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By: Eleanor Jackson,
on 11/22/2015
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When the US Army took the Saxon city of Leipzig in April 1945, a gruelling scene was revealed inside the town hall. The Nazi treasurer of the city, his wife, and his daughter had all committed suicide. But these suicides were not isolated cases. In the spring of 1945, Nazi Germany went to its end in an unprecedented wave of suicides.
The post Suicide in Nazi Germany in 1945 appeared first on OUPblog.
By: William Bocholis,
on 10/26/2015
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Imagine someone close to you disappears. She no longer shows up on the day on which she always visited. She does not call or write. No one says where she has gone or if she is coming back. To make matters worse, you cannot ask about her. You experience feelings of sadness, anger, disappointment, and grief, to name a few. The only way you have to express yourself is through your behavior. You may retreat into yourself or lash out at others, but those who provide your care do not understand the source of your behaviors.
The post How to cope when the words don’t come appeared first on OUPblog.
By:
Heidi MacDonald,
on 10/21/2015
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Mental illness has been a trope in comics-related properties ranging from Peanuts to Gotham, but do new sensitivities to mental health issues mean that it’s time for this to change? At this year’s San Diego and New York Comic-Cons, I had the privilege of moderating a couple of panels on the portrayal of mental illness […]
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Heidi MacDonald,
on 10/10/2015
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Diversity is a recurring theme in panels at this year’s New York Comic-Con, mirroring a trend in fandom nationwide. Race, gender, physical ability, mental health, even geeks as an emerging protected class – amidst the how-to’s and PR announcements, programming about diversity is filling rooms and getting headlines. The power of this theme is something […]
By: Katherine Soroya,
on 10/10/2015
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Each year in July, I greet a new group of post-doctoral psychiatric trainees ('residents,' 'registrars') for a year's work in our psychiatric outpatient clinic. One of the rewards of being a psychiatric educator is witnessing the professional growth of young clinicians as they mature into seasoned, competent, and humanistic psychiatrists.
The post Perceiving dignity for World Mental Health Day appeared first on OUPblog.
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Denise Mealy,
on 10/10/2015
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BEING YOU! Daily Mindfulness For Kids is an interesting exploration of children's mental health.
By: Rebekah Daniels,
on 10/8/2015
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An unacceptably large proportion of mentally ill individuals do not receive any care. Reasons vary but include the dearth of providers, the cost of treatment and stigma. Telemental health, which uses digital technology for the remote delivery of mental health services, may help toward finding a solution.
The post Telemental health: Are we there yet? appeared first on OUPblog.
By: Bridget Stokes,
on 9/7/2015
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Fifteen years ago, the suicide rate among patients in a large behavioral care system in Detroit was seven times the national average. Then leaders there decided to tackle the problem. The first question asked was what should be the goal—to cut the rate in half, reduce it to the national level, or more? One employee said even a single suicide was unacceptable if it was your loved one, and that helped set the target: zero.
The post Step 1 to end military suicide appeared first on OUPblog.
By Nick Cross
To the uninitiated, writing appears to be a simple process of putting words onto the page. But the fact that I’ve re-written the sentence you’ve just read six times seems to indicate that perhaps it’s not that easy. To write well requires us to make a deep personal connection with the material, and this is where the trouble starts.
Ernest Hemingway famously said:
“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”
A trifle melodramatic, you might think, and just imagine the mess it caused to the internal workings of his typewriter! But we understand exactly what he meant. And there’s another use of the word “bleed” that is even more pertinent to the writing experience – the way that our daily experiences, ideas and emotions bleed into our work. Writing is not an activity that respects boundaries, in fact it actively thrives on recycling our happiest and saddest moments, tapping into our deepest fears and exposing our most shameful thoughts.
This might all be fine if the transfer was only one way. But the process of writing, editing and getting published generates a whole host of other emotions which can, in turn, affect our lives away from the desk. Often, we may not realise that we’re building a psychological house of cards, until the sudden, brutal event comes that causes it all to collapse. Life
happens.
For me, the trigger event was the simple failure of my novel to find a publisher (something I covered in detail in
my earlier Slushpile post). For others, it can be something far worse. In
Cliff McNish’s post from June this year, he talks movingly about the death of his wife and how he found himself unable to write the ghost story his publisher wanted:
“Day after day I wrote less and less until finally ... I just stopped. I didn’t want to be in this dark place. I had enough darkness going on in my life.”
Cliff, I’m pleased to say, found a way out of the darkness and is back to writing books again. And so am I, for that matter. But what is it that allows us to see past shattering events and gradually bring our lives back onto an even keel? Psychologists call this trait “resilience” and the American Psychological Association (APA) defines it as follows:
Resilience is the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats or significant sources of stress — such as family and relationship problems, serious health problems or workplace and financial stressors. It means "bouncing back" from difficult experiences.
Building resilience is a core skill for writers, but something that’s often overlooked. The APA have
an excellent factsheet about building resilience, and here (very briefly) are their 10 tips:
- Make connections
- Avoid seeing crises as insurmountable problems
- Accept that change is a part of living
- Move toward your goals
- Take decisive actions
- Look for opportunities for self-discovery
- Nurture a positive view of yourself
- Keep things in perspective
- Maintain a hopeful outlook
- Take care of yourself
The factsheet is very good, and I suggest you read it so I won’t have to regurgitate any more of the information here! Instead, I’d like to share some personal strategies that have worked for me, in the hope that they’ll prove useful.
Write what you want – not what you think you should
You may think you’re writing what you want to, but are you? External pressures such as market trends, agent feedback or peer pressure can subtly affect what projects you choose to pursue. And there’s also the element of “doing what you’ve always done.” We’ve seen that already in Cliff McNish’s piece, and I was struck by
another recent post by Sarah Aronson where she talks about changing writing direction to find peace of mind (and also success!)
Like Cliff and Sarah, I found that writing dark, difficult books worsened my mental condition, which in turn made my writing worse. So I decided to change direction and write lighter, funnier stuff instead. I wouldn’t say it’s been easier exactly (I still find writing pretty hard work), but it’s allowed me to tap into the positive, and make myself laugh into the bargain.
“What about the cathartic effect of writing?” I hear you say. Well, I agree that you can use writing as a form of therapy, and I think that’s why my short stories have been getting darker in the meantime (You can
read more about the process behind that). Short stories are perfect for me because the process is much, much shorter than writing a novel – I can get the darkness out of my brain and onto the page without wallowing in it.
 |
The darkest of my recent stories |
“Too much of anything can make you sick.”
I’d love to attribute that quote to a great philosopher, but in fact it’s the opening line of Cheryl Cole’s debut single
Fight for this Love! Nevertheless, the sentiment holds true, linking nicely into my previous point.
