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Trouble City: Decoding Detroit Violence
It's a puzzling question: How do cities become violent? What makes some cities more troubled than others and what can be done to tame them?Think about Detroit: home to nearly 2 million people, this...
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Does Same-Sex Marriage Improve Gay Men's Health
A new study published in the American Journal of Public Health provides insightful research suggesting that gay men were able to lead healthier, less stress-filled lives when states offer legal...
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Notes From The Infusion Room
[Note to readers of Chronic Healing: Over the course of the last five years I have needed to have regular I.V. infusions to keep my disease under control. I've kept notes throughout. In the next months...
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Why Are So Many Kids Committing Bullycide?
It's relentless. Virtually every week the media informs us about another new tragedy of a young person taking his or her own life because they could no longer tolerate being bullied. Our country has...
View ArticleThe Impact of Socioeconomic Status on Health
The scientific literature contains many examples of socioeconomic factors such as income, education and ethnicity directly contributing to the development of disease.Recently, the journal Ethnicity and...
View ArticleCrafting Marriage Vows to Fit the Times
Dear Dr. Alasko: Our daughter is mid-twenties and is marrying a man seven years older who already has a young child. She wants to compose their own wedding vows and she's looking for suggestions about...
View Article13 Lessons for Aging Well - Lesson 1
Lesson One: Continue to Do What You Did - Aging Our WayThis is the first in a 13- post series on living well, adapted from Aging Our Way: Lessons for Living from 85 and BeyondIf you were to write your...
View ArticleNew Hampshire Goes Normal
Among the ways that one can analyze Mitt Romney's win in New Hampshire, one approach involves psychiatric aspects of electing leaders. In A First Rate Madness, I tried to show that many of our...
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My Father, the Ethical Slut
My daughter, Alyssa, wrote this week's column. I am mourning the unexpected death of a close friend, who was a member of my family of choice. In her column, my daughter responds to my recent argument...
View ArticleThe Foster Care System and Its Victims: Part 3
The Consequences of Abuse and a Compromised SystemIn part one of this series, I talked about the paradox of the foster care system, and in part two, I talked about the problems inherent in the system....
View ArticleWhy I'm Not Going on An Information Diet—At Least Not Yet
I listened this morning to an interview on NPR with Clay Johnson, in which he discussed his new book, The Information Diet. I've not read the book yet, but it's now on my list --- though I'm not sure...
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Sexual Orientation Compulsions in OCD
Compulsions in Sexual Orientation OCDAs previously described, sexual orientation obsessions in obsessive-compulsive disorder (SO-OCD) are included in the OCD symptom category of unacceptable/taboo...
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How Not to Ruin a Marriage: A Veteran Counselor's Ten Rules for Fair Fighting
The following reflects the accumulated wisdom of marriage and family therapist Stephen Martin, MFT, who has worked with Northern California couples to resolve relationship conflicts for over thirty...
View ArticleAll AP? Not for Me! (Why Gifted Students Maybe SHOULDN'T Take the Highest...
Once again, I am sitting down with a parent to discuss her child's performance in school, specifically my English class. It's a parent-teacher conference day and I have, at this point in my...
View ArticleTo Cram of Not to Cram? That Is the Question.
Most students, at one time or another, have crammed for an examination. Researchers refer to this as massed trials, where objects of learning are studied all at the same time in one session. Students...
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Stressed women know it. Stressed men ... not so much.
"Stressed women know it, live it and spend time trying to do something about it. Stressed men, not so much." This is the opening of Sharon Jayson's USA Weekend article, Stress {men and women handle it...
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The Crying Game: Male athletes shedding tears
"There's no crying in baseball!" is the familiar lament from Tom Hanks as the beleaguered baseball coach Jimmy Dugan in the movie A League of Their Own. But is it really true? San Francisco Giants...
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Potential is a Terrible Thing to Waste
How to Get Out of Your Own Way …and Help Others Do the Same When you hit an obstacle in life and reach inside for inner strength to deal with it, what do you come up with? Since hitting that obstacle...
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Is Long-Term Psychodynamic Psychotherapy Worthwhile?
Long-term psychodynamic psychotherapy (LTPP) requires a longer time commitment with more frequent sessions than most other psychotherapies. Does it provide benefits that justify the added expense,...
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