Diana Denholm can relate to the challenges of being a caregiver. A month after her husband proposed, he was diagnosed with colon cancer.

While he survived the cancer, he was later diagnosed with congestive heart failure. Even after receiving a heart transplant, her husband continued to deteriorate and develop other conditions, including severe osteoarthritis, skin cancer, kidney failure, depression and Parkinson’s disease. Denholm was her husband’s primary caregiver for over a decade.

Even though Denholm, Ph.D, LMHC, is a medical psychotherapist, she felt incredibly unprepared for her role and found little direction for navigating the many stresses and challenges of being a caregiver.

This inspired her to write the book The Caregiving Wife’s Handbook: Caring for Your Seriously Ill Husband, Caring for Yourself, which gives women the practical tools to traverse their day-to-day lives and communicate with their husbands.

Marriage can be challenging — even under the best of circumstances. The fantasy of marriage is that, once you’ve found your soulmate (or at least a good stand-in), everything else is downhill.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

All of the stress (and stressors) of a long-term relationship are magnified when one or more of the people in the relationship is dealing with serious mental health issues, such as depression or bipolar disorder. Mental illness amplifies existing problems, and creates new ones while both people in the marriage cope with trying to also cope with the illness together.

That’s why I’m pleased to bring you our newest blog, A Moody Marriage by Rita Brhel. Rita is a writer and editor, and works for Attachment Parenting International. She married her college sweetheart in 2002 who, at the time, had undiagnosed Attention Deficit Disorder and later developed Rapid-Cycling Bipolar Disorder.

We’re proud to be an exhibitor at Alternatives …

Anybody who’s been an administrator in a community mental health system in America in the past three decades knows the drill. During bust times, state governments actually come close to doing a good job with members of society who are at their most vulnerable. Services are — while never fully-funded — well-funded, and for the most part, there’s enough staff to cover the huge need in communities for mental health care for the poor.

But when budgets tighten, the first place governors look to cut are social services. High on the list of social services to be cut are mental health services, because they are often people intensive. Nevermind that most of those people are poorly trained “aides” or others who often have little direct education or experience with people with mental illness.

Governors and state legislatures do this because they know few people complain when government has to cut services to the poor. Sure, a few advocates and agencies may get up in arms about the cuts, but they quickly get drowned out by the fact that nobody wants their taxes to go up and cuts have to be made somewhere.

So as Massachusetts considers more cuts to mental health services, the New York Times yesterday took a look at a tragic case that occurred earlier this year, when someone who was suffering from schizophrenia allegedly brutally beat and murdered his group home counselor and aide, Stephanie Moulton.

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” — Edmund Burke

“What conditions?” asked Rivera.

“In my building,” responded Wilkins, “there are sixty retarded kids with only one attendant to take care of them.  Most are naked and they lie in their own sh*t.”

This exchange was from a telephone call from Dr. Wilkins, who had been fired from Willowbrook State School in Staten Island, New York. He and a coworker were fired for their concern for the welfare of the inhabitants.  The person they were talking to was a young television reporter: Geraldo Rivera.

On January 6th, 1972, Wilkins and Rivera met at a diner.  Wilkins still had the keys to many buildings, and the plan was set to bring in a camera crew to (illegally) film the inhabitants and their conditions.  On January 10 they entered building No. 6.

In honor of May — mental health month — I wanted to highlight the day those videos were taken because it marks the beginning of the mental health movement in America.  Specifically, who received mental health services and how those services were delivered changed after those videos aired. But the powerful videos taken by Geraldo Rivera weren’t the first time the conditions at Willowbrook were noticed.

As part of May Is Mental Health Awareness Month, many of us here at PsychCentral are participating in a Mental Health Blog Party hosted by the American Psychological Association. Today, May 18, we are all blogging about mental health awareness. Here’s my contribution.

Why do I blog about mental health?

I want to explain to people that depression and other mood disorders aren’t yuppie diseases for folks with the time and resources to ruminate and obsess, that they can be life-threatening illnesses.

That’s right. Depression kills.

As the baby boomers age here in the U.S., they are going to swell the ranks of seniors. And senior care — especially mental health care — is one of the most ignored in America. We act as though seniors don’t matter much, and few health care and mental health care professionals go into specializations, such as geriatric psychology, that can help senior citizens.

Perhaps that will change, with more attention and focus provided on this group of people. Because as we age, we often face many of the same difficulties as we did earlier in life.

Except these difficulties are often amplified, because of the loss of social support — our friends — and isolation — most often from our own family.

The New York Times profiles Marc E. Agronin, M.D., a geriatric psychiatrist to showcase the mental health challenges of our aging population.

I’m pleased to introduce our newest blog, Partners in Wellness by Kate Thieda. This is a blog that is meant to provide information and …

The other day, I had the honor of interviewing Owen Stanley Surman, M.D., a practicing hospital psychiatrist known internationally for his work on psychiatric and ethical aspects of solid organ transplantation.

Following the death of his wife, Dr. Surman devoted six years to writer a memoir, The Wrong Side of an Illness: A Doctor’s Love Story, which includes a deeply personal and unique view of events both tragic and transcendent. He now lives in Boston with his new wife.

Question: What words of wisdom would you give the spouse of a person struggling with chronic illness or terminally ill?

Dr. Surman: Chronic illness and terminal illness have a pervasive impact on how we live our lives and in our sense of identity. Loss of a loved one affects the part of ourselves that has led us to think in terms of “we” vs. “I.”