February 2008 Archives
Heartland Counseling mourns, with our community, the tragedy at Northern Illinois University. Our prayers and support go out to all who were affected by this painful event.
We have created a brochure which may help some recovering from this event. Download it here.
Those who were in the auditorium at the time of the shooting are not the only ones impacted by the event. People who have experienced past traumas may find that they feel more anxious after something hits this close to home. We all feel more vulnerable and events like that at NIU remind us that our world feels less safe.
While most of us rely on friends and neighbors to help us through such times some will find that the usual means of coping aren't enough. If you find yourself with symptoms of anxiety, sleeplessness or depression that don't lessen with the usual passage of time, please give us a call. The mental health professionals at Heartland are trained and equipped to help at times like these.
Feeling depressed? No problem, pop a pill.
That's what more and more Americans are doing these days to quell what ails their troubled souls. The use of antidepressants in the United States has exploded in the past couple of decades, and drugs such as Prozac, Paxil and Zoloft, which didn't even exist 20 years ago, are household names, almost household staples.
And why not? The television ads make it seem so easy: An agonized man or woman stares listlessly into space or slumps on a bed or couch, holding their head in their hands. Then they take a pill and suddenly morph into a happily engaged and joyous being, back on the job or walking in a park, awash in sunshine, surrounded by grandchildren, a golden retriever nipping at their heels, while lush music plays in the background.
But recovering from mental illness is rarely that simple. I know.
As an optimistic 18-year-old freshman at Harvard in the 1980s, I found myself afflicted by indescribably disturbing and intrusive thoughts that involved repetitious words and irrational fears that I had harmed others. This assault on my mind -- diagnosed a few years later as obsessive-compulsive disorder -- led me to drop out of two colleges in as many years and made it difficult to hold down a job as a busboy.