Doing everything in moderation is important to both mental and physical health. It’s tempting to lock yourself in a room for eight hours and burn through as many words as possible, but it’s not a healthy long term approach. Varying when, how and what you write can help you work around external pressures and will probably improve your creativity too.
Worry about Your Worrying
Writers are great worriers. This can be a positive trait, because it allows us to catastrophise, imagining all of the worst things that can go wrong in any situation and make sure they happen to our characters! But the same overactive mental process that allows us to plot stories can manifest in other situations as worry and rumination. Here’s a quick definition if the latter term is unfamiliar:
Rumination is the compulsively focused attention on the symptoms of one's distress, and on its possible causes and consequences, as opposed to its solutions.
Rumination is believed by psychology practitioners to be
a leading factor in depression and anxiety. It’s a big risk for people who are naturally introspective and spend a lot of time inside their own heads. Er, that’s us, people.
Cognitive Behavioural Treatment (CBT) is a common way of handling negative thought patterns. I’ve had a fair bit of CBT treatment over the past five years, but it’s only in the last six months that it’s really started to stick. Your mileage will doubtless vary, and there are other treatments that may work better for you instead. See the resources section at the end for more details.
Don’t be an emotional sponge
The world is full of awful events, which – while being horrible, immoral and upsetting – don’t tend to touch our lives directly. So we experience them at a distance via news and social media, sending out our empathy in place of direct experience. This is (once again) a double-edged sword, because the process which allows us to write convincing characters by stepping into their shoes, also allows us to be very quickly overwhelmed by other’s woes.
When I was at my lowest ebb, I can remember sitting on Twitter and feeling that I was being crushed by other people’s sadness – here was someone going through a divorce, or coping with sick kids, or lamenting a parent who died years ago. I had lost perspective of the positive posts, sucking up the painful and the negative emotions like a sponge.
The simple solution for me, was to take a break from Facebook and Twitter and BBC News, to insulate myself from the grief of the world until I was strong enough to face it again.
Beware the end-of-project blues
These are a big issue for me – after the wave of euphoria and relief that a big project has been completed, I will invariably sink into a period of low mood. The Friday before last, we delivered a brand new website at work, after an incredibly ambitious and stressful ten week schedule. As the first step in a projected ten year programme, the site was an unqualified success, and I had every reason to feel extremely proud of my contribution. But instead, I mooched around the house throughout the bank holiday weekend, feeling sorry for myself.
Writing projects are no different, and the stresses can be much worse because the completion of a final draft is invariably followed by submission to agents and editors, which creates its own anxieties. I know that other writers advise you to always have more than one book on the go, so that you can immediately switch to the other one. But I find I work best in intensive bursts, which doesn’t always suit that manner of working.
I remember reading about
fashion designer Alexander McQueen’s suicide, which was triggered, in part, by reaching the end of a fashion project. As McQueen’s psychiatrist told the inquest into his death:
“Usually after a show he felt a huge come-down. He felt isolated, it gave him a huge low.”
Try to plan for the end-of-project blues and have a strategy to cope with them – this may be as simple as allowing yourself not to feel guilty about the low that inevitably follows a high. Although your body and mind will need a rest after an intensive period of work, try to ramp down slowly and structure your downtime.
Build a Support Network
Everyone needs supportive friends and family to celebrate the good times and get them through the bad. Build and nurture your support network by finding like-minded people to share your journey (hello SCBWI!) If you have mental health problems and seek out a community of fellow sufferers, be vigilant to the difference between supportive friends and ones who can become a burden or project their own woes onto you (the emotional sponge problem).
Additional Resources
Living Life to the Full
This is a
free self-help website set up by a Scottish psychiatrist and partly-funded by the NHS. It offers a range of online CBT courses and factsheets to address problems such as anxiety, depression, low self-esteem and addiction.
NHS Choices
This site has lots of
mental health advice, including the
Moodzone which focuses on stress, anxiety and depression.
Manage Your Mind
This
bestselling book by Gillian Butler and Tony Hope is a very approachable and comprehensive guide to mental fitness. At 500 pages, its size can be a little off-putting, and I was scared of reading it for years! But once I finally opened it, I found it both comforting and useful. (full disclosure – my employer publishes this book, but that’s also one of the reasons it’s so good!)
Therapy and Counselling
There are lots of websites and directories of therapists/counsellors, and the choice can be confusing as there are many different types of therapy available. Always look for someone with accreditation – the more reputable sites will show you this information (for instance,
It’s Good to Talk is a directory of practitioners who are accredited by The British Association for Counselling & Psychotherapy). Always “try before you buy” - the practitioner-patient relationship needs to work in both directions to be effective, and good therapists will offer you a free trial session before you commit to regular meetings.
As well as private therapy, I have had counselling on the NHS in the past, although mental health services have been hit very hard by recent government spending cuts and you may struggle to get a referral unless your condition is serious.
Life Coaching
Life coaching is not an alternative to psychotherapy but more of a complement – it won’t help you with deep-seated psychological conditions, but is useful for addressing issues such as confidence, motivation and reaching your career goals. I’ve recently had a course of sessions with a life coach and found it immensely helpful (if pretty expensive). In fact, the confidence it’s given me is pretty much the reason I’m writing this blog post.
Although she wasn’t my life coach, I’d like to give a shout out here to the lovely Bekki Hill, who runs a website called
The Creativity Cauldron and specialises in coaching writers through their creative troubles.
OK, I think that’s quite enough from me! I hope you’ve found this post both useful and enjoyable. The issue of mental health for creative people is one that doesn’t get enough focus, so I hope I’ve redressed the balance a little.
Stay resilient,
Nick.
Nick Cross is a children's writer, Undiscovered Voices winner and Blog Network Editor for
SCBWI Words & Pictures Magazine.
Nick's writing is published in
Stew Magazine, and he's recently received the
SCBWI Magazine Merit Award, for his short story
The Last Typewriter.
By: Catherine,
on 8/27/2015
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I am constantly perplexed by the recurring tendency in western history to connect creativity with mental disability and illness. It cannot be denied that a number of well-known creative people, primarily in the arts, have been mentally ill—for example, Vincent Van Gogh, Virginia Woolf, Robert Schumann, Robert Lowell, and Sylvia Plath.
The post Creativity and mental health appeared first on OUPblog.
By:
Denise Mealy,
on 8/20/2015
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Sophie Kinsella is the bestselling author of The Shopaholic Series. Her hilarious style of writing will entrance readers of any age.
By:
Monica Gupta,
on 6/23/2015
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Social Media Addiction… अजी बस पूछिए ही मत … इतना बुरा हाल है कि बस …. बच्चे हो या युवा या फिर बडे लोग हर समय जुडे रहना चाह्ते हैं एक मिनट भी इससे दूर नही रह सकते. पहले स्टेटस डालेगें फिर उसे भी बार बार देखेंगें को कितने लाईक आए या नही … अगर आए तो इस बात को नार्मली ही लेते हैं और ना आए तो अपना ब्लड प्रैशर बढा लेते हैं ..और गुस्सा हो जाते हैं कि कोई लाईक क्यो नही आया.. या फलां नेट पर तो था फिर भी सने मेरे स्टेट्स को लाईक क्यों नही किया
