Funny or Offensive?: Babies and Manic Depression
98% Of Babies Manic-Depressive
NEW YORK—A new study published in The Journal Of Pediatric Medicine found that a shocking 98 percent of all infants suffer from bipolar disorder. “The majority of our subjects, regardless of size, sex, or race, exhibited extreme mood swings, often crying one minute and then giggling playfully the next,” the study’s author Dr. Steven Gregory told reporters. “Additionally we found that most babies had trouble concentrating during the day, often struggled to sleep at night, and could not be counted on to take care of themselves—all classic symptoms of manic depression.” Gregory added that nearly 100 percent of infants appear to suffer from the poor motor skills and impaired speech associated with Parkinson’s disease.
From—where else?—the Onion.
liz | 12:34 PM | Funny or Offensive?
Are You a Type-A?
This fine morning, Psychology Today’s website features a test for you to take to see if you’re a Type A personality, like (supposedly) Reese Witherspoon:
According to the scientific literature, the Type A Personality construct describes someone who is aggressively involved in a chronic, incessant struggle to achieve more and more in less and less time. The defining characteristics of the Type A Behavior Pattern (TABP) are a strong drive to succeed, hostility, competitiveness, perfectionism, a desire for recognition, wealth and advancement, difficulty talking about feelings, and a sense of urgency and impatience.
I think of myself as a sloppy non-perfectionist, so let’s see what happens when I take the test …
Well, I was right. If 100 is a crazed, tempestuous Type-A person, I’m only at 23 on the impatience/irritability scale.
Your interactions with others, while characterized by warmth and tolerance the majority of the time, may occasionally be tinged with impatience and hostility. When you’re stressed or frustrated, you may lash out at others or end up stewing in anger or frustration, but this is very rare. Since you generally trust others, you are usually willing to open up emotionally and value relationships for the sake of the people involved, instead of what they can do for you.
This is fortunate because a high amount of this aspect of the Type A Behavior Pattern (TABP) can not only be extremely harmful to relationships, it is also very damaging to your health. While originally it was thought that global TABP was the culprit in coronary heart disease, research now shows that hostility, impatience, and other related traits are the real source of the problem. Based on your results here, you are likely not at a very elevated risk of heart disease, but keep in mind that there are other causes unrelated to the TABP, such as poor diet, lack of exercise, and smoking, among other things.
Say what you will about these tests, but you can learn a lot about yourself while taking them.
liz | 10:36 AM | random
Go See Linda Andre!
One of my heroes, activist Linda Andre, is in Philadelphia this weekend in support of her excellent new book Doctors of Deception: What They Don’t Want You to Know About Shock Treatment. She’ll be appearing tomorrow. Info:
A New Life Peer Resource Center
3119 Spring Garden St.
Philadelphia, PA 19104
March 28th at 2:00 p.m.
I’ll be there too.
liz | 5:29 PM | electroshock (ECT)
Need a Good Cry? Rent “Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father”
Did I say a “good cry”? I’m sorry. I meant a “total destruction of your soul.” I sobbed for two hours straight and terrified my Chihuahua with my mucus profusion while I was watching this documentary, which is superb, though agonizing. Here are excerpts from the best review I’ve read of it, by Dustin Knowles:
Dear Zachary is one messed-up motherfucking documentary, people. And the less you know about it, perhaps, the better. Or maybe not. I knew nothing about it going in, and made the mistake of forcing Mrs. Pajiba-hyphenate to watch it with me. Within 11 minutes, she was sobbing, begging me to turn it off. Before I could find the remote, however, she’d been sucked back into an all-too engrossing story of a man’s freakish, tragic murder. But by minute 32, Mrs. Pajiba-hyphenate was inconsolable but transfixed, watching the next 45 minutes of the documentary with bleary, tear-filled eyes. Before the documentary ended, those tears turned to silent shock. And, for the both of us, it was perhaps the first time we’d ever been completely paralyzed by a film. It is an experience unlike almost any other, and your emotions will run the gamut, from sadness, to pride, to despair, to anger, to ache, and to complete disbelief, and unbelievable, mess-you-the-fuck up shock.
Sounds like fun, right? To further emphasize how hard this movie is to watch, Knowles talks about his wife’s reaction:
What happens later in the documentary will knock you on your ass … Mrs. P-h, however, thought that the emotional impact was too heavy, too burdensome; she felt the unsuspecting viewer needed an opportunity opt out of an experience that had the potential to scar.
Indeed, Knowles writes,
Dear Zachary is a documentary worth watching, that it’s one of the most powerful, gut-wrenching movies I’ve ever seen, but I’ll also warn you that, if you’re softhearted, and if movies have a tendency to remain with you for days, then maybe Dear Zachary carries with it an emotional bell you don’t want tolled. It’s one diddle you can’t undo, homeskillet.
