This week is National Eating Disorder Awareness week, and I think it is important to highlight the link between eating disorders and substance abuse. As a person who struggled with both, I feel it is important to bring awareness of statistics and research in this area.

National Eating Disorders Awareness Week 2012 is this week. This year's theme is "Everybody Knows Somebody." According to the National Eating Disorders Association, ten million women and up to one million men have anorexia or bulimia, and millions more struggle with binge eating disorder. That means that you most likely know somebody with an eating disorder.

About 6 months after I left my abusive husband, I met a man who I've come to love. The loving part was easy - he's a complete turn-around from my ex-husband. My new love treats me kindly, he cooks for me and my children, he's generous with his time and affection. He tells me I'm beautiful and doesn't expect me to fall over myself with gratefulness that he said something nice to me! Perhaps better than those cosmetic qualities, he wants to hear my thoughts, he asks me how I feel, and, after I tell him these once-guarded intimacies, he does not tell me how misguided and delusional I am.

Do you have an addiction disorder in addition to borderline personality disorder? If so, you're not alone. The good news is you can fight back! Knowing warning signs of relapse is key to preventing it.

Easing anxiety with pets is animal therapy at its most natural--there's no need to be a professional to benefit from pets. Animals give us mental peace. Watch.

That which doesn’t kill us only makes us stronger. We’ve all heard the cliché. That may ring true for some, but not for me. My depression has been raging these past few weeks, putting me through a hellacious test. Only it hasn’t made me stronger. It’s made me weaker. It’s made me tired. And it’s frustrated me to no end.

What is the definition of abuse? What counts as domestic violence? People search for versions of those questions thousands of times each month. Are there really so many people who do not know any definition of abuse? I don't think so. I think victims continue searching for the definition of abuse because they want to believe their loved one does not abuse them. Victims would rather believe that they, in fact, are as crazy as their abusive relationship makes them feel. They want the definition of abuse to be something other than what they read on that last website.

When the Disney Corporation, icon of social conservatism, first actively began pursuing gay tourists, many consumers were shocked. However, hospitality industry insiders were not; they understood that, like other American businesses, Disney places profit over prejudice ten times out of ten. So, much to the consternation of Grumpy, Doc, Goofy, Minnie and Snow White, wonderlands of all things Mickey were suddenly gay-friendly and in no time at all the music of cash registers began wafting breezily through the sheets of fiberglass snow falling gently on plastic hills and valleys. Disney Corp. even bundled special events, tours, and vacations specifically for this demographic. For mentally ill Americans like me, it was a bittersweet moment. On the one hand, we were delighted to see members of a beleaguered minority group finally welcomed into the inner sanctum of what passes for culture in this country. But, on the other hand, we felt our own exclusion even more painfully. When – we wondered – when would our day come?

I met a beautiful young creature. I then flirted with said creature, as is my habit. Eventually, she asked me a question about local politics. A perfection reasonable question, one assumes. There was just one problem, I don’t know anything about local politics. This is because I refuse to watch the news as I find it depressing and I told her so. She said she understood. Then we planned to go out to a movie. She asked me to pick the film. I picked one of the action-suspense genre as then there was no chance of me becoming emotionally activated by a stupid movie. Nope, no romantic movies on a date with me. And then we discussed the showing to see. I have to see the early show because I turn into a pumpkin at 9:00 PM. And really, I prefer to see matinees because they disrupt my sleep cycle less which disrupts my bipolar less. Poor girl, she had no idea what her flirtation had waded her into.

The news is exciting: a research study has found that cognitive improvements are possible for those with schizophrenia - and that the results can stick. And even better: these results can be achieved with the help of a program to teach social and cognitive skills with the use of computer games. A reporter called me yesterday for a comment before she finished her article, and it certainly got me to reflect on my my son Ben, and how he is - slowly - beginning to show more signs of "growing up." One of the very first "aha moments" for me, when I finally began to learn about schizophrenia and its symptoms, came with the information that it is a "double-edged sword" of positive (added to personality) and negative (taken away from personality). I also learned, in NAMI's Family-to-Family course, about the concept of being "frozen in time" for many affected by mental illness.