Wednesday, April 1, 2009

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


Los Angeles Times
Economy got you down? Try new federal website!
8:59 AM, March 31, 2009


Anxious 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) for information and resources on how to protect, sustain and improve your mental health in the midst of economic hardship.

As you've no doubt read in the L.A. Times Health section, economic troubles can increase your risk for a wide range of psychological ills, including substance abuse, compulsive behaviors such as over-eating, excessive gambling, buying too much and, of course, depression, anxiety and thoughts of suicide. The SAMHSA website lays out warning signs for those and other psychological adjustment problems, and offers advice -- based on the latest research -- on how to cope with them and where to go to seek help.

SAMHSA's acting director, Eric Broderick, explains in a news release that "by helping people remain resilient, we can help promote the overall recovery of our nation." The idea that the government wants to help its citizens with their mental health needs drew jeers of derision from conservative quarters, which promptly dubbed the website a stalking horse for the "nanny state."

What do you think? Should a government agency worry about your state of worry over the economy?

-- Melissa Healy


Monday, March 30, 2009

uuworld.org: A religion for hard times



uuworld.org: liberal religion and life


Faith is what’s left when you stop responding to radical uncertainty with panic and denial.

By Doug Muder
3.30.09


Is 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, assign probabilities to them, and perhaps even take out insurance—without the slightest worry that the insurance company might fail.

An easy-time religion can even be generous and helpful in an easy-going way. We can stand up for the poor without worrying that we might join them. We can comfort the dying without facing our own deaths.

Hard times force us to remember what uncertainty really is. Life is not like roulette—its possibilities spaced evenly around a wheel, our chips stacked neatly in front of us, our bets depending only on our choices and calculations. Sometimes life is more like being lost in the woods at night, wondering not just whether this is the right trail, but whether it is actually a trail at all.

All around us now, people are facing situations they never imagined. They’re losing jobs they expected to retire from, losing homes they thought their grandchildren would visit someday. Nest eggs that once seemed to guarantee a comfortable old age—invested in apparently safe and steady companies like AIG or Citicorp or General Motors—have shattered like Humpty Dumpty. Promises made with love and confidence—“you just get the grades and let me worry about paying for college”—can’t be kept.

Helping such people deal with their new situations is an enormous practical problem for our congregations, many of which are facing their own pressures from lowered contributions and shrinking endowments. But while we must never turn away from nitty-gritty concerns, I think it’s important that we not get lost in them and miss the bigger picture. Facing the uncertainty of life is fundamentally a religious problem, not just a practical problem. Hard times don’t just call for help, they call for faith.





The wake-up call I received from the financial crisis—my personal reminder that I don’t have life tied up in a neat bow—was comparatively mild. Shortly after the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy last fall, my money market fund notified its shareholders that it would be returning our money—most of it—on its schedule, not ours. Six months later, the fund’s liquidation is still incomplete.

In a theoretical sense I had known this possibility, but it was the last thing I expected. I had thought of that account like a stack of twenties under my mattress. It was my security blanket, my what-if money. But I wasn’t prepared for this what-if: What if one of the oldest and most respected money-market funds in the business goes under?

That splash of cold water made all the other bad news real to me: triple-A companies bankrupt, trillions of dollars lost, millions of jobs gone. Each day seemed to bring a headline more awful and unimaginable than the last. I have no idea what can and can’t happen, I realized. I thought I did, but I don’t.

I pride myself on being a reasonable person, but that kind of uncertainty is not a job for reason alone. Reason helps you manage your knowledge and figure out how to apply it. But once you’ve had the thought that totally unexpected things can happen on a totally unexpected scale, you need more than Mr. Spock and his logic. You need faith.


Faith is a difficult word for many Unitarian Universalists. Like God or soul or love, it repels definition. In The Devil’s Dictionary, Ambrose Bierce defined faith as “belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.” Sam Harris also adopted the “belief without evidence” definition in The End of Faith. No wonder he wanted to declare an end to it.

But the kind of faith I’m talking about is not an attachment to some supernatural order of facts. It is a way of living in the present, closer to a mindset or an attitude than a belief. Like any experience—like sweet or red or comfortable—faith can’t be grasped through a definition. All you can do is describe situations where the experience might be had, and hope that those who have had it will recognize it. I can’t even do that directly. The best I can manage is to start with a situation—radical uncertainty—and peel away the more common reactions—panic and denial. Faith is what’s left.

Panic is the most obvious reaction to that feeling of being lost in the woods. That’s actually where the word comes from: the Greek panikon, meaning “pertaining to Pan.” Pan was the god of wild places, the unmapped, uncharted regions where strange creatures might lurk and none of the familiar rules or patterns necessarily applied. It may seem odd to think of Pan roaming the floors of stock exchanges or the virtual worlds of credit default swap markets, but in a sense he does. We used to describe all financial crises as panics, until our leaders decided that depression sounded less alarming.

The simplest way to avoid panic is denial: Tell yourself nothing is wrong. You aren’t off the map, or you’ll be back on it any second now. Stuff like this happens to you all the time. Not a problem. All part of the plan.

Just about every religion tells you not to panic, but religion and denial have an ambiguous relationship. What some people call faith—the kind of faith rightfully rejected by Bierce and Harris—is a way to prop up denial, not transcend it. We put aside uncertainty by claiming God’s certainty as our own. God’s plan is not a mystery to which we must adjust ourselves, it is our plan copied over in God’s handwriting. And so the Almighty becomes an agent carrying out our will rather than the other way around. Of course God will cure our loved ones’ diseases, save our factories, restore the value of our 401(k)s, or stave off disaster in some other miraculous way. How could S/He not?

Many of the people most hostile to religion today are the disappointed veterans of such denial-enhancing theologies. “I hate it when people say prayer works,” says one of the anonymous postcards of the Post Secret Project (which I described in an earlier column), “because it didn’t when I was begging God to save my baby’s life.”

Humanism and secularism can prop up denial too, when their beliefs become too sweeping, too certain, or too optimistic. Excessive confidence in progress, evolution, or the human spirit can close our eyes to real uncertainty. The arc of the universe may indeed bend towards justice, but that doesn’t guarantee that any particular justice-seeking effort will succeed, no matter how ardently and sincerely we pursue it. And letting ourselves imagine that science’s map is complete—that questions with no answers need never be asked at all—is yet another way of denying Pan his due.

