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Texas launches website in fight against opioid abuse; Gen Z’ers report more mental health problems
Officials in Texas see their new “Dose of Reality” website as a tool that might help address the opioid crisis in their state.
Dose of Reality, an initiative of the state attorney general, the Texas Department of State Health Services, and Texas Health and Human Services, offers for download material on opioids. People also can learn about risk factors of opioid abuse and how to safely store the medications. Drug disposal sites statewide also are included, according to an article published by the Dallas Morning News.
“The misuse of prescription opioids costs lives and devastates Texas families in every corner of our state. Dose of Reality is a one-stop shop of information on the opioid epidemic in Texas. [It] will pull back the curtain on opioids, educate Texans and save, hopefully, many lives,” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton reportedly said at a press conference announcing the website launch.
Of the 42,249 deaths tied to opioid overdoses reported nationwide by the National Institute on Drug Abuse in 2016, 1,375 of those deaths reportedly occurred in Texas. According to Mr. Paxton, deceptive marketing and promotion by pharmaceutical companies have been part of the problem.
Generation Z and mental health
Gen Z’ers – young people born from the mid-1990s to the early 2000s – are the most likely age group to report mental health problems, according to a report from the American Psychological Association.
The findings from the group’s 12th annual Stress in America survey of 3,458 Americans aged 18 years or older and 300 teens aged 15-17 years showed that issues such as sexual harassment and gun violence are significant stressors for Gen Z. America’s youngest adults are most likely of all generations to report poor mental health, and Gen Z also is significantly more likely to seek professional help for mental health issues, the study authors wrote.
Adolescents and young adults aged 15-21 years are more concerned than are other generations about the state of the United States, and overall, 71% of the Gen Z’ers are more positive about the country’s future. About 60% had gotten politically involved in the past year.
But that optimism did not extend to Gen Z’ers of color. “For around 4 in 10 Gen Zs of color, personal debt [41%] and housing instability (40%) are significant sources of stress, while 3 in 10 white Gen Zs [30%] say the same about personal debt and less than one-quarter [24%] of this demographic cite housing instability,” the authors wrote.
“Solutions” center in the works
A new facility to be built in a Denver neighborhood will enable offenders with mental health issues to receive treatment instead of incarceration. Once up and running, the facility, dubbed a “solutions” or “stabilization” center, will be a go-to option for police officers who have picked up someone judged to be in the throes of a mental health crisis, instead of a trip to the police station and booking, the Denver Post reported.
People referred to the center will be eligible to stay for up to 5 days and referrals will be available for continued counseling. Walk-ins will not be admitted.
“In my heart, I’m committed to making this an addition to the neighborhood that will make the neighborhood a safer place and not a more difficult place,” said Jay Flynn, a vice president of the Mental Health Center of Denver, which helped spearhead the initiative.
Not everyone is on board. Residents near the center site have voiced their concern about neighborhood safety. “It’s not that we don’t understand the needs of homelessness in our community,” said one resident at a community meeting held to discuss the center. “The fact is that our community is extremely stressed and we need to preserve a safe environment.”
The center is scheduled to open in 2020.
Is masculinity really toxic?
A new ad by Gillette raises questions about what it means to be male. The ad initially presents a more traditional view of men as boors, bullies, and sexual oppressors, then morphs into a call for a sea change to males with empathy, compassion, and a need to help. The ad came a few months after the American Psychological Association issued new practice guidelines for boys and men, in which traditional masculinity ideology was conceptualized as limiting.
Those developments prompted an op-ed piece in the Los Angeles Times that considered whether masculinity really is toxic.
“Some of the angry responses to the [Gillette] ad were over the top, and yet the detractors have a point. Take the way the ad exhorts men to start doing and saying ‘the right thing,’ and then continues, ‘Some already are. But some is not enough.’ This suggests decent men are a minority while brutes are the norm,” wrote Cathy Young, a contributing editor at Reason magazine.
“What’s more, some of the ‘toxic’ behavior shown is pretty innocuous, such as teenage boys ogling bikini-clad babes on television. (Should we shame girls who drool over cute male pop stars?) The ad also blurs the line between fighting and roughhousing, implicitly condemning the physical play styles more common among boys,” she wrote.
Meanwhile, the psychologists pointed out that, in light of many factors, including higher death rates in the United States for boys and men – compared with those of girls and women – understanding “how boys and men experience masculinity is an important cultural competency.”
Dementia and an aging workforce
As the American workforce continues to age, employers are having tough conversations about dementia and other cognitive issues, according an article from the Associated Press.
“And it’s not just managing missed deadlines,” Sarah Wood, director of global work-life services at an organization called Workplace Options, said in the piece. “If this person has been a dependable employee for 40 years and is now missing meetings, they’ll be beating themselves up over this.”
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of U.S. workers aged 65-74 years was expected to skyrocket by 55% between 2014 and 2024.
Those aged 65 years and older are more likely to face dementia diagnoses. Because of the Americans with Disabilities Act, employers with dementia – including Alzheimer’s – are protected, “depending on the employee’s position and level of impairment,” according to the article.
Employers can accommodate employees by taking steps such as writing instructions rather than communicating verbally and reassigning employees who operate heavy machines to desk work, according to David K. Fram, director of the Americans with Disabilities Act equal opportunity services at the National Employment Law Institute. But employees must be able to do the “essential functions of the job,” he said.
Officials in Texas see their new “Dose of Reality” website as a tool that might help address the opioid crisis in their state.
Dose of Reality, an initiative of the state attorney general, the Texas Department of State Health Services, and Texas Health and Human Services, offers for download material on opioids. People also can learn about risk factors of opioid abuse and how to safely store the medications. Drug disposal sites statewide also are included, according to an article published by the Dallas Morning News.
“The misuse of prescription opioids costs lives and devastates Texas families in every corner of our state. Dose of Reality is a one-stop shop of information on the opioid epidemic in Texas. [It] will pull back the curtain on opioids, educate Texans and save, hopefully, many lives,” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton reportedly said at a press conference announcing the website launch.
Of the 42,249 deaths tied to opioid overdoses reported nationwide by the National Institute on Drug Abuse in 2016, 1,375 of those deaths reportedly occurred in Texas. According to Mr. Paxton, deceptive marketing and promotion by pharmaceutical companies have been part of the problem.
Generation Z and mental health
Gen Z’ers – young people born from the mid-1990s to the early 2000s – are the most likely age group to report mental health problems, according to a report from the American Psychological Association.
The findings from the group’s 12th annual Stress in America survey of 3,458 Americans aged 18 years or older and 300 teens aged 15-17 years showed that issues such as sexual harassment and gun violence are significant stressors for Gen Z. America’s youngest adults are most likely of all generations to report poor mental health, and Gen Z also is significantly more likely to seek professional help for mental health issues, the study authors wrote.
Adolescents and young adults aged 15-21 years are more concerned than are other generations about the state of the United States, and overall, 71% of the Gen Z’ers are more positive about the country’s future. About 60% had gotten politically involved in the past year.
But that optimism did not extend to Gen Z’ers of color. “For around 4 in 10 Gen Zs of color, personal debt [41%] and housing instability (40%) are significant sources of stress, while 3 in 10 white Gen Zs [30%] say the same about personal debt and less than one-quarter [24%] of this demographic cite housing instability,” the authors wrote.
“Solutions” center in the works
A new facility to be built in a Denver neighborhood will enable offenders with mental health issues to receive treatment instead of incarceration. Once up and running, the facility, dubbed a “solutions” or “stabilization” center, will be a go-to option for police officers who have picked up someone judged to be in the throes of a mental health crisis, instead of a trip to the police station and booking, the Denver Post reported.
People referred to the center will be eligible to stay for up to 5 days and referrals will be available for continued counseling. Walk-ins will not be admitted.
“In my heart, I’m committed to making this an addition to the neighborhood that will make the neighborhood a safer place and not a more difficult place,” said Jay Flynn, a vice president of the Mental Health Center of Denver, which helped spearhead the initiative.
Not everyone is on board. Residents near the center site have voiced their concern about neighborhood safety. “It’s not that we don’t understand the needs of homelessness in our community,” said one resident at a community meeting held to discuss the center. “The fact is that our community is extremely stressed and we need to preserve a safe environment.”
The center is scheduled to open in 2020.
Is masculinity really toxic?
A new ad by Gillette raises questions about what it means to be male. The ad initially presents a more traditional view of men as boors, bullies, and sexual oppressors, then morphs into a call for a sea change to males with empathy, compassion, and a need to help. The ad came a few months after the American Psychological Association issued new practice guidelines for boys and men, in which traditional masculinity ideology was conceptualized as limiting.
Those developments prompted an op-ed piece in the Los Angeles Times that considered whether masculinity really is toxic.
“Some of the angry responses to the [Gillette] ad were over the top, and yet the detractors have a point. Take the way the ad exhorts men to start doing and saying ‘the right thing,’ and then continues, ‘Some already are. But some is not enough.’ This suggests decent men are a minority while brutes are the norm,” wrote Cathy Young, a contributing editor at Reason magazine.
“What’s more, some of the ‘toxic’ behavior shown is pretty innocuous, such as teenage boys ogling bikini-clad babes on television. (Should we shame girls who drool over cute male pop stars?) The ad also blurs the line between fighting and roughhousing, implicitly condemning the physical play styles more common among boys,” she wrote.
Meanwhile, the psychologists pointed out that, in light of many factors, including higher death rates in the United States for boys and men – compared with those of girls and women – understanding “how boys and men experience masculinity is an important cultural competency.”
Dementia and an aging workforce
As the American workforce continues to age, employers are having tough conversations about dementia and other cognitive issues, according an article from the Associated Press.
“And it’s not just managing missed deadlines,” Sarah Wood, director of global work-life services at an organization called Workplace Options, said in the piece. “If this person has been a dependable employee for 40 years and is now missing meetings, they’ll be beating themselves up over this.”
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of U.S. workers aged 65-74 years was expected to skyrocket by 55% between 2014 and 2024.
Those aged 65 years and older are more likely to face dementia diagnoses. Because of the Americans with Disabilities Act, employers with dementia – including Alzheimer’s – are protected, “depending on the employee’s position and level of impairment,” according to the article.
Employers can accommodate employees by taking steps such as writing instructions rather than communicating verbally and reassigning employees who operate heavy machines to desk work, according to David K. Fram, director of the Americans with Disabilities Act equal opportunity services at the National Employment Law Institute. But employees must be able to do the “essential functions of the job,” he said.
Officials in Texas see their new “Dose of Reality” website as a tool that might help address the opioid crisis in their state.
Dose of Reality, an initiative of the state attorney general, the Texas Department of State Health Services, and Texas Health and Human Services, offers for download material on opioids. People also can learn about risk factors of opioid abuse and how to safely store the medications. Drug disposal sites statewide also are included, according to an article published by the Dallas Morning News.
“The misuse of prescription opioids costs lives and devastates Texas families in every corner of our state. Dose of Reality is a one-stop shop of information on the opioid epidemic in Texas. [It] will pull back the curtain on opioids, educate Texans and save, hopefully, many lives,” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton reportedly said at a press conference announcing the website launch.
Of the 42,249 deaths tied to opioid overdoses reported nationwide by the National Institute on Drug Abuse in 2016, 1,375 of those deaths reportedly occurred in Texas. According to Mr. Paxton, deceptive marketing and promotion by pharmaceutical companies have been part of the problem.
Generation Z and mental health
Gen Z’ers – young people born from the mid-1990s to the early 2000s – are the most likely age group to report mental health problems, according to a report from the American Psychological Association.
The findings from the group’s 12th annual Stress in America survey of 3,458 Americans aged 18 years or older and 300 teens aged 15-17 years showed that issues such as sexual harassment and gun violence are significant stressors for Gen Z. America’s youngest adults are most likely of all generations to report poor mental health, and Gen Z also is significantly more likely to seek professional help for mental health issues, the study authors wrote.
Adolescents and young adults aged 15-21 years are more concerned than are other generations about the state of the United States, and overall, 71% of the Gen Z’ers are more positive about the country’s future. About 60% had gotten politically involved in the past year.
But that optimism did not extend to Gen Z’ers of color. “For around 4 in 10 Gen Zs of color, personal debt [41%] and housing instability (40%) are significant sources of stress, while 3 in 10 white Gen Zs [30%] say the same about personal debt and less than one-quarter [24%] of this demographic cite housing instability,” the authors wrote.
“Solutions” center in the works
A new facility to be built in a Denver neighborhood will enable offenders with mental health issues to receive treatment instead of incarceration. Once up and running, the facility, dubbed a “solutions” or “stabilization” center, will be a go-to option for police officers who have picked up someone judged to be in the throes of a mental health crisis, instead of a trip to the police station and booking, the Denver Post reported.
People referred to the center will be eligible to stay for up to 5 days and referrals will be available for continued counseling. Walk-ins will not be admitted.
“In my heart, I’m committed to making this an addition to the neighborhood that will make the neighborhood a safer place and not a more difficult place,” said Jay Flynn, a vice president of the Mental Health Center of Denver, which helped spearhead the initiative.
Not everyone is on board. Residents near the center site have voiced their concern about neighborhood safety. “It’s not that we don’t understand the needs of homelessness in our community,” said one resident at a community meeting held to discuss the center. “The fact is that our community is extremely stressed and we need to preserve a safe environment.”
The center is scheduled to open in 2020.
Is masculinity really toxic?
A new ad by Gillette raises questions about what it means to be male. The ad initially presents a more traditional view of men as boors, bullies, and sexual oppressors, then morphs into a call for a sea change to males with empathy, compassion, and a need to help. The ad came a few months after the American Psychological Association issued new practice guidelines for boys and men, in which traditional masculinity ideology was conceptualized as limiting.
Those developments prompted an op-ed piece in the Los Angeles Times that considered whether masculinity really is toxic.
“Some of the angry responses to the [Gillette] ad were over the top, and yet the detractors have a point. Take the way the ad exhorts men to start doing and saying ‘the right thing,’ and then continues, ‘Some already are. But some is not enough.’ This suggests decent men are a minority while brutes are the norm,” wrote Cathy Young, a contributing editor at Reason magazine.
“What’s more, some of the ‘toxic’ behavior shown is pretty innocuous, such as teenage boys ogling bikini-clad babes on television. (Should we shame girls who drool over cute male pop stars?) The ad also blurs the line between fighting and roughhousing, implicitly condemning the physical play styles more common among boys,” she wrote.
Meanwhile, the psychologists pointed out that, in light of many factors, including higher death rates in the United States for boys and men – compared with those of girls and women – understanding “how boys and men experience masculinity is an important cultural competency.”
Dementia and an aging workforce
As the American workforce continues to age, employers are having tough conversations about dementia and other cognitive issues, according an article from the Associated Press.
“And it’s not just managing missed deadlines,” Sarah Wood, director of global work-life services at an organization called Workplace Options, said in the piece. “If this person has been a dependable employee for 40 years and is now missing meetings, they’ll be beating themselves up over this.”
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of U.S. workers aged 65-74 years was expected to skyrocket by 55% between 2014 and 2024.
Those aged 65 years and older are more likely to face dementia diagnoses. Because of the Americans with Disabilities Act, employers with dementia – including Alzheimer’s – are protected, “depending on the employee’s position and level of impairment,” according to the article.
Employers can accommodate employees by taking steps such as writing instructions rather than communicating verbally and reassigning employees who operate heavy machines to desk work, according to David K. Fram, director of the Americans with Disabilities Act equal opportunity services at the National Employment Law Institute. But employees must be able to do the “essential functions of the job,” he said.
Coffee shop founder provides mental health intervention
A sign on the wall of the Sip of Hope Coffee Bar in the Logan Square area of Chicago reads: “It’s OK not to be OK.” The slogan is more than a way to distinguish the coffee shop from competitors. According to a report published recently in the Chicago Sun-Times, all money spent on beverages and pastries is donated to suicide prevention and mental health programs in the Windy City.
“Sip of Hope is the brick-and-mortar version of what we do every day,” Jonny Boucher, who started a nonprofit called Hope for the Day in 2011 in an effort to make mental health issues part of the everyday conversation, said in the article. “I’ve lost 16 people to suicide, and I thought if I can just take this pain and I can do something with it, then I can allow others to do something with their pain.”
Mr. Boucher organizes a monthly get-together at the coffee shop where people can talk about their mental health struggles and find help and friendship.
said Mr. Boucher. “There is no magic wand with mental health but I try to tell people – we’re all in this together – it’s not about me, it’s about we.”
Housing First program launched
A housing program being offered in some parts of Kansas, including Wichita, is making housing available to people with mental illness without the traditional requirements of a nightly curfew or adherence to sobriety.
“What we’re doing with a program like this is essentially leveling the playing field so that people who have for some reason become homeless have the same opportunity to have and keep housing as the rest of us,” Sam J. Tsemberis, PhD, a psychologist who founded Pathways to Housing in New York City and is spearheading the program in Kansas, said in an interview with the Topeka Capital-Journal. “Most people in Kansas don’t have sobriety and treatment requirements in order to stay housed. And if they did, we’d be in a lot more trouble on the homelessness front.”
Dr. Tsemberis said his philosophy about providing housing for people with mental illness stems from his work years ago at Bellevue Hospital in New York. During his commute, Dr. Tsemberis said, he “passed people on the sidewalk he had just treated as patients, still wearing the hospital pajamas they were dispatched in.”
“A community’s social structure is impaired when people can walk by somebody who is homeless on the street,” Dr. Tsemberis, a psychiatry professor at Columbia University in New York, said in the interview. “It’s not just the person who is homeless, who is isolated and disconnected. It’s everybody else who walks past them that also has to cut off a part of their humanity in order to tolerate being able to walk past another human being who is sitting there.”
More than 2,000 homeless people live in Kansas, and Wichita is the hub. So far, more than 320 Kansas residents have entered the Housing First program, and more than 240 have found permanent housing.
Some residents shortchanged on services
Policymakers in Chicago are discussing the possibility of reopening some of the city’s mental health clinics.
A city council committee recently unanimously voted to approve a Public Mental Health Clinic Service Expansion Task Force to look into the possibility.
“We are all aware of the anecdotal issues related to the gaps in mental health care that face our wards,” Alderman Sophia King, who sponsored the measure, said in an article published in the Chicago Sun-Times.
According to the article, six of the city’s mental health clinics were shut down in 2012. Mental health clinics said funding for mental health care in the city has continued to decline. A report issued last year by the Collaborative for Community Wellness focusing on mental health services on the city’s southwest side said there were 0.17 licensed mental health clinicians for every 1,000 residents. Meanwhile, on the city’s near north side, also known as the Gold Coast, there were 4.45 clinicians for every 1,000 residents, the report said.
Increase in suicides raising concerns
A recent report from the Tennessee Suicide Prevention Network reveals a dark picture. As reported by the Tennessean, the suicide rate continued to climb last year, continuing an increase that began in 2014. The suicide rate of 17.3 of every 100,000 people is markedly higher than the national rate of 14.5, according to an article in the Tennessean.
For children and adolescents aged 10-17 years, the situation is worse. In that cohort, rate of suicide climbed by more than 24% from 2016 to 2017, and a huge 55% between 2015 and 2017. In 2017, 142 people between 10 and 24 years of age ended their own lives. Overall, there were 1,163 suicides in 2017, an average of 3 every day.
Among the states’ demographics, suicide is three times higher among white non-Hispanics. Whites comprise 79% of the population of Tennessee and account for 91% of the suicides.
A national study in 2015 estimated the total national cost of suicides and suicide attempts at $93.5 billion. A single suicide can cost $1,329,553 in medical treatment and the lost productivity.
But those losses cannot be quantified. “For every number and rate that is provided in the 2019 ‘Status of Suicide in Tennessee’ report, a family member, loved one, neighbor, coworker, and friend suffers an unimaginable loss,” said Scott Ridgway, executive director of the Tennessee Suicide Prevention Network.
Anticonversion therapy bill introduced
A state senator in Arizona has reintroduced legislation aimed at preventing mental health professionals from practicing conversion therapy on minors.
Under the bill reintroduced by state Sen. Sean Bowie, a Democrat, psychotherapists who engage in practices aimed at changing the sexual orientation of a person under age 18 years would be “subject to disciplinary action.”
“This (practice) is completely discredited and actually hurtful for young people,” said state Sen. Bowie, according to azcentral.com, which is part of the USA Today network. “There’s really no medical proof that it’s helpful or effective at all.”
Late last year, the American Psychiatric Association reiterated its strong opposition to the practice. “Conversion therapy is banned in 14 states as well as the District of Columbia,” the group said. “The APA calls upon other lawmakers to ban the harmful and discriminatory practice.”
A sign on the wall of the Sip of Hope Coffee Bar in the Logan Square area of Chicago reads: “It’s OK not to be OK.” The slogan is more than a way to distinguish the coffee shop from competitors. According to a report published recently in the Chicago Sun-Times, all money spent on beverages and pastries is donated to suicide prevention and mental health programs in the Windy City.
“Sip of Hope is the brick-and-mortar version of what we do every day,” Jonny Boucher, who started a nonprofit called Hope for the Day in 2011 in an effort to make mental health issues part of the everyday conversation, said in the article. “I’ve lost 16 people to suicide, and I thought if I can just take this pain and I can do something with it, then I can allow others to do something with their pain.”
Mr. Boucher organizes a monthly get-together at the coffee shop where people can talk about their mental health struggles and find help and friendship.
said Mr. Boucher. “There is no magic wand with mental health but I try to tell people – we’re all in this together – it’s not about me, it’s about we.”
Housing First program launched
A housing program being offered in some parts of Kansas, including Wichita, is making housing available to people with mental illness without the traditional requirements of a nightly curfew or adherence to sobriety.
“What we’re doing with a program like this is essentially leveling the playing field so that people who have for some reason become homeless have the same opportunity to have and keep housing as the rest of us,” Sam J. Tsemberis, PhD, a psychologist who founded Pathways to Housing in New York City and is spearheading the program in Kansas, said in an interview with the Topeka Capital-Journal. “Most people in Kansas don’t have sobriety and treatment requirements in order to stay housed. And if they did, we’d be in a lot more trouble on the homelessness front.”