अब इन साहब को ही देख लीजिए … import export का business करते हैं किस तरह से वो भी आपने सुन लिया होगा. एक महिला ने तो अपनी बिटिया का रिश्ता एक व्यक्ति से इसलिए फिक्स कर दिया कि उसके 10 एकड मे फार्म हाऊस है और ढेर सारे पशु भी है… शुक्र है शादी से पहले ही पता चल गया कि कौन सा फार्म हाऊस था ….
वैसे इतना दीवानापन भी अच्छी बात नही है
The signs and symptoms of social media addiction : Get Healthy
As fun as social media is for keeping up with friends, getting news updates and posting the occasional witty meme, for some people it can be destructive.
Dr. Johann Farley, an addiction medicine physician in Merrillville, is seeing more and more families who are struggling with relational issues as a result of social media addiction or dependency.
According to Farley, who is quick to state that he does use and appreciate his smartphone and the many tools that come with it, the biggest problem with social media is the time it takes away from meaningful relationships.
What may seem like an everyday, menial activity — checking your smartphone — could have a subtle impact on relationships over time, Farley says. He sets up this scenario: “Say you’re married and you and your spouse are sitting on the couch at the end of the day. Instead of getting affectionate with each other and talking about your day, you’re both doing your own thing on your phones. You go to bed without any interaction. From there on, you gradually start to move apart.”
The lack of face-to-face interaction is harmful, yes, but can we really throw around the word addiction?
Farley says yes, even going so far as to compare it to substance abuse addiction. “Do you need that eye-opener every morning? Do you feel like you need (to check social media) to calm your nerves? Can you put your cellphone away on your day off and spend time with the family? If the answer is no, there’s a problem.”
Jamie Monday, a counselor at Crown Point High School, agrees that one can be overly reliant on social media. “Dependency on anything is unhealthy when we are not able to function in our normal lives without it,” she says. “It is a good sign that you are dependent on something if you have tried to cut back your usage but have been unsuccessful.”
Monday says she sees this often among adolescents, particularly when their parents take away their mobile devices as a form of punishment. “If the teen is dependent on social media as their way of communicating with their peers, they will have a meltdown and sometimes even experience depression-like symptoms,” she says. See more…
The post Social Media Addiction appeared first on Monica Gupta.
You know how I feel about my students. You know what love I had this past spring for My Spectaculars. Every. Single. Oneofthem. This young man—this David—was integral to us, remains integral to us, speaks truth, speaks it gently, and has something to say about mental wellness in this issue of
The Daily Pennsylvanian.David went missing for a class last spring. My students rallied to locate him. And while they did, I was having a conversation with myself and with those I trust about what universities can do for students who need time away from pressure. David articulates so masterfully here what students might do for one another. He is asking for a culture of mutual caring, of values that transcend the GPA, of a turn toward soul. I commend this. I believe that when you step onto a college campus you are making a commitment to loving watchfulness. Watch out for your friends. Watch out for your students. And may these harried students be given time—be given the resources—to take care of themselves.
David is about to set off for his first trip overseas. His first airplane ride. His first of many things. He's promised to update me on all he sees, but before he goes, please read his words.
Here.David, Godspeed and God bless.
By: Shannon Hazard,
on 6/5/2015
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How does nature benefit our health? Many of us intuitively know that we simply feel better after ‘stepping out for some fresh air.’ Now over 30 years of research has begun to reveal exactly what health benefits we get from nature. Here are five reasons why we need to make space and time for nature in our lives.
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By: Elizabeth Gorney,
on 3/12/2015
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My eureka moment with citizenship came one morning during the mid-1990s. The New Haven mental health outreach team that I ran was meeting for rounds. Ed, a peer outreach worker, meaning a person with his own history of mental health problems who’s made progress in his recovery and his now working with others, didn’t look happy.
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By: Zoe,
on 2/26/2015
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“Griffin came into the Silk family after Scarlet, Indigo, Violet, Amber and Saffron. He came early in the morning on that uncommon day, the twenty-ninth of February. His father’s prediction, considering the date of Griffin’s birth, was that he would be an uncommon sort of boy.
Perhaps he was, thought Griffin ruefully. For the first time in his life, he wished he’d been born on the twenty-eighth day of February or even the first of March. Maybe then he would have been an ordinary boy instead. If he were an ordinary boy, maybe Mama wouldn’t have gone away. Maybe his secret thoughts wouldn’t have changed everything.
With these words The Naming of Tishkin Silk by Glenda Millard starts weaving gentle magic around your unsuspecting heart.
Griffin is a member of the somewhat unusual and perhaps slightly bohemian Silk family, who live on the outskirts of a small Australian town. Griffin carries a secret deep inside him, a huge worry that he finds hard to share until he meets Layla, instantly recognisable to him as a princess because she is wearing a daisy-chain crown. Thanks to the thoughtfulness shown by his new friend, Griffin’s courage grows and together they do something that heals the sorrow which all the family has felt after a terrible event no-one has been able to talk about for months.
Just like Griffin, this is a truly “uncommon” short novel, the first in a seven part series. From unexpected characters to profoundly moving themes threaded together with sometimes astonishingly lyrical writing, this book is something utterly different and incredibly beautiful. I have never before come across such delicate and yet powerful writing in a novel for children. Unique, breathtaking and full of fierce love and deep sorrow, The Naming of Tishkin Silk is the sort of book that changes you forever, the sort of book you are just so glad to have inside you, to enrich even the happiest of days and to sustain you on dark nights.
The dual aspect of this novel – intense sadness and intense happiness – reminded me of a passage in The Prophet by Khalil Gibran about joy and sorrow; “the deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.“. Whilst this book deals with some of the most difficult themes you’re likely to come across in books for its target age range (approximately 8-12), Millard does it with such quiet tenderness that it doesn’t overwhelm. Indeed, like the adult characters inside the book, Millard enters the world children inhabit without patronising them, but rather with immense respect, sincerity and creativity.
The stories we tell ourselves in an attempt to make sense of the world around us, adjusting to different family setups when new babies are born, sibling jealousy, and the value of having space and taking time to think form some of the varied threads woven throughout this precious book. Never once soppy or sentimental, Millard writes with honesty and integrity about deep and loving emotions. This is a tremendous book for exploring kindness and empathy.
It’s Australian setting is lightly but evocatively worn, grounding the somewhat enchanted story in a very real time and place. Yes, my praise for this book goes on and on! And yet, when this book first arrived in my home, I shelved it in a dusty corner. I judged the book by its cover, and the cover did not work for me at all (Caroline Magerl illustrated this first book in the series, but subsequent volumes have been illustrated by Stephen Michael King). It looked airy-fairy, hippy-dippy, saccharine and syrupy and not like something I would enjoy. Someone whose judgement I trust, however, kept telling me I should read the book. Pig-headedly, I kept ignoring this advice. But what a fool I was! Tishkin could have been part of me for two whole extra years if I had listened and not let my prejudices sway me.
For once I had read the book, I was utterly smitten. I could not get hold of the rest of the series quickly enough.

