Today, mental health conditions are commonly diagnosed. Depression is widespread, and commonly treated with antidepressants. Attention Deficit Disorder is very commonly diagnosed, with stimulants prescribed quite often. Bipolar Disorder is becoming a common mental health diagnosis with medications prescribed frequently.

I have been a Board Certified practicing Psychiatrist for the past twenty years. My current observations are based on years of experience from talking to people diagnosed with these conditions.

I remember many years ago wondering why I was being asked to prescribe medication to children eating fast food and lots of sweets. How was I to tell if these children really had ADD, or were their systems "stressed" from lack of nutrients?

I also wondered about the role of our sedentary lifestyle in the increasing numbers of people diagnosed with mental health conditions. Chlldren seem to watch hours of TV and spend even more time in front of computers and video games. Yet, when we take them from this environment to a mainstream classroom we consider them distractible. But their brains have been programmed to absorb stimuli from TV and computers since they were very young. So are they really distractible, or have their learning circuits not yet been wired to learn traditionally?

And as for adults with sedentary lifestyles, it seems to reason that depression or mood disorder is a consequence.

Of course, many people with healthy lifestyles still suffer from depression, ADD and the like. But are we adequately evaluating the role of lifestyle when we make our diagnosis and prescribe medication?

Talking to literally hundreds of familes is a very humbling process. The more you get to know people the less you really understand. As a clinician, my dilemma was always, does this child or adult need medication? And have all other variables contributing to distractibility or other mental health issue been addressed first?

Another area that is not typically evaluated in a routine doctor's visit is that of exposure to environmental toxins. As a conventional practitioner, I used to believe only small numbers of people were particularly sensitive to the environment.

Pollution is everywhere. How can we think that pollution will not affect our health and well-being, physical or mental?

We usually think of pollution as coming from fumes in the air from cars or factories. It's true, but pollution is far more widespead than that. The plastic liners that we use to feed our infants formula contain toxins. The carpets our babies are crawling on are full of toxins.

How can we think that consistent exposure to toxins, even microtoxins, and lack of nutrition will not have an effect on our children's physical and emotional states? And how about ours?

Last year, several colleagues and I published a study on the effects of nutritional supplements in children with Bipolar Disorder. Out of 15 children, 14 demonstrated considerable improvements with addition of high quality nutritional supplements. All the children were prescribed psychotropic medication. After 6 months of nutritional supplements, their side effect scores dropped from 45.9 to 3.6!

Clearly more scientific research is needed in these areas. But if you are on psychotropic medication, or have a child on psychotropic medication, it would seem prudent to do everything possible to minimize stress in your bodies. That includes eating as healthy as possible. Healthy cells make for healthy bodies.

It also means vigilance around the issue of environmental toxins. In reality, we are all exposed to toxins, more than ever before. Also, cleansing the body with fresh water and quality supplements becomes essential for health maintenance.

Research shows that couples who engage in marriage preparation find the experience highly valuable. Many couples report that they get more than they expect. Couples stated that focusing on communication, commitment, conflict resolution and children was most helpful (Center for Marriage and Family, Creighton University, 1995).

Couples who engage in premarital preparation “feel a higher sense of partnership and report a higher level of adjustment to married life than couples that did not receive marriage education” (Family Relations, April 2003).

People who are happily married get sick less often and live an average four years longer than people who are divorced or unhappily married (Verbrugge & House, University of Michigan).

Marriage education can help set expectations for what is normal in relationships. It allows couples the opportunity to discuss important issues related to their future marriage and teaches them skills that actually aid in divorce prevention and serve to help create healthy, satisfying marriages. Time for Marriage is a one day marriage preparation workshop that offers a supportive environment and framework to address the normal issues and challenges that all couples face in course of their marriage.

Couples who take the class will enter their marriage armed with skills and the confidence that the marriage will not just succeed, but flourish.

Some say belief in a God is necessary for proper mental health although they have no proof of this. In fact those who are the most fundamentalist about God are the most dangerous humans in the World.

Let's take the international terrorists for instance they are very devout and believe in a God, but extremely dangerous and kill innocent people in the name of their God. You see, good people do good things and bad people do bad things and religion unfortunately allows good people to do bad things and use their God to justify.

Therefore all religions are problematic and the cause of most of humans problems. Is proper mental health killing a fellow human being for your God? I think not. In fact for those that believe that it is necessary for proper health to believe in God, I would say that is the biggest bunch of baloney I have ever heard.