Dr. Tsemberis said his philosophy about providing housing for people with mental illness stems from his work years ago at Bellevue Hospital in New York. During his commute, Dr. Tsemberis said, he “passed people on the sidewalk he had just treated as patients, still wearing the hospital pajamas they were dispatched in.”
“A community’s social structure is impaired when people can walk by somebody who is homeless on the street,” Dr. Tsemberis, a psychiatry professor at Columbia University in New York, said in the interview. “It’s not just the person who is homeless, who is isolated and disconnected. It’s everybody else who walks past them that also has to cut off a part of their humanity in order to tolerate being able to walk past another human being who is sitting there.”
More than 2,000 homeless people live in Kansas, and Wichita is the hub. So far, more than 320 Kansas residents have entered the Housing First program, and more than 240 have found permanent housing.
Some residents shortchanged on services
Policymakers in Chicago are discussing the possibility of reopening some of the city’s mental health clinics.
A city council committee recently unanimously voted to approve a Public Mental Health Clinic Service Expansion Task Force to look into the possibility.
“We are all aware of the anecdotal issues related to the gaps in mental health care that face our wards,” Alderman Sophia King, who sponsored the measure, said in an article published in the Chicago Sun-Times.
According to the article, six of the city’s mental health clinics were shut down in 2012. Mental health clinics said funding for mental health care in the city has continued to decline. A report issued last year by the Collaborative for Community Wellness focusing on mental health services on the city’s southwest side said there were 0.17 licensed mental health clinicians for every 1,000 residents. Meanwhile, on the city’s near north side, also known as the Gold Coast, there were 4.45 clinicians for every 1,000 residents, the report said.
Increase in suicides raising concerns
A recent report from the Tennessee Suicide Prevention Network reveals a dark picture. As reported by the Tennessean, the suicide rate continued to climb last year, continuing an increase that began in 2014. The suicide rate of 17.3 of every 100,000 people is markedly higher than the national rate of 14.5, according to an article in the Tennessean.
For children and adolescents aged 10-17 years, the situation is worse. In that cohort, rate of suicide climbed by more than 24% from 2016 to 2017, and a huge 55% between 2015 and 2017. In 2017, 142 people between 10 and 24 years of age ended their own lives. Overall, there were 1,163 suicides in 2017, an average of 3 every day.
Among the states’ demographics, suicide is three times higher among white non-Hispanics. Whites comprise 79% of the population of Tennessee and account for 91% of the suicides.
A national study in 2015 estimated the total national cost of suicides and suicide attempts at $93.5 billion. A single suicide can cost $1,329,553 in medical treatment and the lost productivity.
But those losses cannot be quantified. “For every number and rate that is provided in the 2019 ‘Status of Suicide in Tennessee’ report, a family member, loved one, neighbor, coworker, and friend suffers an unimaginable loss,” said Scott Ridgway, executive director of the Tennessee Suicide Prevention Network.
Anticonversion therapy bill introduced
A state senator in Arizona has reintroduced legislation aimed at preventing mental health professionals from practicing conversion therapy on minors.
Under the bill reintroduced by state Sen. Sean Bowie, a Democrat, psychotherapists who engage in practices aimed at changing the sexual orientation of a person under age 18 years would be “subject to disciplinary action.”
“This (practice) is completely discredited and actually hurtful for young people,” said state Sen. Bowie, according to azcentral.com, which is part of the USA Today network. “There’s really no medical proof that it’s helpful or effective at all.”
Late last year, the American Psychiatric Association reiterated its strong opposition to the practice. “Conversion therapy is banned in 14 states as well as the District of Columbia,” the group said. “The APA calls upon other lawmakers to ban the harmful and discriminatory practice.”
A sign on the wall of the Sip of Hope Coffee Bar in the Logan Square area of Chicago reads: “It’s OK not to be OK.” The slogan is more than a way to distinguish the coffee shop from competitors. According to a report published recently in the Chicago Sun-Times, all money spent on beverages and pastries is donated to suicide prevention and mental health programs in the Windy City.
“Sip of Hope is the brick-and-mortar version of what we do every day,” Jonny Boucher, who started a nonprofit called Hope for the Day in 2011 in an effort to make mental health issues part of the everyday conversation, said in the article. “I’ve lost 16 people to suicide, and I thought if I can just take this pain and I can do something with it, then I can allow others to do something with their pain.”
Mr. Boucher organizes a monthly get-together at the coffee shop where people can talk about their mental health struggles and find help and friendship.
said Mr. Boucher. “There is no magic wand with mental health but I try to tell people – we’re all in this together – it’s not about me, it’s about we.”
Housing First program launched
A housing program being offered in some parts of Kansas, including Wichita, is making housing available to people with mental illness without the traditional requirements of a nightly curfew or adherence to sobriety.
“What we’re doing with a program like this is essentially leveling the playing field so that people who have for some reason become homeless have the same opportunity to have and keep housing as the rest of us,” Sam J. Tsemberis, PhD, a psychologist who founded Pathways to Housing in New York City and is spearheading the program in Kansas, said in an interview with the Topeka Capital-Journal. “Most people in Kansas don’t have sobriety and treatment requirements in order to stay housed. And if they did, we’d be in a lot more trouble on the homelessness front.”
Dr. Tsemberis said his philosophy about providing housing for people with mental illness stems from his work years ago at Bellevue Hospital in New York. During his commute, Dr. Tsemberis said, he “passed people on the sidewalk he had just treated as patients, still wearing the hospital pajamas they were dispatched in.”
“A community’s social structure is impaired when people can walk by somebody who is homeless on the street,” Dr. Tsemberis, a psychiatry professor at Columbia University in New York, said in the interview. “It’s not just the person who is homeless, who is isolated and disconnected. It’s everybody else who walks past them that also has to cut off a part of their humanity in order to tolerate being able to walk past another human being who is sitting there.”
More than 2,000 homeless people live in Kansas, and Wichita is the hub. So far, more than 320 Kansas residents have entered the Housing First program, and more than 240 have found permanent housing.
Some residents shortchanged on services
Policymakers in Chicago are discussing the possibility of reopening some of the city’s mental health clinics.
A city council committee recently unanimously voted to approve a Public Mental Health Clinic Service Expansion Task Force to look into the possibility.
“We are all aware of the anecdotal issues related to the gaps in mental health care that face our wards,” Alderman Sophia King, who sponsored the measure, said in an article published in the Chicago Sun-Times.
According to the article, six of the city’s mental health clinics were shut down in 2012. Mental health clinics said funding for mental health care in the city has continued to decline. A report issued last year by the Collaborative for Community Wellness focusing on mental health services on the city’s southwest side said there were 0.17 licensed mental health clinicians for every 1,000 residents. Meanwhile, on the city’s near north side, also known as the Gold Coast, there were 4.45 clinicians for every 1,000 residents, the report said.
Increase in suicides raising concerns
A recent report from the Tennessee Suicide Prevention Network reveals a dark picture. As reported by the Tennessean, the suicide rate continued to climb last year, continuing an increase that began in 2014. The suicide rate of 17.3 of every 100,000 people is markedly higher than the national rate of 14.5, according to an article in the Tennessean.
For children and adolescents aged 10-17 years, the situation is worse. In that cohort, rate of suicide climbed by more than 24% from 2016 to 2017, and a huge 55% between 2015 and 2017. In 2017, 142 people between 10 and 24 years of age ended their own lives. Overall, there were 1,163 suicides in 2017, an average of 3 every day.
Among the states’ demographics, suicide is three times higher among white non-Hispanics. Whites comprise 79% of the population of Tennessee and account for 91% of the suicides.
A national study in 2015 estimated the total national cost of suicides and suicide attempts at $93.5 billion. A single suicide can cost $1,329,553 in medical treatment and the lost productivity.
But those losses cannot be quantified. “For every number and rate that is provided in the 2019 ‘Status of Suicide in Tennessee’ report, a family member, loved one, neighbor, coworker, and friend suffers an unimaginable loss,” said Scott Ridgway, executive director of the Tennessee Suicide Prevention Network.
Anticonversion therapy bill introduced
A state senator in Arizona has reintroduced legislation aimed at preventing mental health professionals from practicing conversion therapy on minors.
Under the bill reintroduced by state Sen. Sean Bowie, a Democrat, psychotherapists who engage in practices aimed at changing the sexual orientation of a person under age 18 years would be “subject to disciplinary action.”
“This (practice) is completely discredited and actually hurtful for young people,” said state Sen. Bowie, according to azcentral.com, which is part of the USA Today network. “There’s really no medical proof that it’s helpful or effective at all.”
Late last year, the American Psychiatric Association reiterated its strong opposition to the practice. “Conversion therapy is banned in 14 states as well as the District of Columbia,” the group said. “The APA calls upon other lawmakers to ban the harmful and discriminatory practice.”
Family estrangement: Would mutual respect make a difference?
Families are the bedrock of the lives of many, but some people opt to separate permanently from family members. A recent episode of the NPR program “1A” explored why families sever ties.
For journalist Harriet Brown, author of “Shadow Daughter: A Memoir of Estrangement,” (Da Capo Press, 2018), the decision to end her relationship with her mother came after she blamed Ms. Brown in “a blistering email” for the relapsed anorexia of Ms. Brown’s daughter.
“I was done with her,” Ms. Brown said on the program. “I told her I was done. That was it. And I never talked to her again. I think for both of us it felt final in some way.”
She said a lot of shame and stigma comes from having a bad relationship with a parent. “I really wanted to make it clear that ... sometimes walking away is really the best thing to do.”
Kristina M. Scharp, PhD, who has studied the estrangement phenomenon, said no national data exist on family estrangement. “About 12% of mothers and research would suggest even more fathers would report being estranged from one of their children,” said Dr. Scharp, who is with the University of Washington, Seattle. “It’s fairly common.”
Estrangement might be more common today because times have changed, said Joshua Coleman, PhD, author of “When Parents Hurt: Compassionate Strategies When you and Your Grown Child Don’t get Along” (HarperCollins, 2008). “Today’s adult children don’t view their relationships with their parents the way their folks did with their parents … the principles of obligation, duty, and respect that baby boomers and generations before them had for their elders aren’t necessarily there anymore,” Dr. Coleman said in a previous interview with the Chicago Tribune.
For her part, Ms. Brown said, the relationship with her mother – who is now deceased – might have been healed with respect. she said. “Honestly, it was that basic with my mother.”
Phelps gets mental health advocacy award
In the pool, Michael Phelps was golden, with 28 Olympics medals, 23 of them gold, hanging around his neck by the end of his swimming career. But the release from the water to real life after the 2016 Summer Olympics left no outlet for troubles that had dogged him for years. Drunk driving convictions and a ban from competition during his competitive years had failed to stop his downward spiral of depression. His thoughts turned to suicide.
But his story has a bright ending. With his realization that he had hit rock bottom, and with the help of his wife and therapists, he accepted his depression and learned to live with the reality that his life is, for the most part, pretty good.
His openness about his struggles with depression has been influential. The latest recognition came in early January, when he received the Morton E. Ruderman Award in Inclusion from the Ruderman Family Foundation. As reported in the Boston Globe, Mr. Phelps was recognized for his advocacy for people with disabilities and “his own journey with mental health.”
“I do like who I am and I’m comfortable with who I am. I couldn’t say that a few years ago. So I’m in a very good place and just living life one day at a time,” Mr. Phelps remarked in an interview with CNN last year.
Mr. Phelps is now a paid spokesperson for TalkSpace, an online therapy company.
“I’d like to make a difference. I’d like to be able to save a life if I can. You know, for me that’s more important than winning a gold medal. The stuff that I’m doing now is very exciting. It’s hard, it’s challenging but it’s fun for me. That’s what drives me to get out of bed every morning,” he said.
Offenders with mental illness get a break
A law included as part of budget legislation that was signed by then-Gov. Jerry Brown of California in June 2018 has offered people with mental health troubles who have been charged with a crime the opportunity for treatment instead of jail time.
As reported in the Los Angeles Times, the law provides judges with the discretion to order offenders into treatment rather than sentencing them. Success in treatment can lead to charges being dropped.
The law has been praised by some mental health advocates but panned by law enforcement officials and prosecutors with a harder view of criminal justice. The opposition stems largely from a December 2018 ruling by the 4th District Court of Appeal that the law could be applied to retroactively address the case of a man imprisoned for 29 years in 2017 for multiple felony charges that included domestic violence and assault.
The law does not extend to those charged with murder, manslaughter, rape, and child sexual abuse. To date, citing mental illness in seeking diversion of sentencing has not proven successful in most cases.
Schools get mental health allocation
The Orleans Parish School Board, which serves all of New Orleans, will allocate $1.3 million to the Center for Resilience, a local mental health day treatment program, beginning this year. The new program will expand mental health help to children in grades 9-12, according to a report in the Times-Picayune.
The funding will enable the center to expand an existing program that helps students with behavioral issues. Such help is not available in the traditional school system. By offsetting part of the price tag for the mental health care, the initiative “[helps to make] this critical service more available for our students most in need,” said Dominique Ellis, a spokesperson for the school board. “Mental health day treatment programs like the Center for Resilience typically cost between the ranges of $80,000-$100,000 per student to operate effectively.”
The development brings New Orleans level with money spent on similar programs in other school boards nationwide. It’s a service that is sorely needed. According to statistics supplied by the Center for Resilience, 60% of New Orleans children suffer from PTSD and are 4.5 times more likely to suffer from hyperactivity, aggression, and social withdrawal than similarly aged children elsewhere in the United States.
Bill addressing opioid crisis a “no-brainer”
Legislation put forward in the current session of the Texas Legislature would require pharmacists to identify all prescription opioids with a red cap and a hard-to-miss warning of the addictive risk of the medications. In addition, pharmacists would have to explain the risk in person to those receiving the medications and get signed acknowledgment of the conversation before dispensing the drugs.
As described in an article in the Austin American-Stateman, nearly 3,000 people in Texas died from drug overdoses in 2017. The deaths tied to opioid overdoses are not certain, but other data from 2015 suggest that one-third is a reasonable estimate.
“Losing a loved one to an opioid overdose is a tragedy that far too many Texas families experience,” said Rep. Shawn Thierry last month, when she introduced the three bills. “These distinctive red caps will serve as a clear notice to Texans that opioids are unlike milder forms of prescription pain relievers and have life-altering risks that must be considered before taking them.”
Warning labels on everything from food to tobacco products, and including them on prescription opioids is a “no-brainer,” Ms. Thierry said. “The more we can educate our residents the less likely they will be to misuse these medications.”
A report issued in November 2018 chronicled the drug crisis in Texas and offered recommendations. Many of the 100 recommendations involved the absence of treatment resources in the state.
Families are the bedrock of the lives of many, but some people opt to separate permanently from family members. A recent episode of the NPR program “1A” explored why families sever ties.
For journalist Harriet Brown, author of “Shadow Daughter: A Memoir of Estrangement,” (Da Capo Press, 2018), the decision to end her relationship with her mother came after she blamed Ms. Brown in “a blistering email” for the relapsed anorexia of Ms. Brown’s daughter.
“I was done with her,” Ms. Brown said on the program. “I told her I was done. That was it. And I never talked to her again. I think for both of us it felt final in some way.”
She said a lot of shame and stigma comes from having a bad relationship with a parent. “I really wanted to make it clear that ... sometimes walking away is really the best thing to do.”
Kristina M. Scharp, PhD, who has studied the estrangement phenomenon, said no national data exist on family estrangement. “About 12% of mothers and research would suggest even more fathers would report being estranged from one of their children,” said Dr. Scharp, who is with the University of Washington, Seattle. “It’s fairly common.”
Estrangement might be more common today because times have changed, said Joshua Coleman, PhD, author of “When Parents Hurt: Compassionate Strategies When you and Your Grown Child Don’t get Along” (HarperCollins, 2008). “Today’s adult children don’t view their relationships with their parents the way their folks did with their parents … the principles of obligation, duty, and respect that baby boomers and generations before them had for their elders aren’t necessarily there anymore,” Dr. Coleman said in a previous interview with the Chicago Tribune.
For her part, Ms. Brown said, the relationship with her mother – who is now deceased – might have been healed with respect. she said. “Honestly, it was that basic with my mother.”
Phelps gets mental health advocacy award
In the pool, Michael Phelps was golden, with 28 Olympics medals, 23 of them gold, hanging around his neck by the end of his swimming career. But the release from the water to real life after the 2016 Summer Olympics left no outlet for troubles that had dogged him for years. Drunk driving convictions and a ban from competition during his competitive years had failed to stop his downward spiral of depression. His thoughts turned to suicide.
But his story has a bright ending. With his realization that he had hit rock bottom, and with the help of his wife and therapists, he accepted his depression and learned to live with the reality that his life is, for the most part, pretty good.
His openness about his struggles with depression has been influential. The latest recognition came in early January, when he received the Morton E. Ruderman Award in Inclusion from the Ruderman Family Foundation. As reported in the Boston Globe, Mr. Phelps was recognized for his advocacy for people with disabilities and “his own journey with mental health.”
“I do like who I am and I’m comfortable with who I am. I couldn’t say that a few years ago. So I’m in a very good place and just living life one day at a time,” Mr. Phelps remarked in an interview with CNN last year.
Mr. Phelps is now a paid spokesperson for TalkSpace, an online therapy company.
“I’d like to make a difference. I’d like to be able to save a life if I can. You know, for me that’s more important than winning a gold medal. The stuff that I’m doing now is very exciting. It’s hard, it’s challenging but it’s fun for me. That’s what drives me to get out of bed every morning,” he said.
Offenders with mental illness get a break
A law included as part of budget legislation that was signed by then-Gov. Jerry Brown of California in June 2018 has offered people with mental health troubles who have been charged with a crime the opportunity for treatment instead of jail time.
As reported in the Los Angeles Times, the law provides judges with the discretion to order offenders into treatment rather than sentencing them. Success in treatment can lead to charges being dropped.
The law has been praised by some mental health advocates but panned by law enforcement officials and prosecutors with a harder view of criminal justice. The opposition stems largely from a December 2018 ruling by the 4th District Court of Appeal that the law could be applied to retroactively address the case of a man imprisoned for 29 years in 2017 for multiple felony charges that included domestic violence and assault.
The law does not extend to those charged with murder, manslaughter, rape, and child sexual abuse. To date, citing mental illness in seeking diversion of sentencing has not proven successful in most cases.
Schools get mental health allocation
The Orleans Parish School Board, which serves all of New Orleans, will allocate $1.3 million to the Center for Resilience, a local mental health day treatment program, beginning this year. The new program will expand mental health help to children in grades 9-12, according to a report in the Times-Picayune.
The funding will enable the center to expand an existing program that helps students with behavioral issues. Such help is not available in the traditional school system. By offsetting part of the price tag for the mental health care, the initiative “[helps to make] this critical service more available for our students most in need,” said Dominique Ellis, a spokesperson for the school board. “Mental health day treatment programs like the Center for Resilience typically cost between the ranges of $80,000-$100,000 per student to operate effectively.”
The development brings New Orleans level with money spent on similar programs in other school boards nationwide. It’s a service that is sorely needed. According to statistics supplied by the Center for Resilience, 60% of New Orleans children suffer from PTSD and are 4.5 times more likely to suffer from hyperactivity, aggression, and social withdrawal than similarly aged children elsewhere in the United States.
Bill addressing opioid crisis a “no-brainer”
Legislation put forward in the current session of the Texas Legislature would require pharmacists to identify all prescription opioids with a red cap and a hard-to-miss warning of the addictive risk of the medications. In addition, pharmacists would have to explain the risk in person to those receiving the medications and get signed acknowledgment of the conversation before dispensing the drugs.
As described in an article in the Austin American-Stateman, nearly 3,000 people in Texas died from drug overdoses in 2017. The deaths tied to opioid overdoses are not certain, but other data from 2015 suggest that one-third is a reasonable estimate.
“Losing a loved one to an opioid overdose is a tragedy that far too many Texas families experience,” said Rep. Shawn Thierry last month, when she introduced the three bills. “These distinctive red caps will serve as a clear notice to Texans that opioids are unlike milder forms of prescription pain relievers and have life-altering risks that must be considered before taking them.”
Warning labels on everything from food to tobacco products, and including them on prescription opioids is a “no-brainer,” Ms. Thierry said. “The more we can educate our residents the less likely they will be to misuse these medications.”
A report issued in November 2018 chronicled the drug crisis in Texas and offered recommendations. Many of the 100 recommendations involved the absence of treatment resources in the state.
Families are the bedrock of the lives of many, but some people opt to separate permanently from family members. A recent episode of the NPR program “1A” explored why families sever ties.
For journalist Harriet Brown, author of “Shadow Daughter: A Memoir of Estrangement,” (Da Capo Press, 2018), the decision to end her relationship with her mother came after she blamed Ms. Brown in “a blistering email” for the relapsed anorexia of Ms. Brown’s daughter.
“I was done with her,” Ms. Brown said on the program. “I told her I was done. That was it. And I never talked to her again. I think for both of us it felt final in some way.”
She said a lot of shame and stigma comes from having a bad relationship with a parent. “I really wanted to make it clear that ... sometimes walking away is really the best thing to do.”
Kristina M. Scharp, PhD, who has studied the estrangement phenomenon, said no national data exist on family estrangement. “About 12% of mothers and research would suggest even more fathers would report being estranged from one of their children,” said Dr. Scharp, who is with the University of Washington, Seattle. “It’s fairly common.”
Estrangement might be more common today because times have changed, said Joshua Coleman, PhD, author of “When Parents Hurt: Compassionate Strategies When you and Your Grown Child Don’t get Along” (HarperCollins, 2008). “Today’s adult children don’t view their relationships with their parents the way their folks did with their parents … the principles of obligation, duty, and respect that baby boomers and generations before them had for their elders aren’t necessarily there anymore,” Dr. Coleman said in a previous interview with the Chicago Tribune.
For her part, Ms. Brown said, the relationship with her mother – who is now deceased – might have been healed with respect. she said. “Honestly, it was that basic with my mother.”
Phelps gets mental health advocacy award
In the pool, Michael Phelps was golden, with 28 Olympics medals, 23 of them gold, hanging around his neck by the end of his swimming career. But the release from the water to real life after the 2016 Summer Olympics left no outlet for troubles that had dogged him for years. Drunk driving convictions and a ban from competition during his competitive years had failed to stop his downward spiral of depression. His thoughts turned to suicide.
