Los Angeles Times: Economy got you down? Try new federal website!

Economy got you down? Try new federal website!8:59 AM, March 31, 2009Anxious and depressed about the economy, your finances and, well, your state of anxiety and depression over the economy and your finances? While the $800-billion stimulus package is designed to boost the economy, the Department of Health and Human Services' Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, or SAMHSA, today unveils a new website to boost your mood and help you cope with the psychological effects of unemployment, foreclosure, bankruptcy and financial losses and generalized financial worry (which is not yet characterized as a psychiatric disorder).It's a first-of-its-kind website designed to be one-stop shopping (except that it's free to use)...

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uuworld.org: A religion for hard times

Faith is what’s left when you stop responding to radical uncertainty with panic and denial.By Doug Muder3.30.09Is Unitarian Universalism a religion for hard times?We’re in the process of finding out. Hard times, to paraphrase Thomas Paine, try our souls. They also try our congregations, our theologies, and our faith. Is Unitarian Universalism up to the challenge?In easy times, almost any religion will do. Easy times tempt us to believe we have life under control. When we need to make choices, the conventional wisdom seems more than adequate. If we supplement it with our own research or cleverness or insight, it’s because we’re trying to get ahead, not save our necks. Even life’s unpredictable possibilities seem manageable: We can list them,...

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Psychology Today: Q and A: Irreverence Material

Five questions for comedian John Hodgman.By: Matthew HutsonJohn Hodgman has an answer for everything. What it may lack in veracity, or even sense, it makes up for in staid charm and eccentric pseudointellectualism. You know him as a PC in Apple's hit ad campaign; here the author of The Areas of My Expertise and More Information Than You Require discusses satire, truthiness, and Hobbits.What is the value of fake facts?In both of my books, I have struggled against plain absurdity. Pure non sequiturs have a certain flighty charm to them, but I like some factness with my fakery. Ideally, fake facts help to jostle our imaginations. They remind us how much of actual history is so strange, and novelistic, and practically unbelievable.How similar are...

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McSweeney's Internet Tendency: Emotional State 3A.

EMOTIONAL STATE 3A.BY STEPHEN DAU- - - -It has recently been brought to our attention that some of you are stuck in emotional state 3A, Consumed by Fear. Though we have made a number of announcements recently about the need for an emotional-state change, and had hoped that this would be a relatively smooth and uniform process, we understand that 3A is a particularly robust state and that many of you may need further guidance on how to proceed.You might remember that 3A was invoked, as a purely temporary response, after the Event of Great Magnitude. At the time, it was thought that 3A would be in effect for no longer than a short period, and that it would be at most a medium-term measure. We never intended for 3A to be a long-term solution....

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McSweeney's Internet Tendency:Selected Personals From the American Psychiatric Association's Dating Website.

BY FRANK FERRI- - - -"Home, sweet home"Agoraphobe seeks agoraphobe for long-distance relationship."Touchy, but in a good way"Obsessive-compulsive with need to tap exactly four times any lampshade he passes seeks woman with similar interests for frequent checks of stoves and doors. If you're the one, let's get together for a romantic walk without stepping on any cracks."Waiting, with heart wide open"Claustrophobic female seeks male (age not an issue) with empty 50,000-square-foot warehouse with high ceilings."Needed: perfect foil for my fiery personality"Pyromaniac seeks pyrophobe for possible sitcom."What, me worry? You betcha!"Woman with generalized anxiety disorder looking for someone to share evenings catastrophizing about possible reasons...

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EMax Health: Identification, Characterization Of Sensitive Periods For Neurodevelopment Of Mental Illness

Submitted by ruzik_tuzik on Mar 10th, 2009Identification and characterization of sensitive periods for neurodevelopment of mental illnesses is a new initiative, that will stimulate neurodevelopmental research in humans and animals that will increase our understanding of the neurobiology underlying developmentally sensitive periods for risk, resilience, and intervention.Rationale and DescriptionThe goal of this initiative is to accelerate and stimulate research on sensitive periods (i.e., periods during which the developing brain is maximally sensitive to environmental influences that confer risk or resilience) for the neurodevelopment of mental illness. While brain development may start from a genetic blueprint, it is the overlay of experience...

