Welcome To DrComeau.com!

October 1, 2007

As some of my Long Beach, Inland Valley and San Bernardino Sun readers already know, Your Mind Matters is no longer running in those papers, the victim of a merging of the entertainment/living sections of all of those papers into one regional section. No bad feelings. Thanks for seven years of opportunity to reach your readers. Done.

Welcome the new Your Mind Matters - now an web-based column, written with no particular deadline and for the time being taking a short break while I have been completing and bringing to market...

Life Is in Session, my new CD. Four very busy part-time years in the making, including twelve original songs written by me and my cowriter and coproducer, Loni Specter.

I am happy to announce that my new record lable, Topanga Records, is up and running, as is the website, www.TopangaRecords.com. You can link here or at the "my music" link at the top of this page.

I am planning to begin writing Your Mind Matters for my web readers in a few weeks. I am also in the midst of compiling some of my (and your) favorite columns (from the 350 colums that I have already written) into a collection, currently titled, How to Change Your Mind. Anybody who happens to know or be a book publisher is welcome to contact me about getting the book to press.

Please check out the Topanga Records website - tell a friend (no spam - tell them because you know it will be good for them...) Order a copy of the CD, T-shirts, or posters from me, or get copies of the CD from www.Amazon.com, download songs or the whole CD from www.Digstation.com, or www.CDBaby.com (soon) or www.iTunes.com (soon, I hope).

The old greeting - still applies, well sorta:

Welcome to DrComeau.com. I started this site to share some of my columns. "Your Mind Matters" runs ~~weekly in the~~ ~~Long Beach Press-Telegram, the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, the San Bernardino County Sun, and~~ monthly in the Palisadian Post. My main focus is helpful information and guidance on mental health issues, encouraging us all to get help when we need help and to help each other along the way. Overcoming the stigma that has been associated with having mental health needs is my core theme.

Peace to all

A. Comeau

Why Most of Us Don’t Have PTSD (05/16/2003)
Anniversaries are times when we remember what has come to pass, but when the nature of what has come to pass involves trauma, then what we tend to remember is the fear, the suffering, the loss and victimization that we experienced at that time.

Alzheimer’s Disease (05/16/2003)
Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a condition that causes progressive and irreversible dementia, and eventually, death. Dementia is a significant loss of brain functioning and mental abilities, and is associated with increasing problems in memory, reasoning, orientation, impulse control and the stable intactness of one’s personality. Early signs of AD may include forgetting names, dates or directions to places, increased irritability and social withdrawal. Eventually AD will take away first newer and later, older memories. It will reduce the ability think and then even to communicate with loved ones. In the later stages, AD causes a breakdown in the most basic of self-care skills, requiring total reliance on others for even basic care and survival.

How to benefit from the placebo effect (05/16/2003)
The word, placebo, is of Latin origin, meaning, “I shall please,” as in the prayer “I will please the Lord in the land of the living” from the Book of Psalms. Finding its way into medicine, placebo has come to mean any inert substance given to a patient from which a beneficial effect might be achieved, but in the absence of a known specific effect on the condition to be treated. In the early history of medicine, physicians, having few really effective medicines, found that if they gave their patients what we now call “sugar pills,” along with hope and encouragement, sometimes these patients would recover from their illnesses.

Overcoming Eating Disorders (05/16/2003)
A discussion on anorexia, bulemia and eating disorders, their causes, consequences and treatment.

Hug Your Mother! (05/16/2003)
My mom and I had had our own ups and downs through the years. There were times when I would keep a distance, not calling or visiting, and when I did, not really wanting her to hug or hold me — I would pull back, withholding, resisting. Sadly, I knew that I was still clinging to childhood disappointments and angers. Through all of this, I became aware that none of this was going to be more important than the fact that I missed her, and that some day I would miss her in an even greater way.

Gut Reactions (05/16/2003)
When we are ill in the gut, with such conditions as ulcers, reflux, constipation, or diarrhea, we suffer both physically and emotionally. There’s ample evidence that the gastro-intestinal (GI) disorders are strongly influenced by psychological and lifestyle factors. Psychological and social stress, early and later traumatic experiences as well as differences in temperament have been found to play a significant role in the course of some GI illnesses. The one, thankful, exception to date is the fairly recent discovery that a bacterium, H. pylori, accounts for most cases of peptic ulcer, which can usually be successfully treated using antibiotics.