But his story has a bright ending. With his realization that he had hit rock bottom, and with the help of his wife and therapists, he accepted his depression and learned to live with the reality that his life is, for the most part, pretty good.
His openness about his struggles with depression has been influential. The latest recognition came in early January, when he received the Morton E. Ruderman Award in Inclusion from the Ruderman Family Foundation. As reported in the Boston Globe, Mr. Phelps was recognized for his advocacy for people with disabilities and “his own journey with mental health.”
“I do like who I am and I’m comfortable with who I am. I couldn’t say that a few years ago. So I’m in a very good place and just living life one day at a time,” Mr. Phelps remarked in an interview with CNN last year.
Mr. Phelps is now a paid spokesperson for TalkSpace, an online therapy company.
“I’d like to make a difference. I’d like to be able to save a life if I can. You know, for me that’s more important than winning a gold medal. The stuff that I’m doing now is very exciting. It’s hard, it’s challenging but it’s fun for me. That’s what drives me to get out of bed every morning,” he said.
Offenders with mental illness get a break
A law included as part of budget legislation that was signed by then-Gov. Jerry Brown of California in June 2018 has offered people with mental health troubles who have been charged with a crime the opportunity for treatment instead of jail time.
As reported in the Los Angeles Times, the law provides judges with the discretion to order offenders into treatment rather than sentencing them. Success in treatment can lead to charges being dropped.
The law has been praised by some mental health advocates but panned by law enforcement officials and prosecutors with a harder view of criminal justice. The opposition stems largely from a December 2018 ruling by the 4th District Court of Appeal that the law could be applied to retroactively address the case of a man imprisoned for 29 years in 2017 for multiple felony charges that included domestic violence and assault.
The law does not extend to those charged with murder, manslaughter, rape, and child sexual abuse. To date, citing mental illness in seeking diversion of sentencing has not proven successful in most cases.
Schools get mental health allocation
The Orleans Parish School Board, which serves all of New Orleans, will allocate $1.3 million to the Center for Resilience, a local mental health day treatment program, beginning this year. The new program will expand mental health help to children in grades 9-12, according to a report in the Times-Picayune.
The funding will enable the center to expand an existing program that helps students with behavioral issues. Such help is not available in the traditional school system. By offsetting part of the price tag for the mental health care, the initiative “[helps to make] this critical service more available for our students most in need,” said Dominique Ellis, a spokesperson for the school board. “Mental health day treatment programs like the Center for Resilience typically cost between the ranges of $80,000-$100,000 per student to operate effectively.”
The development brings New Orleans level with money spent on similar programs in other school boards nationwide. It’s a service that is sorely needed. According to statistics supplied by the Center for Resilience, 60% of New Orleans children suffer from PTSD and are 4.5 times more likely to suffer from hyperactivity, aggression, and social withdrawal than similarly aged children elsewhere in the United States.
Bill addressing opioid crisis a “no-brainer”
Legislation put forward in the current session of the Texas Legislature would require pharmacists to identify all prescription opioids with a red cap and a hard-to-miss warning of the addictive risk of the medications. In addition, pharmacists would have to explain the risk in person to those receiving the medications and get signed acknowledgment of the conversation before dispensing the drugs.
As described in an article in the Austin American-Stateman, nearly 3,000 people in Texas died from drug overdoses in 2017. The deaths tied to opioid overdoses are not certain, but other data from 2015 suggest that one-third is a reasonable estimate.
“Losing a loved one to an opioid overdose is a tragedy that far too many Texas families experience,” said Rep. Shawn Thierry last month, when she introduced the three bills. “These distinctive red caps will serve as a clear notice to Texans that opioids are unlike milder forms of prescription pain relievers and have life-altering risks that must be considered before taking them.”
Warning labels on everything from food to tobacco products, and including them on prescription opioids is a “no-brainer,” Ms. Thierry said. “The more we can educate our residents the less likely they will be to misuse these medications.”
A report issued in November 2018 chronicled the drug crisis in Texas and offered recommendations. Many of the 100 recommendations involved the absence of treatment resources in the state.
Mental health patients flocking to emergency departments
Emergency department visits in the United States climbed by 15% overall from 2006 to 2014. Over the same time period, ED visits by people with mental health issues soared by 44%, according to a report from the Agency for Health Care Research & Quality.
“The extent to which ERs are now flooded with patients with mental illness is unprecedented,” David R. Rubinow, MD, chairman of the department of psychiatry at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, said in an interview with CNN.
This overflow is “having a really destructive effect on health care delivery in general,” Dr. Rubinow said. “There are ERs now that are repeatedly on diversion – which means they can’t see any more patients – because there are so many patients with mental illness or behavioral problems [who] are populating the ER.”
Physicians such as Mark D. Pearlmutter, MD, are convinced that EDs have become the medical refuge for many people with mental illness. “We are the safety net,” said Dr. Pearlmutter, an emergency physician affiliated with Steward Health Care in Brighton, Mass. Dr. Pearlmutter said some patients he has seen in the ED often have dual diagnoses, such as “substance abuse and depression, for example.”
As a result of this situation, patients with psychiatric needs might not receive the care that they really need, and care might be delayed for patients with other life-threatening conditions. “The ER is not a great place if you’re a mental health patient; the cardiac patients get put in front of you, and you could end up being there for a really long time, said David Morris, PhD, a psychologist at the O’Donnell Brain Institute in Dallas.
, Dr. Pearlmutter suggested. After all, increasingly, primary care physicians are providing mental health care.
Twists on New Year’s resolutions
Some people bring in each new year by shifting their perspectives – without making resolutions.
Tim Ferriss, an entrepreneur known for blogs and podcasts on work and life, engages in what he calls “past year reviews,” where accomplishments are tallied frequently throughout the year in terms of their positive or negative effect, with the latter being ruled out for the coming year. Over a few years, he hopes, the list of negatives will shrink and the positive items will increase, according to a post on the NBC News website.
Instead of making resolutions, Oprah Winfrey keeps a journal that is updated nightly with five things that spark gratitude. “I live in the present moment. I try to find the good that’s going on in any given situation,” Ms. Winfrey said in a 2017 interview. The practice has taught her to be careful in her personal wishes.
Melinda Gates starts the new year with a single word to provide guidance. Past examples include “gentle,” “spacious,” and, last year, “grace.” Her selections, she said, have helped her sharpen her focus on the really important aspects of her life.
“[Grace] even helped me find a beam of peace through the sadness of a friend’s funeral. When I was upset or distressed, I whispered to myself: ‘Grace.’ That’s the power of a well-chosen word of the year. It makes the year better – and it helps me be better, too, she wrote in a recent LinkedIn post.
20-somethings facing challenges
A recent article in the Guardian lamented a life that is not progressing as expected.
“I am 25 and a half, single, unable to pay my rent, and the closest thing I own to a car is a broken skateboard,” wrote Juliana Piskorz. “I’m in the throes of a quarter-life crisis.”
Ms. Piskorz, who said she suffers from anxiety attacks, said her experience of this crisis manifests itself by making her want to run away, start all over, or distract herself from reality.
She is not alone. According to LinkedIn, about three-quarters of people aged 25-33 share this kind of insecurity and doubt. Low self-esteem is an important culprit, according to James Arkell, MD, a psychiatrist affiliated with the Nightingale Hospital London. “Very often, 20-somethings I see here are beautiful, talented, and have the world on a plate, but they don’t like themselves and that’s got to be about society making them feel as if they have to keep up with these unrelenting standards.”
There are other reasons for millennial despair, Ms. Piskorz speculated.
“Our childhood visions for our lives ... are no longer realistic,” she wrote. “Due to unaffordable housing, less job security, and lower incomes, the traditional ‘markers’ of adulthood, such as owning a home, getting married, and having children, are being pushed back. This has left a vacuum between our teenage years and late 20s with many of us feeling we’re navigating a no man’s land with zero clue when we’ll reach the other side.”
Seeking optimism, Ms. Piskorz noted that, as a community, millennials share many positive characteristics that should serve them well.
“We are not afraid to talk about how we feel, although we should probably talk more,” she wrote. “We stand up for the causes that we think matter; we are not afraid to try new things, and we are not willing to live a life half lived.”
Apps monitor teen angst, depression
The smartphone, often seen as a tool that fuels angst, might be a resource that could identify teenagers in trouble.
According to an article in the Washington Post, research is underway on smartphone apps that can decipher the digital footprints left by users during their Internet ramblings.
“As teens scroll through Instagram or Snapchat, tap out texts, or watch YouTube videos, they also leave digital footprints that might offer clues to their psychological well-being,” wrote article author Lindsey Tanner, of the Associated Press. “Changes in typing speed, voice tone, word choice, and how often kids stay home could signal trouble.”
“We are tracking the equivalent of a heartbeat for the human brain,” said Alex Leow, MD, PhD, an app developer, and associate professor of psychiatry and bioengineering at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
The technology is not ready for deployment because of technical glitches and, more importantly, ethical issues concerning the recording and scrutiny of a user’s personal data being roadblocks. Still, with the permission of the user, mood-detecting apps might one day be a smartphone feature. “[Users] could withdraw permission at any time, said Nick B. Allen, PhD, a psychologist at the University of Oregon, Portland, who has helped create an app that is being tested on young people who have attempted suicide.
He said the biggest hurdle is figuring out “what’s the signal and what’s the noise – what is in this enormous amount of data that people accumulate on their phone that is indicative of a mental health crisis.”
Virtues of “intellectual humility”
Intellectual humility is neither a character flaw nor a sign of being a pushover.
Instead, wrote science reporter Brian Resnick in an article posted on Vox.com, “it’s a method of thinking. It’s about entertaining the possibility that you may be wrong and being open to learning from the experience of others. Intellectual humility is about being actively curious about your blind spots.”
In an effort to promote intellectual humility in psychology, two researchers, Tal Yarkoni, PhD, and Christopher F. Chabris, PhD, launched the Loss-of-Confidence project. The project is a safe space where researchers who doubt a previous finding in psychology can recalibrate. “I do think it’s a cultural issue that people are not willing to admit mistakes,” said Julia M. Rohrer, a PhD candidate and personality psychologist at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin who joined the team in 2017. “Our broader goal is to gently nudge the whole scientific system and psychology toward a different culture where it’s okay, normalized, and expected for researchers to admit past mistakes and not get penalized for it.”
Put another way, the aim is to foster a culture where intellectually humble, honest, and curious people can thrive. For that to occur, “we all, even the smartest among us, need to better appreciate our cognitive blind spots,” Mr. Resnick wrote. “Our minds are more imperfect and imprecise than we’d often like to admit.”
In a recent paper, Ms. Rohrer and her associates said the Loss-of-Confidence project grew out of an online discussion in the wake of a post by Dana R. Carney, PhD, and associates on power poses. In that post, Dr. Carney explains why she changed her position on the value of power poses, concluding that the data gathered by her lab at the time leading to the power poses theory (Psychol Sci. 2010 Oct 21 [10]:1363-8) were real but flimsy. “My views have been updated to reflect the evidence,” she wrote. “As such, I do not believe that ‘power pose’ effects are real.”
In the Vox.com article, Mr. Resnick wrote that intellectual humility is needed for two reasons. “One is that our culture promotes and rewards overconfidence and arrogance. At the same time, when we are wrong – out of ignorance or error – and realize it, our culture doesn’t make it easy to admit it. Humbling moments too easily can turn into moments of humiliation.”
Emergency department visits in the United States climbed by 15% overall from 2006 to 2014. Over the same time period, ED visits by people with mental health issues soared by 44%, according to a report from the Agency for Health Care Research & Quality.
“The extent to which ERs are now flooded with patients with mental illness is unprecedented,” David R. Rubinow, MD, chairman of the department of psychiatry at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, said in an interview with CNN.
This overflow is “having a really destructive effect on health care delivery in general,” Dr. Rubinow said. “There are ERs now that are repeatedly on diversion – which means they can’t see any more patients – because there are so many patients with mental illness or behavioral problems [who] are populating the ER.”
Physicians such as Mark D. Pearlmutter, MD, are convinced that EDs have become the medical refuge for many people with mental illness. “We are the safety net,” said Dr. Pearlmutter, an emergency physician affiliated with Steward Health Care in Brighton, Mass. Dr. Pearlmutter said some patients he has seen in the ED often have dual diagnoses, such as “substance abuse and depression, for example.”
As a result of this situation, patients with psychiatric needs might not receive the care that they really need, and care might be delayed for patients with other life-threatening conditions. “The ER is not a great place if you’re a mental health patient; the cardiac patients get put in front of you, and you could end up being there for a really long time, said David Morris, PhD, a psychologist at the O’Donnell Brain Institute in Dallas.
, Dr. Pearlmutter suggested. After all, increasingly, primary care physicians are providing mental health care.
Twists on New Year’s resolutions
Some people bring in each new year by shifting their perspectives – without making resolutions.
Tim Ferriss, an entrepreneur known for blogs and podcasts on work and life, engages in what he calls “past year reviews,” where accomplishments are tallied frequently throughout the year in terms of their positive or negative effect, with the latter being ruled out for the coming year. Over a few years, he hopes, the list of negatives will shrink and the positive items will increase, according to a post on the NBC News website.
Instead of making resolutions, Oprah Winfrey keeps a journal that is updated nightly with five things that spark gratitude. “I live in the present moment. I try to find the good that’s going on in any given situation,” Ms. Winfrey said in a 2017 interview. The practice has taught her to be careful in her personal wishes.
Melinda Gates starts the new year with a single word to provide guidance. Past examples include “gentle,” “spacious,” and, last year, “grace.” Her selections, she said, have helped her sharpen her focus on the really important aspects of her life.
“[Grace] even helped me find a beam of peace through the sadness of a friend’s funeral. When I was upset or distressed, I whispered to myself: ‘Grace.’ That’s the power of a well-chosen word of the year. It makes the year better – and it helps me be better, too, she wrote in a recent LinkedIn post.
20-somethings facing challenges
A recent article in the Guardian lamented a life that is not progressing as expected.
“I am 25 and a half, single, unable to pay my rent, and the closest thing I own to a car is a broken skateboard,” wrote Juliana Piskorz. “I’m in the throes of a quarter-life crisis.”
Ms. Piskorz, who said she suffers from anxiety attacks, said her experience of this crisis manifests itself by making her want to run away, start all over, or distract herself from reality.
She is not alone. According to LinkedIn, about three-quarters of people aged 25-33 share this kind of insecurity and doubt. Low self-esteem is an important culprit, according to James Arkell, MD, a psychiatrist affiliated with the Nightingale Hospital London. “Very often, 20-somethings I see here are beautiful, talented, and have the world on a plate, but they don’t like themselves and that’s got to be about society making them feel as if they have to keep up with these unrelenting standards.”
There are other reasons for millennial despair, Ms. Piskorz speculated.
“Our childhood visions for our lives ... are no longer realistic,” she wrote. “Due to unaffordable housing, less job security, and lower incomes, the traditional ‘markers’ of adulthood, such as owning a home, getting married, and having children, are being pushed back. This has left a vacuum between our teenage years and late 20s with many of us feeling we’re navigating a no man’s land with zero clue when we’ll reach the other side.”
Seeking optimism, Ms. Piskorz noted that, as a community, millennials share many positive characteristics that should serve them well.
“We are not afraid to talk about how we feel, although we should probably talk more,” she wrote. “We stand up for the causes that we think matter; we are not afraid to try new things, and we are not willing to live a life half lived.”
Apps monitor teen angst, depression
The smartphone, often seen as a tool that fuels angst, might be a resource that could identify teenagers in trouble.
According to an article in the Washington Post, research is underway on smartphone apps that can decipher the digital footprints left by users during their Internet ramblings.
“As teens scroll through Instagram or Snapchat, tap out texts, or watch YouTube videos, they also leave digital footprints that might offer clues to their psychological well-being,” wrote article author Lindsey Tanner, of the Associated Press. “Changes in typing speed, voice tone, word choice, and how often kids stay home could signal trouble.”
“We are tracking the equivalent of a heartbeat for the human brain,” said Alex Leow, MD, PhD, an app developer, and associate professor of psychiatry and bioengineering at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
The technology is not ready for deployment because of technical glitches and, more importantly, ethical issues concerning the recording and scrutiny of a user’s personal data being roadblocks. Still, with the permission of the user, mood-detecting apps might one day be a smartphone feature. “[Users] could withdraw permission at any time, said Nick B. Allen, PhD, a psychologist at the University of Oregon, Portland, who has helped create an app that is being tested on young people who have attempted suicide.
He said the biggest hurdle is figuring out “what’s the signal and what’s the noise – what is in this enormous amount of data that people accumulate on their phone that is indicative of a mental health crisis.”
Virtues of “intellectual humility”
Intellectual humility is neither a character flaw nor a sign of being a pushover.
Instead, wrote science reporter Brian Resnick in an article posted on Vox.com, “it’s a method of thinking. It’s about entertaining the possibility that you may be wrong and being open to learning from the experience of others. Intellectual humility is about being actively curious about your blind spots.”
In an effort to promote intellectual humility in psychology, two researchers, Tal Yarkoni, PhD, and Christopher F. Chabris, PhD, launched the Loss-of-Confidence project. The project is a safe space where researchers who doubt a previous finding in psychology can recalibrate. “I do think it’s a cultural issue that people are not willing to admit mistakes,” said Julia M. Rohrer, a PhD candidate and personality psychologist at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin who joined the team in 2017. “Our broader goal is to gently nudge the whole scientific system and psychology toward a different culture where it’s okay, normalized, and expected for researchers to admit past mistakes and not get penalized for it.”
Put another way, the aim is to foster a culture where intellectually humble, honest, and curious people can thrive. For that to occur, “we all, even the smartest among us, need to better appreciate our cognitive blind spots,” Mr. Resnick wrote. “Our minds are more imperfect and imprecise than we’d often like to admit.”
In a recent paper, Ms. Rohrer and her associates said the Loss-of-Confidence project grew out of an online discussion in the wake of a post by Dana R. Carney, PhD, and associates on power poses. In that post, Dr. Carney explains why she changed her position on the value of power poses, concluding that the data gathered by her lab at the time leading to the power poses theory (Psychol Sci. 2010 Oct 21 [10]:1363-8) were real but flimsy. “My views have been updated to reflect the evidence,” she wrote. “As such, I do not believe that ‘power pose’ effects are real.”
In the Vox.com article, Mr. Resnick wrote that intellectual humility is needed for two reasons. “One is that our culture promotes and rewards overconfidence and arrogance. At the same time, when we are wrong – out of ignorance or error – and realize it, our culture doesn’t make it easy to admit it. Humbling moments too easily can turn into moments of humiliation.”
Emergency department visits in the United States climbed by 15% overall from 2006 to 2014. Over the same time period, ED visits by people with mental health issues soared by 44%, according to a report from the Agency for Health Care Research & Quality.
“The extent to which ERs are now flooded with patients with mental illness is unprecedented,” David R. Rubinow, MD, chairman of the department of psychiatry at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, said in an interview with CNN.
This overflow is “having a really destructive effect on health care delivery in general,” Dr. Rubinow said. “There are ERs now that are repeatedly on diversion – which means they can’t see any more patients – because there are so many patients with mental illness or behavioral problems [who] are populating the ER.”
Physicians such as Mark D. Pearlmutter, MD, are convinced that EDs have become the medical refuge for many people with mental illness. “We are the safety net,” said Dr. Pearlmutter, an emergency physician affiliated with Steward Health Care in Brighton, Mass. Dr. Pearlmutter said some patients he has seen in the ED often have dual diagnoses, such as “substance abuse and depression, for example.”
As a result of this situation, patients with psychiatric needs might not receive the care that they really need, and care might be delayed for patients with other life-threatening conditions. “The ER is not a great place if you’re a mental health patient; the cardiac patients get put in front of you, and you could end up being there for a really long time, said David Morris, PhD, a psychologist at the O’Donnell Brain Institute in Dallas.
, Dr. Pearlmutter suggested. After all, increasingly, primary care physicians are providing mental health care.
Twists on New Year’s resolutions
Some people bring in each new year by shifting their perspectives – without making resolutions.
Tim Ferriss, an entrepreneur known for blogs and podcasts on work and life, engages in what he calls “past year reviews,” where accomplishments are tallied frequently throughout the year in terms of their positive or negative effect, with the latter being ruled out for the coming year. Over a few years, he hopes, the list of negatives will shrink and the positive items will increase, according to a post on the NBC News website.
Instead of making resolutions, Oprah Winfrey keeps a journal that is updated nightly with five things that spark gratitude. “I live in the present moment. I try to find the good that’s going on in any given situation,” Ms. Winfrey said in a 2017 interview. The practice has taught her to be careful in her personal wishes.
Melinda Gates starts the new year with a single word to provide guidance. Past examples include “gentle,” “spacious,” and, last year, “grace.” Her selections, she said, have helped her sharpen her focus on the really important aspects of her life.
“[Grace] even helped me find a beam of peace through the sadness of a friend’s funeral. When I was upset or distressed, I whispered to myself: ‘Grace.’ That’s the power of a well-chosen word of the year. It makes the year better – and it helps me be better, too, she wrote in a recent LinkedIn post.
20-somethings facing challenges
A recent article in the Guardian lamented a life that is not progressing as expected.
“I am 25 and a half, single, unable to pay my rent, and the closest thing I own to a car is a broken skateboard,” wrote Juliana Piskorz. “I’m in the throes of a quarter-life crisis.”
Ms. Piskorz, who said she suffers from anxiety attacks, said her experience of this crisis manifests itself by making her want to run away, start all over, or distract herself from reality.
She is not alone. According to LinkedIn, about three-quarters of people aged 25-33 share this kind of insecurity and doubt. Low self-esteem is an important culprit, according to James Arkell, MD, a psychiatrist affiliated with the Nightingale Hospital London. “Very often, 20-somethings I see here are beautiful, talented, and have the world on a plate, but they don’t like themselves and that’s got to be about society making them feel as if they have to keep up with these unrelenting standards.”
There are other reasons for millennial despair, Ms. Piskorz speculated.