Some say the religion gives you a sense of belonging and that is necessary for proper mental health. One individual and met recently said that psychologists and psychiatrists believe this. Unfortunately it is irrelevant what psychologists and psychiatrists believe because half of them are the most screwed up mentally people you have ever met.

In fact in my business I would be careful never to do business with them because they were quite bizarre at times and problematic more often than not. Religion does not guarantee a sense of belonging and nor does the belief in a God. Let's take that BTK murderer who was believed in God and was even part of his Lutheran Church. There are many people who believe in God and commit crimes. What about the lady in Texas, which killed her five kids by drowning them in the bathtub? She believed in God? Well, what happened?

It appears to me that most religions end up screwing people up and causing mental conflict with reality. A belief in a God and a religious background is problematic and it is unhealthy for the mental condition of a human being. It sends a mixed messages and mixed signals.

It makes people week and allows them to rely on a non-existent crutch to get through life. Perhaps all world religions should be banned from first world countries to protect the citizens from purported misrepresentations of nonexistent entities.

Marriage counseling is a process in which two individuals who are married to each other will attempt to solve their problems. Marriage counseling is a new process that did not exist before the end of the 20th century. In the past, most problems within a marriage were handled by family members or leaders. In most developing countries, problems within marriages will be handled by the local elders. However, many of these societies have been exposed to Western culture, and the populations have become composed of nuclear families.

Currently, many marriage counselors are becoming trained to help people with their relationship. One reason that is believed to be a cause for marriage counseling is the rising number of divorces that take place in Western nations. For example, the US currently has one of the highest divorce rates in the world. Many governments and organizations are now becoming involved in this field. The first thing that should be understood about marriage counseling is that everyone has a different personality. Both members of a marriage will often have a value system which may differ from the other.

Because the two members of a marriage may have different value systems, they are prone to getting into conflicts. While the goal of both parties should be to reduce conflicts, this is only one of the many factors that are involved with marriage counseling services. Common problems that are reviewed by marriage counselors include anger, greed, jealousy or ego. In most cases, both members of a marriage may exhibit these traits. Once both members change their perceptions, the problems within the marriage can greatly be reduced.

A good marriage counselor is someone who will listen carefully to both sides of the issues that are being raised, and will create a better understanding between the two members. A lack of communication is a commonly cited problem, and is one of the reasons why many marriages fail. Once the marriage counselor has reviewed the situation between both sides, they can begin offering some practical suggestions that can help solve the problems. Marriage counselors will typically be trained as psychologists. Studies on marriage counseling have shown that it helps most couples who use it. However, a number of couples also decide to terminate their relationship.

Many people hate using marriage counseling services because they will convey a message that their marriage has fallen apart. However, using a marriage counseling service can improve the relationship of those who try it, and it is important to make sure minor problems are resolved before they become serious issues. A number of very successful marriage counselors will often talk to both parties in private. The rising popularity of the internet has allowed some marriage counselors to work with couples from websites. The internet can be useful because it can reduce many of the problems that occur when a marriage counselor is physically present with the couple.

While marriage counseling has successfully worked for the short term, long term studies have indicated that it is not as effective. Many marriage counseling services do not provide information about the success of their services over a number of years, and this is behavior which supports these studies.

When communication between a husband and a wife breaks down, marriage counseling is sometimes sought as a last resort effort to save the marriage. Often, married people think they are seeing the counselor for a particular problem and by the time everything is said and done, they find that what they thought was the problem really wasn’t the problem at all.

Lack of communication is one of the reasons many marriages break up. People in general, not just men and women, don't really understand what the other person is saying to them. Another common problem married couples face, also based on a lack of communication is that they both have different expectations from the marriage and when those expectations don’t line up with each other, conflict arises.

While marriage counseling isn't an instant fix by any means, if the counselor can help both spouses understand where the other is coming from, that can be a big step in the right direction. For example, a common technique that marriage counselors use is mirroring.

Mirroring takes place when, after one spouse has told the other spouse how she feels about something, the spouse who was doing the listening, mirrors, or voices back to the spouse who was doing the talking what he thinks she said.

At this point, the marriage counselor would point out or allow the wife to point out what was actually said, which was not what the husband heard.

Sometimes we hear what the other person never even said and we react on that instead of what they really said. It is in this way that the marriage counselor can facilitate better communication between a husband and a wife.