Faith is something else, a third experience of moving through Pan’s domain. A way seems to open up and you take it. You have no guarantees of where it will lead you, only the confidence that you are doing what you can do, and that you will be able to accept the consequences, whatever they turn out to be.

No religion holds the patent on faith. Christianity describes it as “trusting God.” In Buddhism it’s “action without attachment to outcome.” Twelve-steppers are pointing to that emerging path through Pan’s woods when they say: “One day at a time.” The lives of many Humanists, some of whom never use the word faith, are inspiring testimonies to their faith in truth and conscience.

Our actions may succeed, they may fail, or they may be completely irrelevant when the hurricane comes. If you know that and act anyway, confidently and yet with total awareness that anything at all can happen—that’s what I’m calling faith. That—not denial—is what people need from a religion in hard times.

Does Unitarian Universalism provide, support, or engender that kind of faith?

It can, but it doesn’t always. We’re good at popping bubbles of denial. But if that’s all we do, we’ll just send people back to panic.

Our congregations are full of faithful people, people who have survived not just financial setbacks, but also illness, betrayal, the death of loved ones, the failure of plans long crafted, and every other kind of hardship life can muster. Many have come through with their eyes open and their heads high.

Now is the time for such people to testify—time for all of us to testify about our experiences of faith, however large or small they might be. Not to spread false confidence, not to reassure each other that everything will work out the way we want, but to tell our stories of what has kept us going and what keeps us going today—even though we can’t be sure where this path through the woods will lead.




Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Psychology Today: Q and A: Irreverence Material

Psychology Today: Here To Help
Five questions for comedian John Hodgman.

By: Matthew Hutson



John 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 you to your persona?

I bear an uncanny resemblance to myself. Obviously, I am named John Hodgman, and the details revealed about my life in my books always have one foot in the truth. Or at least a peg leg.

Where does your children's expertise trump yours?


They know a lot more about my neighbors than I do, for the common playdate allows the child access to other people's apartments and private lives that no adult will ever enjoy. In fact, it seems to me that children would make very good private investigators.

In which domains do you know more information than you require?

For a brief time in the early 2000s, being able to quickly name the three races of Hobbits was a handy skill that made you popular at parties. That is all over now, so I could probably free up some brain space there. But the truth is, I can never get enough information about invented, whole worlds. Including the whole world.

Your delivery is famously dry. Do you ever crack yourself up?

I find it to be comedically unethical to laugh at your own jokes on stage. But I probably feel so strongly because it happens pretty frequently lately, and I am ashamed. My deadpan needs re-deadening (see my new book, on the various historical styles of deadpan). But the reverse is true when writing. If my brain can fool myself into a surprised chuckle, my guess is that it can also fool you.


McSweeney's Internet Tendency: Emotional State 3A.


Timothy McSweeney's Header Image

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. That said, it has become obvious that some of you have been unable to extricate yourselves from state 3A, despite our continued suggestions that you do so, and, thus, are attempting to function in an emotional state that does not efficiently deal with our current reality.

It has been found that an incremental approach may prove fruitful. Perhaps it would be helpful at this time for us to make some specific suggestions of alternative states you may want to explore, as a way of gradually distancing yourself from 3A. Our studies indicate that good first steps might be 5E, Generally Fearful; 10B, Apprehensive; or 11C, Jittery. (Check your manuals for appropriate definitions.) Again, these would only be stopgap measures, methods for moving slowly away from 3A and toward one of the currently recommended emotional states, such as 75D, Cautiously Guarded; 78A, Vaguely Alert; or even 105M, Mildly Optimistic.

Some of you may be tempted to try to go cold turkey, as it were, and plunge directly from emotional state 3A into one of the recommended states in the 70s or 80s. Though such efforts are not unheard of, we would emphasize that nearly all the known successful attempts have been conducted in laboratory settings, and that the procedure is rarely successful in real-world situations. That said, if you remain determined, we have made available a number of pamphlets outlining the generally accepted research in this area.

Please be aware that we are by no means recommending that you try to go anywhere near emotional state 800A, Calmly Focused; 805B, Gently Aware; or any of their associated states. As you probably know, these are advanced states that require a great deal of practice, and, depending on your region, there may be licensing requirements. These states should only be attempted by trained professionals operating in controlled conditions.

This brings us to the subject of unauthorized emotional states. As you may know, we have received multiple reports of unauthorized emotional states, many of them emanating from Sector 2 (not that we are pointing any fingers!), and we find ourselves Troubled (53B). Therefore, this may be a good opportunity to review some of the basic tenets of the Emotional State Paradigm, as agreed to at the 11th General Council, many of which relate directly to the aforementioned occurrences.

Emotional state 485G, Wild Abandon, is officially reserved for weddings and public holidays, with significant leeway given for personal triumphs. The same goes for 430A, Effusive Joy; 430B, Elation; and 437C, Overwhelming Glee. (Again, see your manuals for definitions.) Although the decision to officially sanction these emotional states was regarded by some at the time as controversial, it was seen as a necessary precaution in the wake of the High-Level Hoax (remember how that turned out?) and, though carefully regulated, these states are now standard.

Given the large number of reports of recent instances of officially controlled emotional states, we would like to recommend some viable options for those of you wishing to express a more vibrant point of view. For those of you tempted to exhibit 485G, Wild Abandon, may we suggest 375B, Moderate Giddiness? This would provide the necessary irreverence of 485G but without the inherent danger. Another viable alternative might be 493E, General Excitability, which provides a similar adrenal rush but in more controllable doses. We have also seen success with 487C, Wholehearted Enthusiasm. Whatever method of substitution you choose to pursue, the main thing to keep in mind is that moderation is the key.

We are living in tumultuous times, which have obviously proved challenging, both for those of you striving to return from previously used emotional states that are no longer desirable and for those tempted into unauthorized states as a result of the recent, broadly perceived changes. Our goal is to be encouraging, not prescriptive, and punitive only in the face of the most egregious violations. We draw your attention to the large number of publicly available resources existent to help you through this period, and, as always, we remain humbly at your service.

- - - -


Wednesday, March 11, 2009

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


Timothy McSweeney's Header Image





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 why my mother hasn't returned my voicemail, which I left almost an hour ago. If your mind goes straight to car accident, fell down a well, or mistook her car for a time machine, traveled to the late 1600s, and became a victim of the Salem witch trials, then you and I need to talk. Talk ourselves into a panic, that is!