“Our childhood visions for our lives ... are no longer realistic,” she wrote. “Due to unaffordable housing, less job security, and lower incomes, the traditional ‘markers’ of adulthood, such as owning a home, getting married, and having children, are being pushed back. This has left a vacuum between our teenage years and late 20s with many of us feeling we’re navigating a no man’s land with zero clue when we’ll reach the other side.”
Seeking optimism, Ms. Piskorz noted that, as a community, millennials share many positive characteristics that should serve them well.
“We are not afraid to talk about how we feel, although we should probably talk more,” she wrote. “We stand up for the causes that we think matter; we are not afraid to try new things, and we are not willing to live a life half lived.”
Apps monitor teen angst, depression
The smartphone, often seen as a tool that fuels angst, might be a resource that could identify teenagers in trouble.
According to an article in the Washington Post, research is underway on smartphone apps that can decipher the digital footprints left by users during their Internet ramblings.
“As teens scroll through Instagram or Snapchat, tap out texts, or watch YouTube videos, they also leave digital footprints that might offer clues to their psychological well-being,” wrote article author Lindsey Tanner, of the Associated Press. “Changes in typing speed, voice tone, word choice, and how often kids stay home could signal trouble.”
“We are tracking the equivalent of a heartbeat for the human brain,” said Alex Leow, MD, PhD, an app developer, and associate professor of psychiatry and bioengineering at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
The technology is not ready for deployment because of technical glitches and, more importantly, ethical issues concerning the recording and scrutiny of a user’s personal data being roadblocks. Still, with the permission of the user, mood-detecting apps might one day be a smartphone feature. “[Users] could withdraw permission at any time, said Nick B. Allen, PhD, a psychologist at the University of Oregon, Portland, who has helped create an app that is being tested on young people who have attempted suicide.
He said the biggest hurdle is figuring out “what’s the signal and what’s the noise – what is in this enormous amount of data that people accumulate on their phone that is indicative of a mental health crisis.”
Virtues of “intellectual humility”
Intellectual humility is neither a character flaw nor a sign of being a pushover.
Instead, wrote science reporter Brian Resnick in an article posted on Vox.com, “it’s a method of thinking. It’s about entertaining the possibility that you may be wrong and being open to learning from the experience of others. Intellectual humility is about being actively curious about your blind spots.”
In an effort to promote intellectual humility in psychology, two researchers, Tal Yarkoni, PhD, and Christopher F. Chabris, PhD, launched the Loss-of-Confidence project. The project is a safe space where researchers who doubt a previous finding in psychology can recalibrate. “I do think it’s a cultural issue that people are not willing to admit mistakes,” said Julia M. Rohrer, a PhD candidate and personality psychologist at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin who joined the team in 2017. “Our broader goal is to gently nudge the whole scientific system and psychology toward a different culture where it’s okay, normalized, and expected for researchers to admit past mistakes and not get penalized for it.”
Put another way, the aim is to foster a culture where intellectually humble, honest, and curious people can thrive. For that to occur, “we all, even the smartest among us, need to better appreciate our cognitive blind spots,” Mr. Resnick wrote. “Our minds are more imperfect and imprecise than we’d often like to admit.”
In a recent paper, Ms. Rohrer and her associates said the Loss-of-Confidence project grew out of an online discussion in the wake of a post by Dana R. Carney, PhD, and associates on power poses. In that post, Dr. Carney explains why she changed her position on the value of power poses, concluding that the data gathered by her lab at the time leading to the power poses theory (Psychol Sci. 2010 Oct 21 [10]:1363-8) were real but flimsy. “My views have been updated to reflect the evidence,” she wrote. “As such, I do not believe that ‘power pose’ effects are real.”
In the Vox.com article, Mr. Resnick wrote that intellectual humility is needed for two reasons. “One is that our culture promotes and rewards overconfidence and arrogance. At the same time, when we are wrong – out of ignorance or error – and realize it, our culture doesn’t make it easy to admit it. Humbling moments too easily can turn into moments of humiliation.”
Liquid nicotine in e-cigarettes could prove more addictive; gratitude tied to less anxiety, depression
The image of inhaling the vapor from electronic cigarettes – vaping – is presented by some as an innocuous substitute to smoking traditional cigarettes. It is true that vaping might pose less danger than cigarettes and can wean people off smoking,
“Oh man, [withdrawal] was hell,” said Andrea “Nick” Tattanelli, a 39-year-old mortgage banker who reported engaging in vaping for more than 20 years, in a USA Today article. Mr. Tattanelli said quitting left him depressed.
Malissa M. Barbosa, DO, an addiction medicine specialist, wonders whether vaping is the best way to get patients to stop smoking. “The thing is, the studies aren’t fully available around vaping, and I’m very conservative. This is new, and I say, ‘Why aren’t we thinking of traditional means of quitting?’ ”
Vaping is more addictive than smoking traditional cigarettes “because the concentrated liquid form is more quickly metabolized,” said Dr. Barbosa, area medical director of CleanSlate Outpatient Addiction Medicine in Orlando.
And as the number of vapers grows, evidence is mounting that, rather than using it as a stepping stone to becoming nicotine-free, vaping is increasingly being used by adolescents as a form of delivering nicotine.
“We know how hard it is to quit smoking,” said Michael J. Blaha, MD, MPH, a cardiologist who serves as director of clinical research at the Ciccarone Center for the Prevention of Heart Disease at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore. “[With vaping], we’re really dealing with much of the same problem. Early on, there were some reports vaping was less addictive, but that’s still something that can be debated.”
In the United States, vapers include nearly 4 million middle and high school students. Surgeon General Jerome M. Adams, MD, MPH, has suggested raising prices as a strategy aimed at curbing adolescent use.
Impact of gratitude on the brain
The beginning of a new year can be a time for reflection that can include a sense of gratitude for a relatively happy and secure life. And, according to an article at theconversation.com, the ability to have a sense of gratitude is good for well-being.
“Not only does gratitude go along with more optimism, less anxiety and depression, and greater goal attainment, but it’s also associated with fewer symptoms of illness and other physical benefits;” wrote Christina Karns, PhD, research associate in psychology at the University of Oregon, Portland.
A feeling of gratitude stimulates a part of the brain that controls the release of neurochemicals that confer pleasure. The benefits of gratitude aren’t just between the ears. Feeling gratitude can motivate people to pay it forward as altruistic behavior that helps others. Put another way, feeling good about life can trigger kindness.
Research by Dr. Karns and her colleagues also has demonstrated that this link between personal good feeling and altruism can be learned and accentuated. “So in terms of the brain’s reward response, it really can be true that giving is better than receiving,” wrote Dr. Karns, who also is affiliated with the Center for Brain Injury Research and Training at the university.
Imagine if the recipients of such goodwill, in turn, did some good for others, and they for others, and so on.
Did talk radio host save a life?
Talk radio can be filled with acrimony and argument – but it also can save lives. As reported in the Guardian, a show hosted by British TV and radio personality Iain Lee is different in that Mr. Lee sometimes connects with his audience by riffing on his own struggles with depression. A recent show extended the audience connection in a lifesaving way.
Mr. Lee received a call from a listener who reported overdosing on drugs with the intent of suicide. In hearing of that intent, Mr. Lee kept the caller on the line for 30 minutes. At one point, he responded: “Shut up, man, I know you want to die, brother, but I love you. I love you. You may want to die, but we can talk about that tomorrow.”
The response got through to the caller, who reportedly lay on the pavement outside a nightclub. Meanwhile, the call was being traced, and emergency medical personnel responded.
When Mr. Lee learned that the caller had been located and was still alive, he broke down on air. Later, he tweeted: “Tonight we took a call from a man who had taken an overdose … Long periods of silence where I thought he’d died. That was intense and upsetting. Thanks for your kind words. I really hope he makes it.”
A trip to Walmart can include therapy
A Walmart in Carrollton, Tex., is trying out a new service for customers: It is including an on-site mental health clinic. As reported by the Dallas Morning News, the idea is to make mental health care convenient and bring people who otherwise might forgo help through the clinic door.
“Twenty years ago, we would never imagine going to a retail location for a flu shot. You’d make an appointment with your primary care,” said Russell Petrella, chief executive of Beacon Health Options, which runs the in-store clinic. “The idea of bringing these services to places where consumers – potential patients – are more comfortable is getting more and more accepted.”
Initially, therapy was $25 for a 45-minute session with an individual or family. Prices will rise to $110 for an individual and $125 for a family early in this year. Lower prices are available for people who demonstrate a financial need.
The location for this trial run was deliberate. Texas has a disproportionately large number of residents without mental health care, ranking 49th in the nation, according to a 2018 report by Mental Health America.
Greg Hansch, public policy director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness in Texas, said he is encouraged by novel types of care like the Walmart clinic. He would like to see further integration of mental health care into schools, workplaces, and other retailers. “You remove some of that stigma if you can make services part of a person’s everyday routine,” he said.
Smartphones and the teenage brain
The explosion in smartphone use since 2012 has coincided with increased rates of depression in adolescents. Reduced sleep might be one reason. Teenagers in the United States routinely rack up 6 hours a day on social media, which includes texting and other online activities. “For teens in particular, it’s catnip,” said Jean M. Twenge, PhD, professor of psychology at San Diego State University and author of “I-Gen: Why Today’s Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy – and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood” (Atria Books, 2017).
A smartphone is no substitute for face-to-face interactions, and offers little training in verbal communication and problem solving. A consequence of a smartphone-connected youth, according to Dr. Twenge, could be worsened mental health.
But there is some good news. Some teens are working to curb their smartphone use. Stopping the use of a smartphone as a relief for boredom, setting self-imposed time limits of phone use, and not succumbing to the wired world’s tendency to ratchet up anxiety are helpful strategies that can make smartphone use more productive.
The image of inhaling the vapor from electronic cigarettes – vaping – is presented by some as an innocuous substitute to smoking traditional cigarettes. It is true that vaping might pose less danger than cigarettes and can wean people off smoking,
“Oh man, [withdrawal] was hell,” said Andrea “Nick” Tattanelli, a 39-year-old mortgage banker who reported engaging in vaping for more than 20 years, in a USA Today article. Mr. Tattanelli said quitting left him depressed.
Malissa M. Barbosa, DO, an addiction medicine specialist, wonders whether vaping is the best way to get patients to stop smoking. “The thing is, the studies aren’t fully available around vaping, and I’m very conservative. This is new, and I say, ‘Why aren’t we thinking of traditional means of quitting?’ ”
Vaping is more addictive than smoking traditional cigarettes “because the concentrated liquid form is more quickly metabolized,” said Dr. Barbosa, area medical director of CleanSlate Outpatient Addiction Medicine in Orlando.
And as the number of vapers grows, evidence is mounting that, rather than using it as a stepping stone to becoming nicotine-free, vaping is increasingly being used by adolescents as a form of delivering nicotine.
“We know how hard it is to quit smoking,” said Michael J. Blaha, MD, MPH, a cardiologist who serves as director of clinical research at the Ciccarone Center for the Prevention of Heart Disease at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore. “[With vaping], we’re really dealing with much of the same problem. Early on, there were some reports vaping was less addictive, but that’s still something that can be debated.”
In the United States, vapers include nearly 4 million middle and high school students. Surgeon General Jerome M. Adams, MD, MPH, has suggested raising prices as a strategy aimed at curbing adolescent use.
Impact of gratitude on the brain
The beginning of a new year can be a time for reflection that can include a sense of gratitude for a relatively happy and secure life. And, according to an article at theconversation.com, the ability to have a sense of gratitude is good for well-being.
“Not only does gratitude go along with more optimism, less anxiety and depression, and greater goal attainment, but it’s also associated with fewer symptoms of illness and other physical benefits;” wrote Christina Karns, PhD, research associate in psychology at the University of Oregon, Portland.
A feeling of gratitude stimulates a part of the brain that controls the release of neurochemicals that confer pleasure. The benefits of gratitude aren’t just between the ears. Feeling gratitude can motivate people to pay it forward as altruistic behavior that helps others. Put another way, feeling good about life can trigger kindness.
Research by Dr. Karns and her colleagues also has demonstrated that this link between personal good feeling and altruism can be learned and accentuated. “So in terms of the brain’s reward response, it really can be true that giving is better than receiving,” wrote Dr. Karns, who also is affiliated with the Center for Brain Injury Research and Training at the university.
Imagine if the recipients of such goodwill, in turn, did some good for others, and they for others, and so on.
Did talk radio host save a life?
Talk radio can be filled with acrimony and argument – but it also can save lives. As reported in the Guardian, a show hosted by British TV and radio personality Iain Lee is different in that Mr. Lee sometimes connects with his audience by riffing on his own struggles with depression. A recent show extended the audience connection in a lifesaving way.
Mr. Lee received a call from a listener who reported overdosing on drugs with the intent of suicide. In hearing of that intent, Mr. Lee kept the caller on the line for 30 minutes. At one point, he responded: “Shut up, man, I know you want to die, brother, but I love you. I love you. You may want to die, but we can talk about that tomorrow.”
The response got through to the caller, who reportedly lay on the pavement outside a nightclub. Meanwhile, the call was being traced, and emergency medical personnel responded.
When Mr. Lee learned that the caller had been located and was still alive, he broke down on air. Later, he tweeted: “Tonight we took a call from a man who had taken an overdose … Long periods of silence where I thought he’d died. That was intense and upsetting. Thanks for your kind words. I really hope he makes it.”
A trip to Walmart can include therapy
A Walmart in Carrollton, Tex., is trying out a new service for customers: It is including an on-site mental health clinic. As reported by the Dallas Morning News, the idea is to make mental health care convenient and bring people who otherwise might forgo help through the clinic door.
“Twenty years ago, we would never imagine going to a retail location for a flu shot. You’d make an appointment with your primary care,” said Russell Petrella, chief executive of Beacon Health Options, which runs the in-store clinic. “The idea of bringing these services to places where consumers – potential patients – are more comfortable is getting more and more accepted.”
Initially, therapy was $25 for a 45-minute session with an individual or family. Prices will rise to $110 for an individual and $125 for a family early in this year. Lower prices are available for people who demonstrate a financial need.
The location for this trial run was deliberate. Texas has a disproportionately large number of residents without mental health care, ranking 49th in the nation, according to a 2018 report by Mental Health America.
Greg Hansch, public policy director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness in Texas, said he is encouraged by novel types of care like the Walmart clinic. He would like to see further integration of mental health care into schools, workplaces, and other retailers. “You remove some of that stigma if you can make services part of a person’s everyday routine,” he said.
Smartphones and the teenage brain
The explosion in smartphone use since 2012 has coincided with increased rates of depression in adolescents. Reduced sleep might be one reason. Teenagers in the United States routinely rack up 6 hours a day on social media, which includes texting and other online activities. “For teens in particular, it’s catnip,” said Jean M. Twenge, PhD, professor of psychology at San Diego State University and author of “I-Gen: Why Today’s Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy – and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood” (Atria Books, 2017).
A smartphone is no substitute for face-to-face interactions, and offers little training in verbal communication and problem solving. A consequence of a smartphone-connected youth, according to Dr. Twenge, could be worsened mental health.
But there is some good news. Some teens are working to curb their smartphone use. Stopping the use of a smartphone as a relief for boredom, setting self-imposed time limits of phone use, and not succumbing to the wired world’s tendency to ratchet up anxiety are helpful strategies that can make smartphone use more productive.
The image of inhaling the vapor from electronic cigarettes – vaping – is presented by some as an innocuous substitute to smoking traditional cigarettes. It is true that vaping might pose less danger than cigarettes and can wean people off smoking,
“Oh man, [withdrawal] was hell,” said Andrea “Nick” Tattanelli, a 39-year-old mortgage banker who reported engaging in vaping for more than 20 years, in a USA Today article. Mr. Tattanelli said quitting left him depressed.
Malissa M. Barbosa, DO, an addiction medicine specialist, wonders whether vaping is the best way to get patients to stop smoking. “The thing is, the studies aren’t fully available around vaping, and I’m very conservative. This is new, and I say, ‘Why aren’t we thinking of traditional means of quitting?’ ”
Vaping is more addictive than smoking traditional cigarettes “because the concentrated liquid form is more quickly metabolized,” said Dr. Barbosa, area medical director of CleanSlate Outpatient Addiction Medicine in Orlando.
And as the number of vapers grows, evidence is mounting that, rather than using it as a stepping stone to becoming nicotine-free, vaping is increasingly being used by adolescents as a form of delivering nicotine.
“We know how hard it is to quit smoking,” said Michael J. Blaha, MD, MPH, a cardiologist who serves as director of clinical research at the Ciccarone Center for the Prevention of Heart Disease at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore. “[With vaping], we’re really dealing with much of the same problem. Early on, there were some reports vaping was less addictive, but that’s still something that can be debated.”
In the United States, vapers include nearly 4 million middle and high school students. Surgeon General Jerome M. Adams, MD, MPH, has suggested raising prices as a strategy aimed at curbing adolescent use.
Impact of gratitude on the brain
The beginning of a new year can be a time for reflection that can include a sense of gratitude for a relatively happy and secure life. And, according to an article at theconversation.com, the ability to have a sense of gratitude is good for well-being.
“Not only does gratitude go along with more optimism, less anxiety and depression, and greater goal attainment, but it’s also associated with fewer symptoms of illness and other physical benefits;” wrote Christina Karns, PhD, research associate in psychology at the University of Oregon, Portland.
A feeling of gratitude stimulates a part of the brain that controls the release of neurochemicals that confer pleasure. The benefits of gratitude aren’t just between the ears. Feeling gratitude can motivate people to pay it forward as altruistic behavior that helps others. Put another way, feeling good about life can trigger kindness.
Research by Dr. Karns and her colleagues also has demonstrated that this link between personal good feeling and altruism can be learned and accentuated. “So in terms of the brain’s reward response, it really can be true that giving is better than receiving,” wrote Dr. Karns, who also is affiliated with the Center for Brain Injury Research and Training at the university.
Imagine if the recipients of such goodwill, in turn, did some good for others, and they for others, and so on.
Did talk radio host save a life?
Talk radio can be filled with acrimony and argument – but it also can save lives. As reported in the Guardian, a show hosted by British TV and radio personality Iain Lee is different in that Mr. Lee sometimes connects with his audience by riffing on his own struggles with depression. A recent show extended the audience connection in a lifesaving way.
Mr. Lee received a call from a listener who reported overdosing on drugs with the intent of suicide. In hearing of that intent, Mr. Lee kept the caller on the line for 30 minutes. At one point, he responded: “Shut up, man, I know you want to die, brother, but I love you. I love you. You may want to die, but we can talk about that tomorrow.”
The response got through to the caller, who reportedly lay on the pavement outside a nightclub. Meanwhile, the call was being traced, and emergency medical personnel responded.
When Mr. Lee learned that the caller had been located and was still alive, he broke down on air. Later, he tweeted: “Tonight we took a call from a man who had taken an overdose … Long periods of silence where I thought he’d died. That was intense and upsetting. Thanks for your kind words. I really hope he makes it.”
A trip to Walmart can include therapy
A Walmart in Carrollton, Tex., is trying out a new service for customers: It is including an on-site mental health clinic. As reported by the Dallas Morning News, the idea is to make mental health care convenient and bring people who otherwise might forgo help through the clinic door.
“Twenty years ago, we would never imagine going to a retail location for a flu shot. You’d make an appointment with your primary care,” said Russell Petrella, chief executive of Beacon Health Options, which runs the in-store clinic. “The idea of bringing these services to places where consumers – potential patients – are more comfortable is getting more and more accepted.”
Initially, therapy was $25 for a 45-minute session with an individual or family. Prices will rise to $110 for an individual and $125 for a family early in this year. Lower prices are available for people who demonstrate a financial need.
The location for this trial run was deliberate. Texas has a disproportionately large number of residents without mental health care, ranking 49th in the nation, according to a 2018 report by Mental Health America.
Greg Hansch, public policy director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness in Texas, said he is encouraged by novel types of care like the Walmart clinic. He would like to see further integration of mental health care into schools, workplaces, and other retailers. “You remove some of that stigma if you can make services part of a person’s everyday routine,” he said.
Smartphones and the teenage brain
The explosion in smartphone use since 2012 has coincided with increased rates of depression in adolescents. Reduced sleep might be one reason. Teenagers in the United States routinely rack up 6 hours a day on social media, which includes texting and other online activities. “For teens in particular, it’s catnip,” said Jean M. Twenge, PhD, professor of psychology at San Diego State University and author of “I-Gen: Why Today’s Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy – and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood” (Atria Books, 2017).
A smartphone is no substitute for face-to-face interactions, and offers little training in verbal communication and problem solving. A consequence of a smartphone-connected youth, according to Dr. Twenge, could be worsened mental health.
But there is some good news. Some teens are working to curb their smartphone use. Stopping the use of a smartphone as a relief for boredom, setting self-imposed time limits of phone use, and not succumbing to the wired world’s tendency to ratchet up anxiety are helpful strategies that can make smartphone use more productive.
Report criticizes VA’s suicide prevention efforts; author shares depression-fighting strategies
The suicide rate among veterans is almost double that of the general American population. It has been rising among those who served in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Rep. Tim Walz, the Minnesota Democrat who requested the investigation, reportedly said in a statement. “Unfortunately, VA failed to do that.”
Mr. Walz was referring to a failure in prevention efforts that was detailed in a Government Accountability Office report released recently and was the subject of an article in the New York Times. The report blames bureaucratic confusion and an absence of leadership – epitomized by several department vacancies.
“This is such an important issue; we need to be throwing everything we can at it,” said Caitin Thompson, PhD. She was director of the VA’s suicide prevention efforts but resigned in frustration in mid-2017. “It’s so ludicrous that money would be sitting on the table. Outreach is one of the first ways to engage with veterans and families about ways to get help. If we don’t have that, what do we have?”
Surviving the holidays with depression
The postcard image of the Christmas season is that of joyous celebration with family and friends. For many people, however, this image is false. Many complain about feelings of stress imposed by familial obligations, pressure to conform to those postcard myths, and the financial toll that all of that holiday largesse can exact.
Now add depression to this mix. How can those burdened by depression find some joy at this time of year? In a recent article in the Huffington Post, author Andrea Loewen advises staying away from social media and focusing on the positive.
