In this DBSA Wellness Wheel podcast, guest expert Dr. LaGenia Bailey shares with Programs Director Maria Margaglione and Programs Manager Hannah Zeller how to tend to our Environment Wellness in three areas: nature, our homes and workspaces, and our brain. Dr. LaGenia Bailey is the founder of East West Integrative healing. Her soul’s mission is to facilitate Holistic Wellness for her clients through the use of Eastern and Western Science. These sciences include sound, mindfulness, and traditional as well as complementary healing modalities. Dr. Bailey is a board-certified neuropharmacologist, a yogi, musician, and singer. She uses her knowledge to help guide people to wellness.

In this DBSA Wellness Wheel podcast, two DBSA staff members, Maria Margaglione, Programs Director, and Hannah Zeller, Programs Manager discuss Intellectual Wellness and their journeys toward wellness. Maria and Hannah interview expert Dr. Wendy Linderholm to address the challenges individuals who live with depression and bipolar might face in terms of their intellectual wellness. Intellectual Wellness is about finding work and leisure activities that stimulate you and help you to learn new things. Reading, writing, doing puzzles, and collecting, are all different types of hobbies that can boost our intellectual wellness. Dr. Linderholm gives Maria and Hannah insight into why intellectual wellness can help change or brain chemistry to allow for new ideas which can disrupt our experience of depression. Dr. Wendy Linderholm is the Director of Behavioral Medicine in the Family Medicine Residency Program at MemorialCare Long Beach Medical Center where she focuses on full mind-body spiritual healing. She holds degrees in clinical health psychology from Alliant International University in Los Angeles, Calif., then completed a three-year post-doctoral training program in behavioral health in family medicine and oncology. Afterwards, she was offered a fellowship in behavioral health and family systems education. Currently, Dr. Linderholm treats patients at the Family Medicine Center on the campus of Long Beach Medical Center. Dr. Linderholm has cared for patients across a broad spectrum of medicine, including neurology, Huntington’s Disease, HIV, oncology, disaster mental health, and works actively with the LGBTQ+ community. She also teaches physicians how to assess patients for and how to treat mental illness. Dr. Linderholm supports doctors and patients on their journey to build resiliency, also working one-on-one with physicians to create a healthy balance within their own stressful careers. Dr. Linderholm’s favorite leisure activity is racing Hawaiian outrigger canoes in the open ocean. Hey this is Dontae Freeman Communications Manager for DBSA and the producer of the podcast you are listening to. A few times in the intro Hannah and Maria will refer to me, and you will briefly hear from me. We decided to leave these peaks behind the curtains because they were relevant to the conversation about intellectual wellness. Enjoy the episode

Did you know that your DNA can provide insights that can help with treatment planning? In this episode of the DBSA podcast, we talk to Dr. Mark Pollack, Chief Medical Officer and Vice President of Clinical Affairs of Myriad Neuroscience, about what pharmacogenetic testing is, how the testing works, and what benefits it can offer peers. We also talk to Dennis L., a peer who details his journey with Major Depression and how pharmacogenetic testing helped improve his treatment plan. What is pharmacogenetic testing? This test uses a small sample of your DNA, usually obtained by swabbing the inside of your cheek, to learn how your genetic makeup can affect your response to medication. Doctors use this information as a tool to help make prescription decisions. Along with PGx test results, your age, gender, other medical conditions, and any other drugs you take may also be factors in your doctor’s recommendations about possible treatments. Footnotes: Learn more about PGx https://www.dbsalliance.org/wellness/treatment-options/what-is-pharmacogenetic-testing/ Learn about DBSA Peer Specialist Program https://www.dbsalliance.org/get-involved/training/ DBSA would like to thank Myriad for supporting this episode.

In this DBSA Wellness Wheel podcast, DBSA staff Maria Margaglione, Programs Director, and Hannah Zeller, Programs Manager discuss Social Wellness and their journey towards wellness. In this episode, Maria and Hannah interview expert Beth Vaccaro, LPC, and discuss the challenges individuals who live with depression and bipolar might face in terms of their social wellness. Beth, Maria, and Hannah also discuss grief associated with changing plans due to COVID-19. Allowing ourselves to grieve social loss, and have conversations with loved ones about loss, gives us a chance to connect and create plans that support our wellness. Beth Vaccaro is a person trying to figure it out, just like you. She is a St. Louis native, attended Webster University, and earned a Master's Degree in Counseling. She did her post-graduate training at Care and Counseling and the St. Louis Psychoanalytic Institute. Currently, she is in private practice as a therapist in Clayton. She sees adults and adolescents with a wide variety of issues and practices from a psychodynamic perspective. DBSA Wellness Wheel: https://www.dbsalliance.org/wellness/wellness-toolbox/dbsa-wellness-wheel/

Today, we're speaking with DBSA co-founder Rose Kurland, who takes us back to the fall of 1978, when six people gathered in her living room in Glencoe, Illinois. This small but enthusiastic group laid the foundation for the life-changing work that reaches across 35 years. Rose shares highlights from DBSA's earliest years in a conversation with communications director Betsey O'Brien, giving us a glimpse of the friends, colleagues, and medical partners who have fueled decades of hope and progress for people with mood disorders. You can learn more about DBSA's origins by checking out our timeline. https://www.dbsalliance.org/our-history/

Continuing our podcast series centered around the DBSA Wellness Wheel, our most recent episode focuses on finances. DBSA talks with Dr. Thomas Richardson, a Clinical Psychologist who works with a community mental health team for adults at Solent NHS Trust in Portsmouth, UK. An avid researcher, he also has lived experience with Bipolar Disorder. We discuss the financial challenges those with lived experience might face and steps that can be taken to improve financial wellness.

