Category Archives: Mental Health

What Everyone Should Know About Men and Depression

23 Mar 2016
Written by Elahe Izadi / Washington Post

Struggling with clinical depression can be especially challenging for people who don’t have strong support from loved ones. But having that kind of social support may end up discouraging some men from seeking out professional help, according to a study published this month in the journal General Hospital Psychiatry. That’s a dynamic that doesn’t appear to play out for depressed women, the study found. “Social support is, generally speaking, a good thing. In many ways, it buffers against depression in the first place. You have a confidant — someone to reach out and talk to is really helpful for all different aspects of your mental health, depression or otherwise,” said study author Alan Teo, an assistant psychiatry professor at Oregon Health and Science University and researcher at the VA Portland Health Care System.

My Anxiety is Forever and That’s Fine

22 Mar 2016
Written by Melissa Broder / BuzzFeed Health

My superpower is the ability to feel like a fraud about everything I do. My other superpower is the propensity to always fear bad things will happen whenever something good occurs. This is because it’s scarier for me to feel good than to feel bad. Feeling good is too threatening. If I feel good, I won’t be prepared for when the positive situation inevitably sours. If I don’t feel like a fraud, then I will be caught off guard when people find out that I am one.

I suppose that I don’t believe I deserve to feel good, that’s my anxiety, mostly because I don’t meet my own conflicting expectations of myself. Just give me a situation and I will find a way to be wrong. The other day I was hanging out with a bunch of artists and I felt that I was too square, too conformist, a “normie.” I felt so old and dried up that I was basically dead. But a little later I was with a bunch of corporate people and suddenly I was a fucking freak, hyper-confessional, too “out there.” I was somehow 16 again, a mess, as though there were a hole in my shoe and my toe was sticking out. The hole may be seen as literal, or metaphoric, but in either case, I was immature and exposed. I can be inadequate in diametrically opposed ways within the course of the same hour.

I don’t even have to be in the company of real people to imagine their judgments. I keep memories of past lovers rattling around inside me at all times, so as to have judgment readily available. Often, in these memories, I imagine my former lovers issuing decrees about what I’m doing wrong, and I use those imaginary judgments as impetus to be forever fixing myself. My attempts to “be better” — these little missions within the depression of existence — provide a sense of definition and purpose, so that I may feel less powerless over the mystery of life and also of death. In this way, memory functions as a narcotic taskmaster.

Yet all these examples are, of course, ego-based conceptions of identity, involving physicality, occupation, romance, and arbitrary conceptions of cool. Even my political affiliations are, in many ways, merely signifiers of the way I see myself and present myself to the world. One time, a few primary elections ago, the line was too long to vote. So I simply lied to my friends and said that I had voted, whom I had voted for, and why. Yet as soon as I revealed whom I’d pretended to vote for, I regretted my choice of make-believe candidate. I couldn’t even pick the cooler candidate to fake-vote for.

For 80 Years, Young Americans Have Been Getting Anxious and Depressed, and No One is Quite Sure Why

21 Mar 2016
Written by Jesse Singal / Science of Us

Generally speaking, sweepingly pessimistic statements about society should be taken with a grain of salt. When someone claims pop music is getting much dumber, or college kids are much more prone to mental illness, odds are pretty good the claim in question is a bit overblown. Overall, we’re often more attuned to the negative stories and anecdotes than positive ones, meaning that news coverage of terrible events, for example, can cause us to develop a distorted view of things.

Sometimes, though, there are exceptions. And an interesting, under-discussed one involves young people and mental health. In short: Ever since the 1930s, young people in America have reported feeling increasingly anxious and depressed. And no one knows exactly why.

One of the researchers who has done the most work on this subject is Dr. Jean Twenge, a social psychologist at San Diego State University who is the author of Generation Me: Why Today’s Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled—and More Miserable Than Ever Before.She’s published a handful of articles on this trajectory, and the underlying story, she thinks, is a rather negative one. “I think the research tells us that modern life is not good for mental health,” she said.

