This week’s column on living with depression and manic depression, “Based on Personal Experience: Experiencing Mania,” is up. My apologies that I was running a little late this week. As you may have already guessed, the focus this week is mania. (Last week was “Experiencing Depression”). May you (or a loved one) find healing in my continuing story.

11/6/2009
by Bennett Gordon, The Nation

The nation’s unemployment topped 10 percent in last month, but for young people, that number is much higher. The unemployment rate for 16-to-24-year-olds is almost double the national average, according to The Nation, up near 18.1 percent for September. Since December of 2007, those young people have lost some 2.5 million jobs, the most of any age group. And even though the stock market seems to be looking up, the employment picture for young people still looks bleak.

“I hope people are really clear that this is not an equal-opportunity recession, that it’s hurting the weakest,” Dedrick Muhammad of the Institute for Policy Studies Program on Inequality and the Common Good told The Nation. Low-income and people of color have been the hardest hit, according to Muhammad’s research. For unemployment white people in their early 20s is less than half (13.1 percent) of African Americans (27.1 percent). At the same time, college tuition and health care costs have been steadily rising.

The bright spot midst the crisis is the political engagement that young people continually display. According to The Nation, “many young people have already begun coming together, in protest and coalition-style advocacy.” They’re fighting for better health care, education, jobs, and to make sure this kind of recession doesn’t happen again.

Source: The Nation

Julia "Judy" Bonds (Image from Gluekit)

Julia “Judy” Bonds has suffered vulgar personal insults, been slapped in the face, and been arrested for speaking out against mountaintop removal, the coal mining practice that is literally flattening parts of Appalachia. A coal miner’s daughter and granddaughter, Bonds was first moved to action in 1997 when her 6-year-old grandson came across a creek full of dead fish killed by mining waste. Now the codirector of Coal River Mountain Watch, Bonds is a veteran activist and a matriarch to the anti–mountaintop removal movement.

On a typically busy day this fall, the group’s staff was expecting visits from a Greenwire reporter doing a story on mountaintop removal, an FBI agent investigating threats and intimidation against the organization, and a state mining official following up on the group’s suggestions on industry oversight. Bonds was also planning for an upcoming visit from the Chicago Eco-Justice Collaborative for a program called From the Holler to the Hood, which “connects the dots” between coal extraction in West Virginia and energy use in Chicago.

Bonds, who won the Goldman Environmental Prize in 2003, travels often to share her enthusiasm and expertise at conferences and workshops, and she is always cheered by new converts to the cause: “Every time a new citizen or a new college student speaks out about the abuses of coal and about the need for a transition to a clean, renewable energy future,” she says, “that gratifies me.”

(for the entire story, please click here)

From  Prison as Resurrection by Caleb Smith, 10/23/2009

Love your gay brother

Review by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore,
UTNE Reader, November/ December 2009

Ties That Bind exposes homophobia as a practice rooted in family structures, from abuse of children to exclusion of adults. This pattern extends to the cherished liberal value of “tolerating” queers as if they were wasps at a family picnic. Author Sarah Schulman boldly declares that visibility is a failed strategy for cultural change. Gay people are more visible than ever, but “the hatred and overt campaigns against us, ranging from commodification to constitutional amendments to dehumanizingly false representations in popular culture, have intensified and become more deliberate.” Schulman’s solution is third-party intervention. If your parents direct you not to bring your lover to a family reunion, it’s time for your sister to demand that your lover be included. If commercial publishers refuse to print lesbian work, straight best-selling authors should protest. Ties That Bind argues that this type of allegiance is far more important than gay access to problematic institutions like marriage. Unfortunately, the gay establishment has abandoned challenges to structural homophobia in favor of the fight for gay marriage, a shift Schulman calls “a sign of spiritual exhaustion . . . the white flag of surrender” to the status quo.

Author Sarah Shulman was also named one of Utne Reader’s 2009 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World.

11/5/2009 4:04:38 PM

Before the identity of the shooter at Fort Hood was revealed, press reports were already talking about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and the stresses of an army fighting two wars.

