Ketogenic Diet

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Diets and Moods Evidence for the importance of diet for mental health is slowly gathering.  People are looking into the importance of specific diets like the Mediterranean diet, which we have highlighted here before.  And the next big area of research into diet and mental health looks like being the ketogenic diet. Many people have heard of the Atkins diet, …

eMoods Insights

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Some of our patients here at Gateway started using this mood tracker from eMoods, hence we would like to share some information about this app for the benefit of those interested in using this app. eMood is a free mood tracking app that runs on your phone and desktop web browser. It allows you to easily chart your daily highs …

Psychology Tools Worksheets Handouts Resources

Psychology Tools – Resources to Support Clinical Care at GPS

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Psychology Tools offers a wealth of new resources for patients and therapists at Gateway Psychiatric. These tools include hundred of worksheets, handouts, exercises, podcasts, and information sheets that are solidly founded in clinical research. The entire collection is searchable by resource type, problem and therapy type and thus easily accessible. Gateway is licensed to share these materials with any patient …

The New Gottman Relationship Builder

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A powerful online assessment that automatically scores a couple’s strengths and challenges. Created by Drs. John and Julie Gottman in collaboration with The Gottman Institute and Affective Software Inc. This clinical tool consists of 337 questions about friendship, intimacy, how well you know your partner, how you manage emotions and conflict, how you share your values and goals, and what …

Pre-Diabetes Weight Gain and Depression

Insulin Resistance, Pre-Diabetes, Central Obesity, Elevated Triglycerides and Depression

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Three different findings associated with insulin resistance and pre-diabetes are predictive of developing depression according to a study published online from the American Journal of Psychiatry. Study Summary MedPage Today (9/23/2021) writes that, “Three surrogate measures for insulin resistance all showed a significant link with developing a major depressive disorder [MDD] over a nine-year follow-up period,” researchers concluded. The 601-participant study …

Bipolar 101

Gateway Bipolar 101 Group – July 2021

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Next week will commence another round of our 6 week Bipolar 101 group for Gateway clients/patients hoping to learn more about how to manage the impact of their moods with more grace and awareness. Bipolar 101 is an online, six session group that covers topics such as general knowledge of the disorder, medications, substance use, early detection of episodes, healthy …

SSRI Doses and Effectiveness – High Dose vs Low Dose, Is There a Difference?

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One of the questions that has bedevilled clinicians ever since the introduction of the first SSRI (Prozac, fluoxetine) is whether there is any relationship between SSRI doses and effectiveness. In other words, do higher doses result in greater effectiveness. I can recall about 20 years ago reading the first clinical trial looking at this question. It was an article published …

Psychotherapy is Important for Depression Prevention

Peter Forster Best Practices, Major Depression, Treatments of Depression Leave a Comment

Psychotherapies — particularly cognitive-behavioral approaches used as adjunctive treatments — can play a critical role in helping people with a history of depression avoid relapse. For many people, major depression is a chronic illness. Even when they are no longer depressed, people who have had several episodes of depression have to be concerned about a significant risk of a recurrence …

Bipolar Therapy with Family

Psychotherapy for Bipolar

Peter Forster Best Practices, Bipolar Treatment, GPS Leave a Comment

People with bipolar disorder are much less likely to receive psychotherapy (26-50% of patients in one study got therapy) as opposed to psychiatric medications (46-90% were treated with medications) according to a study sponsored by the Depressive and Bipolar Support Association. This is not surprising since many mental health professionals were taught when we were in training that bipolar depression …

Limbic and Prefrontal Connectivity and Treatment Selection for Depression

Peter Forster Basic Science, Best Practices, Major Depression, Psychobiology, Treatments of Depression

Boadie Dunlop, M.D., M.S., and Helen Mayberg, M.D., both of Emory University School of Medicine, and colleagues assessed resting-state functional connectivity between the subcallosal cingulate cortex (SCC) and three other brain regions—the dorsal midbrain, the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex and anterior insula, and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex—in 122 patients with depression. The patients were then randomized to 12 weeks of cognitive-behavioral …