"Fuck you"

Good-looking guy with Tourette's looking for—fucking asshole bitch motherfucker—soul mate with passion for fine wine—douchebag shit fuck—and antiquing.

"Don't sweat the small stuff—keep it!"


Recently divorced compulsive hoarder seeks male with a lot of love—and even more stuff. Must be willing to move in with me immediately. Interests include shopping for unnecessary items, refusing to throw away outdated newspapers, and keeping receipts from the 1950s.

"Don't mock me"

Love to laugh? Then you're not my type. Female katagelophobe seeks female geliophobe for serious, no-nonsense relationship.

"The more the merrier"

Male frotteur in search of tightly packed crowd of women.

"Come on, Daddy needs a new friend!"

Easygoing compulsive gambler in search of male or female for friendship. Must be financially independent and have an excellent line of credit. Desire to travel a must—specifically, to places like Macau, Las Vegas, A.C., and Vicksburg, Mississippi. Roll the dice and find a true friend. Age doesn't matter, but if you're 21, that could be good luck.

"What is this for again?"

Female with adult attention-deficit disorder seeks male for—look at that bird! What is that? An egret? I love their long necks.

"I'm not worthy"

Guy with self-defeating personality disorder thinks he's funny but isn't. Seeking alcohol-free/drug-free female. Must be willing to treat me poorly, undermine any happiness I may experience, and stop me if I'm about to accomplish something I could potentially be proud of.

"Drink me in"


Alcoholic male has thirst for female enabler for long-term co-dependent relationship.

"Nothing to hide"


Disinhibited 48-year-old, 142-pound woman with hemorrhoids, herpes, a penchant for one-night stands with random men, and a history of cheating on her taxes seeks equally overly self-disclosing male to co-host dinner parties with. Together we can make our guests excruciatingly uncomfortable with our unfiltered conversation. Last two hubbies died. Mysteriously.

"Night and day, day and night"


Nyctophobe seeks photophobe for fun battles over the light switch.

"R-E-S-P-E-C-T"


Dominant woman seeking Stockholm-syndrome-prone male. Contact me and I'll capture your heart.

"We're connected"

Person with dissociative identity disorder seeks you, you, and you. Or is it me, me, and me? Doesn't matter. We're meant for each other. Call me. I just did. Great, let's set up a date. Sounds good. Must be Jewish. I am. Great, this is going well.

"Oh, you're going to wear that?
No, no, that looks nice. Really, it does"


Passive-aggressive woman seeks marriage-ready male. I enjoy purposely taking too long to get ready and making us late for reservations. I'm great at "forgetting" to do important tasks, such as mailing in mortgage payments, thus damaging our credit scores just because I won't come out and tell you that I don't like the long hours you work.

"You're not the one for me"


Lonely lady with avoidant personality disorder seeks no one to interact with, share love with, or grow old with.

- - - -


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

Submitted by ruzik_tuzik on Mar 10th, 2009


Identification 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 Description


The 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 that shapes development and leads to either normal function or pyschopathology.

We have limited knowledge of either the timing and specificity of sensitive periods in humans or the neurobiological trajectories in mental disorders. By increasing research focused on sensitive periods in behaviors related to mental health, the field will make exponential progress in the treatment of mental illness. Furthermore, with more fundamental information on sensitive periods in humans, we can develop more specific and focused hypotheses about mechanisms to be tested in preclinical animal models. Therefore, the potential advances gained from this initiative are essential for the ultimate understanding, prevention, and cure of mental disorders.

Read more here ...



Time: Redefining Crazy: Researchers Revise the DSM


Wednesday, Mar. 11, 2009
By John Cloud


If 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 the world have adopted its classification system. In the U.S., it is virtually impossible to get reimbursed by an insurance company for treatment unless a mental-health professional identifies your condition by a DSM diagnosis number. (The DSM code number for mathematics disorder, if you were wondering, is 315.1. The code for Tourette syndrome is 307.23; the code for sexual sadism is 302.84. As I said, the DSM tries to cover everything.) (See the top 10 medical breakthroughs of 2008.)

The American Psychiatric Association (APA), which owns the DSM, is in the process of rewriting the book, which was first published in 1952. The DSM-V, as the fifth edition will be called, is set to be published in 2012. But the process of researching it began way back in 1999 — five years after the publication of the last major revision, the DSM-IV — meaning the new book's production will take 13 years overall. (Read "How We Get Labeled By the DSM.")

Why so long? Last week, a research organization called the American Psychopathological Association (which goes by the acronym APPA, to distinguish it from the APA) brought many of the key players in the development of the DSM-V to a New York City conference to discuss some of the reasons the writing of the book is so complicated.

One obvious reason is that so many people have a stake in what the world defines as crazy and what it calls normal. Famously, homosexuality was listed as a DSM condition until a 1974 vote among APA members to remove it. Other groups of mental-health professionals and patients want certain disorders to be added (and covered by insurance): sexual compulsivity, for instance, is not in the DSM, even though "sexual aversion disorder" (302.79) — the persistent and distressing avoidance of genital contact not explained by another disorder such as depression — is included. (Read an interview with an author who has bipolar disorder.)

Debates about what should and shouldn't be in the DSM are fascinating and often bitter, and as I have pointed out before, the book makes at least one fundamental error in the way it conceives of mental problems: it ignores causes almost entirely. If you feel sad and tired for a couple of months, have trouble sleeping and making decisions, and gain weight, you can be given a DSM diagnosis of depression (296.31 or 296.32, mild or moderate, recurrent) and prescribed drugs for it — even if the reason for your funk is that you just lost your job. Such physiological responses as insomnia are evolutionarily natural (and sometimes helpful, in a jump-starting sort of way) when you go through a trauma like losing your job. But according to the DSM, only perfect is considered normal. Another basic problem with the DSM: it tries to reduce the vastly complex experiences of your mind to a single number.

At last week's conference, there were tantalizing hints that the DSM-V might fix some of these problems. Dr. Steven Hyman, provost of Harvard, a former psychiatry professor at its medical school and former director of the National Institute of Mental Health, agitated at the meeting for a new DSM framework that would stop trying to divide mental problems into discrete all-or-nothing categories. That method works for some medical problems — you either have leukemia or you don't — but depression, for instance, doesn't work like that. (Read "Why Do the Mentally Ill Die Younger?")

