Changes

We have grown from childhood, walking other hallowed halls, daring ourselves to grow even more. Some of us are stricken by poverty and are beginning to learn its meaning and begin fighting the wars within the mind before we are 15 years of age; watching the eyes and minds of others untested of starvation, large families dilapidated homes and a lack of money; without work, while the streets and her hero’s guide those who slowly succumb to pain, drugs or alcoholism others reach for mental seclusion.
Some people change their lives, even the affluent become of the ghetto, while the many cling to another bolstering strength to win the world as even the poor with a bit more to say about it. The poor are of another mighty storm, yet trying to gather the soils to cross the vast ocean of life, discovering lore and the twisted motions of monopoly from street vendors of many walks of life, without inventions; only the wares passed around by others with smiles that turn skeptics.
Outcomes can cause the weak to turn and reach out, through arguments within themselves, with a need for recovery from the aberrations of their illness, Outcomesmhcd.Adult Becoming a consumer of the Mental Health System and understanding hope, what causes the illness, how to change the realm they have grown into, to progressing to a much more positive world and growing with faith beyond the fallen world they had once chosen, is the miracle of change one many have worked towards to overcome their illness.
Accepting help is the greatest test, simply because it is not a bounty of treasure you first choose to receive, this is a test, receiving a decent place to live, through city and state offices, searching and receiving employment, with some one else’s helping hand guiding you, becoming educated, starting over again, while fighting the old virtues’ and conundrums, of other lives and most of all doing all of that without the use of drugs, without the use of pain.

Getting away from the veils of other eyes you have peered into, of people whom you have smiled with while slowly depressing the inexact nature of your knowing, is hard even to shake hands with those that don’t care, can cause a person to understand there has to be a positive outcome to accept, so that changes can be made, and you can be seen as a changed person.

Tell him to live by
Yes and no—
Yes to everything good,
No to everything bad.
Written by William James
By Donald Sammons

Recovery & Hope

Without hope I do no believe there is recovery. You have to hope things will change for the better. Hope that you can have a good life doing what you would like to do in life. Hope you can recover and do all that you did before you had mental distress. Sometimes even do better, because you are stronger from having gone through the experience of mental distress. As you know if you read some earlier blogs, I watch and compare 70s to now days. On one show they did not want to bring children into the world back then because of over population and the war that was going on. I believe you bring children into this world so they can decide if they want to change the world for the better or like it as it is. Hope they can make everyday brighter for others. I know my grandkids do for me. I do not like what we are leaving our children and grandchildren, like debt and pollution. Hopefully we can change the world before we leave it to them. Recovery is to incorporate everything including hope, employment and managing your symptoms. Ridding yourself of harmful addictions, if you have them, and retaining employment or education to do what you want with your life. In that regards it will give you something else to concentrate on besides addiction or mental distress. Hope that all can recover and learn their triggers of their addictions or symptoms. How about you do you have Hope or think it is important in recovery?

Diabetes and Mental Health

In the year 2008 scientist had found that diabetes is associated with depression. Diabetes also known to doctors as Diabetes Mellitus is a disorder which affects the way our bodies digest food for energy and growth.
Almost all the food we eat is changed into glucose (a form of sugar), and this is the primary source of energy for our body. The cells in our bodies use the glucose for energy, sometimes the glucose cannot get inside the cells of our bodies without having insulin and it is this insulin that makes it possible for our cells to use glucose.
Insulin is a hormone that is produced by an organ in the body called a pancreas. After you eat, the pancreas releases insulin to move the glucose in the blood to the cells and lowers the blood sugar level. When a person has diabetes, they have too much glucose in the blood called (hyperglycemia). This means the body has not produced enough insulin or no insulin at all and the pancreas is without cells that do not respond to the insulin of the pancreas. With Type 1 Diabetes you produce no insulin at all; with Type 2 Diabetes you don’t produce enough insulin to process the glucose in the blood stream. Both Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes are chronic medical conditions.
What does this have to do with Mental Health?
Doctors who study both diabetes and depression have for many years associated the two illnesses as being in tandem when a person has one or the other disease. Approximately 30 million people have had at least one bout with depression having also diabetes.
The groups of people vary ethnically and over the years as this study went on people were examined for depression and Type 2 diabetes. The disease is genetic and usually occurs in overweight people or people who have a diet high in sugars. The people in the higher levels of depression had a 50 percent chance more, in developing diabetes, than those people who were not depressed. The people who were in the higher levels of depression tend to smoke more, exercise less, overeat and also tend to be overweight. All of this increases the chances for diabetes and also cause higher rates for depression
Depression raises the levels of hormones in the body that cause stress. These chemicals can affect the person and cause diabetes. With all of the different illnesses such as osteoporosis, heart disease, stroke and others associated with depression it is no wonder that both diabetes and depression are linked.
People, who are known as diabetic, eventually suffer from depression, also from anxiety or worry; and have reached the chronic stage of their diseases, and these people must consider their health and change their life style and eating and exercise habits or continue to suffer even further, with nerve problems, heart disease, even blindness.
Depression as a mental illness in not just a mental illness, it is a illness of habit and it is a illness of being, diabetes is the same and without proper treatment one can no longer be dismissed of the other.

