Category: Depression

Enduring Values in an Age of Change?

Ours is a turbulent and challenging age with many major cultural shifts seemingly happening all at once. A few examples: world powers jockey for dominance, civil rights and other rights advocates compete to be heard, major social shifts occurred in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic with its many impacts isolating persons from each other, […]

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Psychological Trauma/Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and News Reporters

“If it bleeds, it leads” is a common expression among news reporters preparing evening-news programs across the country. These news stories usually emerge in response to critical incidents, such as natural disasters and various acts of human violence. These are the incidents to which first responders are called. These are also the critical events that […]

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PTSD and Public-works Employees

I remember Uncle Harry in my younger days as a happy, hard-working husband and father of two. Outgoing and gregarious, he was always upbeat and helpful. He enjoyed his public-works job as a way to help his community, he idolized his family, and he would do anything to help others. But it changed. It changed […]

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In Memory of Dr. Stefan de Schill

February 9, 2023, is the eighteenth anniversary of the death of Dr. Stefan de Schill. In 2005, that day was on Ash Wednesday, the earliest date Ash Wednesday could fall. The directors of The American Mental Health Foundation take some moments to honor Dr. de Schill’s memory. As long-time director of research, he devoted his […]

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The Power of Two

Given the pressures in today’s world, would you welcome the opportunity to lessen your life stress and anxiety? Reduce your dysphoria and depression? Improve your physical health and sense of well-being? Even lengthen your life? What if I told you that you could attain all of these health benefits at no cost to your health-insurance […]

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COVID-19 Lockdowns and Violence: Attachment Theory Revisited

As COVID-19 restrictions were lifted in 2022, people put aside masks, social distancing, and lockdown social isolation to venture out to restore a more normal life. Most found that the “old” normal had been altered during the lockdown and had been replaced by “new” normal, e.g., some employees now worked from home, some local small […]

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The Tenth Annual Report of The American Mental Health Foundation

Annual Report of AMHF November 1, 2021, to October 31, 2022; on November 1, 2022, The American Mental Health Foundation will be 99 years in existence thus rapidly moving into 100. Few not-for-profit organizations can make this claim. This is the Tenth Annual Report of The American Mental Health Foundation (AMHF), an organization formed in […]

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Violence as COVID-19 Lockdowns Are Eased

It is happening everywhere. Adults are assaulted or shot in bars and entertainment venues. Teenagers and gang members kill each other in broad daylight. Children are murdered in their classrooms. Dinner guests who do not know each other break out in brawls in restaurants. Why is there this increase in crime and violence as COVID-19 […]

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Child Abuse, Natural Disasters, and Health Care Providers

A busy pediatrician looked troubled and tense. He had seen this five-year old, Angela, once before two years ago. Then, it was a fall from some playground equipment her mother had said. Today, mom reported that it was a fractured wrist due to a fall from Angela’s bicycle. However this didn’t explain the child’s two […]

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Preventing Youth Violence: A Guide for Parents, Teachers, and Counselors

Preventing Youth Violence: Twenty Years Later (New Findings, Part 1)

Twenty years ago I published a book on a topic of national concern: preventing youth violence (Flannery, 2012a). The American Mental Health Foundation (AMHF), with its emphasis on improving mental-health awareness, requested I write two blogs (herewith, in 2019, are these two new essays) on some of the topics in the book. The first blog, from […]

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SUDEP: Sudden Unexpected Death in a Person with Epilepsy

This essay has been prepared in consultation with Evander Lomke, president and executive director of The American Mental Health Foundation. It is posted in memory of Elizabeth Leah Lomke, September 19, 1986 – June 4, 2018. The medical community and the general public are fully cognizant of the unexpected death of otherwise apparently healthy infants, […]

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Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in Coroner First Responders

Dateline: Miami, Florida, March 15, 2018 The day dawned bright and sunny with typical early spring Florida warmth. People began to wake up, and each person began to plan the day. Everyone left home for work, for school, for local errands. Some did not realize that they would never be returning home. Ever. Each sat […]

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Henry Kellerman’s There’s No Handle on My Door: Stories of Patients in Mental Hospitals Is Available as an Audiobook

Now available just in time for the 2017 holidays and New Year, this fascinating book probes institutional life via 9 unforgettable profiles. In the words of its author, Dr. Henry Kellerman: “The unalloyed truth is that I’m in thrall to idiosyncrasy. It can be said that I actually love pathology. Let me explain: It’s that […]

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Erich Fromm’s The Pathology of Normalcy (2010) Is Available as an Audiobook

Now available as an Audiobook from American Mental Health Foundation Books…. As Erich Fromm, more in tune with our times than ever, trenchantly writes in The Pathology of Normalcy: “There are two possible approaches to the question of what is mental health in contemporary society. One is statistical and one is an analytical, qualitative approach. “The […]

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Alexis Tomarken, MSW, PhD, Joins the AMHF Advisory Board

The American Mental Health Foundation is delighted to announce Alexis Tomarken, MSW, PhD, has joined its professional advisory board. Dr. Tomarken is a psychologist in private practice in New York City and a supervisor in the clinical-psychology doctoral program at Long Island University (LIU). Over recent years, Dr. Tomarken has trained as a psychoanalytic candidate in the […]

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Patron Saints for People Suffering from Depression: 19 Million in the U.S. Alone