Rather, Hyman argued that many mental illnesses are problems that lie along a continuum from normal and functioning to disordered and tragic. To the annoyance of some old-fashioned DSM defenders, he made the case that the DSM should regard mental illness as "continuous with normal": less like leukemia and more like hypertension. You don't get diagnosed with hypertension until you meet a cut-off point for high blood pressure that takes into account other extenuating factors: your age, for instance, or the conditions under which the blood-pressure reading is taken. Depression should be the same: if you are sad because you just got divorced, the DSM shouldn't necessarily consider you to have an illness.

Such a diagnostic model wouldn't be simple, though, which is one reason the DSM is taking 13 years to rewrite. And in the meantime, the book still has to be useful to everyday clinicians seeing patients who need a code number for insurance companies. "It's like wondering how you repair the airport while the planes are still flying," Hyman said at the conference.

Hyman noted that medical problems, whether in the mind or in the body or both, are usually caused by some combination of genes, environment, behavior and chance. Despite the comforting modern notion that severe psychological illnesses are simply due to an unfortunate genetic inheritance, it is the exceedingly rare mental condition caused only by genes (Rett syndrome is one example.) Rather, if you take something like generalized anxiety disorder (300.02), there may be a variety of causes that set it off: genes that cause excessive activity in the fear-producing part of the brain called the amygdala; a stressful job that stimulates that activity; engaging in a dumb behavior like having an affair that exacerbates your anxiety; then randomly getting into an anxiety-heightening situation like a car accident. The DSM has to try to account for all of that complexity — causes, effects, unintended consequences — and still be definitive.

Hyman said in an interview that one way the DSM currently handles this complexity is to have what he called a "wastebasket" diagnosis called "not otherwise specified" (NOS), which captures just about anything that doesn't easily fit the categorical model. One major problem with the NOS diagnosis: pretty much anyone can qualify for a diagnosis that, by definition, is not specified. A 2005 American Journal of Psychiatry paper found that nearly half of a group of 859 people who sought psychological help in Rhode Island could be considered to have a DSM personality disorder if diagnosticians were allowed to include the "not otherwise specified" option. Another problem: how do you adequately treat patients whose illness is unspecified?

A continuum model like the one Hyman proposes could help solve this problem by recognizing that people aren't always one thing or another. They're sometimes just a little depressed, or a little anxious. To avoid medicalizing normal stress, the DSM-V would set a cut-off point within the spectrum. Of course, determining the right cut-off point for the DSM's 350 illnesses would take an enormous research effort, one that has begun for some disorders like depression but likely hasn't even been thought about for rare problems like sexual sadism.

Other attendees at the APPA conference indicated that the new DSM will almost certainly adopt a continuum model for mental illnesses. But don't be surprised if the book doesn't come out as scheduled in 2012. If the three-day conference came to any solid conclusion, it was that totting up all the ways our minds can fail is a lot harder than, say, explaining why your appendix might burst.


Sunday, March 1, 2009

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

Speaking of Faith: The Soul In Depression

Poems by Rainer Maria Rilke


Ich 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:
he whom they flee is the one
you move toward. All your senses
sing him, as you stand at the window.

The weeks stood still in summer.
The trees' blood rose. Now you feel
it wants to sink back
into the source of everything. You thought
you could trust that power
when you plucked the fruit;
now it becomes a riddle again,
and you again a stranger.

Summer was like your house: you knew
where each thing stood.
Now you must go out into your heart
as onto a vast plain. Now
the immense loneliness begins.

The days go numb, the wind
sucks the world from your senses like withered
     leaves.

Through the empty branches the sky remains.
It is what you have.
Be earth now, and evensong.
Be the ground lying under that sky.
Be modest now, like a thing
ripened until it is real,
so that he who began it all
can feel you when he reaches for you.

Poems by Anita Barrows


Questo muro


Quando mi vide star pur fermo e duro
turbato un poco disse: "Or vedi figlio:
tra Beatrice e te è questo muro."

(When he [Virgil] saw me standing there unmoving,
he was a bit disturbed and said, "Now look, son,
between Beatrice and you there is this wall.")
       -Dante, Purgatorio XXVII


You will come at a turning of the trail
to a wall of flame

After the hard climb & the exhausted dreaming

you will come to a place where he
with whom you have walked this far
will stop, will stand

beside you on the treacherous steep path
& stare as you shiver at the moving wall, the flame

that blocks your vision of what
comes after. And that one
who you thought would accompany you always,

who held your face
tenderly a little while in his hands—
who pressed the palms of his hands into drenched grass
& washed from your cheeks the soot, the tear-tracks—

he is telling you now
that all that stands between you
& everything you have known since the beginning

is this: this wall. Between yourself
& the beloved, between yourself & your joy,
the riverbank swaying with wildflowers, the shaft

of sunlight on the rock, the song.
Will you pass through it now, will you let it consume

whatever solidness this is
you call your life, & send
you out, a tremor of heat,

a radiance, a changed
flickering thing?


Heart Work


Monday. Bronze sunlight
on the worn gray rug
in the dining room where Viva sits
playing her recorder. Pain-ripened sunlight

I nearly wrote, like the huge
vine-ripened tomato
my friend brought yesterday
from her garden, to add to our salad:
meaning what comes

in its time to its own
end, then breaks
off easily, needing no more
from summer.

The notes
of some medieval dance
spill gracefully from the stream
of Viva's breath. Something
that had been stopped

is beginning to move: a leaf
driven against rock
by a current
frees itself, finds its way again
through moving water. The angle of light

is low, but still it fills
this space we're in. What interrupts me

is sometimes an abundance. My sorrow too,
which grew large through summer
feels to me this morning

as though if I touched it
where the thick dark stem

is joined to the root, it would release itself
whole, it would be something I could use.


"Back" by Jane Kenyon

We try a new drug, a new combination
of drugs, and suddenly
I fall into my life again

like a vole picked up by a storm
then dropped three valleys
and two mountains away from home.

I can find my way back. I know
I will recognize the store
where I used to buy milk and gas.

I remember the house and barn,
the rake, the blue cups and plates,
the Russian novels I loved so much,

and the black silk nightgown
that he once thrust
into the toe of my Christmas stocking.


Speaking of Faith: The Soul In Depression

The Soul in Depression
February 26, 2009

SOF OnDemand:
» Download (mp3, 53:09)
» Listen Now (RealAudio, 53:09)
» Podcast

One 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 Me

The vulnerability of revisiting this conversation reminds Krista to embrace "dark times as expressions of human vitality."