If, however, I still had a niggling doubt, it was about how children would respond to these books. Subtle and yet emotionally complex, featuring an unusual family, and dealing with issues as varied as death, illness, fostering, immigration and dementia over the course of the books now available in the UK (the 6th title in the series, The Tender Moments of Saffron Silk, is published next week on World Book Day, and the final will be available in September this year), I was very curious as to how young people, rather than adults would respond to these books.
I only have one child’s response to call upon, but M, my ten year old, has taken these stories to her heart as much as I have. She’s read each one in a single sitting, and whilst she agrees they are indeed full of sadness, they are also “really funny and playful”, “just the sort of family I want ours to be like”. She has SO many plans for implementing aspects of these stories into our lives, from making the recipes which feature throughout the series, to adopting the special breakfast rituals the Silk Family has into our own home, from making our own paper to consecrating an apple tree for tea parties, from collecting shiny foil to painting special poems on walls and doors. I think I shall be posting our activities, our Kingdom of silk playing by the book for a long time to come on the blog!
As it is, we’ve already got our own green rubber gloves with red nail polish…

…we’ve painted our toes like Layla…

… and we’ve started having hummingbird nectar and fairy bread when we come in from school.


Layla and Griffin and all the Kingdom of Silk clan are now part of our lives: We are all the richer for them. These books are alive with wonder and warmth and they’re some of the best I think my family has ever shared.
In the closing pages of The Naming of Tishkin Silk , this gently heart wrenching, heart-soaring short novel, Millard writes, “There are some days when heaven seems much closer to earth than others, and Friday the twenty-seventh of February was one of them.” By introducing you to this book today, also a Friday the twenty-seventh of February, I’ve tried to offer you a slice of such beauty, kindness and wonder as will indeed make today (or at least the day you start reading your own copy of The Naming of Tishkin Silk ) one of those days where heaven really does seem a little nearer by.

Photo: Tonya Staab
By: Ella Sharp,
on 1/22/2015
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When we think of obsessive-compulsive disorder or OCD for short, lots of examples spring to mind. For example, someone who won’t shake your hand, touch a door handle, or borrow your pen without being compelled to wash their hands, all because of a fear of germs. I’m sure many of us are guilty of using the phrase “you’re so OCD” to categorize our friends, family, and colleagues who have obsessive cleaning habits or use their antibacterial hand gel a few too many times a day.
Despite this being a very over-simplified idea of OCD, it’s based on an important and common feature for many sufferers; contact contamination fear. Contact contamination can be described as a feeling of dirtiness or discomfort that is felt in response to physical contact with harmful substances, disease or dirt, which will contaminate the body, most often the hands. Relief can be felt in response to cleansing the contaminated areas, for example through hand washing. Much of the focus by academics in previous literature has been on contact contamination, as well as focus from the media, which surrounds us with examples of contamination fears in OCD through TV series such as Obsessive Compulsive Cleaners and Monk.
However, for some sufferers the feelings of discomfort and dirtiness can also be caused without physical contact with something that is dirty or germy. Instead, feelings of contamination can be triggered by association with a contaminated person who has betrayed or harmed the sufferer in some way, or even by their own thoughts, images or memories. This ‘mental contamination’ leads to an internal sense of dirtiness, rather than being localized to a particular body part, and therefore can’t be cleansed away by hand washing. For example, one patient, “Jenny” started feeling internally dirty after she discovered that her husband had been unfaithful and her marriage broke down. She would feel dirty and wash her hands after touching any of his possessions or speaking to him on the telephone. “Steven” also experienced severe mental contamination that was triggered by intrusive images of harming others. The source of mental contamination is not an external contaminant such as blood or dirt but human interaction. The emotional violations that can cause mental contamination include degradation, humiliation, painful criticism, and betrayal.
There is much less knowledge of mental contamination amongst the public, possibly due to a lack of focus on the topic by professionals, meaning we simply don’t recognize examples or situations in which we might feel mentally contaminated. Similar to the normative experience of contact contamination, there are numerous examples of feeling contaminated without touching something dirty in everyday life, for example the washing away of sins when being Baptized, or when cleansing the body for worship; known as Wudu in Islam. Sins here are referring to an internal type of uncleanliness, which can be provoked without contact, for example through having blasphemous thoughts. Another example is not listening to a song which reminds you of an ex-partner who wronged you, as it makes you feel tarnished inside. Even the phrases we use can be seen as representing a form of mental contamination, for example “dirty money”, “muck up”, and “feel like dirt”. Milder forms of mental contamination are prevalent in society, for example in the course of a bitter divorce, where a wronged person develops feelings of contamination that are evoked by direct contact with the violator or indirect contacts such as memories, images or reminders of the violation.
A lack of knowledge of mental contamination is perhaps also due to it being a harder concept to comprehend than contact contamination. We can all understand the math behind contact contamination; you touch something dirty, your hands become dirty, you wash your hands, the dirt is gone, you feel relief. The process makes logical sense, as the cause is visible. Mental contamination can be seen in the same way, it just doesn’t require a visible cause, and often the cause is associated with a previous psychological or physical violation. Without this visible cause for their problems, the true source of discomfort is often unknown to sufferers. Imagine you’re taking part in an experiment, you’re asked to try on a jumper which was brought from a charity shop, and report your feelings. If you know the jumper is physically clean, you’d probably feel fine, no discomfort, you might even like wearing it. Now, imagine being told that the jumper belonged to a murderer, and suddenly for no explainable reason you aren’t okay with wearing it anymore. You have that disturbing, spine-tingling, and shivery feeling as if the jumper were made of tarantulas. Despite knowing the jumper is physically clean, there’s a cloud of dirtiness hanging over it, and you feel mentally contaminated.
Intrusive thoughts associated with mental contamination are normal, but it is the interpretation of the thoughts that is important in determining whether or not the person will then engage in compulsive washing behaviour. To you or me, these are just weird feelings which are easily forgotten, but to someone with mental contamination they are harmful, and could damage their personality in some way. Take the jumper scenario; a person suffering from mental contamination might worry that somehow they will adopt the negative traits of the murderer through their clothing.
The discovery of mental contamination has large and immediate implications for clinical treatment. Cognitive behavioural therapy can be used to effectively treat mental contamination in OCD patients, by changing the meaning or interpretation of obsessive intrusive thoughts, so that they are no longer seen as harmful. Subsequently, this also reduces the frequency of compulsive washing behaviours. For many OCD sufferers Cognitive Behavioural Therapy provides hope that a life free from the daily interference of mental contamination and compulsions is achievable.
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By: Meredith Sneddon,
on 1/17/2015
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How are we to understand experiences of depression? First of all, it is important to be clear about what the problem consists of. If we don’t know what depression is like, why can’t we just ask someone who’s depressed? And, if we want others to know what our own experience of depression is like, why can’t we just tell them? In fact, most autobiographical accounts of depression state that the experience or some central aspect of it is difficult or even impossible to describe. Depression is not simply a matter of the intensification of certain familiar aspects of experience and the diminution of others, such as feeling more sad and less happy, or more tired and less energetic. First-person accounts of depression indicate that it involves something quite alien to what — for most people — is mundane, everyday experience. The depressed person finds herself in a ‘different world’, an isolated, alien realm, adrift from social reality. There is a radical departure from ‘everyday experience’, and this is not a localized experience that the person has within a pre-given world; it encompasses every aspect of her experience and thought – it is the shape of her world. It is the ‘world’ of depression that people so often struggle to convey.
My approach involves extracting insights from the phenomenological tradition of philosophy and applying them to the task of understanding depression experiences. That tradition includes philosophers such as Edmund Husserl, Edith Stein, Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Jean-Paul Sartre, all of whom engage in ‘phenomenological’ reflection – that is, reflection upon the structure of human experience. Why turn to phenomenology? Well, these philosophers all claim that human experience incorporates something that is overlooked by most of those who have tried to describe it — what we might call a sense of ‘belonging to’ or ‘finding oneself in’ a world. This is something so deeply engrained, so fundamental to our lives, that it is generally overlooked. Whenever I reflect upon my experience of a chair, a table, a sound, an itch or a taste, and whenever I contrast my experience with yours, I continue to presuppose a world in which we are both situated, a shared realm in which it is possible to encounter things like chairs and to experience things like itches. This sense of being rooted in an interpersonal world does not involve perceiving a (very big) object or believing that some object exists. It’s something that is already in place when we do that, and therefore something that we seldom reflect upon.
Depression, I suggest, involves a shift in one’s sense of belonging to the world. We can further understand the nature of this once we acknowledge the role that possibilities play in our experience. When I get up in the morning, feel very tired, stop at a café on the way to work, and then look at a cup of coffee sitting in front of me, what do I ‘experience’? On one account, what I ‘see’ is just what is ‘present’, an object of a certain type. But it’s important to recognize that my experience of the cup is also permeated by possibilities of various kinds. I see it as something that I could drink from, as something that is practically accessible and practically significant. Indeed, it appears more than just significant – it is immediately enticing. Rather than, ‘you could drink me’, it says ‘drink me now’. Many aspects of our situation appear significant to us in some way or other, meaning that they harbor the potentiality for change of a kind that matters. We can better appreciate what experiences of depression consist of once we construe them in terms of shifts in the kinds of possibility that the person has access to. Whereas the non-depressed person might find one thing practically significant and another thing not significant, the depressed person might be unable to find anything practically significant. It is not that she doesn’t find anything significant, but that she cannot. And the absence is very much there, part of the experience – something is missing, painfully lacking, and nothing appears quite as it should do. In fact, many first-person accounts of depression explicitly refer to a loss of possibility. Here are some representative responses to a questionnaire study that I conducted with colleagues two years ago, with help from the mental health charity SANE:
“I remember a time when I was very young – 6 or less years old. The world seemed so large and full of possibilities. It seemed brighter and prettier. Now I feel that the world is small. That I could go anywhere and do anything and nothing for me would change.”
“It is impossible to feel that things will ever be different (even though I know I have been depressed before and come out of it). This feeling means I don’t care about anything. I feel like nothing is worth anything.”
“The world holds no possibilities for me when I’m depressed. Every avenue I consider exploring seems shut off.”
“When I’m not depressed, other possibilities exist. Maybe I won’t fail, maybe life isn’t completely pointless, maybe they do care about me, maybe I do have some good qualities. When depressed, these possibilities simply do not exist.”
By emphasizing the experience of possibility, we can understand a great deal. Suppose the depressed person inhabits an experiential world from which the possibility of anything ever changing for the better is absent; nothing offers the potential for positive change and nothing draws the person in, solicits action. This lack permeates every aspect of her experience. Her situation seems strangely timeless, as no future could differ from the present in any consequential way. Action seems difficult, impossible or futile, because there is no sense of any possibility for significant change. Her body feels somehow heavy and inert, as it is not drawn in by situations, solicited to act. She is cut off from other people, who no longer offer the possibility of significant kinds of interpersonal connection. Others might seem somehow elsewhere, far away, given that they are immersed in shared goal-directed activities that no longer appear as intelligible possibilities for the depressed person. We can thus see how the kind of ‘hopelessness’ or ‘despair’ that is central to so many experiences of depression differs in important respects from more mundane feelings that might be described in similar ways. I might lose hope in a certain project, but I retain the capacity for hope — I can still hope for other things. Some depression experiences, in contrast, involve erosion of the capacity for hope. There is no sense that anything of worth could be achieved or that anything good could ever happen — the attitude of hope has ceased to be intelligible; the person cannot hope.
Of course, it should also be conceded that depression is a heterogeneous, complicated, multi-faceted phenomenon; no single approach or perspective will yield a comprehensive understanding. Even so, I think phenomenological research has an important role to play in solving a major part of the puzzle, thus feeding into a broader understanding of depression and informing our response to it.
Heading image: Depression. Public Domain via Pixabay.
The post What is it like to be depressed? appeared first on OUPblog.

