Emotional Training Helps Kids Fight Depression : NPR.
This is a brilliant effort at nipping the downward spiral in the bud when children are at their most formative, and it is definitely running parallel to what I am trying to work on with my son.
» Continue reading “Emotional Training Helps Kids Fight Depression : NPR”
I had never really considered what being Latino meant to me until Lance Rios of Being Latino asked. It’s something that I have, at times, taken completely for granted and at other times I have resented as an unasked for burden. I love my culture, don’t get me wrong, but there have been times in my life where other people have left me feeling that I have something to prove. That I have to prove my worth as an individual because I was poor, because I was from the Bronx, because I was Latino. There have been times where I have felt that I had to even prove that I was Latino, or Latino enough, to people who were old enough and educated enough to know better than to categorize something as ephemeral as cultural identity.
» Continue reading “Being Latino”
I was daydreaming just now, thinking about a conversation I had earlier with another parent. We were discussing the issues his son was having in school, how amotivated his child was and their struggle to get him to make an effort. It got me to thinking about what motivates our children to achieve and then mentally, automatically rephrased it as what motivates our children to make an effort.
» Continue reading “An Open Letter to My Children”
I think my father lived in the shadow of a brother with whom he could never compete. This brother was well-liked, affable by all accounts. He died in combat in 1966, a casualty of the conflict in Vietnam. He died just shy of his 21st birthday and thus, he will always live and loom larger than his life in the memories of our family, frozen in time as someone who never did any harm, if only because he never had a chance. He’s untouchable. My father never stood a chance.
» Continue reading “Remembrance Day”
A Push For Colleges To Prioritize Mental Health : NPR.
When I was diagnosed as bipolar in 1997, I was diagnosed by a college psychiatrist. My first real experience with a psychiatrist and navigating the ins and outs of having a diagnosis and trying to find a treatment plan that would allow me to function was a key defining moment in my life. Reducing these services will only result in more students dropping out or opting out of college as an option. At this stage in life, at this age, university mental health services are often the only option students have for ever-increasing emotional problems.
» Continue reading “A Push For Colleges To Prioritize Mental Health : NPR”
Teen diagnoses her own disease in science class – CNN.com.
This is the ultimate in being your own best advocate. When you can’t find answer, continue looking, even if you have to go it alone. I think it especially highlights the need for quality control measures in pathology and medicine. We are allowed to routinely get second opinions on major decisions, but what about when lab results yield little help?
» Continue reading “Teen diagnoses her own disease in science class – CNN.com”
Gay soldier: Don’t fire me – amFIX – CNN.com Blogs.
This isn’t a GLBT blog, per se, but in the last few weeks it’s where my head has been, as more states struggle with the idea of equality. This eloquent and poignant letter from an Army serviceman who was fired for honesty leaves me outraged, and it should leave you outraged too. Repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.
I have witnessed first hand the bootstrap conundrum. There is a prevailing attitude in our country that people who have problems need to learn to pick themselves up by their bootstraps, snap out of it, and “just do it.” A typical bipolar response to this attitude, however, is “how do you pick yourself up by your bootstraps when you don’t even have any boots?”
» Continue reading “Part 4: The Bootstrap Conundrum & Personal Accountability”
In ye olde days, doctors used to call it “compliance.” You were prescribed medication and if you took your meds, you were compliant. If, for whatever reason, you did not take your meds, you were labeled “non-compliant” with all the attendant bad juju that went with it. Non-compliant was fairly well synonymous with “difficult” or “untreatable.”
» Continue reading “Part 3: Treatment, Adherence, Crisis, and Stigma”