The Wisdom of Counting to 10 (05/16/2003)

Ecstasy (05/16/2003)

Teen Anxiety (05/16/2003)

How to Succeed at Failure (05/16/2003)

The Other Beautiful Minds (05/16/2003)

Depressed? Get treatment! (05/16/2003)

How to Hope (05/16/2003)

Coping With Job Stress and 'Burn Out' (05/16/2003)

Insomnia: Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep (05/16/2003)

Attention Deficit Disorder – When It Doesn't ADD Up! (05/16/2003)

Bereavement: We Are All Touched By Sadness and Grief (05/16/2003)

Boredom Isn't So Smart (05/16/2003)

Don't Worry, Be Happy… Here's How (05/16/2003)

Forgive And Be Forgiven (05/16/2003)

What Parents Can Do About Teen Drug Abuse (05/16/2003)

Teen Depression (05/16/2003)

Adolescence: Growing Up In An Ever-Changing World (05/16/2003)

Overcoming Eating Disorders (05/16/2003)

Bipolar Disorder: Don't Let Manic Depression Capture Your Soul… (05/16/2003)

Martha Stewart: What Price, Fame? (05/16/2003)

Six Steps to Anger Management (05/16/2003)

Stepfamilies, Making the Most of a Second Chance (05/16/2003)

How to make editable speech (05/16/2003)

Counseling Couples in Trouble (05/16/2003)

An approach to mindfulness (06/20/2003)
I once had what I thought was an irreparable broken gate —the earth had settled, it seemed, while the gate was in a sort of “hyper-open” position. I looked at the metal bolts, fixed to a concrete wall, and imagined having to tear the whole thing down to get it to open properly again. A few days had passed and one day I just stopped and looked again, at the gate itself. I could see that it wasn’t bolted to the wall — only the hinges were. The gate itself was held in place by pins and the whole thing could be lifted, moved, and set back down —exactly where it needed to be. So that’s what I did. Repair completed.

A primer on addiction (06/20/2003)
What is addiction? Addiction is a brain disease, characterized typically by tolerance, dependence, craving and compulsive drug seeking behavior. Tolerance and dependence may be thought of as primarily physical symptoms. Tolerance is defined as the need to take increasingly larger doses of a substance in order to achieve the desired physiological or psychological effect (usually euphoria or sedation).

Breaking up is hard to do (02/18/2004)
A lot of my counseling work involves talking with individuals or couples who are considering or are in the midst of a break-up or a divorce. We are all aware that a large number of marriages and even more non-marital relationships fail: over forty percent of all first marriages and even more subsequent marriages end in divorce within sixteen years.

Dealing with breast cancer (02/18/2004)
A few weeks ago I talked with psychologist Dr. David Wellisch about his work at the UCLA Revlon Breast Center. According to the research, the risk of being diagnosed with some form of cancer in ones lifetime is 1 in 3 for women and 1 in 2 for men. Women in the United States have a 1 in 8 chance of getting breast cancer, although across the board, lung cancer now takes more lives. The risk of developing breast cancer increases with age: 1 in 25 women between the ages of 40 and 59 are at risk; 1 in 15 women between the ages of 60 and 79 are at risk.

Smoking: let’s quit again (02/18/2004)
According to data at the Surgeon General’s office, twenty-five percent of all Adult Americans still smoke, resulting in over four hundred thousand deaths attributable to smoking annually. Research from the National Institute on Drug Abuse reveals that between one half and two-thirds of all teens have smoked, nearly twenty percent smoking regularly. In this article I discuss the consequences of smoking and some efective methods for stopping smoking.

Recent advances in Schizophrenia treatment (02/18/2004)
An interview on new treatments for schizophrenia with Dr. Daniel E Casey, from the Oregon Health and Sciences University, in Portland. Dr. Casey has served as chairman of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advisory committee on psychopharmacology and is a noted psychiatric researcher and clinician. I spoke with Dr. Casey about aripiprazole, the most recently FDA approved medication for schizophrenia.

On reading The Lord of the Rings (02/18/2004)

Dealing with difficult relatives (02/18/2004)

Why rejection really hurts (02/18/2004)

Self-actualization (03/12/2004)

Sylvia Plath, the life and death of a poet (03/12/2004)

The meaning of tears (03/12/2004)

What is cognitive therapy? (03/12/2004)

Finding the way back to reality (05/03/2004)

On using the reset button (05/03/2004)

On lies and other mistruths (05/03/2004)

Opposing oppositional disorder (05/03/2004)

My back pages (05/03/2004)