What about the journalists who cover those wars? Over at In These Times, Kari Lyderson reports on a conference organized by the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies:

CNN and former Atlanta Journal Constitution reporter Moni Basu described the effects of a career including seven stints in Iraq and covering executions by electric chair in Florida.

“You’re watching a man take 18 minutes to die…and then you’re supposed to just go file your story and move on,” she said.

…CNN cameraman Mark Biello was suffering nightmares and other signs of PTSD, that boiled over in a road rage incident where he accosted a cab driver.

“Every time you see things your cup gets fuller, and there’s only so long before it overflows,” he said.

…Reporters say it is harder than ever to persuade employers to make resources or even time available to address job-related mental health. But the need is greater than ever, as staff-cutting and belt-tightening often means heavier workloads that only add to stress. The issue is even harder to address for freelancers, who often don’t have health insurance or one steady employer.

Source: In These Times

Image by Kyle May, licensed under Creative Commons .

Scenes from the motion picture “2012.” Courtesy Columbia Pictures.
Written by E. C. Krupp, Director of Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles Article available at NASA.gov,  reprinted from Sky & Telescope Magazine for not-for-profit educational purposes only. The publisher and the author reserve all rights. All opinions are the author’s own.
The year 2012 is acting like a badly behaved celebrity. Frightful rumors and gossip are spreading. Already more than a half dozen books are marketing, to eager fans, astronomical fears about 2012 End Times. Opening in theaters on Friday, Nov. 13, will be 2012, a $200-million disaster movie that seems designed to break all records for disaster spectacles — with cracking continents, plunging asteroids, burning cities, and a tsunami throwing an aircraft carrier through the White House. The movie’s ominous slogan: “Find out the truth.” Two other major movies about the 2012 doomsday are also reported to be in the works.

Anyone who cruises the internet or all-night talk radio knows why. The ancient Maya of Mexico and Guatemala kept a calendar that is about to roll up the red carpet of time, swing the solar system into transcendental alignment with the heart of the Milky Way, and turn Earth into a bowling pin for a rogue planet heading down our alley for a strike.

None of it is true. People you know, however, are likely becoming a bit afraid that modern astronomy and Maya secrets are indeed conspiring to bring our doom. If people know you’re an astronomer, they will soon be asking you all about it.

Here is what you need to know.

Birth of a Notion
We”ve had similar scares in the recent past, but none quite like this. The last time the world got all worked up over the mystical turning of a calendar was the false Millennium of Jan. 1, 2000. Never mind the actual Y2K computer-date bug. True-believer authors (and their imitators) published scary and/or hopeful books about the moment’s prophetic potential to catch an immense cosmic wave and change everything for either good or ill. Borrowing a forecast from Nostradamus, the 16th-century French riddler, author Charles Berlitz predicted catastrophe in his 1981 book Doomsday 1999. Berlitz (fresh off books on Atlantis and the Bermuda Triangle), warned that 1999 could inflict flood, famine, pollution and a shift of Earth’s magnetic poles. He also spotlighted the planetary alignment of May 5, 2000, and warned that it could bring solar flares, severe earthquakes, “land changes” and “seismic explosions.”

In the 1990s an entire “Earth Changes” movement swelled into being as the end of the century neared, with all sorts of Millennial expectations — earthquakes, plagues, polar axis shifts, continents sliding into the sea, Atlantis rising and more. In England, the Sun tabloid predicted a “marvelous millennium of joy, peace, prosperity.”

When Jan. 1, 2000, came and went with nothing worse than ski-lift passes printing the date as 1900, the focus shifted to “5/5/2000″ several months later. Most believers in the power of planetary alignments forgot the failure of earlier lineups to induce disaster. The “Jupiter Effect” cataclysm predicted for March 10, 1982 (named for the 1974 book about it by John Gribbin and Stephen Plagemann) commanded headlines but never materialized.

Throughout history, end-of-the-world movements missing their mark number in the “hundreds of thousands at the very least, says Richard Landes, historian at Boston University and director of its Center for Millennial Studies. But people eager for the world to end are not to be denied, and this time, of course, all will be different.