DBSA's Young Adult Council members are back to discuss their early experiences with bipolar disorder, depression, and anxiety, and explain how they found the right treatment. Symptoms of a mood disorder can be hard to recognize and understand, especially when they happen simultaneously. YAC members recall where they were in life when the first signs appeared, how they found self-awareness and acceptance, how friends and family reacted, and the resources that helped them most. Each member provides unique perspectives, offering suggestions for dealing with the first signs of a mood disorder and revealing how loved ones can be supportive in the early stages. Footnotes: Read the Recognizing the first sign of a mood disorder blog: https://www.dbsalliance.org/about/young-adult-council/recognizing-the-early-signs-of-a-mood-disorder/ Listen to the Navigating budgets and insurance while living with a mood disorder podcast: https://soundcloud.com/dbsalliance/young-adult-council-navigating-budgets-and-insurance-while-living-with-a-mood-disorder

In our ongoing series based on the DBSA Wellness Wheel, hosts Maria Margaglione and Hannah Zeller welcome expert guests that shed light on how people with mood disorders can build resilience in 7 key areas of their lives. In this episode, Maria and Hannah talk with Sue Phillips, co-founder of Sacred Design Lab, where she helps people find new ways to flourish by deepening their spirituality. An ordained minister and former denominational executive in the Unitarian Universalist tradition, Sue uses ancient wisdom to help people find meaning and solve gnarly problems, especially in difficult times like these. She delights in seeing the transformation that happens when we get all up in life's biggest questions! Sue is part business strategist, part design geek, and part monastic. A graduate of Colgate University and the Episcopal Divinity School, she has also taught at Harvard Divinity School, where she is a Ministry Innovation Fellow. She lives in Tacoma, Washington with her wife Tandi Rogers.

In this DBSA podcast, host Dontae Freeman welcomes guests to an open conversation on the unique experiences and barriers that people of color face in seeking effective mental health care. We offer these perspectives as part of the wider conversation on race, culture, and mental health taking place during Black, Indigenous & People of Color (BIPOC) Mental Health Month 2020. In the first part of the podcast, we hear from Michele Bibby, a trained peer facilitator living in Austin, Texas, who hosts national support groups for DBSA, and Mario Lemos, a Chapter Leader with DBSA San Francisco. Both Michele and Mario identify as persons of color, and their own experiences give us a clear sense of what it's like to attend a support group where your fellow peers may not have faced the same struggles in finding care, resources and social support. In the second part of our podcast, Dontae speaks with Dr. Obari Cartman, a clinical psychologist working with Black high school students in Chicago. Dr. Cartman is program director at Real Men Charities, where he hosts a weekly men's wellness circle. In his remarks, Dr. Cartman reflects on the unique forms of stigma surrounding mental health in the Black community and suggests how mental health organizations can improve outreach to communities of color. DBSA welcomes your thoughts and feedback on this conversation. Please remember to rate and review our podcasts so we can continue to bring you the most interesting, informative guests with the most useful perspectives.

In the DBSA Wellness Wheel podcast, DBSA staff Maria Margaglione, Programs Director, and Hannah Zeller, Programs Manager discuss the areas of the Wellness Wheel and their journey towards wellness. In this episode, DBSA interviews expert Alexandra Kopack, to find out more about Occupational Wellness. The conversation covers challenges you may be experiencing at work if you live with depression and bipolar and discusses specifically the challenges that COVID-19 presents to workers. COVID-19 has greatly altered the way we work and the discussion covers how we can best navigate working from home and the anticipated changing landscape of work in a new era. Alexandra Kopack has a Masters of Applied Positive Psychology from the University of Melbourne, Australia, and is a Board Certified Behavior Analyst. She also holds professional certificates from Harvard and Berkeley in the topics of Behavioral Economics and the Science of Happiness. Currently, she is the Regional Director of ABA services in San Diego and ACE Coordinator for EBS Healthcare and was a co-owner of W3RKWELL, an employee wellbeing, an analytic and advisory firm. She has spoken at international conferences, hosted workshops, and participated in research on the topics of wellbeing, trauma, neurobiology, and behavior change. Alexandra is passionate about combining the science of behavior with the science of wellbeing to make a meaningful impact in the lives of others and pursues this daily through her clinical and consulting work as well as creating and leading trainings for other professionals. Her mission is to evoke zest and curiosity for the artistry of behavior change so that progress is inevitable, willful, and fun.