Perhaps your counselor has mentioned the option of antidepressant medication to you, or you’ve wondered whether this option might be helpful based on something you’ve heard, or based on the experiences of friends or family members.
This webpage is designed to answer some of the most frequently asked questions about antidepressants. We hope the information will serve as a starting point for a more in-depth discussion with a counselor and/or a psychiatrist. If you decide to explore the option of medication further, you will want to meet...
Eighty percent of adults will experience significant low back pain sometime during their lifetime. Low back pain usually involves muscle spasms of the supportive muscles along the spine. Also, pain numbness, and tingling in the buttocks or lower extremity can be related to the back. There are multiple causes of low back pain (see below). Prevention of low back pain, as well as knowing self-care options for acute low back pain, are important, as symptoms can recur on more than one occasion.
A cold is an upper respiratory infection caused by a virus. There are at least 200 different cold viruses, the most common one being the rhinovirus ("nose virus"). Symptoms of a cold usually include a runny nose, sneezing, coughing, sore throat, muscle aches, headaches, low-grade fever, and congestion of the ears, nose, and head. Colds usually last for a few days, but symptoms can persist for weeks.
A perceptive physician once said, "If you treat cold symptoms vigorously, they will go away in seven days. If left alone, they will disappear over the course of a week."...
Many college students have difficulties with sleep, given intense schedules, overlapping deadlines and stress from academics, and often family and relationship issues. Research indicates that adequate sleep is important for learning, lowering stress, averting depression and even maintaining a healthy weight.
This 8-week self-study program can help you get your sleep back on track. This is a program that is meant to be done one unit per week. Weekly reading takes about 10-15 minutes and daily monitoring of sleep is done via a 30-second sleep diary. You can do this on your own, and...
When we refer to depression in the following pages, we are talking about "clinical depression." Clinical depression is a serious medical illness that negatively affects how you feel, the way you think and how you act. Individuals with clinical depression are unable to function as they used to. Often they have lost interest in activities that were once enjoyable to them, and feel sad and hopeless for extended periods of time. Clinical depression is not the same as feeling sad or depressed for a few days and then feeling better. It can affect...