Jody Schoger felt utterly alone, “curled up like a turtle” in her hospital bed, where she was fighting a life-threatening infection after breast cancer surgery.

read the rest here…

Researchers in Taiwan examined the relationship between psychiatric symptoms and Internet addiction in 2,162 junior high students over a period of two years.  About 11% of study participants were classified as having an Internet addiction in the initial assessment.

Chih-Hung Ko, MD and colleagues from Kaohsiung Medical University Hospital in Kaohsiung City, Taiwan found that being male, playing online games, and using the Internet daily for more than 20 hours a week were risk factors for addiction.

Over the two-year follow-up, ADHD was the most significant predictor, followed by hostility. For boys, hostility was the greatest predictor, and for girls ADHD was the greatest predictor. Social phobia and depression were predictors only in girls.

read the rest via Internet Addiction: Is Your Teen at Risk?.

There is a multitude of stage theories, so which one is the correct one? There are theories involving three, four, five, six, seven, ten, and twelve different stages. The most famous model is a misapplication of Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’s five stages of coping with dying: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance (DABDA for short). This model for mourning is the most egregious one since it is a totally erroneous application of her work.

via Stages of Grief – Time For a New Model | Psychology Today.

Researchers have found that online talking treatment using instant messaging can help people recover from depression. Accessing treatment online could make psychological therapies more widely available, and help people who find it challenging to visit a therapist.

What do we know already?

Talking treatments have been shown to help people with depression, but a shortage of therapists and long waiting times mean that it’s not always easy to get treatment. According to the Mental Health Foundation, it’s common for British patients to wait more than a year to get talking treatment, and 78 percent of GPs have prescribed antidepressant drugs through lack of an alternative. In America, drugs for depression are the most commonly prescribed of all medications.

via Instant messaging can help depression | Life and style | BMJ Group .

At one time we were great friends. Then I sensed there was a wall between us. We were still casual friends, and I attributed any distance between us to the fact that we no longer lived in the same city; we now lived halfway across the country from each other. And anyway, I figured if there were anything between us, he would talk to me about it.

Well, not long ago, I was staying in a hotel in the town where Larry lives. While I was there, I got a call from him. “We’ve got to talk,” he said.

“All right,” I answered, “about what?”

“I’ve been upset with you for about nine years now,” he answered, amazing me. As he went on, I was even more appalled. “I’ve been really angry with you all that time, and I can’t shake it,” he said, his voice quivering. “I’ve tried to tell myself I would get over it in time, but it won’t go away. I think about it a lot. Now it’s affecting what I do in my job and my other relationships too. I don’t want to live like this anymore. I have to get this thing resolved. Can we meet?”

Words like that from a friend make you sick to your stomach. As Larry spoke I asked myself over and over, What did I do? What does this involve? Of course I agreed to meet with him.

We got together at a restaurant, and there the story came out, though it took about five hours. Larry cried, I cried, and at one point it got so emotional that his nose started bleeding. One messy scene! But he finally got out this deep anger he had been carrying for all those years.

The problem had grown out of a decision we had made nine years before: Together we were going to confront a guy with whom we both had major disagreements. This was a very serious situation, and we were both equally upset. We went to see the man, and when we got there, the guy said to me, “I’ll discuss the problem you and I have with each other, but I’d rather not have both of you ganging up on me.”

So I talked it over with Larry, who agreed to leave the conversation—and the scene. I remember, as we parted, telling Larry I was sorry and that we would talk later. But as things turned out, Larry thought I had sided with the other guy and deserted him as a friend. I had actually doubled Larry’s anger. I left him with his anger toward the other person unresolved and unintentionally I also added hurt to his anger.

So Larry walked away thinking, How could Gary have done this to me? We were going to talk to the man together, and he just discarded me like I’m not of any value. Yet I had never understood what I had done or how my friend felt about it until that day in the restaurant.

When I heard his feelings and how the incident had affected him for nine years, I grieved deeply. I had not intended to give more loyalty to our adversary than to my good friend.

Fortunately, our relationship was healed that day. We cried together, hugged each other, and sought each other’s forgiveness. The anger was finally drained out of my friend but not before he had suffered depression and other signs of unhappiness for nine years. And since that time, we’ve gone on to develop a deeper friendship than ever before.

Some might say that Larry was overreacting and in time would have gotten over it. That’s what he had thought would happen, but it didn’t. There are thousands of people who wish they could shake off the effects of old offenses, but the truth is, many just can’t. And because they aren’t able to get over it, the damage continues inside them, sometimes for years.

Most of us bury our anger so quickly that we don’t know what we’re doing. Then it does its sneaky damage. It often leads to our lashing out at others. Or it gets turned inward, where it can become depression. Some may pretend it’s simply not there, but it is.

Their study of 485 Iowa adolescents over a 10-year period
(1991-2001) found that early socioeconomic adversity experienced by
children contributes to poor mental health by the time they become
teens — disrupting their successful transition into adulthood by
endangering their social, academic and occupational attainment as young
adults.

Early Family Depression Has Lasting Effects On Teens, Young Adults