I ran 130 miles this year. Broken down into numbers, it doesn’t look so big: only 57 runs in 365 days, my total workout hours adding up to just one turn of the Earth. But to me it feels huge, especially given that my first workout of the year looked like this:
My first instinct when I saw this article linking a desire for economic equality with an increased likelihood of depression was to be snarky. In the context of a billionaire narcissist running a government full of people trying to give more to those who already have the most, you couldn’t get more of a no duh statement than this:
A new study published in Nature Human Behavior suggests that those who value economic equity, at their brain’s core, are more likely to be depressed. Those who prefer everything for themselves tend to be happier.
I am heartened, if disturbed, to see a piece in The New York Times this morning examining a looming mental health crisis in Puerto Rico in the wake of Hurricane Maria. Disturbed, of course, that the crisis is happening—the piece reveals huge spikes in mental health admittances, patients unable to access therapy and medications, a spate of suicides—but heartened that the piece even exists. Continue reading
Black holes aren’t as black as they are painted. They are not the eternal prisons they were once thought. Things can get out of a black hole, both on the outside and possibly to another universe. So if you feel you are in a black hole, don’t give up. There is a way out.
—Stephen Hawking, Oxford University, October 27, 2017
Pacific Standard has a beautiful new piece out about Nev Jones, a psychology professor who experienced psychosis while in graduate school. Her history gives her a unique insight into the unwell mind, and she devotes her study to the idea that “madness” (not my favorite word, but the one the article uses) is not an isolated phenomenon, but instead occurs in the context of a society and so can be worsened—or improved—by that society’s reaction to the afflicted. Continue reading
The “About” page now has a bit of an explanation for the blog’s title.
Yesterday I went hiking through the Blue Mountain Reservation near Peekskill, New York. It’s a fairly standard-issue mid-Atlantic patch of woods, with rocky dirt paths, streams crossed by a plain wooden footbridge, and the occasional bird call from high up in brown trees with leaves just starting to turn. It feels small, so while the crisscrossing trails can sometimes be hard to follow, there’s no real danger of getting lost: just choose a direction and walk, and you’ll hit a road in a mile or two. Continue reading
Laura Turner, everyone.
This weekend I watched To the Bone, a Netflix movie about eating disorders. This is something I’ve (fortunately) never dealt with directly, so I can’t be sure how accurately it portrayed the experience, though it’s worth noting that director Marti Noxon struggled with anorexia. (The Atlantic did a good rundown of the difficulties of presenting eating disorders on screen.) But I have experienced a number of other mental health problems quite directly, and this movie made me almost cry in relief with its deep understanding of what mental illness really is. Continue reading
Here’s something to consider:
Some generational changes are positive, some are negative, and many are both. More comfortable in their bedrooms than in a car or at a party, today’s teens are physically safer than teens have ever been. They’re markedly less likely to get into a car accident and, having less of a taste for alcohol than their predecessors, are less susceptible to drinking’s attendant ills.
Psychologically, however, they are more vulnerable than Millennials were: Rates of teen depression and suicide have skyrocketed since 2011. It’s not an exaggeration to describe iGen as being on the brink of the worst mental-health crisis in decades. Much of this deterioration can be traced to their phones.
iGen is the term given by Jean M. Twenge, the author of this recent piece in The Atlantic, to describe the post-millenial generation (finally, a new cohort to worry over!). I love her choice of name, but I wonder if she missed something in ascribing this trend almost entirely to the social stress linked to social media–that it “exacerbate[s] the age-old teen concern about being left out,” as she puts it.
I can’t help but think–completely unscientifically–that at least a good amount of the trouble could be due to the fact that these kids are not ever really doinganything. To have self-confidence, resilience, the basic sense of purpose needed for even moderate well-being, one needs to first develop a self, and to do that requires interacting intentionally and independently with the real world: learning skills, solving problems, completing tasks, breaking and making things and having feelings about it. In short, they are missing the stuff of life. No wonder they are missing the point of living it.
wolf at door 