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Time: Redefining Crazy: Researchers Revise the DSM

Wednesday, Mar. 11, 2009By John CloudIf you wanted to make a list of important books you should read, what would you choose? Anna Karenina, maybe? The Bible? How about the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders?It may not be at the top of your list, but the DSM, as it's usually called, is one of the most important books in the world. It attempts to categorize, describe and give a code number to literally every problem that can occur in your mind, from schizophrenia to borderline personality disorder to something called mathematics disorder, which is essentially being so bad at math that it amounts to a mental problem.The DSM is important not only because it is wildly ambitious but also because mental-health professionals around...

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Speaking of Faith: The Soul In Depression: Poetry for Reflection, Help and Healing

Speaking of Faith: The Soul In Depression Poems by Rainer Maria RilkeIch liebe meines Wesens Dunkelstunden I love the dark hours of my being. My mind deepens into them. There I can find, as in old letters, the days of my life, already lived, and held like a legend, and understood. Then the knowing comes: I can open to another life that's wide and timeless. So I am sometimes like a tree rustling over a gravesite and making real the dream of the one its living roots embrace: a dream once lost among sorrows and songs.Dich wundert nicht des Sturmes Wucht You are not surprised at the force of the storm— you have seen it growing. The trees flee. Their flight sets the boulevards streaming. And you know:...

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Speaking of Faith: The Soul In Depression

The Soul in DepressionFebruary 26, 2009SOF OnDemand:» Download (mp3, 53:09)» Listen Now (RealAudio, 53:09)» PodcastOne in ten Americans, and even more dramatically, about one in four women, will experience clinical depression at some point in their lives. We take an intimate look at the spiritual dimensions of this illness and its aftermath.Program Details * » Particulars an annotated guide to the radio program with readings, images, and links * » Resources * » Books + Music * » Krista's Journal * » Transcript * » Credits» Depression and MeThe vulnerability of revisiting this conversation reminds Krista to embrace "dark times as expressions of human vitality."» Confessions of a Yoga ConvertFor our yoga show, Krista reflects...

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Storied Mind: Why Depressed Men Leave - 2

Written by john on February 21st, 2009Some Rights Reserved by nyki_m at FlickrSome of the comments on the last post in this series hit hard on two issues. First is the question of personal choice: is a man supposed to escape responsibility for destructive behavior by attributing everything to depression? The answer is no! Depression is never an excuse for inflicting pain and loss, breaking up families, violent rages or destructive behavior of any kind. The other compelling question that is asked over and over again, often in desperation, is: What can I do?I’ll try here to deal with both of these issues here rather than put them off to the end of the series, as I had originally planned.1. ResponsibilityWhatever might roil me internally in the...

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Storied Mind: Why Depressed Men Leave - 1

Written by john on February 9th, 2009Why Depressed Men Leave - 1 Written by john on February 9th, 2009 Some Rights Reserved by lepiaf.geo at Flickr About a year ago, I wrote a series of posts about my experience with the fantasies of a better life that often prompt depressed men to leave their families. You can find the first of those stories here, here and here. Those brief pieces tell only a small part of a long and troubling story. To stay in recovery I have to know more, and so I’m starting a new series of posts specifically about why men want to leave, how we change, where we want to go.Read more ...

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Hara Estroff Marano: Buddhism and the Blues

Buddhist psychology's core techniques of meditation and awareness may have much to offer ordinary Westerners.By: Hara Estroff MaranoTo most people Buddhism is an ancient Eastern religion, although a very special one. It has no god, it has no central creed or dogma and its primary goal is the expansion of consciousness, or awareness.But to the Dalai Lama, it's a highly refined tradition, perfected over the course of 2,500 years, of analyzing and investigating the inner world of the mind in order to transform mental states and promote happiness. "Whether you are a believer or not in the faith," the Dalai Lama told a conference of Buddhists and scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, you can use its time-honored techniques to...

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Anger in the Age of Entitlement: Uncertainty Is Your Friend, Part III: Emotions Are All of the Above

By Steven Stosny in Anger in the Age of Entitlement All available evidence suggests that the brain has enormous flexibility to do a lot of different things at one time. Mental focus is hard because it forces the brain to concentrate its resources, something it is naturally inclined to do only with the prospect of reward or in the face of threat.Read M...

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Anger in the Age of Entitlement: Uncertainty is Your Friend, Part II: Testing the Illusion of Certainty about Emotions

By Steven Stosny in Anger in the Age of Entitlement There's a famous story about the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein watching a sunset with a student and marveling about how anyone could have believed that the sun revolved around the earth.Read M...

