Students: Bitter about your school’s mental health care?
Here’s your chance to be counted. I don’t know the content of the survey, but it’s important that students be heard on this subject.
NATIONAL EDUCATION STUDY FOR STUDENTS WITH MENTAL ILLNESSES
An increasing number of students diagnosed with mental illnesses are attending postsecondary institutions such as 4- or 2-year colleges, vocational schools, and graduate schools. However, little research has been done to assess how such diagnoses impact these individuals’ academic and campus experiences.
liz | 5:31 PM | Uncategorized
P.A. alert
Activists, get those dialing fingers ready:
Medicaid advocates have one last shot to defeat federal budget Reconciliation Cuts Made in December. Only 6 votes in the US House have to switch to stop the devastation. Make one your representative!
liz | 5:34 PM | Uncategorized
Song of the day: “I’m Not in Love”
Why do I find this dumb song, “I’m Not in Love,” by 10cc so pleasing? It’s classic ’70s soft rock, the kind of songs no one makes anymore because they’re too painfully sweet. Think: the Carpenters, America, that sort of thing. At a PW-sponsored lit reading once a few year ago, writer Gabe Boylan talked about his love for soft rock, and it warmed my heart. I don’t think there are many people who feel so deeply about such superficial songs.
This song is so bad, it’s almost New Age, but that’s partly what makes it so good. I actually believe that 10cc were pretty brilliant—that one album How Dare You! is funny and solid good pop.
liz | 4:17 PM | Uncategorized
Headline of the day
From the “breaking news” section of Genetic Engineering News’ website:
People Can Suffer from Bipolar Disorder for Years until It is Correctly Diagnosed
Stop the presses! Er, browser pages!
liz | 3:26 PM | Uncategorized
Blandamerica
I went to see Transamerica with Felicity Huffman this weekend. (We had a great time; I think we’re going to see each other again. Heh.) I’ve heard nothing but raves, basically, about Huffman’s performance, and about the film’s intentions, which I agree are noble.
But I gotta say, I thought the film was pretty bad. Gender dysphoria is a serious condition, and those who suffer from it do certainly struggle with some of the things Huffman’s character endures. But the movie was so deeply conventional and formulaic, and so uninventively filmed and conceived, it was hard to believe the subject matter was in the least controversial.
The conventional aspects are both entirely expected and wholly unrealistic. The way that Huffman gets set up with her young street-hustler son, a blank slate whose pearls of wisdom include explaining how Lord of the Rings is gay, makes little sense. From that point on, it’s a road-movie paint-by-numbers, including appearances put in by our favorite types: the noble Native American and the warm black lady. The hillbilly stepfather is a stupid personification of the trauma of physical and sexual abuse. And the dysfunctional family in Phoenix is over-the-top with drama and hysteria, which is a shame because it offers the character actor Burt Young nothing to do except shrug his shoulders. There are a couple moments of ridiculous Jewish/Yiddish invocation from a blond pixie who probably spent her education saying the catechism, and there’s the obligatory dog-acting-funny/cute shot that everyone has to react to.
If it weren’t for the fact that Huffman plays a transgendered woman, and her kid’s sexuality is ambiguous, the movie would be by-the-books after-school-special material.
I read that director Duncan Tucker was inspired to make the film after learning that his Hollywood roommate, actress Katherine Connella (pictured here), was born as a boy. He was fascinated—but not enough so to cast her (or someone like her) in the film, apparently. Instead, we have a woman playing the part, and what’s subversive about that? If you really want to take risks and show people the reality of the transgendered experience, have the balls to cast a transgendered person in the role. Instead, we have to endure articles in the press about how Huffman transformed herself into a man and bugged hubbie William H. Macy by talking like her character all the time. Ooh, so Method.
Surely one of the reasons she got a Golden Globe is because there’s a scene in which she drools. “Look how brave she is,” say film fans. “She’s not afraid to drool on camera!” It’s the Charlize-Theron-in-Monster syndrome all over again.
Obviously, the film has a positive message, though it’s hard to take it seriously. The one scene that could have been meaningful—a social gathering of transgendered folk—turns into a weird hoedown, which I didn’t get. Why the singing and music when we could have had substantive dialogue? Oh well.
I’d love to hear what transgendered people think of this movie. I looked on a few message boards, and saw mixed reviews. But maybe I’m not understanding how powerful it is to get this message out there, to normalize the experience and expose people to the struggle.
Am I being too critical?
[Photo of Katherine Connella taken by Lynnell Stephani Long]
liz | 12:01 PM | Uncategorized
Weekend comments
This weekend, when I was supposed to be taking time off from blogging, I simply couldn’t help reading some of the comments people left. They’re so interesting, and offer lots of great reading tips.
So I’m going to encourage you to check them out:
•About vivid dreams
•Medicare Part D gets a D from a subscriber
•Racism and Kendra’s Law
liz | 12:39 PM | Uncategorized
“Effing the ineffable”? I don’t even know what that means
Got an email today about a mental health article titled “We are happy conservatives here to brainwash you into doing bad things for your body.” Oh, wait. It wasn’t called that. It was called “Abortion causes massive mental health problems for women.”
I can’t speak to the quality of the research cited, which I’m going to look into later today, but I’m disturbed by the presentation and contextualization of the data, on a website that’s admittedly a conservative hub. I get along with everyone—right-wingers, lefties, ambidextrous people—but this site is a little too strident for me, and I feel like it’s representative of how the anti-abortion movement is being waged—cannily, and persuasively—so it’s worth taking a look.
One of the advertisers on the website it the conservative T-shirt maker thoseshirts.com, who say they’ve been “effing the ineffable since 1991.” Good for them! I think.
Pictured here: a new take on the radical Che Guavara shirt that those damn kids are always sporting. With the cutie boy shirts (isn’t that desecration of the flag?), it’s a fashion do. I only wish Ann Coulter were the model.
liz | 11:37 AM | Uncategorized
More mental health activism in Uganda
Care for people with mental illness [New Vision]
liz | 11:24 AM | Uncategorized
Ear this!
I want to keep you all abreast of the latest developments in the world of mental health, so I scour the newspapers and websites for important stories that’ll make you think.
Yesterday evening, tired after a long day of doing nothing except being depressed, I surfaced and checked out the New York Times‘ Science section, and found the below story. For some reason, I’m mesmerized, maybe because my hearing is kind of bad. (And no, I don’t have ear wax. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.)
Does this mean the end to ear candling? Seems a shame, given this image from Wally’s Natural. How will that little Amish girl bond with her mother?
Japanese Scientists Discover Ear Wax Gene
liz | 8:12 PM | Uncategorized
Sometime I get a press release that I think is sent to me because I’m a mental health expert…
…but it’s not.
TO: Liz Spikol
FROM: PR person
Subj.: RE: “Crazy Cakes”
The love of a Mother is unmistakable and powerful, and the moment Rose Lewis set eyes upon her daughter in a Chinese orphanage, she was smitten. I LOVE YOU LIKE CRAZY CAKES … AND MORE STORIES ABOUT FAMILIES, the newest release in the acclaimed Scholastic Video, tells the true story of the author’s arduous trip to China to adopt a baby girl. Appropriately, Oscar®-winning actress and adoptive parent Mia Farrow narrates this heart-tugging story of a mother’s love and a baby’s smile as they become each other’s family…
liz | 3:44 PM | Uncategorized