» Confessions of a Yoga Convert
For our yoga show, Krista reflects on the impact of her own practice in dealing with depression — and how it liberated her to see value in the graceful transitioning and not just the outcome.

» The First Breath After a Coma

If you've had a long day and are looking for a moment of reflection, watch Carolina LaBranche's lovely two-minute homage to her mother.


We had to cut these three interviews down quite a bit to fold them into one program. Hear each conversation in full and uncut, and let us know what you think of our edits.
» Unedited Interview with Palmer (mp3, 56:54)
» Unedited Interview with Solomon (mp3, 45:57)
» Unedited Interview with Barrows (mp3, 59:49)


Poetry for Reflection, Help, and Healing


» Rainer Maria Rilke
Translations of the two poems recited by Anita Barrows.

» Anita Barrows
Texts of "Questo muro" and "Heartwork."

» Jane Kenyon
Read "Back" cited by Solomon

» Psalms of the Old Testament
Helpful examples for meditation during and after depression.

» William Shakespeare
Passage from The Winter's Tale.


Solomon is author of The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression, which won the National Book Award in 2001.


Palmer is an educator, activist, and author of Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation.


Barrows is a poet and psychologist, and translator of Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God.




Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Storied Mind: Why Depressed Men Leave - 2

Written by john on February 21st, 2009

womanboldeyes-nyki_m450

Some Rights Reserved by nyki_m at Flickr

Some 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. Responsibility

Whatever might roil me internally in the midst of this condition doesn’t change or lessen my responsibility for the harm my behavior is causing. My wife hasn’t kept silent but has confronted me whenever she needed to about what I was doing to our relationship and everything I was putting at risk. Hearing that from her was not enough by itself to shatter the power of denial, but it was essential to be confronted with the facts of her feelings. That truth needs to get through the layers of depressive self-absorption and isolation in order for recovery to begin, but it is knowledge that has to be put to use by me. I had to decide to take responsibility for my own recovery.

Read more ...


Storied Mind: Why Depressed Men Leave - 1


Written by john on February 9th, 2009

Why Depressed Men Leave - 1

Written by john on February 9th, 2009

driftingaway-lepiafgeo450

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 ...


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 Marano


To 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 voluntarily control your emotional state.

Read more


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 More


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


emotions uncertainty.jpg
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 More


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

By Steven Stosny in Anger in the Age of Entitlement

Anger uncertainty.jpgA 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 More


In Practice: Fuhgeddaboudit


By Peter D. Kramer in In Practice


spiderIf 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 of the emotional memory, stripping it of its fear element.

This finding is a slim reed on which to rest a philosophical inquiry, but in truth the medical ethics field has been debating the broader question for the better part of a decade, based on earlier, similar suggestive research involving propranolol. In 2003, the President's Council on Bioethics weighed in, arguing that the modification of emotional memory was a worrisome alteration of personhood, one that risked trivializing signal forms of pain that compose a complex self. In 2007, the American Journal of Bioethics devoted most of an issue to discussions of an essay that argued in favor of choice in the matter of muting disabling fear.

Yesterday, for better or for worse, I represented the bioethics community when AirTalk with Larry Mantle, a public radio show, took up this issue, under the heading "The Spotless Mind." The broadcast does a fair job of presenting the issues — those who are interested should give a listen.

I want here only to clarify a single point - one that was at the heart of Listening to Prozac. When we wrestle with an ethics question in neuroscience, often it is important to ask what worries us: Is it that we disapprove of the goal of an intervention, or that we dislike the intervention itself.

Do we really, for the most part, worry about the attenuation of fearful memories? Let's say that a patient comes to a doctor and says, "I had a terrible experience yesterday, and I'm worried that it will haunt me. Can you help prevent the fear from lingering?" That's the set up.

Now imagine that the doctor prescribes "tincture of time," that is, she reassures the patient: "Don't worry. I know you. That memory will fade." No one, I would guess, has moral worries about that scenario. Yes, there will be a change in the self, but so what? The content in our library of memories shifts all the time. If the self is continuous, that's not because our emotions are always identical.

What if the doctor says, "You're adept at meditation. Tomorrow, when you recall the event, enter into a relaxed state. Later, the memory will upset you less." Do we object to that prescription? If not, then in truth we do not fret about the result, a muted emotional response to a real stimulus.

How about a more mechanical behavioral prescription? Let's say we believe in the efficacy of "Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing," or EMDR, in its simplest form. The doctor trains the patient to recall the trauma while moving his eyes this back and forth. The memory loses its force. Are we alarmed? Well, perhaps this approach does seem a bit eerie.

Now think of an ingested substance, chocolate or green tea. The doctor has the patient call up the memory while enjoying a soothing snack. Do we object to that sort of interference with reconsolidation?

My point is a simple one. We only initiate an ethics debate when the intervention is a medication - here, one with a complex name, propanolol. (In truth, the consolidation of anxiety may be a fairly easy target; it looks as if steroids, opiates, benzodiazepines, and anesthetics might do the job, along with beta-blockers.) That category, medication, seems to bring into play technology, doctors, patient status, and drug companies, and therefore hierarchy, social coercion, and communal norms. Now we worry, if we do, about altering the self in ways that the culture favors.

There's much more to say on this topic, but for the moment, I think I'll stop with this question: Why is it that we debate the ethics of muting anxious memories now, in the years since it's seemed propranolol can do the trick, when we never argued over that capacity before? Like everyone else, I understand the dystopian science fiction scenario of "eternal sunshine," but to undertake a serious philosophical discussion we need to do better of specifying what's at issue. Why precisely do we worry over a drug's doing a job we are happy to see accomplished by any number of other means?


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 hurts. Unfortunately, we often make this bad situation worse as we become mired in regret, fantasy, and worry. "If only I sold my stocks 1 year ago..." or "I'm never gonna get another job" are common reactions to the crisis. However, emotionally such thoughts make us feel worse. So here are a few mindfulness pointers:



*  Notice where your mind goes. Are you stuck in regret or blaming others? Are you catastrophizing about the future? Bring your attention back to rest on your breathing.



*  Find ways to reconnect with positive aspects in your life, like your health, family, or faith. Often, we dismiss expressing such appreciations by adding "Yes, but..." The "but" takes away any joy or satisfaction from things that are going well. Real life is good and bad, not good but bad.