“[Social media] is a double-edged sword: Either I see all the amazing things everyone else is doing and feel jealous/insignificant/left out, or I see that no one else is really posting and assume they must be too busy having incredible quality time with their families while I’m the unengaged loser scrolling Instagram,” Ms. Loewen wrote. “Either way, it’s bad news.”
One concrete practice that she engages in is taking a few minutes to think about and write down the positive things that happened each day.
“The list includes everything, big and small: from the thoughtful gift I wasn’t expecting to the simple observation that a friend seemed happy to see me,” Ms. Loewen wrote. “Depending on where I’m at in my depression, those seemingly tiny details can be vital reminders I hold a valuable place in the world.”
Artist perpetuates persistent myth
In some ways, Kanye West embraces his diagnosis of bipolar disorder. He calls the illness his “superpower,” and the art on his new album, “Ye,” includes the phrase: “I hate being Bi-Polar/it’s awesome.” But his decision to abandon his medications promotes a myth, Amanda Mull wrote in an opinion piece in the Atlantic.
“In apparently quitting his psychiatric medication for the sake of his creativity, Mr. West is promoting one of mental health’s most persistent and dangerous myths: that suffering is necessary for great art,” Ms. Mull wrote.
Philip R. Muskin, MD, who is affiliated with the department of psychiatry at Columbia University in New York, agreed that linking mental turmoil with creative genius is indeed problematic. “Creative people are not creative when they’re depressed, or so manic that no one can tolerate being with them and they start to merge into psychosis, or when they’re filled with numbing anxiety,” he said in the Atlantic article.
Esmé Weijun Wang concurred and offered a counterview to that of Mr. West. A novelist who has written about living with schizoaffective disorder, she said: “It may be true that mental illness has given me insights with which to work, creatively speaking, but it’s also made me too sick to use that creativity. The voice in my head that says, ‘Die, die, die’ is not a voice that encourages putting together a short story.”
For his part, Mr. West’s decision to stop taking his medicine threatens to undermine his own mental health. And his public musings could drive others away from treatment.
“Antiopioid backlash” causes pain
An article by Fox News has highlighted the daily toll that opioid addiction is exacting on Americans. Government efforts aimed at quelling the use of opioids by targeting availability have had the unintended consequence of the cut-off of prescriptions by many physicians. With that route turned off, many people are turning to other sources for pain relief – or are being left with no relief.
One person in the article related how his wife is unable to obtain pain relief for her neurologic and spinal diseases. “A welcome death has become a discussion,” he said.
Meanwhile, a 69-year-old veteran said the Department of Veterans Affairs ended his pain medication. “I now buy heroin on the street.”
Another person in the article, Herb Erne III, wrote: “As a nurse, I have seen addicts and the other end of opioid abuse. But there is another side to this crisis that people are not talking about, those that actually need pain medications but cannot get them because of the ‘fear factor’ of running afoul of the antiopioid – including legal ones taken safely under medical supervision – backlash.
“The chronically ill who do not abuse, who do not divert, have become the unintended victims of misguided and overzealous efforts by policy- and regulation-making bodies in the government,” he said.
Grandparents filling void
An article in the Detroit News reported on more carnage of the opioid crisis. In Michigan and elsewhere nationwide, increasing numbers of parents with opioid addiction are unable to safely care for their children or have died because of an overdose. Grandparents are stepping in to assume care.
Results of a national survey involving more than 1,000 grandparents found that 20% are the daily caregivers to their grandchildren. They can be on their own, without any financial aid from state or national programs. Other children without grandparents can be diverted to foster care.
It’s a role few grandparents anticipated. “Our system as a whole is messed up. It tears at my heart,” 47-year-old Christina Wasilewski said in the article. “Everyone keeps saying children are resilient, but only to a point.”
Ms. Wasilewski and her husband assumed care for their granddaughter when they discovered her in physical distress from lack of care.
In Michigan, the increase in the rate of opioid-related deaths slowed in 2017 but deaths still rose 9% from 2016 , according to the Michigan Department of Health & Human Services. The prior year the death rate was 35%. In Michigan, grandparents raising their grandchildren do not have legal parental rights for this care, including the right to seek medical care and to pursue educational options.
Ms. Wasilewski’s concern about these trends led her to launch the Caregiver Cafe, a support group for grandparents raising their grandchildren.
The suicide rate among veterans is almost double that of the general American population. It has been rising among those who served in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Rep. Tim Walz, the Minnesota Democrat who requested the investigation, reportedly said in a statement. “Unfortunately, VA failed to do that.”
Mr. Walz was referring to a failure in prevention efforts that was detailed in a Government Accountability Office report released recently and was the subject of an article in the New York Times. The report blames bureaucratic confusion and an absence of leadership – epitomized by several department vacancies.
“This is such an important issue; we need to be throwing everything we can at it,” said Caitin Thompson, PhD. She was director of the VA’s suicide prevention efforts but resigned in frustration in mid-2017. “It’s so ludicrous that money would be sitting on the table. Outreach is one of the first ways to engage with veterans and families about ways to get help. If we don’t have that, what do we have?”
Surviving the holidays with depression
The postcard image of the Christmas season is that of joyous celebration with family and friends. For many people, however, this image is false. Many complain about feelings of stress imposed by familial obligations, pressure to conform to those postcard myths, and the financial toll that all of that holiday largesse can exact.
Now add depression to this mix. How can those burdened by depression find some joy at this time of year? In a recent article in the Huffington Post, author Andrea Loewen advises staying away from social media and focusing on the positive.
“[Social media] is a double-edged sword: Either I see all the amazing things everyone else is doing and feel jealous/insignificant/left out, or I see that no one else is really posting and assume they must be too busy having incredible quality time with their families while I’m the unengaged loser scrolling Instagram,” Ms. Loewen wrote. “Either way, it’s bad news.”
One concrete practice that she engages in is taking a few minutes to think about and write down the positive things that happened each day.
“The list includes everything, big and small: from the thoughtful gift I wasn’t expecting to the simple observation that a friend seemed happy to see me,” Ms. Loewen wrote. “Depending on where I’m at in my depression, those seemingly tiny details can be vital reminders I hold a valuable place in the world.”
Artist perpetuates persistent myth
In some ways, Kanye West embraces his diagnosis of bipolar disorder. He calls the illness his “superpower,” and the art on his new album, “Ye,” includes the phrase: “I hate being Bi-Polar/it’s awesome.” But his decision to abandon his medications promotes a myth, Amanda Mull wrote in an opinion piece in the Atlantic.
“In apparently quitting his psychiatric medication for the sake of his creativity, Mr. West is promoting one of mental health’s most persistent and dangerous myths: that suffering is necessary for great art,” Ms. Mull wrote.
Philip R. Muskin, MD, who is affiliated with the department of psychiatry at Columbia University in New York, agreed that linking mental turmoil with creative genius is indeed problematic. “Creative people are not creative when they’re depressed, or so manic that no one can tolerate being with them and they start to merge into psychosis, or when they’re filled with numbing anxiety,” he said in the Atlantic article.
Esmé Weijun Wang concurred and offered a counterview to that of Mr. West. A novelist who has written about living with schizoaffective disorder, she said: “It may be true that mental illness has given me insights with which to work, creatively speaking, but it’s also made me too sick to use that creativity. The voice in my head that says, ‘Die, die, die’ is not a voice that encourages putting together a short story.”
For his part, Mr. West’s decision to stop taking his medicine threatens to undermine his own mental health. And his public musings could drive others away from treatment.
“Antiopioid backlash” causes pain
An article by Fox News has highlighted the daily toll that opioid addiction is exacting on Americans. Government efforts aimed at quelling the use of opioids by targeting availability have had the unintended consequence of the cut-off of prescriptions by many physicians. With that route turned off, many people are turning to other sources for pain relief – or are being left with no relief.
One person in the article related how his wife is unable to obtain pain relief for her neurologic and spinal diseases. “A welcome death has become a discussion,” he said.
Meanwhile, a 69-year-old veteran said the Department of Veterans Affairs ended his pain medication. “I now buy heroin on the street.”
Another person in the article, Herb Erne III, wrote: “As a nurse, I have seen addicts and the other end of opioid abuse. But there is another side to this crisis that people are not talking about, those that actually need pain medications but cannot get them because of the ‘fear factor’ of running afoul of the antiopioid – including legal ones taken safely under medical supervision – backlash.
“The chronically ill who do not abuse, who do not divert, have become the unintended victims of misguided and overzealous efforts by policy- and regulation-making bodies in the government,” he said.
Grandparents filling void
An article in the Detroit News reported on more carnage of the opioid crisis. In Michigan and elsewhere nationwide, increasing numbers of parents with opioid addiction are unable to safely care for their children or have died because of an overdose. Grandparents are stepping in to assume care.
Results of a national survey involving more than 1,000 grandparents found that 20% are the daily caregivers to their grandchildren. They can be on their own, without any financial aid from state or national programs. Other children without grandparents can be diverted to foster care.
It’s a role few grandparents anticipated. “Our system as a whole is messed up. It tears at my heart,” 47-year-old Christina Wasilewski said in the article. “Everyone keeps saying children are resilient, but only to a point.”
Ms. Wasilewski and her husband assumed care for their granddaughter when they discovered her in physical distress from lack of care.
In Michigan, the increase in the rate of opioid-related deaths slowed in 2017 but deaths still rose 9% from 2016 , according to the Michigan Department of Health & Human Services. The prior year the death rate was 35%. In Michigan, grandparents raising their grandchildren do not have legal parental rights for this care, including the right to seek medical care and to pursue educational options.
Ms. Wasilewski’s concern about these trends led her to launch the Caregiver Cafe, a support group for grandparents raising their grandchildren.
The suicide rate among veterans is almost double that of the general American population. It has been rising among those who served in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Rep. Tim Walz, the Minnesota Democrat who requested the investigation, reportedly said in a statement. “Unfortunately, VA failed to do that.”
Mr. Walz was referring to a failure in prevention efforts that was detailed in a Government Accountability Office report released recently and was the subject of an article in the New York Times. The report blames bureaucratic confusion and an absence of leadership – epitomized by several department vacancies.
“This is such an important issue; we need to be throwing everything we can at it,” said Caitin Thompson, PhD. She was director of the VA’s suicide prevention efforts but resigned in frustration in mid-2017. “It’s so ludicrous that money would be sitting on the table. Outreach is one of the first ways to engage with veterans and families about ways to get help. If we don’t have that, what do we have?”
Surviving the holidays with depression
The postcard image of the Christmas season is that of joyous celebration with family and friends. For many people, however, this image is false. Many complain about feelings of stress imposed by familial obligations, pressure to conform to those postcard myths, and the financial toll that all of that holiday largesse can exact.
Now add depression to this mix. How can those burdened by depression find some joy at this time of year? In a recent article in the Huffington Post, author Andrea Loewen advises staying away from social media and focusing on the positive.
“[Social media] is a double-edged sword: Either I see all the amazing things everyone else is doing and feel jealous/insignificant/left out, or I see that no one else is really posting and assume they must be too busy having incredible quality time with their families while I’m the unengaged loser scrolling Instagram,” Ms. Loewen wrote. “Either way, it’s bad news.”
One concrete practice that she engages in is taking a few minutes to think about and write down the positive things that happened each day.
“The list includes everything, big and small: from the thoughtful gift I wasn’t expecting to the simple observation that a friend seemed happy to see me,” Ms. Loewen wrote. “Depending on where I’m at in my depression, those seemingly tiny details can be vital reminders I hold a valuable place in the world.”
Artist perpetuates persistent myth
In some ways, Kanye West embraces his diagnosis of bipolar disorder. He calls the illness his “superpower,” and the art on his new album, “Ye,” includes the phrase: “I hate being Bi-Polar/it’s awesome.” But his decision to abandon his medications promotes a myth, Amanda Mull wrote in an opinion piece in the Atlantic.
“In apparently quitting his psychiatric medication for the sake of his creativity, Mr. West is promoting one of mental health’s most persistent and dangerous myths: that suffering is necessary for great art,” Ms. Mull wrote.
Philip R. Muskin, MD, who is affiliated with the department of psychiatry at Columbia University in New York, agreed that linking mental turmoil with creative genius is indeed problematic. “Creative people are not creative when they’re depressed, or so manic that no one can tolerate being with them and they start to merge into psychosis, or when they’re filled with numbing anxiety,” he said in the Atlantic article.
Esmé Weijun Wang concurred and offered a counterview to that of Mr. West. A novelist who has written about living with schizoaffective disorder, she said: “It may be true that mental illness has given me insights with which to work, creatively speaking, but it’s also made me too sick to use that creativity. The voice in my head that says, ‘Die, die, die’ is not a voice that encourages putting together a short story.”
For his part, Mr. West’s decision to stop taking his medicine threatens to undermine his own mental health. And his public musings could drive others away from treatment.
“Antiopioid backlash” causes pain
An article by Fox News has highlighted the daily toll that opioid addiction is exacting on Americans. Government efforts aimed at quelling the use of opioids by targeting availability have had the unintended consequence of the cut-off of prescriptions by many physicians. With that route turned off, many people are turning to other sources for pain relief – or are being left with no relief.
One person in the article related how his wife is unable to obtain pain relief for her neurologic and spinal diseases. “A welcome death has become a discussion,” he said.
Meanwhile, a 69-year-old veteran said the Department of Veterans Affairs ended his pain medication. “I now buy heroin on the street.”
Another person in the article, Herb Erne III, wrote: “As a nurse, I have seen addicts and the other end of opioid abuse. But there is another side to this crisis that people are not talking about, those that actually need pain medications but cannot get them because of the ‘fear factor’ of running afoul of the antiopioid – including legal ones taken safely under medical supervision – backlash.
“The chronically ill who do not abuse, who do not divert, have become the unintended victims of misguided and overzealous efforts by policy- and regulation-making bodies in the government,” he said.
Grandparents filling void
An article in the Detroit News reported on more carnage of the opioid crisis. In Michigan and elsewhere nationwide, increasing numbers of parents with opioid addiction are unable to safely care for their children or have died because of an overdose. Grandparents are stepping in to assume care.
Results of a national survey involving more than 1,000 grandparents found that 20% are the daily caregivers to their grandchildren. They can be on their own, without any financial aid from state or national programs. Other children without grandparents can be diverted to foster care.
It’s a role few grandparents anticipated. “Our system as a whole is messed up. It tears at my heart,” 47-year-old Christina Wasilewski said in the article. “Everyone keeps saying children are resilient, but only to a point.”
Ms. Wasilewski and her husband assumed care for their granddaughter when they discovered her in physical distress from lack of care.
In Michigan, the increase in the rate of opioid-related deaths slowed in 2017 but deaths still rose 9% from 2016 , according to the Michigan Department of Health & Human Services. The prior year the death rate was 35%. In Michigan, grandparents raising their grandchildren do not have legal parental rights for this care, including the right to seek medical care and to pursue educational options.
Ms. Wasilewski’s concern about these trends led her to launch the Caregiver Cafe, a support group for grandparents raising their grandchildren.
Michigan police receive training to recognize mental illness
Responding to a police call can prove dangerous. In those kinds of high-pressure situations, agitation or other manifestations of mental illness might be mistaken for violent intent – with disastrous results.
In Kalamazoo, Mich., crime response training now includes subduing suspects without using violent force. “Through training and education, and scenarios that we use in the training, [the officers] start to detect the different cues or indicators where they start to see that this is really a crisis event. And we treat it as a medical issue and get that person the help that they need,” said Rafael Diaz, executive lieutenant with the Kalamazoo Department of Public Safety in an interview on Michigan NPR.
In the training, called the Crisis Intervention Team model, the goal is to slow down the pace of the interaction and keep some distance between themselves and the suspect after officers recognize signs of mental illness. Both responses can lower the chances of a lash-out response.
“The number of injuries to officers goes down, the number of injuries to the person in crisis goes down, and there is a huge benefit to society there if you don’t have to use physical force,” Mr. Diaz said.
Animal neglect and mental health
Images of neglected and abused livestock on farms can inspire thoughts of how someone could mistreat the animals in their care. “Frankly, if you can’t understand that, it’s probably a good thing. It means you haven’t been in the depths of low, low mental health, depression, and anxiety,” Andria Jones-Bitton, DVM, PhD, said in an interview with the Western Producer.
Dr. Jones-Bitton is a veterinarian and epidemiologist at the Ontario Veterinary College in Guelph. She is studying the mental health and mental resilience of farmers and veterinarians.
“If farmers are struggling with their own well-being and motivation, they’re likely going to find it difficult to invest in improving animal welfare. When we’re mentally unwell, it’s hard to care for ourselves, let alone to care for others, even when those others are really important to us,” she said.
A national survey of Canadian farmers by Dr. Jones-Bitton showed high levels of stress and diminished ability to cope with the pressures that come with running a livestock farm. “What makes me the most upset is I have everything I’ve ever dreamed of – love, family, and a farm, and all I feel is overwhelmed out of control and sad,” one respondent said.
The problems are not unique to Canada. Studies from Ireland, for example, documented an association between animal neglect cases and the mental health, drug/alcohol addiction, and social problems of farmers.
“Even if you didn’t care about the humans that were struggling and you only cared about the animal welfare, you’d be wise to address the issue of farmer stress,” Dr. Jones-Britton said.
Depression and rural America
A recent “Farming in Tough Times” workshop that convened in Minnesota focused on the mental health of farmers. Making a living is challenging for many reasons. One is that prices for commodities are set by others.
“I realized that I can’t change the situation that we’re in. I can’t change milk prices. I can’t stop farms from going bankrupt. But I can change how we are. And we are together, and that really does matter,” said dairy farmer Brenda Rudolph during the workshop, according to a report from the St. Cloud Times, which is part of the USA Today network.
“There is a conversation you people have to have in America, rural America, that says, depression is part of your life. It is not a sign of weakness. It’s a sign of reality,” said Dennis Hoiberg, a farming consultant based in Australia who spoke at the workshop. He added that, from his perspective, the United States still tends to be more repressed about mental health issues than elsewhere in the world – with the focus on stress and not on resiliency.
“Most of you folk are proud folk, and most you folk are very proud of what you do,” Mr. Hoiberg said. “You’re also psychologically exposed because you are a true believer [in what you do].”
Advice offered to lessen the tough times included noticing the beauty in the world, breaking down problems into small chunks that are more easily dealt with and then moving on to the next, sleep, and a good diet.
People with mental illness languishing
Public defenders in Colorado are seeking to have dozens of people diagnosed with mental illness who are in jail awaiting trial set free until their court date. The usual scenario in Colorado for someone charged with a crime and jailed who is deemed mentally incompetent is treatment within 28 days. However, this system is broken and wait times are far longer – in one instance 270 days.
“Many of them are there for very, very low level offenses and they’re holding in jail for way longer than a person who did not suffer from mental illness would be in custody,” said Maureen Cain, policy liaison for the public defender’s office in an interview with the Denver Post. “They are being incarcerated for their mental illness, not really because of the crime they committed.” Responses from judges have ranged from immediate release to finding the incarcerated person guilty of contempt and sending them back to jail.
The Colorado Department of Human Services is in charge of people who have been jailed but have been found to be incompetent to stand trial. Officials there have say they do not have enough bed space or capacity to get people moved out of jail within 28 days.
“We are in a situation where [the human services department] is in breach, and I need to know what efforts are being made to bring it back into compliance,” said federal Judge Nina Y. Wang. “These individuals are not being served, and frankly, the state is not being served.”
“Cruel” practice confined youth
A federal class action lawsuit filed against the Departmental of Children and Family Services (DCFS) in the Chicago area alleges that, from 2015 to 2017, more than 800 youth were being confined to psychiatric hospitals even when they were cleared for discharge. The problem goes back decades and is getting worse, the lawsuit contends.
“I spent Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s, Easter, and my 16th birthday in the hospital,” said Skylar, who’s now 19 years old. “I only got to go outside one time. I felt like a prisoner; I felt very depressed.”
As reported on Chicago’s WGN9 News, the delay between clearance for discharge and actual freedom is a month or more in many of the cases. Acting Cook County Public Guardian Charles Golbert said the practice is “cruel, unusual, and illegal. It’s a violation of the children’s civil and most basic human rights.”
Many of the youth had been incarcerated for setting fires and self-harm and had been rejected by foster parents and other providers, in some cases their own families, who were concerned with the possible behavior of the youth after their release.
“Blame the children is the wrong response from DCFS,” said attorney Russell Ainsworth. “DCFS should be apologizing for not addressing this issue and for violating the Constitution.”
Responding to a police call can prove dangerous. In those kinds of high-pressure situations, agitation or other manifestations of mental illness might be mistaken for violent intent – with disastrous results.
In Kalamazoo, Mich., crime response training now includes subduing suspects without using violent force. “Through training and education, and scenarios that we use in the training, [the officers] start to detect the different cues or indicators where they start to see that this is really a crisis event. And we treat it as a medical issue and get that person the help that they need,” said Rafael Diaz, executive lieutenant with the Kalamazoo Department of Public Safety in an interview on Michigan NPR.
In the training, called the Crisis Intervention Team model, the goal is to slow down the pace of the interaction and keep some distance between themselves and the suspect after officers recognize signs of mental illness. Both responses can lower the chances of a lash-out response.
“The number of injuries to officers goes down, the number of injuries to the person in crisis goes down, and there is a huge benefit to society there if you don’t have to use physical force,” Mr. Diaz said.
Animal neglect and mental health
Images of neglected and abused livestock on farms can inspire thoughts of how someone could mistreat the animals in their care. “Frankly, if you can’t understand that, it’s probably a good thing. It means you haven’t been in the depths of low, low mental health, depression, and anxiety,” Andria Jones-Bitton, DVM, PhD, said in an interview with the Western Producer.
Dr. Jones-Bitton is a veterinarian and epidemiologist at the Ontario Veterinary College in Guelph. She is studying the mental health and mental resilience of farmers and veterinarians.
“If farmers are struggling with their own well-being and motivation, they’re likely going to find it difficult to invest in improving animal welfare. When we’re mentally unwell, it’s hard to care for ourselves, let alone to care for others, even when those others are really important to us,” she said.
A national survey of Canadian farmers by Dr. Jones-Bitton showed high levels of stress and diminished ability to cope with the pressures that come with running a livestock farm. “What makes me the most upset is I have everything I’ve ever dreamed of – love, family, and a farm, and all I feel is overwhelmed out of control and sad,” one respondent said.