I have set before you
Life and death,
Blessing and cursing:
Therefore choose life,
That both thou and thy
Seed may live.
Deuteronomy 30:19
There is more information at the web site posted below
Written by Donald Sammons

What's New

Well the guy from Social Security never called back, so I did some calling to Social Security. Two different people I talked to from the national office and the office where you are supposed to pay back to in California. Both of them quoted me two different amounts that I owe and those amounts were also different from the amount on the letter they sent. A big organization like Social Security cannot use a calculator to come up with the same amount and they were really different. I have not even brought up the letter I have where they say they owe me. I called my new case manager at the local office, he had told me before to go in and he would seem me. Now he tells me “you do not have to see me, just come in and fill out the appeal form.” As I stated earlier in the system blog, they lost my earlier appeal, which was against my former case manager for not doing her job for quite awhile. It was filled out while she was still working there, I believe she took before she left or destroyed it. This time I am getting the papers, and bringing them home, and filling them out and copying them before I return them. I have my paystubs to back up, my version of events. I hope they are prepared. Although with three different amounts and a person who told me last time there records are all screwed up, I doubt it. This is going to last another three months. I cannot file a small claims suit until all appeals are finished with Social Security. At least talking to all these people has helped me remember names and dates that I had forgot. I just do not like how it is dragging on. Also trying to not let it stress me out, although I think I’m more angry, than stressed.

A Process of Recovery

Have you ever thought about how many people you know have grown as you have? People who have overcome obstacles which were destructive, physically or mentally, even materially, economically? I have had an on-going illness for many years, and I wonder the people I have met along the way, most whom I’ll never see again, others whom I care not to know. Those I care not to know, I wonder if it’s my illness that intercedes in my caring about them and others I sigh about, sometimes in happiness, other times in sadness.
Realizing that having a mental illness can intercede in relationships is one step in knowing you will know what to do to ensure that you do not lose happiness and become overwhelmed by sorrow. This involves acceptance, which is a part of being happy and content. As the days and weeks and years go by, so do people and what should we have to say about it. If we accept change, we continue to grow. If we fight and struggle within against what should be of life, especially our own, harboring discontent, envy, jealousy and sorrow all our days, then we are struggling and within us this causes harm.
In Recovery, admittance, belief, hope, faith and acceptance are principles which help us to grow spiritually; we become content through our understanding and we realize we are not alone in our journey.
*“No man chooses evil
Because it is evil
He only mistakes it
For happiness
The good he seeks”

*Mary Shelly-- 1797-1851

By Donald Sammons

Employment II

I am writing again about employment, because it is a subject that keeps coming up. There is a good side to being on Social Security, if you only want to work part time. You or your employer does not have to worry about benefits. The bad side is if you get a bad case manager that does not understand how to process your pay stubs, then you are not too happy. If you are on Social Security and have a part time job and lose then that has to be extremely hard. Also without Social Security and a part time job if you get sick, that has to hurt your situation to. Doing my research I have come across a few blogs about working and having mental distress. On one of the blogs the person finished college before they were mentally distressed. That resulted in him not being stable on his medication for ten years, and he went through quite a few jobs. Good jobs that he should have been happy with. Although it was not until he was put on a newer medication that worked, was he able to hold a job for three years so far. Employment especially in this economy is hard whether you have mental distress or not. If you are not stable with your medication it is even harder to hold a job. There are some people who say employment is part of recovery. Do you think it is part of recovery and you need to be stable on your medication in order to stay employed?

Having Positive Friends

Seeking help when you feel you are alone with some sort of despondency or given help when someone understands someone is facing a problem is a sure sign that there is a person caring about another person, that you care about yourself, because you care about yourself.
One of the sayings I have always heard since I was a child is “choose your friends wisely”. The same is said in another way, *“Be with people who are going the same way you are, if they are positive or good people you will find them more of a joy to be around”.
In the Mental Health system, when going through the Recovery process, you find that many people going through Recovery have a need to find someone “new” to begin their new growing process. Even though we become close in a sense, associating with the doctors, clinicians, etc. whom have begun to earn our trust, we begin to change from negative to positive, we are feeling the encouragement of positive people, new friends.
You don’t have to give your time to anyone if you don’t want to, yet if you do, know that you don’t have to be negative. Spending your time alone or with someone, you must understand that you must have a positive good note about your life, not only with the people helping you through Recovery, yet also with those things you care to spend your time with.
Have you met someone new who has become a friend?
*Excerpt from “Choose Well Your Fellow Travelers”,
“You Can’t Afford the Luxury of a Negative Thought”
By John Rogers and Peter McWilliams

By Donald Sammons

Recovery Conference 2010: Resilience

I attended recently a Recovery Conference held by MHCD in Denver, Colorado. I am a consumer of MHCD and also an employee; and having gone alone to the conference, though there were nearly over 300 persons attending, I knew then at that time I was not alone in needing strength and maintaining my sobriety, most of all accepting reality.
I met two of the principle speakers and having known other doctors and clinicians which attended besides nurses, I did not feel like the “lone stranger” in my endeavors’ of learning something new to make my life seem more meaningful to myself and to others. Learning that Resilience plays a major part in recovery along with Spirituality gave wind to optimism, which made life a bit more meaningful, when you realize you have lived through illness, both physical and mental, and must remain strong.
I understood throughout one of the speakers’ agenda that we have to “live the moment of life we live” and that “wishful thinking” is not optimistic and that we should lean towards realism—that is truth. Spirituality and Religion is the “realm of human experience” understanding to create with the power of the spirit and knowledge which is good and most positive in prayer and meditation not something negative or destructive to the peace we sojourn to seek.
Both speakers and all involved agreed that, everyone should remain positive in thought and strive with hope and that we should practice compassion, seeking emancipation from the “sick role” being lived, so that we renew our faith, our understanding of spirituality, live in truth, our belief and have a purpose in life.
“If you think you know it,
Rejoice.
If you don’t,
Think again and regale.”

Donald Sammons
May 30, 2010