A key thing to understand before diving into her argument is that there are important methodological obstacles to accurately gauging how the prevalence of anxiety and depression wax and wane over time. The words “depression” and “anxiety” themselves, after all, mean very different things to someone asked about them in 1935 as compared to 1995, so surveys that invoke these concepts directly only have limited utility for longitudinal study. To get around this, Twenge prefers to rely on surveys and inventories in which respondents are asked about specific symptoms which are frequently correlated with anxiety and depression (she said that there’s a lot of symptomological overlap between the two). Questions like “Do you have trouble falling asleep?” mean similar things in 1935 as compared to 1995.

For Pro Sports Leagues, Addressing Mental Illness Crucial

20 Mar 2016
Written by James A. / The Cauldron

Over the next six to seven weeks, NFL team executives and scouts will make their annual cross-country trips for pro days in an effort to evaluate this year’s draftees. Given the billion-dollar stakes at play, the pre-draft process is as grueling and exhaustive as possible, covering everything from a player’s skill set to his underlying biomechanics and overall next-level preparedness.

Players undergo a gamut of tests designed to help teams identify their strengths and weaknesses, physical and otherwise. Some prospects receive greater scrutiny, but in the end, each will find his deficiencies — both on and off the field — identified and quantified. All to manage risk and increase the team’s chance of finding an impact player.

Still, despite all the resources allocated to ensure draft success, there is one area of concern that professional football doesn’t seem ready to invest in: The mental health of its prospective players.

The Facts

According to the National Alliance of Mental Illness, 20 percent of the nation’s population deals with some form of mental illness — nearly half of which have an onset average of 14 years old. The most commonly diagnosed type of mental illness, anxiety disorders, affect an estimated 42 million people.

Former NBA first-round pick Royce White is one of them.

To better understand how mental illness can affect a professional athlete in transition, White offered to illustrate a clearer picture on what the NBA is currently doing (and not doing) to address the mental health of prospects and players.

In a 2013 interview with Huffington Post Live, White reiterated his commitment to being his own advocate as it concerned receiving support from the NBA and the Houston Rockets, the team that drafted him. Out of the gate, both the Rockets’ general manager and head coach were aware of White’s anxiety disorder. As the first player to be properly and publicly classified, White, his representatives, and the Rockets negotiated several accommodations over the course of his contract. Sadly, with White’s condition preventing him from logging much in the way of court time, and with no precedent to follow, the relationship came to an abrupt end.

All these years later, the NBA still lacks concrete policies for handling mental health and illnesses. The reason being, perhaps, that it simply doesn’t fully understand it as a disease. Without acknowledging it as such, the criticism goes, how can you expect players to feel comfortable talking about it?

Maine Shelter Dog Adopted to Train as Veteran Service Dog

19 Mar 2016
Written by Ann Bryant / Stars and Stripes

A stray dog brought to Maine from South Carolina will soon head south again as a service dog for a wounded veteran. Service dogs are often used by veterans to manage such mental health issues as PTSD. Rocky arrived at the Franklin County Animal Shelter from Macon County just a few days before One Warrior Won founder Richard Brewer and Vice President of Operations Julie Plummer came up from Portland to meet him and adopted him last Tuesday, said Billie Jo McDonald, animal care technician. “They fell in love with him,” she said. “He was exactly what they wanted.”

7 Ways You Could Be Wrecking Your Mental Health

17 Mar 2016
Written by JR Thorpe / Bustle

There are obvious things in life that will drag down your mental health: being in an abusive relationship, for instance, or dealing with the death of a loved one. Beyond that, however, there are factors that you may not realize play a role in keeping mental health on the up, and are letting slide in the belief that they don’t matter. News flash: they do. You need to get enough sleep, get moving, stop smoking, and stop ignoring the seriously stressful parts of your life if you want to avoid heading for a mental health crash.