The problems are not unique to Canada. Studies from Ireland, for example, documented an association between animal neglect cases and the mental health, drug/alcohol addiction, and social problems of farmers.
“Even if you didn’t care about the humans that were struggling and you only cared about the animal welfare, you’d be wise to address the issue of farmer stress,” Dr. Jones-Britton said.
Depression and rural America
A recent “Farming in Tough Times” workshop that convened in Minnesota focused on the mental health of farmers. Making a living is challenging for many reasons. One is that prices for commodities are set by others.
“I realized that I can’t change the situation that we’re in. I can’t change milk prices. I can’t stop farms from going bankrupt. But I can change how we are. And we are together, and that really does matter,” said dairy farmer Brenda Rudolph during the workshop, according to a report from the St. Cloud Times, which is part of the USA Today network.
“There is a conversation you people have to have in America, rural America, that says, depression is part of your life. It is not a sign of weakness. It’s a sign of reality,” said Dennis Hoiberg, a farming consultant based in Australia who spoke at the workshop. He added that, from his perspective, the United States still tends to be more repressed about mental health issues than elsewhere in the world – with the focus on stress and not on resiliency.
“Most of you folk are proud folk, and most you folk are very proud of what you do,” Mr. Hoiberg said. “You’re also psychologically exposed because you are a true believer [in what you do].”
Advice offered to lessen the tough times included noticing the beauty in the world, breaking down problems into small chunks that are more easily dealt with and then moving on to the next, sleep, and a good diet.
People with mental illness languishing
Public defenders in Colorado are seeking to have dozens of people diagnosed with mental illness who are in jail awaiting trial set free until their court date. The usual scenario in Colorado for someone charged with a crime and jailed who is deemed mentally incompetent is treatment within 28 days. However, this system is broken and wait times are far longer – in one instance 270 days.
“Many of them are there for very, very low level offenses and they’re holding in jail for way longer than a person who did not suffer from mental illness would be in custody,” said Maureen Cain, policy liaison for the public defender’s office in an interview with the Denver Post. “They are being incarcerated for their mental illness, not really because of the crime they committed.” Responses from judges have ranged from immediate release to finding the incarcerated person guilty of contempt and sending them back to jail.
The Colorado Department of Human Services is in charge of people who have been jailed but have been found to be incompetent to stand trial. Officials there have say they do not have enough bed space or capacity to get people moved out of jail within 28 days.
“We are in a situation where [the human services department] is in breach, and I need to know what efforts are being made to bring it back into compliance,” said federal Judge Nina Y. Wang. “These individuals are not being served, and frankly, the state is not being served.”
“Cruel” practice confined youth
A federal class action lawsuit filed against the Departmental of Children and Family Services (DCFS) in the Chicago area alleges that, from 2015 to 2017, more than 800 youth were being confined to psychiatric hospitals even when they were cleared for discharge. The problem goes back decades and is getting worse, the lawsuit contends.
“I spent Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s, Easter, and my 16th birthday in the hospital,” said Skylar, who’s now 19 years old. “I only got to go outside one time. I felt like a prisoner; I felt very depressed.”
As reported on Chicago’s WGN9 News, the delay between clearance for discharge and actual freedom is a month or more in many of the cases. Acting Cook County Public Guardian Charles Golbert said the practice is “cruel, unusual, and illegal. It’s a violation of the children’s civil and most basic human rights.”
Many of the youth had been incarcerated for setting fires and self-harm and had been rejected by foster parents and other providers, in some cases their own families, who were concerned with the possible behavior of the youth after their release.
“Blame the children is the wrong response from DCFS,” said attorney Russell Ainsworth. “DCFS should be apologizing for not addressing this issue and for violating the Constitution.”
Responding to a police call can prove dangerous. In those kinds of high-pressure situations, agitation or other manifestations of mental illness might be mistaken for violent intent – with disastrous results.
In Kalamazoo, Mich., crime response training now includes subduing suspects without using violent force. “Through training and education, and scenarios that we use in the training, [the officers] start to detect the different cues or indicators where they start to see that this is really a crisis event. And we treat it as a medical issue and get that person the help that they need,” said Rafael Diaz, executive lieutenant with the Kalamazoo Department of Public Safety in an interview on Michigan NPR.
In the training, called the Crisis Intervention Team model, the goal is to slow down the pace of the interaction and keep some distance between themselves and the suspect after officers recognize signs of mental illness. Both responses can lower the chances of a lash-out response.
“The number of injuries to officers goes down, the number of injuries to the person in crisis goes down, and there is a huge benefit to society there if you don’t have to use physical force,” Mr. Diaz said.
Animal neglect and mental health
Images of neglected and abused livestock on farms can inspire thoughts of how someone could mistreat the animals in their care. “Frankly, if you can’t understand that, it’s probably a good thing. It means you haven’t been in the depths of low, low mental health, depression, and anxiety,” Andria Jones-Bitton, DVM, PhD, said in an interview with the Western Producer.
Dr. Jones-Bitton is a veterinarian and epidemiologist at the Ontario Veterinary College in Guelph. She is studying the mental health and mental resilience of farmers and veterinarians.
“If farmers are struggling with their own well-being and motivation, they’re likely going to find it difficult to invest in improving animal welfare. When we’re mentally unwell, it’s hard to care for ourselves, let alone to care for others, even when those others are really important to us,” she said.
A national survey of Canadian farmers by Dr. Jones-Bitton showed high levels of stress and diminished ability to cope with the pressures that come with running a livestock farm. “What makes me the most upset is I have everything I’ve ever dreamed of – love, family, and a farm, and all I feel is overwhelmed out of control and sad,” one respondent said.
The problems are not unique to Canada. Studies from Ireland, for example, documented an association between animal neglect cases and the mental health, drug/alcohol addiction, and social problems of farmers.
“Even if you didn’t care about the humans that were struggling and you only cared about the animal welfare, you’d be wise to address the issue of farmer stress,” Dr. Jones-Britton said.
Depression and rural America
A recent “Farming in Tough Times” workshop that convened in Minnesota focused on the mental health of farmers. Making a living is challenging for many reasons. One is that prices for commodities are set by others.
“I realized that I can’t change the situation that we’re in. I can’t change milk prices. I can’t stop farms from going bankrupt. But I can change how we are. And we are together, and that really does matter,” said dairy farmer Brenda Rudolph during the workshop, according to a report from the St. Cloud Times, which is part of the USA Today network.
“There is a conversation you people have to have in America, rural America, that says, depression is part of your life. It is not a sign of weakness. It’s a sign of reality,” said Dennis Hoiberg, a farming consultant based in Australia who spoke at the workshop. He added that, from his perspective, the United States still tends to be more repressed about mental health issues than elsewhere in the world – with the focus on stress and not on resiliency.
“Most of you folk are proud folk, and most you folk are very proud of what you do,” Mr. Hoiberg said. “You’re also psychologically exposed because you are a true believer [in what you do].”
Advice offered to lessen the tough times included noticing the beauty in the world, breaking down problems into small chunks that are more easily dealt with and then moving on to the next, sleep, and a good diet.
People with mental illness languishing
Public defenders in Colorado are seeking to have dozens of people diagnosed with mental illness who are in jail awaiting trial set free until their court date. The usual scenario in Colorado for someone charged with a crime and jailed who is deemed mentally incompetent is treatment within 28 days. However, this system is broken and wait times are far longer – in one instance 270 days.
“Many of them are there for very, very low level offenses and they’re holding in jail for way longer than a person who did not suffer from mental illness would be in custody,” said Maureen Cain, policy liaison for the public defender’s office in an interview with the Denver Post. “They are being incarcerated for their mental illness, not really because of the crime they committed.” Responses from judges have ranged from immediate release to finding the incarcerated person guilty of contempt and sending them back to jail.
The Colorado Department of Human Services is in charge of people who have been jailed but have been found to be incompetent to stand trial. Officials there have say they do not have enough bed space or capacity to get people moved out of jail within 28 days.
“We are in a situation where [the human services department] is in breach, and I need to know what efforts are being made to bring it back into compliance,” said federal Judge Nina Y. Wang. “These individuals are not being served, and frankly, the state is not being served.”
“Cruel” practice confined youth
A federal class action lawsuit filed against the Departmental of Children and Family Services (DCFS) in the Chicago area alleges that, from 2015 to 2017, more than 800 youth were being confined to psychiatric hospitals even when they were cleared for discharge. The problem goes back decades and is getting worse, the lawsuit contends.
“I spent Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s, Easter, and my 16th birthday in the hospital,” said Skylar, who’s now 19 years old. “I only got to go outside one time. I felt like a prisoner; I felt very depressed.”
As reported on Chicago’s WGN9 News, the delay between clearance for discharge and actual freedom is a month or more in many of the cases. Acting Cook County Public Guardian Charles Golbert said the practice is “cruel, unusual, and illegal. It’s a violation of the children’s civil and most basic human rights.”
Many of the youth had been incarcerated for setting fires and self-harm and had been rejected by foster parents and other providers, in some cases their own families, who were concerned with the possible behavior of the youth after their release.
“Blame the children is the wrong response from DCFS,” said attorney Russell Ainsworth. “DCFS should be apologizing for not addressing this issue and for violating the Constitution.”
Medical marijuana for autism facing good prospects in Colorado
Five years after the legalization of marijuana in Colorado, anticipated legislation in 2019 could see home delivery of cannabis and cannabis-related products, and expanded medical availability.
Governor-elect Jared Polis, who takes office in the new year, probably will take a different approach from outgoing Gov. John Hickenlooper, according to a recent article in the Denver Post. Mr. Hickenlooper vetoed previous legislation intended to increase drug’s accessibility.
“ says Albert Gutierrez, CEO of MedPharm Holdings, a cannabis research and cultivation company.
“You’re going to probably have more variety from these companies, whether they’re offering drinks or chocolate bars. But these companies are going to be the household names that people are going to come to know over the next 30, 50, 100 years,” he says.
Not everyone is on board. “We should all be able to agree that Colorado’s increasingly potent marijuana products are harmful to youth and that we have a collective responsibility to protect Colorado kids,” writes Henny Lasley, the cofounder of Smart Colorado, which was formed in opposition to the legalization of marijuana in the state.
The availability of medical marijuana for people diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders is among the vetoed initiatives that are likely to reemerge in 2019. That bill reportedly was opposed by the Colorado Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Society, the Colorado Psychiatric Society, and by Larry Wolk, MD, who recently stepped down as chief medical officer of the state’s department of public health and environment.
Adjusting to life after fires
The latest wildfires have been vanquished in California. For those affected recently and in the past several years has come the reality that the draw of living on the edge of nature means living surrounded by tinder-dry terrain. It’s a great location – until it ignites.
A year ago, the Thomas Fire devastated Ventura and Santa Barbara counties, burning more than 440 square miles. Few people died, but more than 1,000 buildings were destroyed – and hundreds of people were left homeless. A year later, in the Clearpoint neighborhood of Ventura, residential lots sit empty, their owners having abandoned the effort to rebuild. Others, like Sandra and Ed Fuller, are choosing to begin again. The beauty of the area that pulled them there years ago remains strong.
They have come to terms with losing their home to the fire. “I think it was a sort of a breaking point where there was just a flood of peace that kind of went through. It’s like there is nothing we can do about this. We know what we have to do now. We’ll just get on with it,” Ed Fuller says in an interview with NPR.
Having the Christmas season looming has been a boost to their spirits and planning. “My wife is absolutely obsessed that she’s ready for Christmas. Last Christmas we sort of lost.”
The invisibility of asexuality
It can be hard for some to fathom that sex just isn’t important for some. “They are the friends and family members who don’t express any desire to pursue sexual intimacy, who don’t often or ever seem interested in conventional dating, and who get pushed to the sidelines in any conversation about sexual health,” Kate Sloan writes in a recent article in the Walrus.
“Much like same-sex attraction decades ago, this nonattraction was initially (and is sometimes still) conflated with a sexual-desire disorder, worthy of pathologization and medical treatment with pharmaceuticals or therapy. But scientists have confirmed asexuality isn’t a medical issue; it is a sexual orientation on the same plane as heterosexuality, homosexuality, and bisexuality,” Ms. Sloan writes.
“If someone is gay, as an example, it’s pretty easy to say, ‘Okay, well, I experience the same type of attraction that everyone else does, it’s just pointed at a different gender,’ ” says Brian Langevin, executive director of the nonprofit organization Asexual Outreach. “For asexual people ... they might not even know that sexual attraction exists, and to them, the whole world could seem very confusing.”
Meanwhile, a 2013 study in British Columbia showed that asexual individuals are more likely to be socially isolated, depressed, and anxious.
“True emotional intimacy is created, according to psychology, by honesty, empathy, and listening,” Ms. Sloan writes. “When we oversimplify relationships by insisting, on a sociocultural level, that sex is the ultimate key to and only sign of a profound connection, we deprive ourselves of the more holistic affinities available to us if we look for more.”
Fundamental churches face allegations
Joy Evans Ryder was 15 when she reportedly was raped by Dave Hyles, youth director at her Baptist church in Hammond, Ind. She was not the youth director’s only alleged victim. He never faced charges; in a scenario strikingly similar to that of hundreds of Roman Catholic priests, he escaped local prosecution by being moved on to other assignments.
An investigation by the Fort Worth (Tex.) Star-Telegram has unearthed a decades-old cover-up of more than 400 cases of sexual abuse at independent fundamental Baptist churches across the United States.
Former members of congregations point to the cultlike power of many independent fundamental Baptist churches and the constant pressure to never question pastors or leave the church.
“We didn’t have a compound ... but it may as well have been. Our mind was the compound,” says a former member. Some of the abused believed that if they disobeyed the pastor or left the church, God would kill them or their family.
Some independent fundamental Baptist churches preach separation from the world, nonbelievers, and Christians with other religious views. A natural outcome, according to Josh Elliott, a former member of Vineyard’s Oklahoma City church, is that for any issues, “even legal issues, you go to the pastor first, not the police. ... You don’t report to police because the pastor is the ultimate authority, not the government.”
“I see a culture where pastoral authority is taken to a level that’s beyond what the Scripture teaches,” says Tim Heck, who was a deacon at Faith Baptist Church in Wildomar, Calif., and whose daughter said she had been abused by the youth pastor there. “I think the independent fundamental Baptists have lost their way.”
Adam Lanza’s ‘separateness’ exposed
Written musings and other documents by Adam Lanza – who slaughtered 20 first-graders and six teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., on Dec. 14, 2012 – have been reported by the Hartford Courant.
Adam Lanza was challenged by speech and sensory issues as a child but had a keen intellect. That potential was eclipsed in his teenage years by paranoia, disdain for relationships, and contempt for others, the documents show. Family, teachers, and counselors were aware of his isolation. And, with time, his obsessions and mental/physical deterioration grew. But the documents make clear that no one really had a full grasp of the person he was becoming.
“As a teenager, his sensory condition made him exceedingly sensitive to textures, sound, light, and movement. He shunned his classmates, bothered by their choice of clothes and the noises they made. He cultivated a set of ground rules that fed his separateness,” write reporters Josh Kovner and Dave Altimari. The critical addition to this toxic brew was an absence of empathy and social compassion, according to Harold I. Schwartz, MD, a psychiatrist and former member of the Sandy Hook Advisory Commission, which studied the shootings.
“In this mental state, known as solipsism, only the solipsist is real. Everyone else in the world is a cardboard cutout, placed there for your benefit and otherwise devoid of meaning or value. It is the most extreme end of one form of malignant narcissism. If the victims have no value, then there is nothing to constrain you from shooting them,” Dr. Schwartz says.
In a note accompanying the article, the editors write: “Understanding what a mass killer was thinking not only paints a clearer picture of the individual, it helps us identify and understand red flags that could be part of a prevention formula for future mass shootings.”
Five years after the legalization of marijuana in Colorado, anticipated legislation in 2019 could see home delivery of cannabis and cannabis-related products, and expanded medical availability.
Governor-elect Jared Polis, who takes office in the new year, probably will take a different approach from outgoing Gov. John Hickenlooper, according to a recent article in the Denver Post. Mr. Hickenlooper vetoed previous legislation intended to increase drug’s accessibility.
“ says Albert Gutierrez, CEO of MedPharm Holdings, a cannabis research and cultivation company.
“You’re going to probably have more variety from these companies, whether they’re offering drinks or chocolate bars. But these companies are going to be the household names that people are going to come to know over the next 30, 50, 100 years,” he says.
Not everyone is on board. “We should all be able to agree that Colorado’s increasingly potent marijuana products are harmful to youth and that we have a collective responsibility to protect Colorado kids,” writes Henny Lasley, the cofounder of Smart Colorado, which was formed in opposition to the legalization of marijuana in the state.
The availability of medical marijuana for people diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders is among the vetoed initiatives that are likely to reemerge in 2019. That bill reportedly was opposed by the Colorado Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Society, the Colorado Psychiatric Society, and by Larry Wolk, MD, who recently stepped down as chief medical officer of the state’s department of public health and environment.
Adjusting to life after fires
The latest wildfires have been vanquished in California. For those affected recently and in the past several years has come the reality that the draw of living on the edge of nature means living surrounded by tinder-dry terrain. It’s a great location – until it ignites.
A year ago, the Thomas Fire devastated Ventura and Santa Barbara counties, burning more than 440 square miles. Few people died, but more than 1,000 buildings were destroyed – and hundreds of people were left homeless. A year later, in the Clearpoint neighborhood of Ventura, residential lots sit empty, their owners having abandoned the effort to rebuild. Others, like Sandra and Ed Fuller, are choosing to begin again. The beauty of the area that pulled them there years ago remains strong.
They have come to terms with losing their home to the fire. “I think it was a sort of a breaking point where there was just a flood of peace that kind of went through. It’s like there is nothing we can do about this. We know what we have to do now. We’ll just get on with it,” Ed Fuller says in an interview with NPR.
Having the Christmas season looming has been a boost to their spirits and planning. “My wife is absolutely obsessed that she’s ready for Christmas. Last Christmas we sort of lost.”
The invisibility of asexuality
It can be hard for some to fathom that sex just isn’t important for some. “They are the friends and family members who don’t express any desire to pursue sexual intimacy, who don’t often or ever seem interested in conventional dating, and who get pushed to the sidelines in any conversation about sexual health,” Kate Sloan writes in a recent article in the Walrus.
“Much like same-sex attraction decades ago, this nonattraction was initially (and is sometimes still) conflated with a sexual-desire disorder, worthy of pathologization and medical treatment with pharmaceuticals or therapy. But scientists have confirmed asexuality isn’t a medical issue; it is a sexual orientation on the same plane as heterosexuality, homosexuality, and bisexuality,” Ms. Sloan writes.
“If someone is gay, as an example, it’s pretty easy to say, ‘Okay, well, I experience the same type of attraction that everyone else does, it’s just pointed at a different gender,’ ” says Brian Langevin, executive director of the nonprofit organization Asexual Outreach. “For asexual people ... they might not even know that sexual attraction exists, and to them, the whole world could seem very confusing.”
Meanwhile, a 2013 study in British Columbia showed that asexual individuals are more likely to be socially isolated, depressed, and anxious.
“True emotional intimacy is created, according to psychology, by honesty, empathy, and listening,” Ms. Sloan writes. “When we oversimplify relationships by insisting, on a sociocultural level, that sex is the ultimate key to and only sign of a profound connection, we deprive ourselves of the more holistic affinities available to us if we look for more.”
Fundamental churches face allegations
Joy Evans Ryder was 15 when she reportedly was raped by Dave Hyles, youth director at her Baptist church in Hammond, Ind. She was not the youth director’s only alleged victim. He never faced charges; in a scenario strikingly similar to that of hundreds of Roman Catholic priests, he escaped local prosecution by being moved on to other assignments.
An investigation by the Fort Worth (Tex.) Star-Telegram has unearthed a decades-old cover-up of more than 400 cases of sexual abuse at independent fundamental Baptist churches across the United States.
Former members of congregations point to the cultlike power of many independent fundamental Baptist churches and the constant pressure to never question pastors or leave the church.
“We didn’t have a compound ... but it may as well have been. Our mind was the compound,” says a former member. Some of the abused believed that if they disobeyed the pastor or left the church, God would kill them or their family.
Some independent fundamental Baptist churches preach separation from the world, nonbelievers, and Christians with other religious views. A natural outcome, according to Josh Elliott, a former member of Vineyard’s Oklahoma City church, is that for any issues, “even legal issues, you go to the pastor first, not the police. ... You don’t report to police because the pastor is the ultimate authority, not the government.”
“I see a culture where pastoral authority is taken to a level that’s beyond what the Scripture teaches,” says Tim Heck, who was a deacon at Faith Baptist Church in Wildomar, Calif., and whose daughter said she had been abused by the youth pastor there. “I think the independent fundamental Baptists have lost their way.”
Adam Lanza’s ‘separateness’ exposed
Written musings and other documents by Adam Lanza – who slaughtered 20 first-graders and six teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., on Dec. 14, 2012 – have been reported by the Hartford Courant.
Adam Lanza was challenged by speech and sensory issues as a child but had a keen intellect. That potential was eclipsed in his teenage years by paranoia, disdain for relationships, and contempt for others, the documents show. Family, teachers, and counselors were aware of his isolation. And, with time, his obsessions and mental/physical deterioration grew. But the documents make clear that no one really had a full grasp of the person he was becoming.
“As a teenager, his sensory condition made him exceedingly sensitive to textures, sound, light, and movement. He shunned his classmates, bothered by their choice of clothes and the noises they made. He cultivated a set of ground rules that fed his separateness,” write reporters Josh Kovner and Dave Altimari. The critical addition to this toxic brew was an absence of empathy and social compassion, according to Harold I. Schwartz, MD, a psychiatrist and former member of the Sandy Hook Advisory Commission, which studied the shootings.
“In this mental state, known as solipsism, only the solipsist is real. Everyone else in the world is a cardboard cutout, placed there for your benefit and otherwise devoid of meaning or value. It is the most extreme end of one form of malignant narcissism. If the victims have no value, then there is nothing to constrain you from shooting them,” Dr. Schwartz says.
