How Depressing

post from The Omnipotent Poobah Speaks! on 25 August 2012 08:01:04 AM. © The Omnipotent Poobah Speaks!

I’m lucky enough to know a number of very talented people – bloggers, artists, writers, musicians, photographers, scientists, even a ballet dancer. My tastes are very eclectic and these people fill my head, my eyes, my ears, and my heart with more important things than I can list. They are remarkable people and it is an honor to know them.

In keeping with various statistics, they also have a higher rate of mental illness and other emotional problems than my luckier “normal” friends and acquaintances. There is a fine line, as they say, between brilliance and madness.

Though I don’t pretend to have as much talent as most of them, my own mental illness – and make no mistake, it is a mental illness – is clinical depression. I’ve suffered from it almost my entire life and have been from barely functional in high school to highly functional now. Through a combination of grit, very long and expensive therapy, and drugs – yet another reason why universal health care is so important – I keep it mostly controlled. In fact, so well-controlled most people are shocked to know I’m a sufferer. But, it never goes away…ever. It always lurks in the background ready to creep in at any time. It is the true elephant in my room.

There are relative constants in depressives’ experiences, usually revolving around the reactions of the unafflicted.

It’s Not a Bad Hair Day on Steroids

In general, people unacquainted with depression view it as a sort of bad hair day on steroids. They “know” you’re down, but hey, who isn’t? After all, they’ve felt down – like when their cat died, or when they had that fender-bender, or when their boyfriend cheated on them. They “know” how hard it is to pick yourself up, but chin up and give it a little time. “You’ll be your old self again in no time.”

I can understand that point of view. To the uninitiated, depression is event-based and mostly transitory – my cat died, therefore I am sad. It will pass. Not to minimize it, but that is not true depression.

While your bad hair eventually straightens out, many depressives rarely feel truly happy, only less sad – regardless of events, therapy, medication, or baskets of cute puppies. As with all mental illnesses, families suffer right along with them – sometimes deepening the depression.

Getting the “cheer up” speech in the middle of a depressive episode is one of the things that drive depressives, well, crazy. It is like telling a morbidly obese person to stop being silly and eat less. The morbidly obese aren’t simply folks with big appetites, they are battling other problems. Depressives are the same. If it were that easy, we wouldn’t be fat or depressed.

The other pet peeve comes from the helpful expert with an aunt or cousin twice-removed who “suffers terribly from depression”. By virtue of their exposure to the poor wretch – whether that person is 3000 miles away or truly depressed or not – they’ve become the less-religious equivalent of a depression faith healer.

“My cousin was depressed and she took St. John’s wort for a few weeks. She was as good as new.” WHAP! Out damn depression, I command thee!

“My hairdresser was depressed and she took massive doses of vitamin B, ate three eggs per day, and rubbed a special crystal on her forehead. Cured her almost immediately.” SMILE YOU ILL-TEMPERED WRETCH! Let the sun of all that is good enter your head and banish all bad thoughts!

‘Listen to Me, I’m the Stent-Meister’

Sadly, both of these examples are true. They, along with many other more benign suggestions are offered as innocent help, but have the opposite effect. Imagine waking up from heart surgery to hear someone say, “I know they did a bypass, but your doctor should really have used a stent. It would have been much less painful.” If you are normal, the next patient in your bed would probably be the stent-meister.

So in the spirit of fostering peace and understanding, keep a few things in mind.

Depressives know they are depressed. They know how deep it is and the subtle shades it has. They know what they can and can’t do about it – and trust me on this – have probably tried. The last thing they need is an anthropomorphized ray of sunshine to remind them of all the things you think they should do.

And always remember this: you are not a doctor, or a faith healer for that matter. Chances are, the depressed person has tried every med or gimmick in the book. If they are lucky enough, through painful trial and error, they already use something that works – after a fashion. It isn’t perfect and it will need to change periodically, but it holds the demons away much better than all the St. John’s wort in China.

There is no need to let depressed friends or relatives sit in the corner like a stump. They are people and usually like having people around who talk to them like other normal people about normal things – just without all the “helpfulness”. Unless we tell you otherwise, it is not only OK, but appreciated by most of us. It’s even OK to ask directly about the depression, but only if you are truly curious or concerned. It is suspect light dinner conversation. You needn’t to try to fix our problem. Just listen, show normal concern if you’d like, and end with something like, “I’m sorry to hear that.”