The Rollover
What exactly is the Maya calendar about to do? On Dec. 21, 2012, it will display the equivalent of a string of zeros, like the odometer turning over on your car, with the close of something like a millennium. In Maya calendrics, however, it’s not the end of a thousand years. It’s the end of Baktun 13. The Maya calendar was based on multiple cycles of time, and the baktun was one of them. A baktun is 144,000 days: a little more than 394 years.

Scholars have deciphered how the Maya calendar worked from historical texts and ancient inscriptions, and they have accurately correlated so-called Maya Long Count dates with the equivalent dates in our calendar. Just as we number our years counting from a historically and culturally significant event (the presumed birth year of Christ), Maya times were numbered from a date endowed with religious and cosmic significance: the creation date of the present world order. A Long Count date is the tally of days from that mythic startup. Most experts think the start point corresponds to Aug. 11, 3114 B.C.

Most of the Maya calendar intervals accumulate as multiples of 20. An interval of 7,200 days (360 × 20) was known as a katun. It takes 20 katuns to complete a baktun (20 × 7,200 = 144,000 days). Although some ancient inscriptions turn 13 baktuns into an important reset milestone, others imply that the calendar simply keeps running. For instance, it takes 20 baktuns to make a pictun.

No one paid much attention to the end of Baktun 13 until fairly recently. In 1975 Frank Waters, a romantic and speculative author, devoted a brief section to the subject in his book Mexico Mystique. He identified the 13-baktun interval as a “Mayan Great Cycle,” overestimated its duration as 5,200 years, and equated five such cycles with five legendary eras, each of which ends in the world’s destruction and rebirth. There is no genuine Maya tradition behind any of this.

Waters also miscalculated the date when the calendar would supposedly pull down the shades. “The end of the Great Cycle . . . will occur Dec. 24, 2011 A.D.,” he announced, when the world “will be destroyed by catastrophic earthquakes.” Exact date aside, the doomsday ball was now rolling.

Another book in 1975 also spotlighted the Maya calendric roundup. Dennis and Terence McKenna discussed it in The Invisible Landscape: Mind, Hallucinogens, and the I Ching. That book at least got the Baktun-13 end date right: Dec. 21, 2012. It also noted that the date is the winter solstice, when the Sun will be “in the constellation Sagittarius, only about 3 degrees from the Galactic Center, which, also coincidentally, is within 2 degrees of the ecliptic.” The McKennas continued, “Because the winter solstice node is precessing, it is moving closer and closer to the point on the ecliptic where it will eclipse the galactic center.” In reality this event will never happen, but it hardly matters. The McKennas linked the whole arrangement with the concept of renewal and called 2012 a moment of “potential transformative opportunity.”

Broader interest in 2012 caught on beginning in 1987. In The Mayan Factor: Path Beyond Technology, José Argüelles (an “artist, poet, and visionary historian” according to the dust jacket) linked the 13-baktun period with an impalpable “beam” from the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. According to Argüelles, the Maya knew when we entered this beam and when we would leave it, and set their 13-baktun cycle to mark our passage through it accordingly. The beam, he asserted, operates as “invisible galactic life threads” that link people, the planet, the Sun, and the center of the Galaxy. Neither Maya tradition nor modern astronomy supports a belief in any such beam. It stemmed instead from Argüelles’s personal philosophy, which emphasizes “the principle of harmonic resonance.” Argüelles also concluded that the planets are “orbiting harmonic gyroscopes” that “play a role in the coordination of the beam,” which advances the development of anything with DNA. The year 2012, therefore, will bring a rosy version of the apocalypse.

If this sounds a bit familiar, you’re right. In 1987 Argüelles and his followers predicted, with worldwide fanfare, that Aug. 16–17 of that year would bring a Maya-Galactic “Harmonic Convergence.” That event turned into a global phenomenon, with thousands gathering at Earth’s “acupuncture points” to create a “synchronized and unified bio-electromagnetic collective battery.” Unfortunately, the date passed with nothing more than colorful newspaper stories and a Doonesbury satire. (A character explains earnestly that that the alignment could bring either “mass unification of divine and earth-plane selves,” or perhaps nuclear annihilation. “Either way there will probably be a crafts fair.”)

