We know for sure that humans purposely kill themselves.  But what about dogs, and to a larger extent, animals?  Do animals ever want to kill themselves?  Are animals ever depressed?

I sometimes wonder this because I see so many dogs dead on the side of the road, so I wonder if there is a percentage of these dogs that do this on person.  Let’s take a deeper look.

We certainly cannot ask them if they are depressed because they don’t speak English.  But we can observe their behavior and deduce what they may be experiencing in the same way that we can interpret human behavior.

When humans are depressed they tend to either sleep much more than usual or have trouble sleeping.  They will exhibit symptoms of lethargy, their appetite will change, and they will generally not want to be part of their usual activities.  So when a dog starts acting this way, we know that there is something wrong.  But we must be careful here because the dog could just be ill with some physical affliction.  Just the same as adults, physical health problems can sometimes have the same symptoms as mental health problems.

But the question of the day is, would a dog actually go through the trouble of committing suicide if he were sad enough?

In order to commit suicide, humans have to have a plan and means available.  Planning is a skill that humans have mastered due to our enlarged frontal lobe (and to a larger extend, the entire cortex) of the brain.  Dogs do have a limited ability to plan however.  For instance, if you teach your dog to go get a beer out of the refrigerator, the dog has to know where the refrigerator is, he has to know how to open the fridge, which thing in there is beer, and some sort of rudimentary plan about how to transport the beer to you.  So in a sense, a dog does have the ability to plan things out.

But here is where a dog would ultimately fail at suicide.  Death is sort of an abstraction, and abstract subjects take a well developed brain with an agile cortex to be able to work through.  There is no clear evidence that I am aware of that dogs are capable of abstraction, much less formulate a plan that contains abstract subject matter.  The more evolved the organism, the thicker their cortex extends from the brain’s limbic system, the part of the brain responsible for the most basic of tasks such as breathing and heart beat.  Dogs have a well developed limbic system like most mammals, but not a whole lot in the way of cortex; therefore, I think it is safe to deduce that dogs do not commit suicide.

Chase Chick MPA LPC is CEO and co-founder of Beyond the Gray Sky, whose brands include Pursuit of Happiness, Dallas Psychology Review, and Luxe Media Productions.

There’s a lot of confusion out there.  Most of it is nobody’s fault in particular.  Education in psychology is pretty sparse, especially in pre-college public education.  In fact, I never even had the opportunity to have a class on the subject until I got to college.  In high school we learned French and chemistry (two things that most people would have absolutely no use for in their day-to-day lives) but not even a whisper of psychology.  This should change, but since it hasn’t, I will take another swing at dispelling a common myth I repeatedly hear in practice.

You cannot have Bipolar disorder if you are abusing drugs. 

I know, “But that’s what my (fill in the blank healthcare provider) said I have!”  Well, I’m here to tell you that this is wrong.  Here’s why:

You can’t technically have both going on at the same time, per the DSM.  The reason for this is simple:

If you are currently abusing drugs, then you cannot say with any degree of certainty that any symptoms you are experiencing are not directly related to the drugs you are abusing.  Feeling manic after an all nighter of meth?  Feeling down the next couple of days?  These mood swings on the surface appear to resemble the ups and downs in Bipolar, but symptoms must be caused by the presence of the disorder itself.  When drugs are causing the symptoms, what we have here is a drug problem.  Stop the drugs and see if the symptoms persist.

There’s a lot of confusion out there.  Most of it is nobody’s fault in particular.  Education in psychology is pretty sparse, especially in pre-college public education.  In fact, I never even had the opportunity to have a class on the subject until I got to college.  In high school we learned French and chemistry (two things that most people would have absolutely no use for in their day-to-day lives) but not even a whisper of psychology.  This should change, but since it hasn’t, I will take another swing at dispelling a common myth I repeatedly hear in practice.

You cannot have Bipolar disorder if you are abusing drugs. 