I’ve thought about giving up. No longer creating. No longer caring. It’s on these, the darkest days, that I end up at Perryville Prison or on a road trip to Prescott or, say, to a sober-living halfway house in downtown Phoenix. It’s on these darkest days that Gina’s Team has saved my life.
Gina’s Team was named for Gina Panetta, a young mother who died while serving time in an Arizona prison. In her memory, we actively promote education and self-sufficiency for incarcerated women and men in Arizona at no cost to the prisons.
My title at work is “Book Nerd,” and this title has perpetuated through my time with Gina’s Team. At first, it was a monthly book club at Perryville Prison. I am now expanding to start a book club for former inmates and recovering addicts in downtown Phoenix and also at Mingus Mountain Academy—a safe haven for troubled teenage girls.
One of my dark days occurred last Wednesday, when I woke at 6 AM and knew I had to head to Prescott to judge a poetry slam at Mingus. My anxiety was off the charts, and I had trouble remembering how to dress myself. Then, we—Gina’s Team—arrived at Mingus, and the slam began.
One girl’s name was called (coincidentally, Sarah), and she covered her face. She ran up to us and said she couldn’t do it, couldn’t read in front of a hundred of her peers. She looked to me for some nod that would allow her to sit down and give up. Instead, I pulled her aside and said, “I’m terrified to be here today. I’d much rather be under my bed, but I got up on that stage earlier. You can, too. Now, go read.”
She did. An excerpt from Sarah’s piece, written for the founders of Mingus, Bill and Pauline: “I didn’t care about my life, and I wanted to die. I fought every day and held in my pain. I was stuck on alcohol and self harm habits. I hit rock bottom, then one day, a staff sat me down to tell me the story of Bill and Pauline. I didn’t want to accept that someone once cared about girls lonely and scared.”
Sarah won third place. I have her judging numbers on the wall in my office as a reminder of that day, and I like to think Sarah looks at her third place certificate and thinks of Gina’s Team. I hope we did something for her that day.
Gina’s Team has had a huge effect on my life. I’ve met beautiful, broken women who I have helped to heal—at least a wound or two. Now, we’re expanding, reaching out to more women, more volunteers. So now, I need something from you.
Behind the scenes is a team of web masters, volunteer accountants, organizers … you name it, someone is doing it. The bad news: one of our computers just died. We are in desperate need of a new Mac, so we’ve started a GoFundMe campaign. In order to continue serving women at Perryville and young girls like Sarah at Mingus, we need efficient access to technology. Please consider giving just five bucks, ten bucks, something.
When I have my darkest days, Gina’s Team pulls me from my shell and shoves me into situations that should be scary. Instead, my experiences with Gina’s Team have left me enlivened and hopeful for the future. I will not give up, no matter my personal darkness, because there are women who need me. Gina’s Team won’t give up either. Please help us in our continued mission to change lives for the better.
Head to GoFundMe now and donate, and please spread the need to your friends, family, and social media circle. Thank you!