*  Re-evaluate and do constructive planning and problem-solving. Mindfulness can help us see what is really happening and deal with it appropriately. Not being able to pay the bills might be a reality for you. So, minus the worry, anxiety, and recrimination, what are your options? How can you increase the money coming in and reduce the money going out? Perhaps you need to find another job, borrow money from friends or family, or sell some of your stuff. None of these actions are easy, but they might be necessary. Getting caught-up in worry, guilt, shame, and other destructive emotions can only delay taking productive action and make you feel even more miserable.



*  Finally, notice your mindset now vs. 1 year ago. Chances are, you saw your life as being deficient at that time, too. You wanted more money, an iPhone, or whatever. You told yourself, "If only I had [X], I would be happy." Now, we are confronted with reality of having less than we did previously; our mindset matches actually matches our circumstances. In fact, we might even find ourselves longing for how good we had it before, at least financially. At the time though, we weren't satisfied with it. This irony suggests that we need to recognize the problem in dwelling on thoughts that we're deficient or need something that we do not have. Not until we recognize and accept our current circumstances can we be free to change it.


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 and gives people a sense of immortality. Hunger is a powerful emotion, which is both exploitive and destructive to others when it is acted out. People identify this feeling with love and mistakenly associate these longings with genuine affection. Nothing could be further from the truth.


Feelings of emotional hunger are deep and are like a dull but powerful aching in your insides. You may often find yourself reaching out and touching others or expressing affection and loving movements in order to attempt to kill off this aching sensation. People often give physical affection and attention when they feel the most need for it themselves. This type of physical affection is draining of the emotional resources of loved ones, particularly one's children, rather than enhancing their development psychologically. It is wise to be suspicious of your own use of the word "love" or "I love you." If you search yourself truthfully you may discover that you say these words most often, not when you feel the most for others, but rather when you experience strong dependency needs and feel the need for reassurance.


To read more, click here ...


Friday, February 13, 2009

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 Correspondent
Last Updated: 3:48PM GMT 10 Feb 2009


Florence Nightingale 'might never have succeeded with modern stigma against mental illness' 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 heavily prejudiced against people with mental health problems.

More than one in four people, 29 per cent, do not think that someone with a mental illness can hold down a responsible job, the study found, while 60 per cent of employers said that they would feel unable to employ someone suffering from mental health problems.

The report warns that achievements including the theory of evolution, the creation of modern nursing, developments in cancer treatment and the abolition of slavery may never have happened under modern ideas about mental health.

As well as Churchill, Curie and Lincoln both suffered from depression, while Darwin had extreme bouts of anxiety and agoraphobia and experts believe that Florence Nightingale suffered from bipolar disorder, also known as manic depression.

The report speculates that without Churchill, Britain could have made a compromise peace agreement in 1940, allowing a Nazi-dominated Europe and the loss of freedom and democracy.

It also warns that the "next Churchill" could be missed because of the modern demands on politicians.

Mr Campbell said: "I am not convinced that a modern politician who admitted to mental health problems would be able to get to the top.

"Churchill was by common consent Britain's greatest ever leader, and voted the greatest ever Briton, but I wonder whether his depression would have stopped him becoming Prime Minister in modern Britain.

"As I watch politicians and other public figures deal with the pressures of modern leadership, not least dealing with harsh 24 hour scrutiny, I sometimes wonder how these great historic figures would have fared had they been alive today.

"Churchill with his depressions, drinking and long lie-ins; Darwin with his severe anxiety that showed up in stomach disorders, crippling headaches, agoraphobia, trembling, palpitations of the heart, and mental torment which often left him in floods of tears.

"Would the media and public have been understanding about their conditions? – these statistics suggest otherwise."

The report, released today and co-written by historian Nigel Jones, is part of a campaign called Time to Change, organised by the mental health charities Mental Health Media, Mind and Rethink.

According to the report almost nine out of ten people with mental health problems have experienced stigma and discrimination, often by employers.

One in four Britons suffer from it at some point in their life, and Mr Campbell said that his own experience had shown how important the role of work could be to aid a patient's recovery.

He said: "When Tony Blair asked me to work for him in 1994, I told him about my breakdown and my drink problem. He said he wasn't worried. If a Prime Minister can have that attitude, then I think it is about time the six out of ten who say they wouldn't consider taking on someone with a history of mental illness join the four out of ten who say they would."




Sustainablog: Is Climate Change Making Us Mental?

Written by Robin Shreeves
If 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 natural disasters.”

Read the rest of the article here:



San Jose Mercury News: Lawmakers debate mental health cuts


By CATHY BUSSEWITZ Associated Press Writer
Posted: 02/12/2009 04:27:26 PM PST


CARSON 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 Sen. Bob Coffin, D-Las Vegas, referring to budget cuts to mental health in 1991. "Now we face the greatest reduction I've ever seen."

"The mentally ill cannot complain. Their families are shy about complaining," Coffin said during a joint Senate-Assembly budget subcommittee hearing. "Who is going to fight for the mentally ill? I am not going to support these cuts. I am going to follow through with my vow of 1991."

Of the 21 rural mental health clinics, two already are closed, another nine would be closed by June 30, and services would be moved to regional hubs.

Read the full article here:


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


By Deidre Williams
NEWS STAFF REPORTER



It’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:

• A global economic crisis.

• A recession here at home.

• The near-daily tally of job cuts at large companies worldwide.

• Record snow and frigid temperatures locally, then flooding and a wind storm.

• Gasoline prices creeping up again after receding from record highs.

“There’s a lot of bad news,” said Brian D. Barnas, a University at Buffalo student. “That’s the times we’re in right now. That’s what’s going on in the world.”

As a result, many Americans are facing fear, anxiety, uncertainty and stress.

The despair and desperation that come with such feelings is the “modern face of mental illness,” said Thomas P. McNulty, president and chief executive officer of the Mental Health Association of Erie County.

Many people have heard of schizophrenia, bipolarity, and eating and personality disorders, McNulty said.

“But today the modern face of mental illness includes mortgage crises, job loss, people stressed to the limit financially. It’s an entirely different emotional situation,” McNulty said. “The modern-day things we can face can turn into a severe emotional disturbance.”