I know, “But that’s what my (fill in the blank healthcare provider) said I have!”  Well, I’m here to tell you that this is wrong.  Here’s why:

You can’t technically have both going on at the same time, per the DSM.  The reason for this is simple:

If you are currently abusing drugs, then you cannot say with any degree of certainty that any symptoms you are experiencing are not directly related to the drugs you are abusing.  Feeling manic after an all nighter of meth?  Feeling down the next couple of days?  These mood swings on the surface appear to resemble the ups and downs in Bipolar, but symptoms must be caused by the presence of the disorder itself.  When drugs are causing the symptoms, what we have here is a drug problem.  Stop the drugs and see if the symptoms persist.

In my practice, I like to see sustained drug abstinence for 6 months straight before I would even consider an official diagnosis of anything else.  Even after 6 months if symptoms are persistent, I’m still going to be wondering if the damage done to the brain by the drug abuse is what is causing the symptoms.  So in this case, what we would have is “drug induced” and then fill in the blank for the disorder.

So why are a portion of mental health practitioners so quick to slap a Bipolar diagnosis on someone?  There’s quite a number of reasons unfortunately. 

One reason is that they are just lazy.  In a managed care setting (i.e. a volume customer setting usually populated by high percentages of Medicaid patients) healthcare practitioners are not afforded the proper time necessary to be able to accurately diagnose someone.  These managed care companies are not paid well by the bargain basement insurance companies they serve, and the patients have a tendency to no-show their appointments, so in order to survive they have to fill up their walls with as many patients as possible. 

Worse, they are forced to give some sort of diagnosis by the patient’s insurance.  Worse still, those insurance companies (especially Medicaid HMO’s) will decree that a patient has to have a certain subset of disorders (usually either Major Depression, Bipolar, or Schizophrenia) or else they refuse to pay for services. 

So rather than turn someone away who might actually need help, a managed care organization may slap a filler diagnosis that may not be completely appropriate just for the purposes of getting paid (unfortunately we can’t live on love alone) and making sure people are getting help who need it.  In a nutshell, managed care is not good for anyone.  It’s basically a giant disaster.

Best practices warrant that we try to refrain from giving out a diagnosis until we have seen a patient at least a couple of times.  Maybe it’s possible that the person is telling us about their ups and their downs, and not telling us about their drug use.  But then later on in therapy they decide to spill the beans, but we already gave them a diagnosis of Bipolar.  Not that this cannot be changed after the fact, but the diagnosis informs our treatment, and if the diagnosis is inappropriate or just plain wrong, that patient is not going to get the kind of care that they need.

Another reason is because some mental healthcare practitioners may just not be educated enough about the disorder.  There’s one primary thing that we all need to understand.  Bipolar disorder is organic.  It is a regulatory problem in the brain and how the brain directs different neurotransmitters, thus making you feel sad or depressed.  Because we know that this disorder is organic, we must be aware that Bipolar and its symptoms of mania and depression are not caused by environmental factors.  Said another way, if your happiness and sadness is caused by something, then we can quickly rule out Bipolar.  The mood swings of this disorder occur independent of whatever is going on in the world.  So if you are usually “really happy” but then get “really depressed when something terrible happens,” that isn’t Bipolar.

So make sure that if you have been diagnosed with Bipolar, or if you are a practitioner thinking that the patient sitting in front of you might have it, make sure that you have all the facts before you begin treatment.  Bipolar disorder requires a very specialized sort of treatment which can work wonders for the person receiving it, but we must always be leery of over diagnosis as well as diagnosis that might be better accounted for by something else.  In my practice, I like to see sustained drug abstinence for 6 months straight before I would even consider an official diagnosis of anything else.  Even after 6 months if symptoms are persistent, I’m still going to be wondering if the damage done to the brain by the drug abuse is what is causing the symptoms.  So in this case, what we would have is “drug induced” and then fill in the blank for the disorder.

So why are a portion of mental health practitioners so quick to slap a Bipolar diagnosis on someone?  There’s quite a number of reasons unfortunately. 