That’s for sure. I don’t know how to recover. I can tell you there’s a murder and that the murderess is most certainly mentally ill, though what exactly is wrong with her, I don’t know. It’s enough to make you believe in the concept of evil.
liz | 12:49 PM | violence
High on Jesus? No, Just an Idiot
That would be me, of course. Sorry I posted the same three videos yesterday. Below, I actually got it right.
liz | 12:40 PM | random
To My DSM Friends: Diagnosis, Please
Thanks to Joey Sweeney for sending me perhaps the weirdest video about depression I’ve ever seen. This young woman claims not to do drugs but merely to be high on Jesus. Without tarring anyone’s religious proclivities, does being high on Jesus make you talk like this and drool on camera? I must include four videos because, as Sweeney says, they’re haunting. Notice that in the third one — after accusations of drug use — she’s quite lucid, not to mention lip-glossed. Then in the fourth, the drool emerges.
And no, don’t get on me for posting these videos. She put herself out there. When people dis my videos on YouTube, I’m okay with that. Fair game. She says there’s no such thing as depression? I think pot does a lousy job controlling Tourette syndrome.
liz | 12:40 PM | depression, media, random
Lexapro for Teens
Dawdy’s got an interesting post over at Furious Seasons critiquing the FDA’s recent approval process vis-a-vis the use of Lexapro in kids 12-17. He explains his opposition to the use of the med in teens quite clearly; the only thing I would quibble with is the assumption that withdrawal is the same in every case.
Many people who come off of Paxil, Effexor or Lexapro don’t get brain zaps, particularly if the withdrawal is done slowly. People lose patience with the tapering process and want to go faster, and sometimes do so to their detriment. At any rate, we shouldn’t assume that everyone who takes the meds has the same responses.
However, there’s a serious question here, in my opinion, about the safety and efficacy of initiating treatment with Lexapro to begin with. As Dawdy points out, the evidence is slim that it works in teens, and the brain is still developing at that age. Many people I know who grew up on meds are all fucked up, both in terms of their sense of self and their brain chemistry. They’ve been habituated to medications too early.
Go to Furious Seasons for more.
liz | 11:06 AM | BIG PHARMA, meds
Cute Fix: Sugar Gliders Grooming
I guarantee the one on the left is a boy. They’re placid. The girls are crazy. One of my boys is
liz | 4:17 PM | cute fix
Treatment for Panic Attacks
For those of you without health insurance and/or little money and access to appropriate resources, the University of Pennsylvania is doing a study on treatments for panic attacks. Normally such studies make me nervous, but given that this is the Center for Psychotherapy Research, I doubt they’ll be shoving meds at you. Here’s the info from Penn:
If you are experiencing the following symptoms, please call 215.662.2837
A panic attack is a sudden rush of anxiety that includes some of the following symptoms:
▪ palpitations ▪ shortness of breath
▪ nausea ▪ trembling
▪ fear of going crazy ▪ abdominal distress ▪ dizziness ▪ fear of dying
▪ hot flashes ▪ chest pain
▪ feelings of unreality ▪ fear of losing self-control
▪ feeling of chokingIf you are between 18-70 years old, you may be eligible for FREE therapy treatment as part of a research study.
The purpose of this study is to compare the effectiveness of three types of therapies in treating panic disorder. If you decide to participate, you will complete a brief phone screen, a diagnostic interview, and then be randomly assigned to one of a three therapy treatments.
Participation in this study includes treatment at NO cost to you, regular assessment by a diagnostician, occasional questionnaires, and daily tracking of your panic attacks outside of therapy.
Please call 215.662.2837 for more information and to see if this study is right for you.
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA HEALTH SYSTEM
Jacques Barber, Principal Investigator
Center for Psychotherapy Research
Panic Relief: 215.662.2837
liz | 11:10 AM | anxiety
R.I.P. Nick Hughes
Thanks to Susan — who, like me, surely has a long memory with the Plath/Hughes family — for sending me the tragic news that Nicholas Hughes hanged himself. But let’s not dwell on the question of heredity or a gene for suicide; we’ll leave that to the other pundits. Instead, I like this bit from the Times online:
A family friend said last night: “Nick wasn’t just the baby son of Plath and Hughes and it would be wrong to think of him as some kind of inevitably tragic figure. He was a man who reached his mid-forties, an adventurous marine biologist with a distinguished academic career behind him and a host of friends and achievements in his own right. That is the man who is mourned by those who knew him.”
So his parentage, and any parallels, aren’t what matter now. Jeers to the Daily Kos, one of my favorite sites, for the headline “Like mother like son.” Tacky.
liz | 11:40 PM | Uncategorized