Neither of us needs anything more than that.

Natural Way To Help Depression (naturalhealthezine.com)
The Best Natural Treatments for Depression (everydayhealth.com)
Is Culture Making You Mentally Ill? (psychologytoday.com)
Searching For “Normal” (thedepressedmoose.com)
Former Norwich player’s wife found him with rope round his neck (offthepost.info)
Fears stop parents seeking help (bigpondnews.com)

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Pull Up a Chair and Have a Laugh

post from Firedoglake on 25 August 2012 08:00:42 AM. © Firedoglake

Good morning pups-o-fire! Pull up a chair this morning and let's share a laugh. It's established science that laughter has the ability to help heal physical wounds and ailments; but beyond that, it's also wonderful at healing rifts between people.[...]

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Todd Akins colonial-era ideas

post from Occasional Planet on 25 August 2012 08:00:33 AM. © Occasional Planet

Where does Todd Akin get the idea that, when she?s raped, a ?woman?s body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down?? Here?s an Akin tidbit that offers a clue. For many years, Akin held Fourth of July picnics for supporters and friends at his family homestead in suburban St. Louis. And at [...]Related posts:

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Mike's Blog Round Up

post from Crooks and Liars on 25 August 2012 08:00:00 AM. © Crooks and Liars

Mock the Dummy - Mittens, the musical!

Occasional Planet - a simple explanation of how Romney/Ryan plan to end Medicare;

The Consumerist Manifesto - someone should ask Todd Akin what his god is telling him;

The Reaction - Rush says Obama arranged for Hurricane Isaac to hit the GOP convention. No. Really.

Zandar v. The Stupid - wait too long to release your tax returns and someone will reverse-engineer them.

blogenfreude blogs at stinque.com and is still in denial about the NY Jets picking up Tebow.

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Abbreviated Pundit Round-up: Why Romney isn't
winning

post from Daily Kos on 25 August 2012 07:15:04 AM. © Daily Kos

Above is pollster.com aggregate without Rasmussen and Gallup. See explanation.

Above is Rasmussen and Gallup alone. "All polls included" is here.

Note that many pollsters are switching to Likely Voters (LV) but not all have. For the next few weeks, try and match apples to apples and pay attention to Registered Voters (RV) vs Likely Voters (LV) polls. And since everyone uses a different model, the difference will vary (7 points in the recent CNN poll, 1 in the LA Times poll.)

On LV...the models differ widely. Some pollsters will show big diff like CNN, others a point or two
? @MysteryPollster via Tweetbot for Mac
Charlie Cook chronicles some fundamental Romney errors:

Still, this race shouldn?t be as tight as it is. Whether one looks at polling measurements of whether voters think the country is headed in the right direction, at consumer confidence, or at key economic measurements such as growth in gross domestic product, deviations in the unemployment rate, or the change in real personal disposable income, it is puzzling, to say the least, why polls show President Obama and Mitt Romney running neck and neck. Incumbents generally don?t get reelected with numbers like we are seeing today.

And some responses/companion pieces, this from John Sides:

He?s not a ?natural candidate.? He didn?t air enough positive ads to make voters ?comfortable? with him. He should have taken Rubio?s position on immigration to win Latinos. He shouldn?t be having a discussion of Medicare.
Maybe those things are true. Or maybe the economy just doesn?t predict that Obama should be losing. I?ve said it before and I?ll say it again: many an unduly complicated interpretation of an election began with a misreading of the fundamentals. Fortunately, I don?t need to say much more. Just read Jon Bernstein, Jamelle Bouie, Matt Dickinson, and especially Sean Trende.

Why Is It So Hard to Get the Fundamentals Right? http://t.co/...
— @monkeycageblog via IFTTT

Matt Dickenson (please read in full):

My point is that even political scientists are not in full agreement regarding what aspects of the economy are most ?fundamental? to presidential election outcomes. Moreover, each of their forecasts comes with a degree of uncertainty built into their estimates. This means that, in a close election, forecast models that differ in their prediction regarding the election winner in November could nonetheless all be considered accurate if the final popular vote falls within their specified level of uncertainty. Of course, this is small consolation to the layperson who wants to know now who the likely winner will be come November 6th, which is what most of you care about! But it is important to remember that political scientists speak in probabilities, based on past events, not certainties.