One reason is that they are just lazy.  In a managed care setting (i.e. a volume customer setting usually populated by high percentages of Medicaid patients) healthcare practitioners are not afforded the proper time necessary to be able to accurately diagnose someone.  These managed care companies are not paid well by the bargain basement insurance companies they serve, and the patients have a tendency to no-show their appointments, so in order to survive they have to fill up their walls with as many patients as possible. 

Worse, they are forced to give some sort of diagnosis by the patient’s insurance.  Worse still, those insurance companies (especially Medicaid HMO’s) will decree that a patient has to have a certain subset of disorders (usually either Major Depression, Bipolar, or Schizophrenia) or else they refuse to pay for services. 

So rather than turn someone away who might actually need help, a managed care organization may slap a filler diagnosis that may not be completely appropriate just for the purposes of getting paid (unfortunately we can’t live on love alone) and making sure people are getting help who need it.  In a nutshell, managed care is not good for anyone.  It’s basically a giant disaster.

Best practices warrant that we try to refrain from giving out a diagnosis until we have seen a patient at least a couple of times.  Maybe it’s possible that the person is telling us about their ups and their downs, and not telling us about their drug use.  But then later on in therapy they decide to spill the beans, but we already gave them a diagnosis of Bipolar.  Not that this cannot be changed after the fact, but the diagnosis informs our treatment, and if the diagnosis is inappropriate or just plain wrong, that patient is not going to get the kind of care that they need.

Another reason is because some mental healthcare practitioners may just not be educated enough about the disorder.  There’s one primary thing that we all need to understand.  Bipolar disorder is organic.  It is a regulatory problem in the brain and how the brain directs different neurotransmitters, thus making you feel sad or depressed.  Because we know that this disorder is organic, we must be aware that Bipolar and its symptoms of mania and depression are not caused by environmental factors.  Said another way, if your happiness and sadness is caused by something, then we can quickly rule out Bipolar.  The mood swings of this disorder occur independent of whatever is going on in the world.  So if you are usually “really happy” but then get “really depressed when something terrible happens,” that isn’t Bipolar.

So make sure that if you have been diagnosed with Bipolar, or if you are a practitioner thinking that the patient sitting in front of you might have it, make sure that you have all the facts before you begin treatment.  Bipolar disorder requires a very specialized sort of treatment which can work wonders for the person receiving it, but we must always be leery of over diagnosis as well as diagnosis that might be better accounted for by something else.

Chase Chick MPA LPC is CEO and co-founder of Beyond the Gray Sky, whose brands include Pursuit of Happiness, Dallas Psychology Review, and Luxe Media Productions.

When you are in the throes of an argument, don’t you sometimes wish that the other person would just understand what you are saying?  Does it seem like they never do?  Does it seem like the only thing that they care about is getting their point across and not listening to what you are saying?  If you answered yes to any and all of these questions, you just might have a communication problem!

I Statements and You Statements.  If you learn to master these, you might just win the day and save yourself from suffering a giant blow out.  

First rule of disagreement: If you or the person you have a beef with is currently upset in some way, which is absolutely NOT the time to have the discussion.  All that is going to happen at this point is yelling.  So make it a point to take a breath, suggest your fellow combatant do the same, and put the issue aside temporarily until you can both calm down.  Nothing can be accomplished when people are upset.  (As you might have notice)

In fact, go ahead and preempt future conversation by suggesting to your mate the implementation of this rule.  You can say something to the tune of, “You know, in the future, when we get into disagreements, let’s agree that if we start to get upset that we will end the discussion right then and go to our corners until we are calm again.”  If this rule is already in place, then both parties will be much more understand when things start to get heated if that yellow flag is raised.  

2nd Rule:  Quit using You Statements.  Don’t know what those are?  You Statements are the statements that we make to each other that usually begin with “you” and usually end with some type of accusation.  Example:  “You never take out the trash!”  The primary feature that we must keep in mind about You Statements is that they are basically an attack.  And what happens when we are attacked?  We get defensive.  It’s human nature.  If you are under attack you are going to feel like you need to defend yourself, and if you are directing You Statements at somebody, their natural inclination is going to be defense.