In a note accompanying the article, the editors write: “Understanding what a mass killer was thinking not only paints a clearer picture of the individual, it helps us identify and understand red flags that could be part of a prevention formula for future mass shootings.”
Five years after the legalization of marijuana in Colorado, anticipated legislation in 2019 could see home delivery of cannabis and cannabis-related products, and expanded medical availability.
Governor-elect Jared Polis, who takes office in the new year, probably will take a different approach from outgoing Gov. John Hickenlooper, according to a recent article in the Denver Post. Mr. Hickenlooper vetoed previous legislation intended to increase drug’s accessibility.
“ says Albert Gutierrez, CEO of MedPharm Holdings, a cannabis research and cultivation company.
“You’re going to probably have more variety from these companies, whether they’re offering drinks or chocolate bars. But these companies are going to be the household names that people are going to come to know over the next 30, 50, 100 years,” he says.
Not everyone is on board. “We should all be able to agree that Colorado’s increasingly potent marijuana products are harmful to youth and that we have a collective responsibility to protect Colorado kids,” writes Henny Lasley, the cofounder of Smart Colorado, which was formed in opposition to the legalization of marijuana in the state.
The availability of medical marijuana for people diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders is among the vetoed initiatives that are likely to reemerge in 2019. That bill reportedly was opposed by the Colorado Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Society, the Colorado Psychiatric Society, and by Larry Wolk, MD, who recently stepped down as chief medical officer of the state’s department of public health and environment.
Adjusting to life after fires
The latest wildfires have been vanquished in California. For those affected recently and in the past several years has come the reality that the draw of living on the edge of nature means living surrounded by tinder-dry terrain. It’s a great location – until it ignites.
A year ago, the Thomas Fire devastated Ventura and Santa Barbara counties, burning more than 440 square miles. Few people died, but more than 1,000 buildings were destroyed – and hundreds of people were left homeless. A year later, in the Clearpoint neighborhood of Ventura, residential lots sit empty, their owners having abandoned the effort to rebuild. Others, like Sandra and Ed Fuller, are choosing to begin again. The beauty of the area that pulled them there years ago remains strong.
They have come to terms with losing their home to the fire. “I think it was a sort of a breaking point where there was just a flood of peace that kind of went through. It’s like there is nothing we can do about this. We know what we have to do now. We’ll just get on with it,” Ed Fuller says in an interview with NPR.
Having the Christmas season looming has been a boost to their spirits and planning. “My wife is absolutely obsessed that she’s ready for Christmas. Last Christmas we sort of lost.”
The invisibility of asexuality
It can be hard for some to fathom that sex just isn’t important for some. “They are the friends and family members who don’t express any desire to pursue sexual intimacy, who don’t often or ever seem interested in conventional dating, and who get pushed to the sidelines in any conversation about sexual health,” Kate Sloan writes in a recent article in the Walrus.
“Much like same-sex attraction decades ago, this nonattraction was initially (and is sometimes still) conflated with a sexual-desire disorder, worthy of pathologization and medical treatment with pharmaceuticals or therapy. But scientists have confirmed asexuality isn’t a medical issue; it is a sexual orientation on the same plane as heterosexuality, homosexuality, and bisexuality,” Ms. Sloan writes.
“If someone is gay, as an example, it’s pretty easy to say, ‘Okay, well, I experience the same type of attraction that everyone else does, it’s just pointed at a different gender,’ ” says Brian Langevin, executive director of the nonprofit organization Asexual Outreach. “For asexual people ... they might not even know that sexual attraction exists, and to them, the whole world could seem very confusing.”
Meanwhile, a 2013 study in British Columbia showed that asexual individuals are more likely to be socially isolated, depressed, and anxious.
“True emotional intimacy is created, according to psychology, by honesty, empathy, and listening,” Ms. Sloan writes. “When we oversimplify relationships by insisting, on a sociocultural level, that sex is the ultimate key to and only sign of a profound connection, we deprive ourselves of the more holistic affinities available to us if we look for more.”
Fundamental churches face allegations
Joy Evans Ryder was 15 when she reportedly was raped by Dave Hyles, youth director at her Baptist church in Hammond, Ind. She was not the youth director’s only alleged victim. He never faced charges; in a scenario strikingly similar to that of hundreds of Roman Catholic priests, he escaped local prosecution by being moved on to other assignments.
An investigation by the Fort Worth (Tex.) Star-Telegram has unearthed a decades-old cover-up of more than 400 cases of sexual abuse at independent fundamental Baptist churches across the United States.
Former members of congregations point to the cultlike power of many independent fundamental Baptist churches and the constant pressure to never question pastors or leave the church.
“We didn’t have a compound ... but it may as well have been. Our mind was the compound,” says a former member. Some of the abused believed that if they disobeyed the pastor or left the church, God would kill them or their family.
Some independent fundamental Baptist churches preach separation from the world, nonbelievers, and Christians with other religious views. A natural outcome, according to Josh Elliott, a former member of Vineyard’s Oklahoma City church, is that for any issues, “even legal issues, you go to the pastor first, not the police. ... You don’t report to police because the pastor is the ultimate authority, not the government.”
“I see a culture where pastoral authority is taken to a level that’s beyond what the Scripture teaches,” says Tim Heck, who was a deacon at Faith Baptist Church in Wildomar, Calif., and whose daughter said she had been abused by the youth pastor there. “I think the independent fundamental Baptists have lost their way.”
Adam Lanza’s ‘separateness’ exposed
Written musings and other documents by Adam Lanza – who slaughtered 20 first-graders and six teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., on Dec. 14, 2012 – have been reported by the Hartford Courant.
Adam Lanza was challenged by speech and sensory issues as a child but had a keen intellect. That potential was eclipsed in his teenage years by paranoia, disdain for relationships, and contempt for others, the documents show. Family, teachers, and counselors were aware of his isolation. And, with time, his obsessions and mental/physical deterioration grew. But the documents make clear that no one really had a full grasp of the person he was becoming.
“As a teenager, his sensory condition made him exceedingly sensitive to textures, sound, light, and movement. He shunned his classmates, bothered by their choice of clothes and the noises they made. He cultivated a set of ground rules that fed his separateness,” write reporters Josh Kovner and Dave Altimari. The critical addition to this toxic brew was an absence of empathy and social compassion, according to Harold I. Schwartz, MD, a psychiatrist and former member of the Sandy Hook Advisory Commission, which studied the shootings.
“In this mental state, known as solipsism, only the solipsist is real. Everyone else in the world is a cardboard cutout, placed there for your benefit and otherwise devoid of meaning or value. It is the most extreme end of one form of malignant narcissism. If the victims have no value, then there is nothing to constrain you from shooting them,” Dr. Schwartz says.
In a note accompanying the article, the editors write: “Understanding what a mass killer was thinking not only paints a clearer picture of the individual, it helps us identify and understand red flags that could be part of a prevention formula for future mass shootings.”
Corpora callosa of young football players could be at risk
Younger players are not immune to the brain damage that can come with playing football, National Public Radio says, quoting a grim report from the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America.
The technique of magnetic resonance imaging, which essentially records a video of brain structure and function in real time, was used to scan the brains of 26 boys aged an average of 12 years before and after a season of football. The findings were compared with the brain scans of 26 other boys of similar age who were not football players, according to NPR.
Damage to the region that connects the two halves of the brain was evident in a majority of the football players but not in their control counterparts. in the shape of the corpus callosum. When these changes come at a time in life when the brain is developing, the results can be lifetime consequences on thought, behavior, and emotion.
“You have to understand that the NFL players were also most likely once collegiate players; they were also high school players and they were also probably youth players,” says radiologist Christopher T. Whitlow, MD, PhD, of Wake Forest Baptist Health in Winston-Salem, N.C., and a coauthor of the new findings, in the interview. “To us, it’s more than a question about concussions, it’s a question about long-term cumulative exposure.
“We don’t know what [the results] mean … do these changes persist over time? Do they accumulate with multiple seasons? And then No. 3, probably the most important: Do they have any relevance to long-term health?”
Average can be just fine
The need to excel is drilled into many people from childhood. Hard work is a virtue, but the pressure to shine can have disastrous consequences. In South Korea, for example, academic pressure is a major cause of suicide in youth.
A recent TED Women conference held in Palm Springs, Calif., provided some reassurance for those in the “forgotten middle” – those who were adequate but not stellar students, and who do their work diligently but not outstandingly.
“Those at the top get noticed and those at the bottom get extra help but no one really thinks about the kids in the middle who make up the majority,” says Danielle R. Moss Lee, EdD, a social activist and chief of the New York Civil Liberties Union, who spoke at the conference. These folks can be valuable contributors but are often overlooked. As a result, when it comes to excelling, they “check out.”
“We have to create different ways to harness their potential. I didn’t appreciate how average I was until I was a college student and I bumped into a science teacher and he couldn’t believe what college I was attending,” Dr. Lee says.
Sometimes it takes a push from a loved one to spur action. In Dr. Lee’s case, she says she was happy being an average student. Her mother’s search for extracurricular activities led her to discover writing and set her on a path to personal and professional accomplishment.
Dr. Lee’s message was that “the middle isn’t a permanent location.”
Others experts see the situation differently. “Most psychological traits are evenly distributed, meaning that a significant proportion of the population will have average intelligence and leadership potential,” says Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, PhD, of University College London, in an interview with BBC News.
“The world’s progress depends on those who stand out via their exceptional and innovative contributions, but these individuals are part of the top 1% in their field, combining truly unconventional levels of talent, work ethic, and focus,” Dr. Chamorro-Premuzic says. “For the remaining 99% of us, the acceptance that our talents and motivation are much more conventional, and unlikely to result in world-changing accomplishments, would reflect a healthier, more rational self-concept than illusions of grandiosity or fantasized talent.”
Shared sorrow mark club members
A recent article in Time described the experiences of some who have lost their children and whose worlds have been forever altered. From all walks of life and diverse backgrounds, these folks become tethered together. “It’s a club you spend your whole life hoping you won’t ever become a part of,” says Nicole Hockley, whose son Dylan, 6, was killed in the December 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut. “But once you’re in, you’re in.”
Mitchell Dworet and Melissa Wiley are connected by death of their children. Mr. Dworet’s 17-year-old son Nicholas was killed during the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., in February 2018. A month later, Ms. Willey’s daughter Jaelynn, 16, was shot to death by a fellow student at Great Mills High School in Maryland. They connected through Facebook. “I felt like I should reach out. I wanted to pay it forward,” explains Mr. Dworet.
“When you’ve gone through this kind of tragedy with other people, you see their humanity, where they’re coming from,” says Darrell Scott, whose 17-year-old daughter Rachel was killed at Columbine. Politics can differ – as can views on the painful issue of gun control measures – and friendships might not develop. Still, however, they share one enduring bond.
The connection with others can help in the immediate aftermath, and can continue to be important over time. “When you lose a child violently and publicly, there’s an outpouring of support at first,” said Sandy Phillips, whose 24-year-old daughter Jessi was shot with 11 others at a cinema in Aurora, Colo., in 2012. “Once the vigils are over and the media is gone, that’s when things get really bad. The world moves on, and you don’t. You can’t. It’s a pain you can’t outrun.”
“A huge emotional jolt”
In the aftermath of the magnitude 7.0 earthquake that shook Anchorage, Alaska, on Nov. 30, and the many aftershocks, residents are scrambling to cope with their changed lives. For those who lost possessions, the pain is real. But there comes the realization for many that they survived and that material possessions can, for the most part, be replaced.
Psychological changes, meanwhile, can prove profound and lasting. Researchers have found that large earthquakes can produce PTSD and anxiety. Some survivors can come away from earthquakes with difficulty concentrating and hypervigilance.
As one resident explains to Anchorage Daily News, “I felt yesterday like I had one final nerve and every aftershock was playing on that nerve.”
K.J. Worbey, a mental health counselor for Southcentral Foundation – an Alaska Native health care organization – describes the experience as a “huge emotional jolt.” She adds there is “lots of uncertainly about our own safety. Safety of our families and our homes. ... When we are faced with that kind of an emotional crisis, it takes a whole lot of energy to navigate it.”
Ms. Worbey recommends limiting alcohol, eating a healthy diet, and exercising appropriately. “Try to get some energy out. Try and get that excess emotional stuff out,” she said. Other prudent measures include sticking to a normal routine as much as is possible, including mealtimes and sleep, and talking with neighbors and friends.
Drug diversions can cost lives
A recent article in the Dallas Morning News has highlighted the humanity of health caregivers. Within the past several years, two nurses at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center’s Williams P. Clements Jr. Hospital in Dallas have died of self-inflicted drug overdoses during a work shift.
It’s unusual for one hospital to have two caregivers die of overdoses in such a short time, experts say.
“This is an extreme example,” says Kimberly New, a nurse and lawyer in Tennessee who consults with hospitals nationwide on how to prevent diversions. “That type of alarming situation would be the reason to bring someone in and look at their controls.”
For addicted health care staff, access to their drug of need can be as near as the hospital’s drug supply room. In the past 4 years, hospitals in Texas have reported more than 200 thefts by employees. The tally is likely much higher, as thefts go undetected. The consequences of the thefts in terms of overdoses and deaths are unknown, as those details are not tracked.
Other consequences also hit home for those tasked with providing care: While focusing on their addictions, a nurse or other caregiver can dangerously comprise their duties. This can, in turn, compromise patient care – and can threaten survival if an oversight or mistake is egregiously wrong.
The response by hospitals like the Clements facility is typically a hard-line approach to institute procedures to safeguard the drugs from diversion. This tact is necessary but completely overlooks the reasons for the drug addiction. As with such measures, the effect can be to drive the abuser underground. Hiding the addiction and raiding the hospital’s drug supply can be preferred over admitting the problem and risking the health care workers’ careers – and ultimately, their lives.
Younger players are not immune to the brain damage that can come with playing football, National Public Radio says, quoting a grim report from the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America.
The technique of magnetic resonance imaging, which essentially records a video of brain structure and function in real time, was used to scan the brains of 26 boys aged an average of 12 years before and after a season of football. The findings were compared with the brain scans of 26 other boys of similar age who were not football players, according to NPR.
Damage to the region that connects the two halves of the brain was evident in a majority of the football players but not in their control counterparts. in the shape of the corpus callosum. When these changes come at a time in life when the brain is developing, the results can be lifetime consequences on thought, behavior, and emotion.
“You have to understand that the NFL players were also most likely once collegiate players; they were also high school players and they were also probably youth players,” says radiologist Christopher T. Whitlow, MD, PhD, of Wake Forest Baptist Health in Winston-Salem, N.C., and a coauthor of the new findings, in the interview. “To us, it’s more than a question about concussions, it’s a question about long-term cumulative exposure.
“We don’t know what [the results] mean … do these changes persist over time? Do they accumulate with multiple seasons? And then No. 3, probably the most important: Do they have any relevance to long-term health?”
Average can be just fine
The need to excel is drilled into many people from childhood. Hard work is a virtue, but the pressure to shine can have disastrous consequences. In South Korea, for example, academic pressure is a major cause of suicide in youth.
A recent TED Women conference held in Palm Springs, Calif., provided some reassurance for those in the “forgotten middle” – those who were adequate but not stellar students, and who do their work diligently but not outstandingly.
“Those at the top get noticed and those at the bottom get extra help but no one really thinks about the kids in the middle who make up the majority,” says Danielle R. Moss Lee, EdD, a social activist and chief of the New York Civil Liberties Union, who spoke at the conference. These folks can be valuable contributors but are often overlooked. As a result, when it comes to excelling, they “check out.”
“We have to create different ways to harness their potential. I didn’t appreciate how average I was until I was a college student and I bumped into a science teacher and he couldn’t believe what college I was attending,” Dr. Lee says.
Sometimes it takes a push from a loved one to spur action. In Dr. Lee’s case, she says she was happy being an average student. Her mother’s search for extracurricular activities led her to discover writing and set her on a path to personal and professional accomplishment.
Dr. Lee’s message was that “the middle isn’t a permanent location.”
Others experts see the situation differently. “Most psychological traits are evenly distributed, meaning that a significant proportion of the population will have average intelligence and leadership potential,” says Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, PhD, of University College London, in an interview with BBC News.
“The world’s progress depends on those who stand out via their exceptional and innovative contributions, but these individuals are part of the top 1% in their field, combining truly unconventional levels of talent, work ethic, and focus,” Dr. Chamorro-Premuzic says. “For the remaining 99% of us, the acceptance that our talents and motivation are much more conventional, and unlikely to result in world-changing accomplishments, would reflect a healthier, more rational self-concept than illusions of grandiosity or fantasized talent.”
Shared sorrow mark club members
A recent article in Time described the experiences of some who have lost their children and whose worlds have been forever altered. From all walks of life and diverse backgrounds, these folks become tethered together. “It’s a club you spend your whole life hoping you won’t ever become a part of,” says Nicole Hockley, whose son Dylan, 6, was killed in the December 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut. “But once you’re in, you’re in.”
Mitchell Dworet and Melissa Wiley are connected by death of their children. Mr. Dworet’s 17-year-old son Nicholas was killed during the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., in February 2018. A month later, Ms. Willey’s daughter Jaelynn, 16, was shot to death by a fellow student at Great Mills High School in Maryland. They connected through Facebook. “I felt like I should reach out. I wanted to pay it forward,” explains Mr. Dworet.
“When you’ve gone through this kind of tragedy with other people, you see their humanity, where they’re coming from,” says Darrell Scott, whose 17-year-old daughter Rachel was killed at Columbine. Politics can differ – as can views on the painful issue of gun control measures – and friendships might not develop. Still, however, they share one enduring bond.
The connection with others can help in the immediate aftermath, and can continue to be important over time. “When you lose a child violently and publicly, there’s an outpouring of support at first,” said Sandy Phillips, whose 24-year-old daughter Jessi was shot with 11 others at a cinema in Aurora, Colo., in 2012. “Once the vigils are over and the media is gone, that’s when things get really bad. The world moves on, and you don’t. You can’t. It’s a pain you can’t outrun.”
“A huge emotional jolt”
In the aftermath of the magnitude 7.0 earthquake that shook Anchorage, Alaska, on Nov. 30, and the many aftershocks, residents are scrambling to cope with their changed lives. For those who lost possessions, the pain is real. But there comes the realization for many that they survived and that material possessions can, for the most part, be replaced.
Psychological changes, meanwhile, can prove profound and lasting. Researchers have found that large earthquakes can produce PTSD and anxiety. Some survivors can come away from earthquakes with difficulty concentrating and hypervigilance.
As one resident explains to Anchorage Daily News, “I felt yesterday like I had one final nerve and every aftershock was playing on that nerve.”
K.J. Worbey, a mental health counselor for Southcentral Foundation – an Alaska Native health care organization – describes the experience as a “huge emotional jolt.” She adds there is “lots of uncertainly about our own safety. Safety of our families and our homes. ... When we are faced with that kind of an emotional crisis, it takes a whole lot of energy to navigate it.”
Ms. Worbey recommends limiting alcohol, eating a healthy diet, and exercising appropriately. “Try to get some energy out. Try and get that excess emotional stuff out,” she said. Other prudent measures include sticking to a normal routine as much as is possible, including mealtimes and sleep, and talking with neighbors and friends.
Drug diversions can cost lives
A recent article in the Dallas Morning News has highlighted the humanity of health caregivers. Within the past several years, two nurses at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center’s Williams P. Clements Jr. Hospital in Dallas have died of self-inflicted drug overdoses during a work shift.
It’s unusual for one hospital to have two caregivers die of overdoses in such a short time, experts say.
“This is an extreme example,” says Kimberly New, a nurse and lawyer in Tennessee who consults with hospitals nationwide on how to prevent diversions. “That type of alarming situation would be the reason to bring someone in and look at their controls.”
For addicted health care staff, access to their drug of need can be as near as the hospital’s drug supply room. In the past 4 years, hospitals in Texas have reported more than 200 thefts by employees. The tally is likely much higher, as thefts go undetected. The consequences of the thefts in terms of overdoses and deaths are unknown, as those details are not tracked.
Other consequences also hit home for those tasked with providing care: While focusing on their addictions, a nurse or other caregiver can dangerously comprise their duties. This can, in turn, compromise patient care – and can threaten survival if an oversight or mistake is egregiously wrong.
The response by hospitals like the Clements facility is typically a hard-line approach to institute procedures to safeguard the drugs from diversion. This tact is necessary but completely overlooks the reasons for the drug addiction. As with such measures, the effect can be to drive the abuser underground. Hiding the addiction and raiding the hospital’s drug supply can be preferred over admitting the problem and risking the health care workers’ careers – and ultimately, their lives.
Younger players are not immune to the brain damage that can come with playing football, National Public Radio says, quoting a grim report from the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America.
The technique of magnetic resonance imaging, which essentially records a video of brain structure and function in real time, was used to scan the brains of 26 boys aged an average of 12 years before and after a season of football. The findings were compared with the brain scans of 26 other boys of similar age who were not football players, according to NPR.
Damage to the region that connects the two halves of the brain was evident in a majority of the football players but not in their control counterparts. in the shape of the corpus callosum. When these changes come at a time in life when the brain is developing, the results can be lifetime consequences on thought, behavior, and emotion.
“You have to understand that the NFL players were also most likely once collegiate players; they were also high school players and they were also probably youth players,” says radiologist Christopher T. Whitlow, MD, PhD, of Wake Forest Baptist Health in Winston-Salem, N.C., and a coauthor of the new findings, in the interview. “To us, it’s more than a question about concussions, it’s a question about long-term cumulative exposure.
“We don’t know what [the results] mean … do these changes persist over time? Do they accumulate with multiple seasons? And then No. 3, probably the most important: Do they have any relevance to long-term health?”
Average can be just fine
The need to excel is drilled into many people from childhood. Hard work is a virtue, but the pressure to shine can have disastrous consequences. In South Korea, for example, academic pressure is a major cause of suicide in youth.
A recent TED Women conference held in Palm Springs, Calif., provided some reassurance for those in the “forgotten middle” – those who were adequate but not stellar students, and who do their work diligently but not outstandingly.
“Those at the top get noticed and those at the bottom get extra help but no one really thinks about the kids in the middle who make up the majority,” says Danielle R. Moss Lee, EdD, a social activist and chief of the New York Civil Liberties Union, who spoke at the conference. These folks can be valuable contributors but are often overlooked. As a result, when it comes to excelling, they “check out.”