Depression, which can be paralyzing, is the most common emotional problem, certainly in the United States: by some estimates 19 million. But of course, it has an international, human dimension that transcends borders. Jean-Baptiste-Marie Vianney was born near Lyons (Dardilly) on May 8, 1786. As a youngster, he worked the land while teaching other children […]

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The American Mental Health Foundation–Astor Services Study and Young People

On April 16, 2015, American Mental Health Foundation Books published its most comprehensive research project devoted to young people in its 90-plus-year history. Early Identification, Palliative Care, and Prevention of Psychotic Disorders in Children and Youth is the result of a pioneering two-year study developed and funded by AMHF. This monograph is also a collaborative […]

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Young Healthy Minds: The Future of the World

The Winter 2016 issue of the University of Toronto—where I did graduate work forty years ago—alumni magazine features an article on the college response to a rise in mental-health needs among its students. In an evermore diverse society, in a faster-changing culture amid the brave new world of social media, college-aged students in North America […]

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Dr. Paul Quinnett Joins the AMHF Advisory Board

The American Mental Health Foundation is delighted to announce Dr. Paul Quinnett has joined its professional-advisory board. Dr. Quinnett is currently president and CEO of QPR Institute, an educational organization dedicated to preventing suicide. Author of 8 books and an award-winning journalist, he is also Clinical Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral […]

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The American Mental Health Foundation on NASH FM 94.7 NASH Matters with Kelly Ford

Executive Director Evander Lomke was delighted to be interviewed by Kelly Ford on her public-affairs program NASH Matters, which is devoted to philanthropic endeavors in the New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut area. More than 800,000 listeners tuned in. As of October 22, 2021, Ms. Ford’s program is off the air. Unfortunately, the 15-minute broadcast is […]

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Superb Notice of AMHF Professional Advisory Board Member Dr. Henry Kellerman in The Midwest Book Review

“A delusion is a belief held with strong conviction despite superior evidence to the contrary. As a pathology, it is distinct from a belief based on false or incomplete information, confabulation, dogma, illusion, or other effects of perception. Delusions typically occur in the context of neurological or mental illness, although they are not tied to […]

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When Your Spouse or Loved One May Be Struggling with Too Much Pornography: Some Facts

Facts: Pornography causes problems socially and individually; pornography cuts against Christian (and most religious) teaching; pornography is demeaning; pornography victimizes women or whoever is depicted. Pornography might properly be described as unfit for consumption…by anyone. Might the title of this blog be “When Your Wife Is a Pornography Addict?” or “When Your Husband Is a […]

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“Like the Gay, ‘Love that Dare Not Speak Its Name,’ Depression Is Now Shouting!”

The title of this blog is in quotes since it derives from the second part of a series Dick Cavett published in the New York Times. Part 2 appeared on July 11, 2008. The link is highly recommended. Comments received on part 1, Cavett notes, approached 500 in number, an extraordinary volume of mail and […]

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Understanding Adam Lanza and the Newtown-Sandy Hook Mass Killings

A year-and-a-half following the horrible killings at the Sandy Hook, Connecticut, elementary school, we Americans are still searching our souls, trying to understand how this tragedy could happen, why it did, what might have been the warning signs before young Adam Lanza snapped. Journalist Andrew Solomon met with Adam’s father, Peter Lanza, over six gut-wrenching […]

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Psychiatry Films from AMHF: “The Bell Jar” (1979, 2013?)

This is the final blog in the AMHF series of twenty-one films relating to “Hollywood and Psychiatry.” These blogs have taken us from ca. 1921, and the release of silent classic The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, a mere three years before The American Mental Health Foundation was organized, into the twenty-first century. The first blog […]

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AMHF at BookExpo America

For three days last week American Mental Health Foundation Books shared a booth with its distributor, Lantern, at the annual BookExpo America—which is held at the Jacob Javits Center on New York City’s West Side. (New York remains the publishing capital of North America, even with the multitude of changes the industry has seen.) The […]

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Starting out with Schizophrenia

A feature story in today’s Washington Post, written by Stephanie McCrummen, offers an intensive look at the week of a 19-year-old man who, two years ago, was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. It is the story of Spencer Haskell, and of his mom, Naomi, who has taken on the task of monitoring her son and making […]

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Dr. Joyce Brothers, R.I.P.

Dr. Joyce Brothers, who paved the way for television figures as diverse as Dr. Ruth K. Westheimer and Dr. Drew Pinsky, and was essential in making the mass-cultural discussion of deep-seated and uncomfortable emotions in the U.S. a more open forum, died yesterday. As my friend notes in the Los Angeles Times obituary—which quotes him […]

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The Great Gatsby, Zelda Fitzgerald, and Craig House Hospital

This is the first weekend showing of a movie that filmgoers and literary lions alike have been waiting for: The Great Gatsby. Everyone and everything is enmeshed. There are affairs. Grand parties throw people who would not normally meet each other together. The excesses of the Jazz Age coexist with the growing economic conditions that […]

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Mental Illness and Churches

Newly minted pastor Ed Stetzer, writing in CNN.beliefnet, writes of his dealings with a man in his congregation. This person would often disappear for days at a time, and later Stetzer would hear that the fellow had spent hours praying the psalms. Later the man killed himself, leading Stetzer to reflect of aproaches churches could […]

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