Read the full article here:


Monkey See: Valentine's Day Un-Romances

by Linda Holmes

I 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 Un-Romance: What's frustrating is that for the first three-quarters or so, this movie demonstrates all kinds of incredibly valid points. Don't perform dramatic stunts (like quitting your job) to impress guys with good teeth. Don't have drunks over to your house. Don't introduce your kid to guys he'll fall in love with unless you're pretty sure about them. Don't date your boss. Don't try to save disasters. Don't ignore your sister when she warns you about guys who are "hanging onto the bottom rung." Don't get married as an alternative to the nightmare of driving a U-Haul.

And then in the closing moments: BOOM! It turns out that the guy who clearly was not in love with you can suddenly discover he's in love with you, and that all your bad decisions are now irrelevant. If only real life worked...anything like that.

More, after the jump...

2. Sex And The City



This may not even need saying at this point, but given that we're being threatened with a sequel, perhaps that's not the case.

Why it's an Un-Romance: Oh, where to begin. With the ditching of the faithful Smith, one of the only nice men in the history of the entire show? With the refusal to dump the endlessly dumpworthy Big? With the shoes/clothes/closets obsessions that seemingly eclipse every other interest? You can't have a romance between characters unless you have characters, and "loves shoes" is not a character.

2. The Mirror Has Two Faces



This mostly obscure 1996 Barbra Streisand film is simply the first one that came to mind to represent all movies of its kind: the It Was Only After Your Makeover That I Realized You Never Needed A Makeover love story.

Why it's an Un-Romance: Certainly, it's dangerous for anyone to fall into the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy, and it could be that it's a coincidence that the "falling in love" part comes after the "application of artificial nails" part. But it doesn't seem that way. It kind of seems like, in the above clip, Glam Barbra wins the happiness that Dumpy Barbra was not entitled to.

3. Sweet Home Alabama



One of the romantic comedies that made Reese Witherspoon the It-Girl of the genre for a time, it seems like a sort of funny, harmless, torn-between-two-lovers piece of business. As if its effect on Witherspoon were not enough, it also did good things for a fellow named Patrick Dempsey.

Why It's An Un-Romance: Agreeing to marry someone when you are in love with someone else and then dumping the person you've agreed to marry at the altar is not romantic, full stop. You are not a romantic hero; you are...kind of a jerk. Having never been left at the altar (whew!), I can't say I speak from experience, but in the many (many) movies in which this happens, the perpetrator always loses my sympathy instantly. See also: Affairs are not romantic, and I am talking to you, The Bridges Of Madison County.

5. Reality Bites



The ultimate early-'90s slacker romance, here is another one that does
a lot of things right in the first three-quarters. No, wait -- the
first nine-tenths.

Why it's an Un-Romance: Ethan Hawke's work in
the front part of this movie is grossly underrated: he may be
detestable, but the guy is pitch-perfectly infuriating, disguising
meanness as a complex personality and push-pulling on Winona Ryder
until she finally does actually sleep with him, at which point he
flakes out and she -- in the movie's truest scene -- stomps her foot
and screams, "I knew this was going to happen!" And she did, and it
did, and that's what makes it a sad (and plausible) story. What isn't
plausible is that he then, out of nowhere, appears at the end to
announce that he's sorry and he's in love with her and now they will go
off happily into the future with only his acoustic guitar and her
father's gas card to sustain them.


Monday, January 26, 2009

NYTimes: Coffee Linked to Lower Dementia Risk


The New York Times   By NICHOLAS BAKALAR

Drinking 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 cups a day also were at reduced risk of dementia, the researchers said, but there were not enough people in this group to draw statistically significant conclusions.

Dr. Miia Kivipelto, an associate professor of neurology at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm and lead author of the study, does not as yet advocate drinking coffee as a preventive health measure. “This is an observational study,” she said. “We have no evidence that for people who are not drinking coffee, taking up drinking will have a protective effect.”

Dr. Kivipelto and her colleagues suggest several possibilities for why coffee might reduce the risk of dementia later in life. First, earlier studies have linked coffee consumption with a decreased risk of type 2 diabetes, which in turn has been associated with a greater risk of dementia. In animal studies, caffeine has been shown to reduce the formation of amyloid plaques in the brain, one of the hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease. Finally, coffee may have an antioxidant effect in the bloodstream, reducing vascular risk factors for dementia.

Dr. Kivipelto noted that previous studies have shown that coffee drinking may also be linked to a reduced risk of Parkinson’s disease.

The new study, published this month in The Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, is unusual in that more than 70 percent of the original group of 2,000 people randomly selected for tracking were available for re-examination 21 years later. The dietary information had been collected at the beginning of the study, which reduced the possibility of errors introduced by people inaccurately recalling their consumption. Still, the authors acknowledge that any self-reported data is subject to inaccuracies.

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 run more than little parallel to the actor's own life story.

Mickey Rourke and LokiRourke seemed destined to be a superstar in the 1980's. Most critics agreed that his performances in "Diner" (1982), "Rumble Fish" (1983) "9 ½ Weeks" (1986), and "Angel Heart" (1987) seemed to contain signs that the world was witnessing the appearance of another James Dean or even Robert De Niro.

Unfortunately Rourke's acting career eventually became overshadowed by his personal life and some seemingly eccentric career decisions. Directors such as Alan Parker found it difficult to work with him. Parker stated that "working with Mickey is a nightmare. He is very dangerous on the set because you never know what he is going to do". In addition Rourke began to show the effects of substance abuse. He associated with motorcycle gang members and was involved in several aggressive instances including a charge of spousal abuse (later dropped). Ultimately he virtually disappeared from the cinematic world.

Rourke's career was revived when director Robert Rodriguez cast him in the role of a sinister hit man in "Once Upon a Time in Mexico" (2003). Two years later Rodriguez again called upon him, this time to play Marv, one of the antiheroes from writer-artist Frank Miller's crime noir comic book series "Sin City" (2005). In that film Rourke delivered a unforgettable performance, alternately chilling and amusing, that reminded any doubters that he was still a force to be reckoned with. However to get to this stage in his life Rourke required the intervention of a dog.

The possibility that dogs can produce major psychological and health benefits for their human companions has been a subject of much recent serious psychological research. Scientific evidence about the health benefits of a relationship with a dog was first published about 30 years ago by a psychologist, Alan Beck of Purdue University and a psychiatrist, Aaron Katcher of the University of Pennsylvania. These researchers measured what happens physically when a person pets a friendly and familiar dog. They found that the person's blood pressure lowered, his heart rate slowed, breathing became more regular and muscle tension relaxed-all of which are signs of reduced stress.