I’ve thought about giving up. No longer creating. No longer caring. It’s on these, the darkest days, that I end up at Perryville Prison or on a road trip to Prescott or, say, to a sober-living halfway house in downtown Phoenix. It’s on these darkest days that Gina’s Team has saved my life.
Gina’s Team was named for Gina Panetta, a young mother who died while serving time in an Arizona prison. In her memory, we actively promote education and self-sufficiency for incarcerated women and men in Arizona at no cost to the prisons.
My title at work is “Book Nerd,” and this title has perpetuated through my time with Gina’s Team. At first, it was a monthly book club at Perryville Prison. I am now expanding to start a book club for former inmates and recovering addicts in downtown Phoenix and also at Mingus Mountain Academy—a safe haven for troubled teenage girls.
One of my dark days occurred last Wednesday, when I woke at 6 AM and knew I had to head to Prescott to judge a poetry slam at Mingus. My anxiety was off the charts, and I had trouble remembering how to dress myself. Then, we—Gina’s Team—arrived at Mingus, and the slam began.
One girl’s name was called (coincidentally, Sarah), and she covered her face. She ran up to us and said she couldn’t do it, couldn’t read in front of a hundred of her peers. She looked to me for some nod that would allow her to sit down and give up. Instead, I pulled her aside and said, “I’m terrified to be here today. I’d much rather be under my bed, but I got up on that stage earlier. You can, too. Now, go read.”
She did. An excerpt from Sarah’s piece, written for the founders of Mingus, Bill and Pauline: “I didn’t care about my life, and I wanted to die. I fought every day and held in my pain. I was stuck on alcohol and self harm habits. I hit rock bottom, then one day, a staff sat me down to tell me the story of Bill and Pauline. I didn’t want to accept that someone once cared about girls lonely and scared.”
Sarah won third place. I have her judging numbers on the wall in my office as a reminder of that day, and I like to think Sarah looks at her third place certificate and thinks of Gina’s Team. I hope we did something for her that day.
Gina’s Team has had a huge effect on my life. I’ve met beautiful, broken women who I have helped to heal—at least a wound or two. Now, we’re expanding, reaching out to more women, more volunteers. So now, I need something from you.
Behind the scenes is a team of web masters, volunteer accountants, organizers … you name it, someone is doing it. The bad news: one of our computers just died. We are in desperate need of a new Mac, so we’ve started a GoFundMe campaign. In order to continue serving women at Perryville and young girls like Sarah at Mingus, we need efficient access to technology. Please consider giving just five bucks, ten bucks, something.
When I have my darkest days, Gina’s Team pulls me from my shell and shoves me into situations that should be scary. Instead, my experiences with Gina’s Team have left me enlivened and hopeful for the future. I will not give up, no matter my personal darkness, because there are women who need me. Gina’s Team won’t give up either. Please help us in our continued mission to change lives for the better.
Head to GoFundMe now and donate, and please spread the need to your friends, family, and social media circle. Thank you!
By: Zoe,
on 10/12/2014
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Can you imagine a world without colour, where all you see is black, white or the shades of grey in between? As a self-confessed colour junkie such a world would sap my energies and leave my life (perhaps ironically), somewhat blue.
Thus when two new books came to my attention both titled ‘The Colour Thief’ I was very intrigued; not only did they look like their subject matter would appeal to me, it was funny and surprising to see two books, from different authors/illustrators/publishers with the same title.

In The Colour Thief by Gabriel Alborozo an alien looks longingly across space to planet earth, full of colours and brightness. He believes such a beautiful place must be full of joy, and so sets off to bring some of that happiness back to his home planet.
With just a few magic words the alien is able to suck up first all the reds, then the blues and the greens and before long planet earth is looking very grey and sad. But what of the alien? Can he really be happy when he sees the glumness he has caused?
Alborozo’s story about kindness, desire and what makes us joyous and content is full of appeal. There are lots of themes which can be explored; from the beauty around us which we might take for granted (requiring an outsider to alert us to us), to whether or not we can be happy if we’ve caused others distress, this book could be used to open up lots of discussion.

Click to see larger image
Although the alien’s actions could be frightening, this is mitigated by his cute appearance, just one of the book’s charms. I also think kids will love the apparent omnipotence of the alien: He wants something, and at his command he gets it, just like that, and this identification with the alien makes the story more interesting and unusual. The artwork is fun and energetic, seemingly filled with rainbow coloured confetti. I can easily imagine a wonderful animation of this story.
The Colour Thief by Andrew Fusek Peters and Polly Peters, illustrated by Karin Littlewood is a very different sort of story. It draws on the authors’ own experience of parental depression, exploring from a child’s perspective what it can feel like to watch a parent withdraw as they suffer from this illness.
Father and son lead a comforting life “full of colour”, but when depression clouds the father’s mind he withdraws, and all the colours around the family seem to disappear. The child worries that he might somehow be the cause of this loss, but he is repeatedly reassured it is not his fault and gradually, with patience and love, colours start to seep back into the father’s life and he returns to his family.
Mental health is difficult to talk about when you’re 40, let alone when you are four, but this lyrical and moving book provides a thoughtful, gentle, and unsentimental way into introducing (and if desired, discussing) depression. If you were looking for “when a book might help” to reassure a child in a specific situation, I would wholeheartedly recommend this; it is honest, compassionate and soothing.
However, I definitely wouldn’t keep this book ONLY for those times when you find a child in a similar circumstances to those described in the book. It is far too lovely to be kept out of more general circulation. For a start, the language is very special; it’s perhaps no surprise when you discover that one of the author’s has more than 70 poetry books to his name. If you were looking for meaningful, tender use of figurative language, for example in a literacy lesson, this book provides some fabulous, examples.

Click to see larger image.
And then there are the illustrations. Karin Littlewood has long been one of my favourite illustrators for her use of colour, her graceful compositions, her quiet kindness in her images. And in The Colour Thief there are many examples of all these qualities. I particularly like her use of perspective first to embody the claustrophobia and fear one can feel with depression, with bare tree branches leaning in onto the page, or street lamps lowering overhead, and then finally the open, sky-facing view as parent and child reunite as they walk together again when colour returns.
*******************
Particularly inspired by the imagery in Alborozo’s The Colour Thief we made a trip to a DIY store to pick up a load of paint chips.

Wow. My kids went crazy in the paint section: Who knew paint chips could be just so much fun? They spent over an hour collecting to their hearts’ desire. A surprising, free and fun afternoon!
Once home we snipped up the paint chips to separate each colour. The colour names caused lots of merriment, and sparked lots of equally outlandish ideas for new colour names, such as Beetlejuice red, Patio grey, Spiderweb silver and Prawn Cocktail Pink.

We talked about shades and intensity of colours, and sorted our chips into three piles: Strong, bright colours, off-white colours, and middling colours. I then put a long strip of contact paper on the kitchen table, sticky side up, and the kids started making a mosaic with the chips, starting with the brightest colours in the middle, fading to the palest around the edge.

Apart for the soothing puzzle-like quality of this activity, the kids have loved using the end result as a computer keyboard, pressing the colours they want things to change to. I also think it makes for a rather lovely bit of art, now up in their bedroom.

Whilst making our colour mosaic we listened to:
My favourite ever, ever song about colours…. Kristin Andreassen – Crayola Doesn’t Make A Color For Your Eyes
Colors by Kira Willey. This song would go really well with ‘My Many Colored Days’ by Dr. Seuss.
Roy G Biv by They Might Be Giants
Other activities which might go well with either version of ‘The Colour Thief’ include:
Taking some online colour quizzes to learn more about just how you see colour (and how that might be different to someone else)
Making your own colour swatches or favourite colours book, using this amazing 322 year old Dutch book as inspiration. It will be much cheaper and a lot more fun than buying a Pantone Colour Guide.
If you know someone suffering from depression these charities may be of help:
Depression Alliance
Mind
Sane
Pandas Foundation – Pre and Post Natal depression support
Acacia – Pre and Post Natal depression support
Disclosure: I received free review copies of both books reviewed today from their respective publishers.
Some other books I have since found with the same title but by different authors/illustrators/publishers include:

‘The Snowy Day’ by Ezra Jack Keats, and ‘The Snowy Day’ by Anna Milbourne and Elena Temporin

‘Bubble and Squeak’ by Louise Bonnett-Rampersaud and Susan Banta, and ‘Bubble and Squeak’ by James Mayhew and Clara Vulliamy