Jamelle Bouie:

In other words, despite the conventional wisdom, it?s not true that Romney should be winning. Barring rapid economic deterioration ? or a botched foreign policy crisis ? it?s difficult to unseat a sitting president. All things considered, both Romney and Obama are doing about as well as you would expect.

EJ Dionne:

In my column today, I noted that I had interviewed Elizabeth Warren, the Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate in Massachusetts. In the course of the interview, Warren offered what I thought were particularly interesting thoughts about the Affordable Care Act, and also about the role of her religious faith in her public engagement. I share a partial transcript of the interview here.

National Journal on Walmart moms:

But her passion sets her apart from most undecided women, according to research conducted by Momentum Analysis, a Democratic polling firm, and Public Opinion Strategies, a Republican firm. The pollsters have been studying ?Walmart moms??women with school-aged children who shop at the mega-store?since 2010. They conducted a focus group with them in June in Richmond, Va., and an online discussion with women from five battleground states, including Virginia.
?We would get a blank stare when we asked about women?s issues,? said GOP pollster Alex Bratty, whose partner, Neil Newhouse, advises Romney. ?President Obama is raising an issue that these moms are not talking about. It?s the wrong conversation.?
Even Bratty?s Democratic partner in the study, Margie Omero, agreed that most women are not feeling targeted, although she added that they don?t want the government involved in reproductive decisions. ?I think part of the Democratic strategy to talk about abortion and birth control is for motivating the base and for turnout and enthusiasm, not necessarily for reaching swing voters,? she said. ?Swing voters are not seeing a war on women. What they want is to make sure candidates understand their life struggles and what they?re going through in a very empathetic way, and if you look at the polls, Obama definitely has the advantage on that.?

WaPo:

Former congressman Virgil H. Goode Jr. hand-delivered more than 20,500 signatures to Virginia election officials this week, hoping to become the next president of the United States. The move could instead make him the next Ralph Nader, the consumer advocate widely believed to have played the role of spoiler in the 2000 election.

You may remember VA is good(e) at kicking candidates off the ballot. Where there's a will...
? @LarrySabato via web
National Journal on the auto bailout:

The auto bailout (or rescue, as Democrats like to call it) is not a panacea in an election season in which poll after poll shows Romney comfortably ahead among white voters without college degrees. Men in that group, in particular, are turning away from the president in droves. The recession has left many white, blue-collar voters brimming with anger and anxiety about lost jobs or homes, stagnant or falling wages, high gas prices, and the possibility of worse to come. Some never supported Obama. Some who did are impatient for an economic fix and ready to try something?or somebody?new.
But a different story is developing in some states that rely on the auto industry. Its revival is helping Obama hold his own with noncollege voters in battlegrounds such as Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. Combined with Romney?s inability so far to make the sale, that could make all the difference on Nov. 6.

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Squeeze - Cool for Cats

post from US Politics | AMERICAblog News on 25 August 2012 07:00:11 AM. © US Politics | AMERICAblog News

This week was cat week over here. Sushi needed a checkup after his recent intervention for his thyroid problem. The results look good so far so everyone is happy about that. Cat girl (Nasdaq) also needed a visit but she was not being cooperative. She bolted in the morning and went into the garden and kept running when I tried approaching her.She's generally the easy one but the day we...

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Saturday Open Thread

[Commercial radio] is owned by one or two corporations now,
and they're not in the music business.
They're in the advertising business, ...
So let's not kid ourselves.
If you want to hear music, go buy a guitar.

Elvis Costello (Declan Patrick McManus)

Born August 25, 1954

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Janet Jackson Thats the Way Love Goes

Artist: Janet Jackson Tune: That's the way love goes I'm not sure if this is Janet's best tune or not. I think that it is close. I think that when this tune came out Janet was at the peak of her popularity.

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Ray Charles & Stevie Wonder Wow!

Crook and Liars posted some Stevie Wonder tonight. So I was running through You Tube and I came across Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder singing Livin' for the City. Wow. That's all I can say.

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