3rd Rule: Start using I statements.  I statements are the opposite of You Statements.  They begin with “I” and end with a statement about how the situation is affecting you.  So if we take the same example about taking out the trash and convert it to an I Statement it would look something like this: “I feel like I am always doing more around the house than is fair and I would appreciate some help.”  The primary feature of I Statements (which is contrasted with You Statements) is that rather than attacking someone you are letting them understand how the situation is affecting you, and any normal person’s natural inclination is to help other people, so when you are telling someone that you are being affected negatively in some way, their natural inclination will be to help you not to be negatively affected.  

If you start replacing You Statements with I Statements and wait until you are both calm to have the discussion, I promise you will find your success rate significantly increases.  You will both be more likely to get the things you want, your communication will be better, and it will lead to a healthier happier relationship.

Chase Chick MPA LPC is CEO and co-founder of Beyond the Gray Sky, whose brands include Pursuit of Happiness, Dallas Psychology Review, and Luxe Media Productions.

First, make sure you are completely relaxed.  For this you can either sit or lie down, but make sure there is no discomfort and nothing distracting for you. 

Close your eyes and breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth.  When you breathe in, try to take in as much air as you possibly can.  When you breathe out, try to expel as much air out of your lungs as you can until you cannot expel any more.  Do this slowly and feel the air come in and come out.  Each interval of breathing in and out counts as 1 breath.  Do this 3 times.

Concentrate on yourself.  Feel the connectedness of your body as it exists in space.  Feel all the muscles and bones and skin and all the molecules that make up the entire experience of you.

Take a deep breath.

Expand your awareness to the room around you.  Concentrate on how the room with its walls and ceilings and furniture and everything that makes up the experience of the room works on concert with each other.  Feel how everything is connected and at peace.

Take a deep breath.

Expand your awareness again to the building you are in, be it a house or some other structure.  Feel all the rooms and air and space that connect everything.  Concentrate on all the different wires and tubes that connect the building.  Be aware of all the details and structures and people that make up the building that you are in.

Take a deep breath.

Expand your awareness again to the neighborhood you are in.  Concentrate on the roads and other buildings and trees and sidewalks.  Feel how everything is connected and working in concert with each other.  Feel the air overhead and the ground underneath and all the people and things in between.

Take a deep breath.

Expand your awareness to the city you are in.  Feel the energy between the highways and bridges, the roads and the lakes.  Concentrate on all the structures and people and earth and sky that make up the city you are in. 

Take a deep breath.

Expand your awareness now to the state you live in.  Feel the connectedness of the cities and counties, the highways and rivers and railroads connecting it all.  Feel how everything is working on concert with each other.  Be aware of the people and animals, the sky and ground and everything in between the make up the state that you live in.

Take a deep breath.

Expand your awareness again to the country that you live in.  Feel the plains and valleys and mountains and all the states that make your country.  Feel all the people and lives being lived.  Concentrate on the air and ground and borders in between.

Take a deep breath.

Expand your awareness now to the entire Earth.  Feel the oceans and continents and all the creatures of the sea and creatures above.  Feel the atmosphere and the earth’s core.  Be aware of how everything works in concert together, all connected and at peace.  Feel all the inhabitants of the entire earth, and the energy flowing between everything. 

Take a deep breath.

Expand your awareness again to our solar system.  Feel the power of the warm sun lighting the planets.  Feel the asteroid belts and comets and moons orbiting the planets that orbit the sun.  Be aware of how everything is connected and working together to create the experience of our solar system.

Take a deep breath.

Expand your aware further, out to the entire galaxy.  Feel the galactic core with its dense soup of planets.  Feel the outer planets with their own solar systems and planets.  Feel the stardust and all matter, light and dark, rotating around the galactic center.  Feel how everything is connected and working in concert together. 

Take a deep breath.

Now expand your awareness out to the whole universe.  Feel the billions and billions of galaxies all racing away from each other.  Feel the immense size and influence of the vastness of space.  Feel all the inhabitants of the universe, along with the huge nebulae and pockets of stardust forming new galaxies to counter the older ones.  Expand your awareness out to the edges of the universe, and our cosmic horizon in space.  Feel how everything is working in concert together and connected.