‘My Dad’ by Anthony Browne, ‘My Dad’ by Steve Smallman and Sean Julian, and ‘My Dad’ by Chae Strathie and Jacqueline East
My thanks to @josiecreates, @FBreslinDavda and @illustratedword for alerting me to some of these titles.
By: Julia Callaway,
on 9/26/2014
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A new study shows that women who have difficulty accepting the fact that they can’t have children following unsuccessful fertility treatment, have worse long-term mental health than women who are able to let go of their desire for children. It is the first to look at a large group of women (over 7,000) to try to disentangle the different factors that may affect women’s mental health over a decade after unsuccessful fertility treatment. These factors include whether or not they have children, whether they still want children, their diagnosis, and their medical treatment.
It was already known that people who have infertility treatment and remain childless have worse mental health than those who do manage to conceive with treatment. However, most previous research assumed that this was due exclusively to having children or not, and did not consider the role of other factors. Alongside my research colleagues from the Netherlands, where the study took place, we found only that there is a link between an unfulfilled wish for children and worse mental health, and not that the unfulfilled wish is causing the mental health problems. This is due to the nature of the study, in which the women’s mental health was measured at only one point in time rather than continuously since the end of fertility treatment.
We analysed answers to questionnaires completed by 7,148 women who started fertility treatment at any of 12 IVF hospitals in the Netherlands between 1995-2000. The questionnaires were sent out to the women between January 2011 and 2012, meaning that for most women their last fertility treatment would have been between 11-17 years ago. The women were asked about their age, marital status, education and menopausal status, whether the infertility was due to them, their partner, both or of unknown cause, and what treatment they had received, including ovarian stimulation, intrauterine insemination, and in vitro fertilisation / intra-cytoplasmic sperm injection (IVF/ICSI). In addition, they completed a mental health questionnaire, which asked them how they felt during the past four weeks. The women were asked whether or not they had children, and, if they did, whether they were their biological children or adopted (or both). They were also asked whether they still wished for children.
The majority of women in the study had come to terms with the failure of their fertility treatment. However, 6% (419) still wanted children at the time of answering the study’s questionnaire and this was connected with worse mental health. We found that women who still wished to have children were up to 2.8 times more likely to develop clinically significant mental health problems than women who did not sustain a child-wish. The strength of this association varied according to whether women had children or not. For women with no children, those with a child-wish were 2.8 times more likely to have worse mental health than women without a child-wish. For women with children, those who sustained a child-wish were 1.5 times more likely to have worse mental health than those without a child-wish. This link between a sustained wish for children and worse mental health was irrespective of the women’s fertility diagnosis and treatment history.
Our research found that women had better mental health if the infertility was due to male factors or had an unknown cause. Women who started fertility treatment at an older age had better mental health than women who started younger, and those who were married or cohabiting with their partner reported better mental health than women who were single, divorced, or widowed. Better educated women also had better mental health than the less well educated.
This study improves our understanding of why childless people have poorer adjustment. It shows that it is more strongly associated with their inability to let go of their desire to have children. It is quite striking to see that women who do have children but still wish for more children report poorer mental health than those who have no children but have come to accept it. The findings underline the importance of psychological care of infertility patients and, in particular, more attention should be paid to their long-term adjustment, whatever the outcome of the fertility treatment.
The possibility of treatment failure should not be avoided during treatment and a consultation at the end of treatment should always happen, whether the treatment is successful or unsuccessful, to discuss future implications. This would enable fertility staff to identify patients more likely to have difficulties adjusting to the long term, by assessing the women’s possibilities to come to terms with their unfulfilled child-wish. These patients could be advised to seek additional support from mental health professionals and patient support networks.
It is not known why some women may find it more difficult to let go of their child-wish than others. Psychological theories would claim that how important the goal is for the person would be a relevant factor. The availability of other meaningful life goals is another relevant factor. It is easier to let go of a child-wish if women find other things in life that are fulfilling, like a career.
We live in societies that embrace determination and persistence. However, there is a moment when letting go of unachievable goals (be it parenthood or other important life goals) is a necessary and adaptive process for well-being. We need to consider if societies nowadays actually allow people to let go of their goals and provide them with the necessary mechanisms to realistically assess when is the right moment to let go.
Featured image: Baby feet by Nina-81. Public Domain via Pixabay.
The post Do children make you happier? appeared first on OUPblog.

I was once thrown into the Salt River by a guy named Damian. I forgave this because he is a cool dude with good taste in movies. Then, I heard he was doing something REALLY COOL that did not involve throwing women into rivers.
Damian will be embarking on a one-year, 19,000-mile bike trip from Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, all the way to the bottom of the world: Ushuaia, Argentina. He will be doing this solo ride to help raise public awareness of the benefits that regular exercise offers to those battling mental illness. He will raise money for the National Alliance on Mental Illness, specifically their “Hearts and Minds” campaign.
As a diagnosed depressive, how could I not get behind this project? Damian already has two amazing sponsors: Caledonia Spirits and Hero Apicus Nutrition. They’ve been a huge help, but he still needs more funding to make this trip happen.
To donate, head to Damian’s GoFundMe site. For more about this super cool dude and his mission to support mental health awareness, read on …
An H and Five Ws with NAMI Advocate Damian Reusch
How did you come up with the idea for this solo bike adventure?
I wanted to undertake what I considered to be a transformative journey, one that would compare with the “Great American” adventures that used to fill novels and dime store magazines, before advancements in technology seemingly shrank the world to a more user-friendly size.
I have always felt, as the world I live in became more and more connected, a sense of increasing disconnection. I have longed for an experience that will allow me to rediscover the awe I knew as a child, the wonder and fascination I only knew from the books I read and a life I imagined. I have grown tired of living inwardly, with the incessant concern for professional and personal growth … I wanted to live outwardly for a bit, to have focus on a goal outside my personal narrative and perhaps in the process bring back some measure of connection through its fulfillment.
I decided to choose a charity that I felt a connection with and endeavor to begin a journey that people could identify with, and be excited by. People love a story, and though there are fewer today, they especially love adventure stories. I thought that would be an interesting way to try to rekindle people’s spirit of fascination with the world at large, while at the same time raise money for an important and often overlooked cause. The Pan American Highway is the world’s longest motorable road… so why not ditch the car and bike it?
What is your inspiration?
My greatest inspiration is the world as a whole. I remember a few years ago, I was in Austin visiting some friends. They took me to an overlook that was situated over a river next to a roadway. I imagine most people climb up there for a view of a sunset, or the rolling hills, or the slowly crawling river below … but I couldn’t take my eyes off the road and the cars driving on it.
I had been thinking a lot about the idea of a personal narrative, how we are all the stars of our own story, and how constrictive that mentality can be. I began to imagine a sort of story board, drawn like a circuit with lines extending out of each passenger. Each line led to a box, each box splintered into another possibility, and each possibility splintered to another and so on … constantly changing with each passing second, constantly evolving, fracturing, and expanding outward.
That is the world I wish to see, so I see it. An explosion of stories, intertwining and unraveling at every moment, most of it unobserved potential. My narrative became less interesting knowing all that potential was out there waiting for a catalyst to bring so much to fruition.
A trip like this will most likely not bring any measure of “traditional” success, but it will drop me in the center of that stew of unrealized story lines.
What do you hope to achieve?
I hope to have an incredible journey, to experience the world in its most raw form, to meet incredible people and for a moment experience their story. I hope to raise money for a great cause that benefits people who in their own way may feel as lost or disconnected as myself.
Where are you most excited to go?
Ushuaia, Argentina. That will mean I have completed the journey successfully.
When did you realize you had you own mental health issues?
I realized at a very young age. It manifested itself as a reaction to the profound disappointment I had in the people around me, in their inability to see the long view, the larger picture. I became frustrated at first, slowly mired in anger, then boom. I was diagnosed with what is called Intermittent Explosive Disorder. I have never been medicated. I have always found that all of my frustration can be mitigated through an active lifestyle. At times I am obsessively active; at times I struggle. But I am lucky in that I know what I need to maintain a positive balance. That is why I relate so well to the NAMI “Hearts and Minds” Campaign.
Why is mental health so important?
Throughout history, mental illness has been treated like possession or witchcraft, rather than like an illness, which is why it still carries the stigma it does today. The brain is an organ, but it is an organ we lack critical understanding of. That lack of understanding can lead to confusion and eventual disassociation rather than acceptance and healing. We are a thousand steps behind where we should be with regard to the treatment of mental illness, and we are there because of the lack of an open dialogue. The first step is to drive awareness. Mental health should be no more taboo than an infection or a genetic disorder.
I am so, so proud of Damian’s mission. It’s time we all supported him and mental health awareness. Head to GoFundMe right now and become part of the solution. Thank you!
By: Kirsty,
on 7/16/2014
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By Claire Niedzwiedz
How satisfied are you with your life? The answer is undoubtedly shaped by many factors and one key influence is the country in which you live. Governments across the world are increasingly interested in measuring happiness and well-being to understand how societies are changing, as indicators such as GDP (gross domestic product) do not seem to measure what makes life meaningful. Indeed, some countries, such as Bhutan, have measured national happiness for many years. In the World Map of Happiness below, the countries in green (such as Sweden) have the highest satisfaction. The blue countries are less happy than the green, followed by the pink and orange, and finally the red countries (such as Russia) have the lowest satisfaction. The map conjures up all sorts of interesting questions, like what would the map look like if only older or younger people were included or does happiness vary much within a country?