The mental health disorders I’m addressing here are predominantly the ones that are most affected by environmental factors: the mood disorders, anxiety, depression, and to a lesser extent, bipolar disorder. Others do pop up, though, so it’s not just one size fits all. This isn’t about blame, either: every mental illness is a cocktail of unique factors, and you can’t in all honesty be thought to have “brought it on yourself”. But if you do want to keep your head on the smooth and narrow, there are certain activities to avoid and behaviors to stop, as they’re high-risk when it comes to mental health.

Can Trauma Help You Grow?

16 Mar 2016
Written by David Kushner / The New Yorker

When I tell people that I had a brother who was kidnapped and murdered, I’m often asked how my parents survived. I was only four when Jon died, so for a long time I had the same question. My family suffered an unfathomable loss. Yet I grew up as free as most kids in the nineteen-seventies: my friends and I biked around town for hours, losing ourselves in the woods, the lakes, the arcades, with no cell phones to find us. When I finally had children of my own, I wondered more than ever how my mom and dad had done it. How had they found the strength not only to survive but to let me go? A few years ago, I began exploring this question while reporting and writing my memoir, “Alligator Candy,” about the murder and its aftermath. During that research, I found a new way to contextualize my family’s experience: a psychological phenomenon called post-traumatic growth. Psychologists have long studied resilience—the ability to bounce back and move on. But post-traumatic growth, which has been documented in hundreds of studies, is different; it’s what happens when trauma changes and deepens life’s meaning. In his recent book on the phenomenon, “What Doesn’t Kill Us,” Stephen Joseph, a psychologist at the University of Nottingham, describes victims of trauma experiencing enhanced relationships, greater self-acceptance, and a heightened appreciation of life. “To only look at the dark side and negative side is to miss out on something very important,” Joseph told me recently. Needless to say, no one wants to go through trauma, or suggests it’s a good thing. I’d rather have Jon here with me now—watching Louis C.K., eating a bowl of pho, hearing about his kid’s messy room—than be writing this essay. But, as Rabbi Harold Kushner (no relation) wrote after the loss of his son, “I cannot choose.” The existence of post-traumatic growth suggests that, while the pain never vanishes, something new and powerful is likely to come. As my mother once told my other brother, Andy, and me, “It’s like, after a spring gets pushed all the way down, it rises even higher.”

Let a Llama Take Your Troubles Away

15 Mar 2016
Written by Samantha Bresnahan / CNN

Dani, 15 years old, walks into the library of Serendipity Center in Portland, Oregon. Quiet and reserved, her face lights up when she sees the visitors waiting for her: “It makes me feel like they are my friends,” Dani says. “I would always talk to them, and it would make me really happy.” Dani’s visitors are actually two therapy animals. Soft, fluffy, gentle, tolerant — these two aren’t your usual therapy dogs, which help people cope with mental health. In fact, they aren’t dogs at all. Rojo the llama and Napoleon the alpaca are changing the face of therapy animals in the Pacific Northwest. “Everybody just needs a little happiness and joy in unexpected places,” said Lori Gregory. A few hours earlier, she and her daughter Shannon were walking Rojo and Napoleon through downtown Portland. It was quite the spectacle. Even in this city, known for having a quirky personality, this group drew a crowd. Photos, hugs, selfies, and a lot of laughter — that’s what Rojo and Napoleon can do. And it’s what Lori and Shannon have been sharing with the Portland area for 8 years and counting. “We never dreamed that we’d be doing work with llamas and alpacas,” Lori said. “We came to Oregon 20 years ago, and bought 2 ½ acres. Basically, we got tired of mowing the lawn, so we went to the fair to look for some animals to keep it eaten down.” The low-maintenance llamas caught their eye. So they went llama-shopping at a local farm. A red-colored llama named Rojo — Spanish for “red” — would become their first llama.