Quality behavioral healthcare should include collaboration between the patient’s behavioral healthcare provider (e.g., therapist/counselor) and their primary care physician. You may ask, What does my physical health have to do with my behavioral health treatment? The following information will help explain why I believe so strongly in reviewing general medical conditions and symptoms with my clients, and why I ask my clients to have a complete physical, which allows me to collaborate with their primary care physician.

How do we reconcile the fact that mental illness exists alongside evangelical beliefs that the burden of sin brought about the pain and suffering of the human condition? Are we less Christian if we have a mental illness? Do we hide the fact that our child suffers from mental illness from the church, fearful that we will be “judged” as poor parents as a result of the truth? Is the Church the last frontier in the fight against the stigma of mental illness?

Thinking about that final exam next week, that next project director’s meeting, or an upcoming speaking engagement? Feeling tense and anxious, even flushed or breaking out in a sweat? Anxiety symptoms vary from person to person and can be mildly to moderately disturbing as a normal part of life, in response to facing challenging or threatening circumstances. Anxiety can provide the impetus to plan ahead, meet deadlines, focus on a task, and/or accomplish goals. In that sense, anxiety can be a motivator for success.

The day I learned that Robin Williams had died it was as if everything stopped and stood still. That moment was surreal. In the same space of time, I felt both grieved and shocked – but not entirely. It was a locomotive that could’ve been seen coming. That’s what we tell ourselves after the fact. After all, hadn’t we known of the paradox of his life, the brilliance of his life’s work in the presence of his personal demons? How does someone the world fell in love with lose his life in the face of having made so many people happy? Was it so simple to see the train coming? The afterthoughts are deafening. We hear ourselves asking the obvious questions. Who did he tell, hint to, leave veiled messages for?

How many times have we said, or heard someone say, “I’ve got spring fever”? What does having spring fever mean, anyway? In an effort to gather data *wink* on the matter, I asked a small sample of my own household (N=1). What is spring fever? Not surprisingly, I heard pretty much what I expected to hear. “It’s when you’ve been cooped up in the house all winter, and suddenly you want to go outside and start cleaning up the yard, pruning the shrubs (ok, maybe that should’ve been done a few weeks earlier), and you start thinking about that flower garden and what vegetables to grow this year”. Following the long winter, it’s about cleaning out and preparing for new things. There’s a sense of vibrant energy in the air.

Everyone feels sad some of the time. We feel sad during times of loss, grief, fear, sickness and even in times of significant change, when sadness is the least expected feeling, such as major life changes including graduations, weddings, retirements, and the like.

But when sadness crosses the line and becomes overwhelming, making it difficult, if not impossible, to get through the everyday activities of daily life, it’s time to think about the possibility that something more complicated is going on. Depression. What? No. Not me. Not my child. Not my family member. Not my spouse, partner, lover. But, maybe…maybe I should think again. When DOES sadness cross the line? When should I be concerned? And when should I get help?