A recent study published in the Journal of Psychosomatic Medicine not only confirmed these effects, but showed changes in blood chemistry demonstrating a lower amount of stress-related hormones such as cortisol. These effects seem to be automatic, they do not require any conscious efforts or training on the part of the stressed individual. Perhaps most amazingly, these positive psychological effects are achieved faster-after only five to 24 minutes of interacting with a dog-than the result from taking most stress-relieving drugs. Compare this to some of the Prozac or Xanax-type drugs used to deal with stress and depression. Such drugs alter the levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin in the body and can take weeks to show any positive effects. Furthermore, the benefits that build up over this long course of medication can be lost with only few missed doses of the drug. Petting a dog has a virtually immediate effect and can be done at any time. Recently, researchers extended this research by looking at a group of people aged 60 and older, living alone, except for a pet. Non-pet owners were four times more likely to be diagnosed as clinically depressed than pet owners of the same age. The evidence also showed that pet owners required fewer medical services and were more satisfied with their lives.Mickey Rourke and Loki

Depression was, indeed, Mickey Rourke's problem in the 1990's. In his case when all friends left him he was left with only his dog, for solace. Rourke admits that things had gotten bad enough so that went into a closet with his beloved dog Beau Jack, locking the door and planning to commit suicide with a drug overdose. In the end he just couldn't go through with it because of his relationship to his little Chihuahua-cross dog. Rourke describes the scene saying, "(I was) doing some crazy s**t, but I saw a look in Beau Jack's eyes, and I put the s**t down. That dog saved my life."

Rourke's life took a major turn after these events. He became active in animal welfare issues, including an involvement with PETA and its spay and neutering campaign. He increased the number of dogs in his house, first by adding Beau Jack's daughter, Loki. The depth of his bond to his dogs became obvious when Beau Jack died in 2002. He recalls, "I gave him mouth-to-mouth for 45 minutes before they peeled me off. Depressed? He died at my home, and I didn't go back for two weeks."

Rourke's canine family has continued to grow. He says "I have five now - Loki, Jaws, Ruby Baby, La Negra and Bella Loca--but Loki is my number one." In describing his relationship to Loki he added, "My dog [Loki] is very old, she is 16 and she is not going to be around for long so I want to spend every moment with her. When I was filming "Stormbreaker" in England, I had to have her flown over because I missed her so much. I had to get her from New York to Paris and Paris to England, and also pay for someone to come with her. The whole thing cost about $5,400."

Rourke seems to understand the therapeutic value of dogs. He says of Loki, "She's like a giant Xanax, you know? I'm not going to get religious on your ass, but I truly believe God created dogs for a cause. They are the greatest companions a man could ever have."

So it was that following his remarkable comeback to a successful acting career, and following his rise from the depth of depression, that Mickey Rourke was able to stand in front of colleagues to accept his Golden Globe award. However his speech was different from the others. It not only included references to the contributions and the support of colleagues and professional associates, but also contained the lines, "I'd like to thank all my dogs, the ones that are here, the ones that aren't here anymore, because sometimes when a man's alone that's all you got is your dog, and they meant the world to me."

Sunday, January 25, 2009

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


FOXNews.com
Thursday , January 22, 2009

Former 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 for depression. My husband was bitten quite badly but he is certain to make a full recovery in weeks."

Chirac was taken to a hospital in Paris where he was treated as an outpatient and later sent home.

The 76-year-old was president of France for 12 years until 2007.

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Beyond Blue: I, Too, Have a Dream

Beyond Blue
Monday January 19, 2009


I 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 and obsessive-compulsive disorder have been located and identified.

I have a dream that brain-imaging technology will continue to advance in discovering what, exactly, is going on inside the brain, that a neurological perspective coupled with a biochemical approach to mental illness will develop targeted treatments: new medication and better response to particular medications--that we can cut out that painful trial-and-error process.

I have a dream depressives won't have to risk their jobs in divulging their condition, that employers will respond more empathetically to the country's 7.8 million working depressives, that the general public will be more educated on mental illness so that it doesn't cost this country more than $44 billion each year (like it does now).

I have a dream that families, friends, and co-workers will show kindness to depressives, not reproach them for not being stronger, for not having enough will power and discipline and incentive to get well, for not snapping out of it, for not being grateful enough, for not seeing the cup half full, for not controlling their emotions.

I have a dream that tabloids like "In Touch Weekly" won't lump allegations of Britney Spears' taking antidepressants into the same category as her 24-hour marriage, all-night clubbing, and pantyless photos--that our world might be more sophisticated and informed than that.

I have a dream that people will no longer use the following terms to describe persons with mental illness: fruity, loony, wacky, nutty, cuckoo, loopy, crazy, wacko, gonzo, nutso, batty, bonkers, ditzy, bananas, and crazy.

I have a dream that spiritual leaders might preach compassion to persons with mental illness, not indict them for not praying hard enough, or in the right way, or often enough, and that judgmental new-age thinkers who blame all illness on blocked energy (in chakras one through seven) might be enlightened to understand that fish oil, mindfulness meditation, and acupuncture can't cure everything.

I have a dream that health insurance companies will stop serving Satan, and read a medical report every now and then, where they would learn that depression is a legitimate, organic brain disease, and that those who suffer from it aren't a bunch of weak, pathetic people who can't cope with life's hard knocks.

I dream that one day depression won't destroy so many marriages and families, that better and faster treatment will work in favor of every form of intimacy.

I have a dream that suicide won't take more lives than traffic accidents, lung disease, or AIDS, that together we can do better to reduce the 30,000 suicides that happen annually in the United States, and that communities will lovingly embrace those friends and families of persons who ran out of hope, instead of simply ignoring the tragedy or attaching fault where none should be.

I have a dream that one day depression, bipolar disorder, and all kinds of mental illness will lose their stigma, that I won't have to whisper the word "Zoloft" to the pharmacist at Rite Aid, that people will be able to have loud conversations in coffee shops about how they treat their depression (in addition to the excellent dialogue we have here on "Beyond Blue").

Mostly, I dream about a day when I can wake up and think about coffee first thing in the morning, rather than my mood--is it a serene one, a panicked one, or somewhere in between?--and fretting about whether or not I'm heading toward the black hole of despair. I dream that I'll never ever have to go back to that harrowing and lonely place of a year ago. That no one else should have to either. But if they do (or if I do), that they not give up hope. Because eventually their tomorrow will be better than their today. And they will be able to dream again too.

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