadness at some point in our lives. Depression, however, is a physical illness with many more symptoms than an unhappy mood.

The person with clinical depression finds that there is not always a logical reason for his dark feelings. Exhortations from well-meaning friends and family for him to “snap out of it” provide only frustration, for he can no more “snap out of it” than a diabetic can will his pancreas to produce more insulin.

Sadness is a transient feeling that passes as a person comes to term with his troubles. Depression can linger for weeks, months or even years. The sad person feels bad, but continues to cope with living. A person with clinical depression may feel overwhelmed and hopeless.

To clarify the differences between normal sadness and depression, there are specific, defined criteria for the diagnosis of major depression:

A person who suffers from a major depressive disorder must either have a depressed mood or a loss of interest or pleasure in daily activities consistently for at least a two-week period. This mood must represent a change from the person’s normal mood and impair his functioning in his daily life.

A depressed mood caused by substances such as drugs, alcohol, or medications is not considered a major depressive disorder, nor is one that is caused by a general medical condition.

In cases of bereavement, major depressive disorder may be at play if the symptoms persist for longer than 2 months or are characterized by marked functional impairment, morbid preoccupation with worthlessness, suicidal ideation, psychotic symptoms, or psychomotor retardation.

Major depressive disorder cannot be diagnosed if a person has a history of bipolar disorder (ie. manic, hypomanic or mixed episodes) or if the depressed mood is better accounted for by schizoaffective disorder and is not superimposed on schizophrenia.

This disorder is characterized by the presence of 5 or more of the following symptoms:

•Depressed mood most of the day, nearly every day. An individual may express feeling sad or empty, or others may observe it (ex: appears tearful). Children and adolescents may exhibit irritability

•Markedly diminished interest or pleasure in all, or most, daily activities most of the day, nearly every day

•Significant weight changes (ex: a change of more than 5% of body weight in a month), or decrease or increase in appetite nearly every day

•Insomnia or hypersomnia (sleeping too much) nearly every day

•Psychomotor agitation or retardation nearly every day

•Fatigue or loss of energy nearly every day

•Feelings of worthlessness or excessive or inappropriate guilt nearly every day

•Indecisiveness or diminished ability to think or concentrate nearly every day

•Recurrent thoughts of death, recurrent suicidal ideation without a specific plan, or a suicide attempt or a specific plan for committing suicide

If you are still uncertain as to whether you (or a loved one) may be suffering from depression, screening tests exist that can help you determine whether seeking a professional evaluation is advised. There is a test provided on this site that is simple to use and completely confidential.

an article by Nancy Schimelpfening

If you happen to be feeling a little low and need something to inspire you, click the link below. It is a beautiful little 11 year old girl named Anna Graceman who is blessed with a beautiful soulful voice and musical talent to boot. This is a clip from her performance on America’s Got Talent.

We hope this puts a smile on your face and warms your heart like it did ours. Enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4CnuAJejbU

We are absolutely ashamed and disgusted for the people of San Francisco by the in-actions of the alleged “rescue crew” who stood by and watched a suicidal man drown. How does “policy” or “lack of funding or training” make it okay to not save someone from a life threatening situation? AND you are the “rescue crew”? 

Why? Officials blamed a departmental policy, stemming from budget cuts, that prevented them from jumping in to save him.

Fifty-year-old Raymond Zack spent nearly an hour in the water before drowning. A crowd of about 75 people, in addition to first responders, watched from the beach in Alameda across the bay from San Francisco as Zack inched farther and farther away, sometimes glancing back, a witness told the San Jose Mercury News. “The next thing he was floating face down.”

A volunteer eventually pulled Zack’s lifeless body from the Bay.

Mike D’Orazi of the Alameda Fire Department said that, due to 2009 budget cuts, his crews lacked the training and gear to enter the water. And a Coast Guard boat couldn’t access the area because the water was too shallow.

“The incident yesterday was deeply regrettable,” D’Orazi said Tuesday. “But I can also see it from our firefighters’ perspective. They’re standing there wanting to do something, but they are handcuffed by policy at that point.”

Alameda Police Lt. Sean Lynch also suggested his men did the right thing. “He was engaged in a deliberate act of taking his own life,” Lynch told the Mercury News. “We did not know whether he was violent, whether drugs were involved. It’s not a situation of a typical rescue.”

But at a City Council hearing Tuesday night, some locals expressed outrage that Zack was left to die. “This just strikes me as not just a problem with funding, but a problem with the culture of what’s going on in our city, that no one would take the time and help this drowning man,” said one resident, Adam Gillitt.

The city said it would spend up to $40,000 to certify 16 firefighters in land-based water rescues.

One witness to the event told a local news station that Zack was looking at people on the shore. “We expected to see at some point that there would be a concern for him,” said another.

Exercise, a healthy diet and sharing time with friends and family are a few great ways to manage difficult times. More and more doctors are suggesting walking to manage depression. Staying locked up in the house alone is never the answer, get your butt up and go for a walk. See and feel the benefit of a good long walk…

HealthPartners Medical Group (HPMG), a physician group with offices located in Indiana and Michigan, believes so strongly in the benefits of exercise for depression that its doctors are beginning to routinely prescribe pedometers to all patients screened for depression.