A U-shaped relationship between age and life satisfaction is often reported, meaning that people are happiest in their 20s and their 60s. But what are the factors that help older people achieve high life satisfaction? Research in this area is particularly important as a result of increasing life expectancy and growth in the proportion of older people. Measuring average well-being is only one side of the story, however. Countries which have high levels of overall life satisfaction may have large inequalities between the richest and poorest in society.
What type of country fosters a more equitable distribution of well-being? This is the focus of our paper recently published in Age and Ageing. We studied the influence of socioeconomic position on life satisfaction in over 17,000 people aged 50 to 75 years old from 13 European countries participating in the Survey of Health, Ageing, and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). To measure socioeconomic position, we used a number of different measures that reflected their position in society at different stages of their life. By looking at their relative position in their own country’s social hierarchy, we created a scale that enabled comparison between countries and across the life course measures. From childhood, we looked at the number of books people reported they had when they were aged 10 years old, a measure of the family’s cultural and economic resources. Education level was used as a measure of early adulthood social position and current wealth was taken as a measure of economic position at the time of the survey. We grouped countries into four categories based on the characteristics of their welfare policy and looked at whether socioeconomic inequalities in life satisfaction varied by the type of welfare state a country fits into.
Intriguingly, we found that Scandinavian (Sweden and Denmark) followed by Bismarckian countries (Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Austria, and France) had both higher life satisfaction and narrower differences in well-being between those at the top and bottom of society. Scandinavian countries are traditionally characterised by their high levels of welfare provision, universalism, and the promotion of social equality. Bismarckian countries are characterised by welfare states that maintain existing social divisions in society, in which social security is often related to one’s earnings and administered via the employer. Southern (Greece, Italy, and Spain) and Post-communist (Poland and the Czech Republic) countries, which tend to have less generous welfare states, had lower life satisfaction and larger social inequalities in life satisfaction. The number of books in childhood was a significant predictor of quality of life in early old age in all welfare states, apart from the Scandinavian type, and the relationship was particularly strong among women in the Southern countries. On the whole, however, inequalities in life satisfaction were largest by current wealth across the majority of welfare states.
Our findings have important implications, especially given the welfare policy changes taking place across Europe and the growth in wealth inequalities. It raises questions about how future generations of people are going to experience their early old age. Will average well-being and inequalities between the richest and poorest change as less welfare support is available? What will be the impact of increases in the retirement age? It is clear that these are urgent questions which affect us all and that the policies governments pursue are likely to shape the answers.
Claire Niedzwiedz (@claire_niedz) is a final year doctoral researcher at the University of Glasgow’s Institute of Health and Wellbeing and is part of the Centre for Research on the Environment, Society and Health (CRESH). They tweet at @CRESHnews. She is the author of the paper ‘The association between life course socioeconomic position and life satisfaction in different welfare states: European comparative study of individuals in early old age’, published in the journal Age and Ageing.
Age and Ageing is an international journal publishing refereed original articles and commissioned reviews on geriatric medicine and gerontology. Its range includes research on ageing and clinical, epidemiological, and psychological aspects of later life.
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Image credit: Satisfaction with Life Index Map coloured according to The World Map of Happiness, Adrian White, Analytic Social Psychologist, University of Leicester. Public domain via Wikimedia commons
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Cheryl Rainfield,
on 6/9/2014
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I am honored that SCARS is included in a thoughtful B&N blog post: “8 Great YAs About Mental Health Issues” written by Dahlia Adler.
Dahlia includes some powerful YA books on various mental health issues, including Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson (eating disorders), It’s Kind of a Funny Story, by Ned Vizzini (depression), OCD Love Story by Corey Ann Haydu (OCD), and Crazy by Amy Reed (bi-polar).
Check out her post for the entire list and thoughtful descriptions of the books from someone who’s clearly read them and been touched by them, and to leave a comment about your favorite YA books that deal with mental health issues.
I think it’s important that we have books that deal with mental health issues in honest and realistic ways–and that provide hope. We all need to know that we’re not alone, and that things can get better.

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’embracing the fullest possible range of potential customers simply makes good business sense.’
except there not, as a long time comic reader I’ve given up buying any from the big two. None of the new books are aimed at me and all the white male characters I liked have been replaced by so called minorities (eg captain america, hulk, iceman, Thor, antman, nick fury, wolverine, starlord and probably spiderman to name just a few).
whereas it’s not ok for minorities to have no representation it seems ok for white males to have none.
Every book now has to have gay characters , I’ve no problem with having books with gay characters for those who want but not in every fucking book, what about those who don’t. Sorry but I’m just not interested in seeing gay love scenes.
I would buy books with minorities if they could get past blaming every thing bad on white males, I don’t pay $4 to be told I’m an asshole because I’m male and white.
And I bet for daring I’d like to see the odd white male superhero I’m sure the posters will write me of some homophobic, kkk arsehole. Well F*** you comics. I’ll spend the $400 a month I used to spend on comics on something other activity that doesn’t take me for granted and actually welcomes me.
Good riddance.
Dave, I don’t see this as an either-or proposition — statistically there are still a fair number of straight white male superheroes, even a majority. Meanwhile, as attendance at comic-cons demonstrates, the audience for comics and other nerd-culture material has visibly diversified. The time when a dirty-blonde white male embodied America is long past.
Sorry, the above comment was me, Jeff Trexler, addressing Dave Allen.