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Anger in the Age of Entitlement: Uncertainty is Your Friend, Part I

By Steven Stosny in Anger in the Age of Entitlement A number of years ago the dean of a leading medical school opened the commencement ceremonies with a message to the newly graduated physicians, "Fifty percent of what we taught you is wrong.Read M...

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In Practice: Fuhgeddaboudit

By Peter D. Kramer in In Practice If we had a drug that could erase bad memories, should we use it? That was the question the press extracted from an arguably limited set of observations reported in an on-line article in Nature Neuroscience.You've probably heard about the experiment. A trio of Dutch researchers showed normal subjects photos of spiders, accompanying one image with an electric shock. The next day, the scientiest re-presented the images, with or without pre-administering the subjects an anti-adrenalin drug, propranolol. Down the road, those who had taken propranolol were less likely to startle when exposed to a loud noise in the presence of an offending picture. The conclusion was that the drug interfered with the consolidation...

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Urban Mindfulness: Mindfulness and the Financial Crisis

By Jonathan Kaplan, Ph.D. in Urban Mindfulness Here in the city (and all over the country), anxiety about the financial crisis is palpable and omnipresent. Thousands of people, especially within the financial services industry, have been losing their jobs. Real estate construction and development have slowed or ceased, while home sales plummet. Retail businesses and restaurants have been doing poorly too as many of us cope with a decrease in income by reducing our spending.How can mindfulness help?Mindfulness can help by reducing our suffering in a very painful situation. The financial crisis has a negative effect on our home finances, savings, and fulfillment of some life dreams (at least temporarily). This is our current reality--and it...

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The Human Experience: Emotional Hunger Vs. Love

By Robert Firestone, Ph.D.  in The Human Experience Emotional hunger is not love. It is a strong emotional need caused by deprivation in childhood. It is a primitive condition of pain and longing which people often act out in a desperate attempt to fill a void or emptiness. This emptiness is related to the pain of aloneness and separateness and can never realistically be fully satisfied in an adult relationship. Yet people refuse to bear their pain and to face the futility of gratifying these primitive needs and dependency. They deny the fact of their own ultimate death and do everything in their power to create an illusion that they are connected to other persons. This fantasy of belonging to another person allays the anxiety about death...

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Telegraph.co.uk: Florence Nightingale 'might never have succeeded with modern stigma against mental illness'

She became world-famous as the saviour of countless lives and the inventor of modern nursing, but a new report suggests that Florence Nightingale might never have been able to transform hospitals if she had to combat today's stigma against mental illness. By Kate Devlin, Medical CorrespondentLast Updated: 3:48PM GMT 10 Feb 2009 The document, co-written by Alastair Campbell, the former Government spin doctor, also questions whether a modern politician could reach the top of their profession suffering from Winston Churchill's "black dog" of depression. And it queries whether the ideas of other leading figures, including Charles Darwin, Marie Curie and Abraham Lincoln, would be ignored in today's society, which the report found was...

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Sustainablog: Is Climate Change Making Us Mental?

Written by Robin Shreeves Published on February 11th, 2009If you were to click on my bio here for Sustainablog, you’d see that I started down this green path because my son who was six at the time had read about global warming and gave us the “what for” over the SUV we owned. We joke now with him that he was the one that got this whole thing started for our family, yet at times he seems, at almost ten years old, the least interested in the environment. In a way, that may be a good thing.The Boston Globe reported that climate change takes a mental toll, and that children and adults alike are starting to have “psychosis or anxiety disorders focused on climate change.” Children especially “are having nightmares about global-warming-related...

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San Jose Mercury News: Lawmakers debate mental health cuts

By CATHY BUSSEWITZ Associated Press WriterPosted: 02/12/2009 04:27:26 PM PSTCARSON CITY, Nev.—Lawmakers challenged major cuts in the state's mental health services on Thursday, saying they won't agree to reductions that would jeopardize the health and safety of Nevada communities.Gov. Jim Gibbons has proposed closing 11 of the state's 21 rural mental health clinics, and increasing the number of patients per staff member at mental health facilities in Reno and Las Vegas.While overall human services spending, about a third of the state's general funds, for the coming two fiscal years is up, funding for mental health services would decrease 5 percent, to $473 million."Several of us took vows that we would never support reductions again," said...