Take a deep breath.

Now reverse course and slowly let your awareness contract back with the same attention to detail as when you expanded your awareness.  Contract back through the universe, the galaxy, the solar system, the earth, your country, your state, your city, your neighborhood, your building, your room, and finally yourself.  Between each awareness be sure to take a deep breath.  Once you have gotten to yourself, when you are ready and feeling at peace, slowly open your eyes and bring yourself back to reality. 

Once completed, you should feel relaxed and at peace.  To get your blood flowing again, stretch some before you stand back up.  Once you are up, stretch a little more, and then go about your day.

Chase Chick MPA LPC is CEO and co-founder of Beyond the Gray Sky, whose brands include Pursuit of Happiness, Dallas Psychology Review, and Luxe Media Productions.

Given the demographics of the American population, it is a safe bet to say that just about everyone is interested in losing weight. Here's where people go wrong, and what you can do to make it right. 

Diets

Don't go on a diet. Fad diets may help you lose weight in the short term, but ultimately you are going to gain it all back and then some. Here's why: most diets involve some sort of caloric reduction along with some way to make you not get hungry. The way that it is keeping you from getting hungry is by lowering your metabolism. 

This is bad. 

When your metabolism is low your body will be much more likely to convert whatever you eat into fat because it will correctly assume that calorie reduction is your intention. Lowering your metabolism is your body's way of keeping an advantage over starvation because fat burns more efficiently over time, and if your body doesn't think it is going to get anything then having a source from which to derive energy (fat) would seem to be a good idea.  The alternative is starvation and death. Your body doesn't understand that you live in 2013 and have plentiful food as far as the eye can see. 

Make a lifestyle chance by eating better.  Going on a diet that you are ultimately going to come off of is going to end up causing you to gain more weight than you started out with.

Drinks

Be aware of what you are drinking. Sugary drinks are your downfall. Most people understand when it comes to sugary sodas, but a lot of people fail to see the other sugary drinks for what they really are: bad. Fruit juices, sports drinks and energy drinks are great if you've just exercised for hours, but for the rest of us we are just drinking straight sugar. Most researchers agree at this point that juices are no better for you than drinking sodas. Make sure that you are drinking water as your primary beverage. A little milk or tea or coffee is ok too so long as you don't start pouring in sugar, but water should be your best friend. 

Exercise

Exercise: Your don't have to do 90 minutes of Insanity or P90x, though I certainly would not dissuade you from working out that hard, but a good 10-15 minute interval workout can have equally beneficial results. There are tons and tons of completely free YouTube videos and websites that show different interval training exercises, and most can be done with no equipment, so there is no excuse not to set aside 10-15 minutes of your day to exercise. 

If you put together everything above consistently, you WILL be in great shape. There's no getting around it. You really don't have to join gyms, buy expensive equipment, or get into strange fad diets. Drink water, eat six small meals throughout the day, and exercise, and I promise you that you will see results. 

Chase Chick MPA LPC is CEO and co-founder of Beyond the Gray Sky, whose brands include Pursuit of Happiness, Dallas Psychology Review, and Luxe Media Productions.

Anyone can say "I'm going to be happy." But for a lot of people this can be a tricky business.

1. Stay aware of your thoughts.

Buying in to irrational thoughts is one of the most destructive things you can do if you're trying to be a healthy happy person. Irrational thoughts are constantly bombarding your brain, and we can get metaphysical all day about where thoughts originate, but the important take home item is that you are in control of what thoughts you allow yourself to believe. If you are always berating yourself you will eventually start to believe that you do not have value, and a person who believes that they are not valuable is a person who is not happy. Whatever the situation, always be conscious of taking control of the way that you think. Realistic thinking is the hallmark of a well-adjusted person, and without it happiness will remain elusive.

2. Eating right and exercising

If you are already eating six small meals throughout the day and exercising then congratulations... you're awesome! If not it is time to start evaluating whether or not you are serious about your health and happiness, because taking care of your body and mind means that proper diet and exercise must be part of the deal. Here is a more in depth explanation of proper nutrition, but to simplify: six small meals throughout the day, from the food pyramid, exercise, and drink lots of water.