“We have to create different ways to harness their potential. I didn’t appreciate how average I was until I was a college student and I bumped into a science teacher and he couldn’t believe what college I was attending,” Dr. Lee says.
Sometimes it takes a push from a loved one to spur action. In Dr. Lee’s case, she says she was happy being an average student. Her mother’s search for extracurricular activities led her to discover writing and set her on a path to personal and professional accomplishment.
Dr. Lee’s message was that “the middle isn’t a permanent location.”
Others experts see the situation differently. “Most psychological traits are evenly distributed, meaning that a significant proportion of the population will have average intelligence and leadership potential,” says Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, PhD, of University College London, in an interview with BBC News.
“The world’s progress depends on those who stand out via their exceptional and innovative contributions, but these individuals are part of the top 1% in their field, combining truly unconventional levels of talent, work ethic, and focus,” Dr. Chamorro-Premuzic says. “For the remaining 99% of us, the acceptance that our talents and motivation are much more conventional, and unlikely to result in world-changing accomplishments, would reflect a healthier, more rational self-concept than illusions of grandiosity or fantasized talent.”
Shared sorrow mark club members
A recent article in Time described the experiences of some who have lost their children and whose worlds have been forever altered. From all walks of life and diverse backgrounds, these folks become tethered together. “It’s a club you spend your whole life hoping you won’t ever become a part of,” says Nicole Hockley, whose son Dylan, 6, was killed in the December 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut. “But once you’re in, you’re in.”
Mitchell Dworet and Melissa Wiley are connected by death of their children. Mr. Dworet’s 17-year-old son Nicholas was killed during the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., in February 2018. A month later, Ms. Willey’s daughter Jaelynn, 16, was shot to death by a fellow student at Great Mills High School in Maryland. They connected through Facebook. “I felt like I should reach out. I wanted to pay it forward,” explains Mr. Dworet.
“When you’ve gone through this kind of tragedy with other people, you see their humanity, where they’re coming from,” says Darrell Scott, whose 17-year-old daughter Rachel was killed at Columbine. Politics can differ – as can views on the painful issue of gun control measures – and friendships might not develop. Still, however, they share one enduring bond.
The connection with others can help in the immediate aftermath, and can continue to be important over time. “When you lose a child violently and publicly, there’s an outpouring of support at first,” said Sandy Phillips, whose 24-year-old daughter Jessi was shot with 11 others at a cinema in Aurora, Colo., in 2012. “Once the vigils are over and the media is gone, that’s when things get really bad. The world moves on, and you don’t. You can’t. It’s a pain you can’t outrun.”
“A huge emotional jolt”
In the aftermath of the magnitude 7.0 earthquake that shook Anchorage, Alaska, on Nov. 30, and the many aftershocks, residents are scrambling to cope with their changed lives. For those who lost possessions, the pain is real. But there comes the realization for many that they survived and that material possessions can, for the most part, be replaced.
Psychological changes, meanwhile, can prove profound and lasting. Researchers have found that large earthquakes can produce PTSD and anxiety. Some survivors can come away from earthquakes with difficulty concentrating and hypervigilance.
As one resident explains to Anchorage Daily News, “I felt yesterday like I had one final nerve and every aftershock was playing on that nerve.”
K.J. Worbey, a mental health counselor for Southcentral Foundation – an Alaska Native health care organization – describes the experience as a “huge emotional jolt.” She adds there is “lots of uncertainly about our own safety. Safety of our families and our homes. ... When we are faced with that kind of an emotional crisis, it takes a whole lot of energy to navigate it.”
Ms. Worbey recommends limiting alcohol, eating a healthy diet, and exercising appropriately. “Try to get some energy out. Try and get that excess emotional stuff out,” she said. Other prudent measures include sticking to a normal routine as much as is possible, including mealtimes and sleep, and talking with neighbors and friends.
Drug diversions can cost lives
A recent article in the Dallas Morning News has highlighted the humanity of health caregivers. Within the past several years, two nurses at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center’s Williams P. Clements Jr. Hospital in Dallas have died of self-inflicted drug overdoses during a work shift.
It’s unusual for one hospital to have two caregivers die of overdoses in such a short time, experts say.
“This is an extreme example,” says Kimberly New, a nurse and lawyer in Tennessee who consults with hospitals nationwide on how to prevent diversions. “That type of alarming situation would be the reason to bring someone in and look at their controls.”
For addicted health care staff, access to their drug of need can be as near as the hospital’s drug supply room. In the past 4 years, hospitals in Texas have reported more than 200 thefts by employees. The tally is likely much higher, as thefts go undetected. The consequences of the thefts in terms of overdoses and deaths are unknown, as those details are not tracked.
Other consequences also hit home for those tasked with providing care: While focusing on their addictions, a nurse or other caregiver can dangerously comprise their duties. This can, in turn, compromise patient care – and can threaten survival if an oversight or mistake is egregiously wrong.
The response by hospitals like the Clements facility is typically a hard-line approach to institute procedures to safeguard the drugs from diversion. This tact is necessary but completely overlooks the reasons for the drug addiction. As with such measures, the effect can be to drive the abuser underground. Hiding the addiction and raiding the hospital’s drug supply can be preferred over admitting the problem and risking the health care workers’ careers – and ultimately, their lives.
Viral tweet leads to physician backlash, #ThisISMyLane
When the National Rifle Association responded to an American College of Physicians position paper updating its policy on reducing firearm injuries by telling the physicians to “stay in their lane,” the group got an earful on Twitter.
“Many of the Tweet responses relayed heart-wrenching stories of doctors caring for patients who suffered and died from gun shot wounds,” writes Forbes contributor Bruce Y. Lee, MD, an associate professor of public health at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore. “Some Tweets included pictures of blood-spattered scenes to emphasize what doctors have to regularly address.”
The NRA’s response to the ACP update led to the creation of the hashtags #ThisISMyLane and #ThisIsOurLane.
says Rebecca Cunningham, MD, an emergency physician at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, on the WBUR radio show, “On Point.” Talking to families about gun safety is “absolutely in our lane.” Meanwhile, Dr. Cunningham, principal investigator of Firearm Safety Among Children and Teens, tweeted that 50 women die per month “by gun by intimate partner.”
The twitter account @ThisIsOurLane, described as a group of “medical professionals who care for #GunViolence Victims,” currently has more than 26 million followers.
Japanese concepts offer perspective
Western culture is fueled by immediacy, and as a result, life can feel askew.
“We’re living in the busiest time of history of humanity, and we often do not have enough time to get everything done that we need to,” futurist and trends guru Daniel Levine says in an interview with NBC News. “The promise of technology was that it would handle our work for us and let us hang out more and relax, but the opposite has happened. Rather than helping us slow down, technology is forcing us to move even faster.”
In seeking another way, Mr. Levine cites “a countertrend against the barrage of tasks and technology that we are inundated with everyday. Patience is the other side of the coin of speed, and we’re looking more to [integrate] that into our lives.”
One step might be to take part in the Japanese tea ceremony of wabi-sabi. At the heart of the ceremony is the reality that things are not perfect but that the imperfections can be embraced to provide fulfillment. This attitude can extend to finding acceptance of personal imperfections.
Developing patience also is important. Again, drawing on Japanese culture, the philosophical outlook of Shankankan espouses the beauty found in a slower pace.
“Patience is the understanding that this is a long journey and you can’t rush the process, particularly in the Zen meditation tradition of spiritual ripening,” says author and yoga teacher Kino MacGregor.
Ikigai – self-introspection as to one’s true purpose – is the another pearl of wisdom from Japanese culture. “I think the Western idea of purpose tends to be very focused on what your profession and livelihood are and how to make money,” Ms. MacGregor says. “Ikigai is quite different. It’s about finding what you love and what the world needs. That requires patience in the sense that it won’t be revealed to you in one moment. You’ll need space and time for those answers.”
Using animal-assisted therapy for children
A Canadian psychologist is putting her livestock to nontraditional use as part of a mental health therapy program for local children and youth in need.
Kali Eddy, who lives on a range in Saskatchewan, uses her critters to help treat anxiety, depression, and other mental health challenges, according to a report by Global News. “Really, it’s just a technique that I use in addition to traditional therapies,” she explains. “A lot of times in a traditional therapy setting, you’re sitting with a psychologist talking and looking at them in the eye – and sometimes this helps reduce some of that pressure if a client is petting an animal or interacting with an animal.”
As many pet owners can attest, having another living thing to focus on and care for can prove therapeutic. As part of a structured therapy, coming into contact with the animals can encourage conversations about personal struggles.
The tactile mental health program developed by Ms. Eddy has allowed her to use the animals that are part of her life to help her clients. And the need for mental health interventions is pressing: “10-20% of youth are affected by a mental illness or disorder, and I think those statistics are probably even higher because the number of youth who come to us who are diagnosed and struggling,” she says in the interview.
Advice for Alzheimer’s caregivers
Caring for a family member with Alzheimer’s disease can be a lonely responsibility, but advice from those who have made the journey can provide a roadmap.
Grieving for the patient while caring for them is important. “You have to learn how to grieve losing someone while they’re still alive,” Amy L. says in an interview with SELF. Amy cared for her father for 3 years until his death from Alzheimer’s in 2015.
“You always think about grief as something that happens once someone passes away, but this illness really changes who they are,” she adds. The knowledge that the disease is progressive and that cognitive and physical functions will spiral downward can be helpful, although very painful.
Trust in the ability to do what is needed for the affected person can prevent second-guessing and guilt later in life. “I wish I had known from the beginning to just listen to and trust myself because I am the only one who knows what it feels like to be in my own circumstance,” Linda G. says.
Having others to talk with is vital. “Connecting with others who know what [we’re] going through and who can offer support and suggestions for dealing with the disease’s various challenges has been very helpful,” explains Peggy M.
Global suicide rates down 29%
The number of suicides in the United States has increased since 2000, fueled by white, middle-aged men who have been hard hit by structural changes in the economy. But, according to an article in The Economist, compared with other countries around the world, the United States appears to be the exception. Globally, the suicide rate has dropped by 29% over the same period.
Notable declines have occurred among young women in China and India, middle-aged men in Russia, and elderly people in general. This might reflect increasing urbanization, with the accompanying access to health and mental health services, freedom from suffocating traditions that can spawn despair, and increased human interaction.
Spending on health services is another important factor. “Spending on health services, especially those that most benefit the old and sick, can make a big difference: Fear of chronic pain is one of the things that leads people to seek a quick way out. The remarkable recent fall in suicide among elderly Britons may have happened in part because Britain’s palliative-care system is the best in the world,” the authors write.
“For a few people – those who are terminally ill, in severe pain, and determined to die – suicide may be the least terrible option. In such circumstances, and with firm safeguards, doctors should be allowed to assist. But many of the 800,000 people who kill themselves each year act in haste, and more could be saved with better health services, labor-market policies, and curbs on booze, guns, pesticides, and pills.
“America, in particular, could spare much pain by learning from the progress elsewhere.”
When the National Rifle Association responded to an American College of Physicians position paper updating its policy on reducing firearm injuries by telling the physicians to “stay in their lane,” the group got an earful on Twitter.
“Many of the Tweet responses relayed heart-wrenching stories of doctors caring for patients who suffered and died from gun shot wounds,” writes Forbes contributor Bruce Y. Lee, MD, an associate professor of public health at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore. “Some Tweets included pictures of blood-spattered scenes to emphasize what doctors have to regularly address.”
The NRA’s response to the ACP update led to the creation of the hashtags #ThisISMyLane and #ThisIsOurLane.
says Rebecca Cunningham, MD, an emergency physician at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, on the WBUR radio show, “On Point.” Talking to families about gun safety is “absolutely in our lane.” Meanwhile, Dr. Cunningham, principal investigator of Firearm Safety Among Children and Teens, tweeted that 50 women die per month “by gun by intimate partner.”
The twitter account @ThisIsOurLane, described as a group of “medical professionals who care for #GunViolence Victims,” currently has more than 26 million followers.
Japanese concepts offer perspective
Western culture is fueled by immediacy, and as a result, life can feel askew.
“We’re living in the busiest time of history of humanity, and we often do not have enough time to get everything done that we need to,” futurist and trends guru Daniel Levine says in an interview with NBC News. “The promise of technology was that it would handle our work for us and let us hang out more and relax, but the opposite has happened. Rather than helping us slow down, technology is forcing us to move even faster.”
In seeking another way, Mr. Levine cites “a countertrend against the barrage of tasks and technology that we are inundated with everyday. Patience is the other side of the coin of speed, and we’re looking more to [integrate] that into our lives.”
One step might be to take part in the Japanese tea ceremony of wabi-sabi. At the heart of the ceremony is the reality that things are not perfect but that the imperfections can be embraced to provide fulfillment. This attitude can extend to finding acceptance of personal imperfections.
Developing patience also is important. Again, drawing on Japanese culture, the philosophical outlook of Shankankan espouses the beauty found in a slower pace.
“Patience is the understanding that this is a long journey and you can’t rush the process, particularly in the Zen meditation tradition of spiritual ripening,” says author and yoga teacher Kino MacGregor.
Ikigai – self-introspection as to one’s true purpose – is the another pearl of wisdom from Japanese culture. “I think the Western idea of purpose tends to be very focused on what your profession and livelihood are and how to make money,” Ms. MacGregor says. “Ikigai is quite different. It’s about finding what you love and what the world needs. That requires patience in the sense that it won’t be revealed to you in one moment. You’ll need space and time for those answers.”
Using animal-assisted therapy for children
A Canadian psychologist is putting her livestock to nontraditional use as part of a mental health therapy program for local children and youth in need.
Kali Eddy, who lives on a range in Saskatchewan, uses her critters to help treat anxiety, depression, and other mental health challenges, according to a report by Global News. “Really, it’s just a technique that I use in addition to traditional therapies,” she explains. “A lot of times in a traditional therapy setting, you’re sitting with a psychologist talking and looking at them in the eye – and sometimes this helps reduce some of that pressure if a client is petting an animal or interacting with an animal.”
As many pet owners can attest, having another living thing to focus on and care for can prove therapeutic. As part of a structured therapy, coming into contact with the animals can encourage conversations about personal struggles.
The tactile mental health program developed by Ms. Eddy has allowed her to use the animals that are part of her life to help her clients. And the need for mental health interventions is pressing: “10-20% of youth are affected by a mental illness or disorder, and I think those statistics are probably even higher because the number of youth who come to us who are diagnosed and struggling,” she says in the interview.
Advice for Alzheimer’s caregivers
Caring for a family member with Alzheimer’s disease can be a lonely responsibility, but advice from those who have made the journey can provide a roadmap.
Grieving for the patient while caring for them is important. “You have to learn how to grieve losing someone while they’re still alive,” Amy L. says in an interview with SELF. Amy cared for her father for 3 years until his death from Alzheimer’s in 2015.
“You always think about grief as something that happens once someone passes away, but this illness really changes who they are,” she adds. The knowledge that the disease is progressive and that cognitive and physical functions will spiral downward can be helpful, although very painful.
Trust in the ability to do what is needed for the affected person can prevent second-guessing and guilt later in life. “I wish I had known from the beginning to just listen to and trust myself because I am the only one who knows what it feels like to be in my own circumstance,” Linda G. says.
Having others to talk with is vital. “Connecting with others who know what [we’re] going through and who can offer support and suggestions for dealing with the disease’s various challenges has been very helpful,” explains Peggy M.
Global suicide rates down 29%
The number of suicides in the United States has increased since 2000, fueled by white, middle-aged men who have been hard hit by structural changes in the economy. But, according to an article in The Economist, compared with other countries around the world, the United States appears to be the exception. Globally, the suicide rate has dropped by 29% over the same period.
Notable declines have occurred among young women in China and India, middle-aged men in Russia, and elderly people in general. This might reflect increasing urbanization, with the accompanying access to health and mental health services, freedom from suffocating traditions that can spawn despair, and increased human interaction.
Spending on health services is another important factor. “Spending on health services, especially those that most benefit the old and sick, can make a big difference: Fear of chronic pain is one of the things that leads people to seek a quick way out. The remarkable recent fall in suicide among elderly Britons may have happened in part because Britain’s palliative-care system is the best in the world,” the authors write.
“For a few people – those who are terminally ill, in severe pain, and determined to die – suicide may be the least terrible option. In such circumstances, and with firm safeguards, doctors should be allowed to assist. But many of the 800,000 people who kill themselves each year act in haste, and more could be saved with better health services, labor-market policies, and curbs on booze, guns, pesticides, and pills.
“America, in particular, could spare much pain by learning from the progress elsewhere.”
When the National Rifle Association responded to an American College of Physicians position paper updating its policy on reducing firearm injuries by telling the physicians to “stay in their lane,” the group got an earful on Twitter.
“Many of the Tweet responses relayed heart-wrenching stories of doctors caring for patients who suffered and died from gun shot wounds,” writes Forbes contributor Bruce Y. Lee, MD, an associate professor of public health at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore. “Some Tweets included pictures of blood-spattered scenes to emphasize what doctors have to regularly address.”
The NRA’s response to the ACP update led to the creation of the hashtags #ThisISMyLane and #ThisIsOurLane.
says Rebecca Cunningham, MD, an emergency physician at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, on the WBUR radio show, “On Point.” Talking to families about gun safety is “absolutely in our lane.” Meanwhile, Dr. Cunningham, principal investigator of Firearm Safety Among Children and Teens, tweeted that 50 women die per month “by gun by intimate partner.”
The twitter account @ThisIsOurLane, described as a group of “medical professionals who care for #GunViolence Victims,” currently has more than 26 million followers.
Japanese concepts offer perspective
Western culture is fueled by immediacy, and as a result, life can feel askew.
“We’re living in the busiest time of history of humanity, and we often do not have enough time to get everything done that we need to,” futurist and trends guru Daniel Levine says in an interview with NBC News. “The promise of technology was that it would handle our work for us and let us hang out more and relax, but the opposite has happened. Rather than helping us slow down, technology is forcing us to move even faster.”
In seeking another way, Mr. Levine cites “a countertrend against the barrage of tasks and technology that we are inundated with everyday. Patience is the other side of the coin of speed, and we’re looking more to [integrate] that into our lives.”
One step might be to take part in the Japanese tea ceremony of wabi-sabi. At the heart of the ceremony is the reality that things are not perfect but that the imperfections can be embraced to provide fulfillment. This attitude can extend to finding acceptance of personal imperfections.
Developing patience also is important. Again, drawing on Japanese culture, the philosophical outlook of Shankankan espouses the beauty found in a slower pace.
“Patience is the understanding that this is a long journey and you can’t rush the process, particularly in the Zen meditation tradition of spiritual ripening,” says author and yoga teacher Kino MacGregor.
Ikigai – self-introspection as to one’s true purpose – is the another pearl of wisdom from Japanese culture. “I think the Western idea of purpose tends to be very focused on what your profession and livelihood are and how to make money,” Ms. MacGregor says. “Ikigai is quite different. It’s about finding what you love and what the world needs. That requires patience in the sense that it won’t be revealed to you in one moment. You’ll need space and time for those answers.”
Using animal-assisted therapy for children
A Canadian psychologist is putting her livestock to nontraditional use as part of a mental health therapy program for local children and youth in need.
Kali Eddy, who lives on a range in Saskatchewan, uses her critters to help treat anxiety, depression, and other mental health challenges, according to a report by Global News. “Really, it’s just a technique that I use in addition to traditional therapies,” she explains. “A lot of times in a traditional therapy setting, you’re sitting with a psychologist talking and looking at them in the eye – and sometimes this helps reduce some of that pressure if a client is petting an animal or interacting with an animal.”
As many pet owners can attest, having another living thing to focus on and care for can prove therapeutic. As part of a structured therapy, coming into contact with the animals can encourage conversations about personal struggles.
The tactile mental health program developed by Ms. Eddy has allowed her to use the animals that are part of her life to help her clients. And the need for mental health interventions is pressing: “10-20% of youth are affected by a mental illness or disorder, and I think those statistics are probably even higher because the number of youth who come to us who are diagnosed and struggling,” she says in the interview.
Advice for Alzheimer’s caregivers
Caring for a family member with Alzheimer’s disease can be a lonely responsibility, but advice from those who have made the journey can provide a roadmap.
Grieving for the patient while caring for them is important. “You have to learn how to grieve losing someone while they’re still alive,” Amy L. says in an interview with SELF. Amy cared for her father for 3 years until his death from Alzheimer’s in 2015.
“You always think about grief as something that happens once someone passes away, but this illness really changes who they are,” she adds. The knowledge that the disease is progressive and that cognitive and physical functions will spiral downward can be helpful, although very painful.
Trust in the ability to do what is needed for the affected person can prevent second-guessing and guilt later in life. “I wish I had known from the beginning to just listen to and trust myself because I am the only one who knows what it feels like to be in my own circumstance,” Linda G. says.
Having others to talk with is vital. “Connecting with others who know what [we’re] going through and who can offer support and suggestions for dealing with the disease’s various challenges has been very helpful,” explains Peggy M.
Global suicide rates down 29%
The number of suicides in the United States has increased since 2000, fueled by white, middle-aged men who have been hard hit by structural changes in the economy. But, according to an article in The Economist, compared with other countries around the world, the United States appears to be the exception. Globally, the suicide rate has dropped by 29% over the same period.
Notable declines have occurred among young women in China and India, middle-aged men in Russia, and elderly people in general. This might reflect increasing urbanization, with the accompanying access to health and mental health services, freedom from suffocating traditions that can spawn despair, and increased human interaction.
Spending on health services is another important factor. “Spending on health services, especially those that most benefit the old and sick, can make a big difference: Fear of chronic pain is one of the things that leads people to seek a quick way out. The remarkable recent fall in suicide among elderly Britons may have happened in part because Britain’s palliative-care system is the best in the world,” the authors write.
“For a few people – those who are terminally ill, in severe pain, and determined to die – suicide may be the least terrible option. In such circumstances, and with firm safeguards, doctors should be allowed to assist. But many of the 800,000 people who kill themselves each year act in haste, and more could be saved with better health services, labor-market policies, and curbs on booze, guns, pesticides, and pills.
“America, in particular, could spare much pain by learning from the progress elsewhere.”