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The Buffalo News: Hard times are pushing many into mental illness

By Deidre WilliamsNEWS STAFF REPORTERIt’s all weighing pretty heavily on Barbara Smith, a widowed grandmother who lives in the Black Rock section of Buffalo.She fears layoffs are coming soon at her job a local nonprofit agency. That’s on top of the hours that were cut recently at her part-time job at a local florist.And don’t forget the weather: the very cold, very snowy past weeks, followed by a couple of days of warming, then 60 -mph winds and wet snow that knocked out power to more than 50,000 homes and businesses.“I guess the news is bad for everybody,” Smith said, “and it just seems to get worse.”All this contributes to what experts call the new face of mental illness.Doom and gloom seem to have dominated the news lately.Consider the headlines:•...

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Monkey See: Valentine's Day Un-Romances

by Linda HolmesI have a long history with romantic movies of all kinds. Goopy musicals, kicky-girl rom-coms, masterpieces of banter -- you name it, and I've probably fallen for it at one time or another. Unfortunately, the older one gets, the more some of these fall apart, and the more others don't work at all. I give you five (of many) Un-Romances. Be warned: all descriptions contain spoilers.1. Jerry Maguire This really pains me, because I thought this was a terribly touching story the first time I saw it. As much as "you complete me" and "you had me at hello" are now as dessicated as "Show me the money!" there was a time when they seemed like sort of nifty things for people to say to each other. Of course...I was 25.Why it's an...

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NYTimes: Coffee Linked to Lower Dementia Risk

   By NICHOLAS BAKALARDrinking coffee may do more than just keep you awake. A new study suggests an intriguing potential link to mental health later in life, as well.A team of Swedish and Danish researchers tracked coffee consumption in a group of 1,409 middle-age men and women for an average of 21 years. During that time, 61 participants developed dementia, 48 with Alzheimer’s disease.After controlling for numerous socioeconomic and health factors, including high cholesterol and high blood pressure, the scientists found that the subjects who had reported drinking three to five cups of coffee daily were 65 percent less likely to have developed dementia, compared with those who drank two cups or less. People who drank more than five...

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Canine Corner: Dogs as Therapists

By Stanley Coren, Ph.D. in Canine Corner On January 11, 2009 Mickey Rourke won the Golden Globe Award for best actor for his performance in Darren Aronofsky's "The Wrestler." When actors give acceptance speeches for such awards it is quite common for them to thank God and their family for the win, but Mickey Rourke thanked his dogs. If it had not been for the therapeutic effects of his relationship with his dogs, Mickey Rourke might not have been alive to accept this award. In the film, "The Wrestler," Rourke plays the part of Randy "The Ram" Robinson, a professional wrestler who is now well past his prime, holding on to the remains of a once-famous career, and presented with the opportunity for a comeback. These are circumstances that...

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FOXNews.com - Clinically Depressed Poodle Mauls Former French President Chirac

Thursday , January 22, 2009Former French President Jacques Chirac was rushed to a hospital after being mauled by his pet dog who is being treated for depression, in a dramatic incident that rattled the ex-president's wife.The couple's white Maltese poodle, called Sumo, has a history of frenzied fits and became increasingly prone to making "vicious, unprovoked attacks" despite receiving treatment with anti-depressants, Chirac's wife Bernadette said."If you only knew! I had a dramatic day yesterday," she told VSD magazine. "Sumo bit my husband!"Mrs. Chirac, 74, did not reveal where the former president was bitten, but said, "the dog went for him for no apparent reason.""We were aware the animal was unpredictable and is being treated with pills...

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Beyond Blue: I, Too, Have a Dream

Monday January 19, 2009I have a dream that one day I won't hold my breath every time I tell a person that I suffer from bipolar disorder, that I won't feel shameful in confessing my mental illness.I have a dream that people won't feel the need to applaud me for my courage on writing and speaking publicly about my disease, because the diagnosis of depression and bipolar disorder would be understood no differently than that of diabetes, arthritis, or dementia.I have a dream that the research into genetics of mood disorders will continue to pinpoint specific genes that may predispose individuals and families to depression and bipolar disorder (like the gene G72/G30, located on chromosome 13q), just as specific genes associated with schizophrenia...

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