Galactic Guessing Games
Fast-forward to 1995. That year John Major Jenkins packaged several of these themes into Maya Cosmogenesis 2012. According to Jenkins, the winter-solstice point and the centerline of the Galaxy will line up exactly on Dec. 21. Arguing that this motivated the Maya to contrive the calendar to end on that date, Jenkins concludes that it will be “a tremendous transformation and opportunity for spiritual growth, a transition from one world age to another.”

In fact, astronomy cannot pinpoint such a “galactic alignment” to within a year, much less a day. The alignment depends on the rather arbitrary modern definition of the galactic equator, and/or the visual appearance of the Milky Way. There is no precise definition of the Milky Way’s edges — they are very vague and depend on the clarity of your view. (Jenkins says that he personally established the Milky Way’s edges by viewing it from 11,000 feet, far above anywhere the Maya lived.) So to give a precise visual position for its centerline is not meaningful.

Jenkins did acknowledge that the winter-solstice Sun actually crosses the center of the Milky Way anytime between 1980 and 2016. Elsewhere he expands this approach zone to a 900-year period, and settles for an imprecise alignment to which Dec. 21, 2012, is arbitrarily and circularly assigned. Real astronomy does not support any match between the Baktun-13 end date and a galactic alignment. The advocates both admit and ignore this discrepancy.

It’s almost a sidelight that the winter-solstice sun will never actually “eclipse” the galaxy’s true center, the pointlike radio source marking the Milky Way’s central black hole. Moreover, the winter-solstice sun won’t even pass closest to it on the sky for another 200 years. What did the Maya themselves think about End Times? There is no evidence that they saw the calendar and a world age ending in either transcendence or catastrophe on December 21, 2012. Some Maya Long Count texts refer to dates many baktuns past 13 and even into the next pictun and beyond. For instance, an inscription commissioned in the 7th century A.D. by King Pacal of Palenque predicts that an anniversary of his accession would be commemorated on Oct. 15, 4772.

In all of the Long Count texts discovered, transcribed, and translated, only one mentions the key date in 2012: Monument 6 at Tortuguero, a Maya site in the Mexican state of Tabasco. The text is damaged, but what remains does not imply the end of time.

The Secret NASA Conspiracy
Some advocates for the 2012 catastrophe say that what will actually cause the devastation is an alignment of planets. There is no planet alignment on the winter solstice in 2012. Nonetheless, advocates of doom connect the fictional alignment to astrological predictions or groundless claims about a reversal of Earth’s magnetic field and unprecedented solar storms. Many internet postings and guests on all-night apocalyptic radio have elaborated on these themes.

In particular, several threads of irrational thought have created an internet phantom, the secret planet Nibiru. It’s the bowling ball, and Earth is the pin. There is no such planet, though it is often equated with Eris, a plutoid orbiting safely and permanently beyond Pluto. Some insist, however, that a NASA conspiracy is in play and that Nibiru, looming in on the approach, can already be seen in broad daylight from the Southern Hemisphere. It was supposed to become visible from the Northern Hemisphere, too, by last May, but like a fickle blind date, it stood up those awaiting it.

Others on the Web, confused about the supposed alignment of the winter-solstice sun with the Milky Way’s center, have declared that the Sun is now plummeting to the Milky Way’s center and dragging Earth with it. The predicted result? Earth’s polar axis will shift. Most of what’s claimed for 2012 relies on wishful thinking, wild pseudoscientific folly, ignorance of astronomy, and a level of paranoia worthy of Night of the Living Dead.

So maybe the Maya were on to us after all. The clock is ticking. And it’s the end of the world as we know it.

E.C. Krupp, a Sky & Telescope contributing editor, is Director of Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles.

Deep brain stimulation, already established as a treatment for stubborn Parkinson’s disease, may also be useful as a therapy for drug-resistant clinical depression.

