I recently read an opinion editorial from the July 20,2014 New York Times by Arthur Brooks who is President of the American Enterprise Institute.   Mr. Brooks wrote about ways to achieve happiness and what can get in the way of this.  He rules out wealth, fame, power as ways to happiness and even indicates…

I have already blogged about changing driving speeds in my former neighborhood in the blog entitled: It Takes A Neighborhood To Change A Speed Limit.”  In that blog I recalled an experience getting a speed limit lowered as I was told by the traffic engineer to first get my neighbors to drive slower and then…

To be liked or unliked, that is the question.  Please forgive my paraphrasing a line from Shakespeare’s Hamlet as I am refering to choices that exist on Facebook.  There is more attention being given to the possible impact of Facebook and other similar social apps on human relationships.  Facebook has been criticized for seeking “likes”…

An article by Robert I Simon, M.D. in Current Psychiatry, Vol 13, No 3, March 2014, talks about passive suicidal ideation and feels that active suicidal ideation [a plan] is also present. Dr. Simon believes that there is always a continuum of severity of thoughts and feelings and indicates changes in the patient’s psychiatric disorder.…

I have previously blogged about grief and wondered if our ability to reach a level of acceptance about our loss is important as the acceptance will keep us from continuing to experience the absence of our loved one.  This continued feeling of loss can occupy our brains and keep us stuck in the past.  So,…

I have continued to wonder about why grief is often so crippling and difficult to resolve. It seems that many people get stuck focused on past memories of the loved one who has died.  I keep wondering why the memories have to be so painful.  As I thought about this I remembered that I have…

A recent JAMA[2014;311(12):1218-1224] study by Kypros Kypri, Ph.D. et al that used an internet based screening for alcohol abuse followed by random assignment to a brief intervention or no intervention. Those who screened positive for alcohol abuse [Alcohol Use Disorders Identifying Test AUDIT-C score > 4] either got only the screening or also 10 minutes…

Recently I was speaking with Curtis Duffy about his career as a chef.  We talked about his realizing that even as a child he felt most at home in the kitchen.  He described his increasing awareness of how important this feeling of at home was. He realized that he could trust that this feeling would…

The simple response to that statement is because we are unique. Even identical twins are not really identical but each has unique features compared to their twin. So why is this important for our doctor’s to consider? Well our uniqueness means that we may not fit within a statistically derived range on blood tests or…

A recent article by L. Miller, PhD et al in JAMA Psyhiatry [2014;71(2):128135] reported on their previous 10 year prospective study of adult children who had a parent with major depression, showing that they had a 90% reduced risk for depression if they stated that religion or spirituality was important to them. The reduced risk…