3. Staying social.

When is the last time you got out of the house and hung out with people who you care about? If you have to think about that it has probably been too long. Humans are a social species, and as such our human relationships are an integral part of who we are. So call your family, have dinner with a friend, or take your loved ones out to the park. Sitting around and watching reality TV all your days is a poison pill that you don't want to swallow.

Chase Chick MPA LPC is CEO and co-founder of Beyond the Gray Sky, whose brands include Pursuit of Happiness, Dallas Psychology Review, and Luxe Media Productions.

Psychology Today More and More Radical, Unscientific

According to this latest article, the dictator of North Korea who is starving his people to death, telling them he is a God, and threatening the rest of the world with nuclear war, is “behaving rationally.”  At this point I think we are fine to disregard any of the radical garbage coming out of this organization.  But for the sake of fun, let’s take a look at their logic:

The writer, Ian Robertson, compares the dictator to George Bush, immediately revealing that this writer is not beholden to facts, but rather ideology.  While arguing that these types of leaders believe that they are gods, he regurgitates a disproven lie about George Bush saying that Bush believed that God sent him to invade Iraq.  Nothing of the sort happened.  And if this writer had done any research at all, he would have found this Washington Post article analyzing the legitimacy of this blatant lie and found this excerpt:

"We checked contemporaneous notes from the meeting with President Abbas and did not find a single reference to God," a senior administration official told us. "The closest thing we could find that the president said is: 'My government and I personally are committed to the vision of a Palestinian state.' "

Boom.

Beholden to an ideology much Psychology Today?

Ian then goes on to excuse Kim Jong Un’s behavior by saying that the dictator “certainly feels god-like because of the drug-like effects — the chemical messenger dopamine is a key player — that power has on his brain. Power is an aphrodisiac which casts a spell of charisma around the holder and bewitches those he has power over, and if that be millions of people, so be it.”

So because you are already in power, and because dopamine is introduced into the brain of someone in power that means it’s ok to act however you want?

Couple points:

Kim Jong Un is not new to power.  While it’s true that people who are introduced into new and exciting situations experience a rush of dopamine, there is also something called habituation which soon normalizes that experience. 

If I went to ride the Titan at Six Flags right now I would get excited.  It’s a novel experience for people to be slung about like that.  But if I stayed on the rollercoaster all day, by the 2nd hour I’m virtually certain that I’d be bored and want to get off the ride.  Habituation knows no enemies and if you want to talk about something with ultimate power, habituation is a major field leveler.  There is no escaping it.  It’s how we are built.  You could ultimately get used to and habituated to being King of the Galaxy.  It’s how we’re built.

Second point:  Yes, power is an aphrodisiac, and that is the specific reason that we build term limits into the constitution of the United States.  Human beings are not built to wield power for an indeterminate amount of time.  We just aren’t.  We are at our best when we are serving others, not domineering over them.  So this whole idea that the North Korean dictator’s rule is even ok on principle is so riddled in backwards thinking that I don’t even feel that this line of argument should be justified with a response.  It’s 2013.  The fact that dictators still exist anywhere in the world saddens me.  But apparently Psychology Today is cool with it.  For the rest of us, the sane people who still exist in the world, we aren’t.

Ultimately the Psychology Today contributor comes to the conclusion that, “The North Korean leadership’s aggression and threats are a rational strategy within the twisted confines of gang-logic…”

That’s like saying beating your wife is a rational strategy within the twisted confines of domestic abuse situations.  Sorry, but neither is a “rational strategy” within the realm of reality that we actually live in.  To excuse abusive and insane and corrupt behavior because you exist in some twisted framework is rationalization at best, and pure stupidity at worst.  Psychology Today should know better, but unfortunately they have turned into an ideologically driven gossip rag.

Chase Chick MPA LPC is CEO and co-founder of Beyond the Gray Sky, whose brands include Pursuit of Happiness, Dallas Psychology Review, and Luxe Media Productions.