I’m such a believer in the power of pet love to help persons with disabilities and seniors, and now some heartwarming stories are coming out of the Iraq war about our military and pets they’ve adopted.

Besides doing a beautiful job of rescuing animals in St. Louis, Stray Rescue has a number of worthwhile programs to help people in the community as well. One of those is the Senior for Senior program, which pairs senior dogs with senior people and helps fund medical expenses for the dogs. I can’t think of anything more beautiful than that.

Way to go Stray Rescue! I’m just so happy they won the million dollar prize.

Animal rescue organizations always need money and volunteers. More than anything, I believe you can improve your mental health by helping others, especially animals in need. It does a heart good, I swear to God.

I know many persons with psychiatric disabilities are on very limited incomes, but there actually are some programs out there to help with expenses of owning a pet. Check out zaprap.org, the discussion forums, for links.

There’s been some good discussion on the ZapRap Forums about the use of B12 shots in treating severe depression. Some have found the shots to be helpful when other treatments (including meds and shock) have failed.

I have zero experience with the shots personally, although my grandmother swore by them. (Not for depression specifically, just as a “feel better, more energy” boost.) Her doctor, as I recall, went along with it grudgingly, and members of my family tolerated it, but thought it was snake oil.

I don’t repost discussions from inside the forums (I’ll leave that to an asshole who does it for sport, because he enjoys mocking people in pain). But if you’re interested in the topic, you might want to check it out and talk to those who have found the shots beneficial. (You must register as a member to read/post on the boards. We’re very private these days.) Apparently you can order the injections online (which I’m not sure I’m comfortable with) and give them to yourself.

When I need a little something special to get me out of the doldrums, I play this video. Anything by Verka is fun, but this is the best of all. This was their entry in Eurovision.

And this one is good too - anything with a chimp in a tutu can’t be bad:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=p0RLptdBO7E

MUMBAI/PUNE: Despite having been through several therapy sessions, seven-year-old Pramodini, an autistic child, had never spoken a word until she met Bruno, a Golden Retriever, who handed her a paw in greeting during their first meeting.

Ten ball-throwing sessions with Bruno later, therapists had managed to teach Pramodini her first word — ball.

Fourteen-year-old Aruna was a poor student with low self-esteem. Her most positive emotion was her passion for animals, noted Nair Hospital psychiatrist Henal Shah. She wrote out a different prescription for Aruna — a few hours of voluntary work once a week at a dog-training school in the American city the girl came from. The sessions will boost her self-esteem, the doctor said. Read more…

Treatments for depression range from medicines that can come with scary side effects to electric shock therapy, but a new paper suggests a simple cold shower might sometimes cure, and even prevent, the debilitating mood disorder.Cleanliness may be a pleasant side effect, but the key lies in the water temperature.

The study’s author, Nikolai Shevchuk, believes the biological explanation revolves around a part of the brainstem known, appropriately enough, as the locus ceruleus, or “blue spot.” Read more…

Zen and the art of everyday life

Today’s profile on John Seniff concludes our yearlong, monthly series, Extraordinary People, about Twin Tiers residents who appear ordinary to most of us but have done extraordinary things.

In 2008, the Star-Gazette will launch a new monthly series in Twin Tiers Life. Stay tuned for details and for your opportunity to nominate subjects to be profiled in the series.

When John Seniff first visited Mount Saviour Monastery about 30 years ago, he never imagined that he’d eventually be living nearby. Read more…

These FREE downloadable (pdf format) books are brought to you by Centre for Applied Research in Mental Health and Addiction (CARMHA) in Canada.

• Antidepressant Skills Workbook
• Coping with Suicidal Thoughts
• Dealing With Depression: Antidepressant Skills for Teens
• Hope and Healing: A Practical Guide for Survivors of Suicide
• The Antidepressant Skills at Work Manual

If you have any difficulty downloading these from the Canadian site, I’ve zipped them all into a file (5 mb) and they can be downloaded here.

Here come 12 ways to improve your life satisfaction. One of the headlines to the story I’m passing on to you reads, “Your assessment of yourself and your life circumstances may vary at different stages. Here’s how to increase your feeling of accomplishment.”

And the explanation of why that is so important: “A key aspect of psychological well-being is a high level of life satisfaction, a subjective summing up of personal circumstances and life events that results in overall feelings of achievement, happiness, pride and purpose. People who score high in measures of life satisfaction are much more likely to believe that they have gotten the important things they want in life.” Read more…

STRESS has become the disease of the 24-7 society in which we live.

It is increasingly being blamed as the cause of more sick days and is known to be an exacerbating factor in a range of other illnesses.

On top of that comes the traditional stresses and emotional and psychological strain associated with the Christmas season.

Richard Haggerty, a Cardiff-based hypnotherapist and life coach, said, “I’ve seen a huge number of stress-related problems over the last five years and I would say that most of my clients seem to have some anxiety or panic Read more…

Mental health problems? Jump on the e-couch
Online e-mental health self-help program developed by the Australian National University.

A new online health application called e-couch has been developed to provide evidence-based therapies for common mental health problems, free of charge to the community. Read more…