Probing into Depression
Research Blogging by Dave Munger, November 11, 2009

What would it take for you to allow a surgeon to probe deep into your brain to implant permanent electrodes that would administer behavior-altering electric shocks? Anyone undergoing brain surgery risks stroke and possibly death, and even if the surgery is successful there is the potential for infection, which would require even more surgery with all its attendant risks.

Tens of thousands already have electrostimulation devices implanted in their brains, and millions more may join them if the technique, called “deep brain stimulation” (DBS), gains wider acceptance. DBS was originally developed as a treatment for Parkinson’s disease, and it has been remarkably effective. The primary symptom of Parkinson’s is uncontrollable body tremors that can make it nearly impossible to perform basic daily functions like eating and drinking, writing, and even walking. An acquaintance of mine who has Parkinson’s opted for the DBS procedure and now functions perfectly normally—it’s impossible for the casual observer to notice anything unusual about how he moves. He went from being nearly incapacitated to being renewed as a healthy, fully functional person. Perhaps it’s no wonder that he was willing to submit to such an invasive procedure.

In DBS therapy, one or more electrodes the size of a spaghetti strand are precisely positioned in the patient’s brain, then connected by wire around the skull and through the neck to a pacemaker-like device, a neurostimulator, just below the collarbone. The neurostimulator is activated and deactivated by a magnet that the patient carries, so if a tremor is beginning to become disruptive, DBS can be self-administered in an instant, with near-instantaneous results. A video provided by the manufacturer of a DBS device shows how it works in ideal cases.

Now new uses for the treatment are being tested. One observed side effect of DBS for Parkinson’s is excessive happiness, to the point of uncontrollable elation—the sort of unhealthy, personality-changing reaction that everyone fears when they think of electrodes being implanted in their brain. Tuning the device can minimize this side effect, but its very existence suggests that DBS might be a useful therapy for clinical depression.

The problem has been that, while researchers understand how DBS prevents tremors, they don’t really know why it might work as an antidepressant. That, too, is beginning to change. The pseudonymous UK-based neuroscientist Neuroskeptic points to a study published in the journal Biological Psychiatry in October. “Depression” was induced in rats by forcing them to swim in a cylinder of water from which they couldn’t escape. The amount of time the rats spent immobile, not trying to swim, is seen as a measure of depression. DBS was applied, and, as expected, the rats spent more time swimming and less time contemplating the futility of their situation. What was interesting about the study is that rats swam more even when the brain cells in the area where DBS was applied had been killed. The only way the researchers managed to block the effects of DBS was to deplete the rats’ brains of serotonin. Not coincidentally, many antidepressants work by increasing serotonin levels in the brain.

“Joseph j7uy5” is the pseudonym of a psychiatrist at a US community hospital, who notes that DBS has been tested on a small scale for clinically depressed patients who are resistant to drug treatments. The success rates have been remarkable: Up to 60 percent of patients indicate a positive response, with 35 percent in remission after a full year. Joseph calls these results “astonishingly good”—remember, these are people who are apparently resistant to standard drug-based forms of treatment.

One huge benefit of DBS compared to other types of brain surgery is that it is fully reversible. The electrodes can simply be turned off or even removed if they don’t work or have adverse side effects. But still, the idea of brain surgery is a frightening prospect. Walter van den Broek is a Dutch psychiatrist specializing in treating depression, and two weeks ago he pointed to a new brain stimulation technique that doesn’t require invasive surgery. Instead of implanting electrodes deep in the brain, they are placed just inside the skull—a much safer procedure than full-on brain surgery. Three of five patients responded to the treatment—a similar success rate to the more-invasive DBS.

So if deep brain stimulation isn’t necessary to treat depression, is it possible that even less-invasive procedures might work? Another therapy that is garnering attention is transcranial magnetic stimulation (TCM), which uses an electromagnet to temporarily activate or deactivate regions of the brain without any direct contact. In 2008, the FDA approved the procedure for treatment-resistant depression.