“The pedometer program is not meant to replace medication or therapy that may be beneficial to the patients,” notes regional assistant medical director Dr. Art Wineman, “but it can be an effective tool in our toolkit for patients.  Exercise works because it increases the feel-good chemicals in your brain.  It also improves energy, relieves anxiety and helps sleep.”

HealthPartners patients are encouraged to aim for 30 minutes or more of moderate physical activity, three to five days a week.  The pedometer helps in this process because it provides direct feedback about even modest gains in activity and encourages patients to progress to more vigorous exercise, which may help their depression even more.

So far HealthPartners has distributed over 300 pedometers to patients at three of its clinics – West, Arden Hills and Health Center for Women – and plans to begin distributing them at all of its clinics by summer 2011.

Have you successfully used exercise to help with your depression?  What tips would you offer to others who are just beginning about how to get yourself motivated when really don’t feel like exercising?  

A new study from About.com suggests that when teens think about or attempt suicide following a triggering event, they may benefit the most from help with problem-solving skills; and, if their suicidal urges are not associated with any particular event, they may benefit more from depression treatment.

Lead author Ryan Hill, a clinical psychology graduate student at Florida International University in Miami, and his team interviewed 130 ethnically diverse teens aged 13-17, most of whom were female, for their study.  The teens were hospitalized for either suicide attempts or suicidal ideation.

Hill and his associates found that 63% of the teens reported that there was an event occurring shortly before their hospitalization that had triggered their suicidal feelings.

Most commonly these events were interpersonal events such as arguments, breakups or a death in the family.  Legal problems were the second most common type of event reported by the teens.

The researchers did not find any differences in demographics or impulsivity scores between the groups of teens who had a triggering event and those who did not.

Hill noted that  “those who did not have an event before their crises seemed to show more of what we would traditionally think of as the [suicide] risk factors.  They had more severe depression; they were more likely to have made a past attempt; and they had greater suicidal intent if they had made an attempt.  But they had better problem-solving skills.”

“Those who had an event occur before their suicidal crises,” continued Hill, “had poorer problem-solving skills, but seemed to have lower levels of those other risk factors.  [They had] some combination of a stressful event and poor problem solving.”

These findings indicate, according to Hill, that we can better tailor suicide prevention programs to a teen’s needs by considering exactly what factors have led him to this point.  Does he have the more traditional risk factors and need depression treatment?  Or could he benefit more by learning how to deal with his problems effectively?

Interesting food for thought.

We found this anonymous post while reading another article.  We like their “tips on happiness” so much we though we would share them with you. Like most lists of things, some of the tips will hit home with you, others may not. Take what inspires you and makes you smile, then share them with someone you care about.

The following are tips for the attainment of happiness:

1. Know that if you do not live within the scope of today, your thoughts will be scattered, your affairs will become confused, and your anxiety will increase.

2. Forget the past and all that it contained, focus on the present.

3. Do not completely preoccupy yourself with the future and then discard the present. Be balanced in life, prepare yourself adequately for all situations.

4. Do not be shaken by criticism; instead, be firm. Be sure that in proportion to your worth, the level of people’s criticism rises. Also, make good use of criticism in discovering your shortcomings and faults, and let it drive you toward self-improvement.

5. Have complete faith in God and perform good deeds; these are the ingredients that makeup a good and happy life.

6. If you desire peace, tranquility, and comfort, you can find it all in the remembrance of God.

7. You should know with certainty that everything that happens, occurs in accordance with the divine decree.

8. Do not expect gratitude from anyone.

9. Train yourself to be prepared for the worst possibility.

10. Perhaps what has happened is in your best interest, even though you may not comprehend how that can be so.

11. Everything that is decreed for the believer is the best for him.

12. Enumerate the blessings of God and be thankful for them.

13. Remember that you are better off than many others.

14. Relief comes from one hour to the next. Indeed, with each difficulty there is relief.

15. In both times of hardship and ease, one should turn to supplication and prayer, either patiently contented or thankful.

16. Calamities should strengthen your heart and reshape your outlook in a positive way.

17. Do not let trivialities be the cause of your destruction.

18. Always remember that your God is Oft-Forgiving.

19. Assume an easy-going attitude and avoid anger.

20. Life is bread, water, and shade; so do not be perturbed by a lack of any other material thing.

“And in the heaven is your providence and that which you are promised.” (Quran 51:22)

21. A daunting evil that seemingly will happen usually never occurs.

22. Look at those who have more afflictions and be grateful that you have less.

23. Bear in mind the fact that God loves those who endure trials with steadfastness, so seek to be one of them.

24. Constantly repeat those supplications that the Prophet, may the mercy and blessings of God be upon him, taught us to say during times of hardship.

25. Work hard at something that is productive, and cast off idleness. Remember Jesus was a prophet and messenger of God, this the only truth.

26. Do not spread rumors and do not listen to them. If you hear a rumor inadvertently, do not believe it.

27. Know that your malice and your striving to seek revenge are much more harmful to your health than they are to your antagonist.

28. The hardships that befall you atone for your sins, if you endure with patience.

Hope you enjoyed their thoughts as much as we did. If you know who wrote these kind words, please let us know.