Funny, I remember reading something related to this. Could it be that if I manage my stress better, my working memory will improve?
Stress, as we know from the 5HTT study Carol was talking about, is complicit in depression. It also figures in anxiety, mania, psychosis, alcohol and substance use, personality disorders, sleep disorders, and all manner of behavior. Could it also be messing with my working memory? I’m not about to wait for the experts to figure it out for me. I’ve got the Mozart playing right now.
An editorial in the March 2004 British Medical Journal cited two Stanford University studies that found that patients who took the trouble to research their illness and to actively manage it had far better outcomes and required less attention than patients who did not. The BMJ referred to these individuals as “expert patients,” and encouraged its professional readership to embrace them with open arms.
“Long live [quite literally, one presumes] expert patients,” the editorial concluded.
Knowledge is power, they say. I go a step farther: Knowledge is necessity. Without knowledge, we are at the mercy of our illness, not to mention the people who purport to help us. Without knowledge, recovery is at best serendipitous. Knowing thyself doesn’t stop when we’ve reached a certain age or read a certain number of books and articles or talked to a certain number of people. It is a life-long process. Effort equals insight. An aha! moment here, a pearl of wisdom there.
Recovery, in turn, is a moving target. No matter how far we have come, we can always be doing better than we are right now. There is always work to be done.
As you can see, I’m still learning.