But the pseudonymous blogger at the Clinical Psychology and Psychiatry blog is skeptical, pointing out that the study purporting to show TCM’s effectiveness may have been flawed. A large number of the study participants were excluded from the analysis and results, and there were key differences between the sham TCM and real TCM procedures that may mean the study didn’t have true placebo control.

Nonetheless, the tremendous success DBS has shown as a treatment for Parkinson’s disease and its early promise against treatment-resistant depression suggests that we’ll be hearing much more about electrostimulation of the brain in the future. As scientists learn more about these treatments, look for discussion and analysis of the results on ResearchBlogging.org.

Dave Munger

Forwarded to the Church for the benefit of the local community in the Rochester, NY Area:

Date: 2009-11-05, 12:59PM

Hello, I would like to start a support group for individuals that are dealing specifically with Borderline Personality Disorder or Depression. I would be interested in meeting at least once a week or more depending on what is needed or desired by other group members. At the moment, I am interested in this type of group and I am feeling out if there is anyone else out there that would like to give it a try. If interested, please respond and I will tell you more about myself and find out how we can make this work for anyone invovled. Thank you.

• Location: Unknown
• it’s NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests

Original URL: http://rochester.craigslist.org/grp/1452740337.html

——————————————————
From: U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) <fda@service.govdelivery.com>
Date: Sat, Nov 14, 2009 at 7:39 AM
Subject: U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) Daily Digest Bulletin
To: adriantremayne@gmail.com

Promotion of Food and Drug Administration-Regulated Medical

Products Using the Internet and Social Media Tools

FDA has established public docket FDA- 2009-N-0441 to receive public comment on promotion of FDA-regulated medical products (including prescription drugs for humans and animals, prescription biologics, and medical devices) using the Internet and social media tools. 

Educating the Public About Removal of Essential-Use Designation for Epinephrine

OTC epinephrine metered-dose inhalers are FDA-approved for the temporary relief of shortness of breath, tightness in the chest, and wheezing due to asthma. But the medicine in these inhalers is currently propelled by gases known as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). CFCs are harmful to the environment because they decrease the protective ozone layer above the Earth. In order to comply with an international agreement, the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, CFC-propelled epinephrine OTC inhalers cannot be made or sold in the United States after December 31, 2011. Written or electronic comments must be submitted by November 24, 2009. The FDA has established public docket FDA-2009-N-0374.

Providing Effective Information to Consumers about Prescription Drug Risks and Benefits; Request for Comments

FDA has established public docket FDA-2009-N-0295 to receive public comment on potential approaches that will result in written prescription drug information for consumers that is comprehensible, accurate, and easy to access. The docket is open to receive comments until November 25, 2009.

Submit electronic comments to Regulations.gov. Submit written comments to the Division of Dockets Management (HFA-305), Food and Drug Administration, 5630 Fishers Lane, rm. 1061, Rockville, MD 20852.

Pai You Guo, Marketed as Dietary Supplement – Recall

Audience: Consumers

GMP Herbal Products and FDA notified consumers and healthcare professionals of a recall of Pai You Guo, a weight loss dietary supplement, due to the presence of undeclared drug ingredients. FDA lab analyses of dietary supplements were found to contain undeclared sibutramine, an FDA-approved drug used as an appetite suppressant for weight loss; and phenolphthalein, a solution used in chemical experiments and a suspected cancer-causing agent that is not approved for marketing in the United States. The FDA has not approved the Pai You Guo products as a drug; therefore the safety and effectiveness of this product is unknown. The product is sold either in a box of 30 capsules or a bag of 10 g powder. The affected products were sold and distributed nationwide via the internet.

FDA advises that these products pose a threat to consumers because sibutramine is known to substantially increase blood pressure and/or pulse rate in some patients and may present a significant risk for patients with a history of coronary artery disease, congestive heart failure, arrhythmias or stroke.

Consumers are advised to destroy the affected products or return them to the company’s address in Westminster, CA.

Read the complete MedWatch 2009 Safety summary, including a link to the firm press release at:

http://www.fda.gov/Safety/MedWatch/SafetyInformation/SafetyAlertsforHumanMedicalProducts/ucm190531.htm