"Military's annual physicals now require mental health assessments"

Via Reddit:  Air Force Col. Brendan Noone, an Eglin Air Force Base physician, said the mental health assessments are also part of routine physicals given to all airmen.

Noone said the assessment is completed online, with airmen answering a questionnaire.

"It is a fairly straightforward questionnaire, it should take less than 30 minutes," Noone said.

Noone said the questions focus on issues like quality of sleep and interactions with other people.

After completing the questionnaire, the airmen must do a phone interview with a mental health representative.

Any "red flag" issues are then referred to the airman's primary care physician, Noone said.

Noone said the goal is to ensure airmen are ready to deploy and are capable of dealing with the stress that comes with deployment.

"There is really nothing to be worried about. We have tried to make a change in the Air Force to let people know that seeking mental health help isn't going to affect your career," Noone said.

He said the goal is to make sure airmen get help when they need it.

(Link to story)

"Dutch people given the right to euthanasia because of mental, not terminal, illness"

Daily Mail:  Helena told the Mail: 'Jackie is only 45 but dearly wants to die. Our family believes she must be allowed to do so. She approached an end-of-life clinic and it has put her on the waiting list for an appointment.

'Her mood has brightened since. She knows there is an end in sight to her suffering and this has given her comfort.'....

Significantly, many of the mentally-ill patients had already been rejected for euthanasia by their own GPs. He explained: 'If someone has cancer and the prognosis is poor, doctors will shorten their suffering by euthanasia.

'But if you cannot see what a patient is dying of, or know when they will die — it could be many years ahead if the person is mentally ill — then the doctors find it more difficult to decide whether to end a life.'

So Pleiter's team offers to fill this gap. He got into the right-to-die business when his mother suffered a stroke at 80 and was left paralysed down one half of her body. She had always told him that if such an eventuality happened, she wanted to be helped to die.

"What is something that most people think they are alone in experiencing/feeling/thinking?"

Top voted answers from Therapists/psychiatrists of reddit:

Two things I've come across a lot:
1)Not caring deeply for family members. Especially for their children. They expect this instinct to kick in at some point where they'll feel fiercely protective, but it never happens.
2)Feeling "imposter syndrome", which is basically a feeling that you don't belong somewhere (work or school), that you're not capable, and soon everyone will figure out that you got there on a fluke and kick you out.

Feeling "crazy". I would say the majority of my clients at some point ask if they are crazy. It's sad that mental illness is seen as black and white, sane or crazy, and not a continuum that can ebb and flow over time.

Seeing shadows, figures, or other things or hearing murmurs, voices, or similar, during the half-asleep-half-awake state are not schizophrenic hallucinations. It's an in-between dream state and does not mean you have schizophrenia. It's normal.                           Also: sudden, unwelcome, sometimes even violent, thoughts that pop into your head are also normal and not indicative of psychopathology or sexual perversion. They're intrusive thoughts and as long as you don't think you're going to act on them, there's no reason to worry about them. The more you attend to them and perseverate on them, the more they're going to bother you. Like the pink polka dot elephant. 

Teenagers who think they are "special" and "mature for their age". It's almost all of them. Its kinda funny, actually.

"Johns Hopkins Psychiatrist: Sex Change ‘Biologically Impossible’"

"Transgender is ‘Mental Disorder'"

Dr. Paul R. McHugh, the former psychiatrist-in-chief for Johns Hopkins Hospital and its current Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry, said that transgenderism is a “mental disorder” that merits treatment, that sex change is “biologically impossible,” and that people who promote sexual reassignment surgery are collaborating with and promoting a mental disorder...

He also reported on a new study showing that the suicide rate among transgendered people who had reassignment surgery is 20 times higher than the suicide rate among non-transgender people. Dr. McHugh further noted studies from Vanderbilt University and London’s Portman Clinic of children who had expressed transgender feelings but for whom, over time, 70%-80% “spontaneously lost those feelings.”...

The transgendered person’s disorder, said Dr. McHugh, is in the person’s “assumption” that they are different than the physical reality of their body, their maleness or femaleness, as assigned by nature. It is a disorder similar to a “dangerously thin” person suffering anorexia who looks in the mirror and thinks they are “overweight,” said McHugh. (read more)

The Independent: Seth Rogen 'horrified' at suggestion his work inspired mass murderer's shooting rampage

"Seth Rogen has expressed his outrage at an article that suggested films he has starred in inspired mass murderer Elliot Rodger to go on a shooting rampage in California against women over the weekend."

Ann Hornaday, a film critic for the Washington Post, pin-pointed the work of the actor and famed comedy director Judd Apatow as possible motivation for the killing spree, which ended the lives of six young people and injured 13 more.

She wrote that “mass entertainment has been overwhelmingly controlled by white men, whose escapist fantasies so often revolve around vigilantism and sexual wish-fulfilment (often, if not always, featuring a steady through-line of casual misogyny).”

Seth Rogen

“How many students watch outsized frat-boy fantasies like Bad Neighbours and feel, as Rodger did, unjustly shut-out of college life that should be full of ‘sex and fun and pleasure’?” she continued. (read more)

Others at stuff.co.nz argue that Mental Illness, not Misogyny, made Elliot Rodger kill.

"What to make of a disturbed young man who rants about killing women in revenge for them not having sex with him, who then murders two, as well as four men?"

There's not much to like about Elliot Rodger - entitled, self-pitying, vain, insecure, histrionic, materialistic, racist, boastful and ungrateful - yet it's difficult for any of us to judge how many of these attributes arose from mental health issues or were simply the result of a nasty little mind. Our knowledge of him is incomplete... 

Much has been made of Rodger's misogyny, yet he stabbed these three Asian men to death and mutilated their bodies. Think about the sort of mind needed to do something like that, then move calmly on to your next victims? Ask yourself if they're the actions of a sane man? (read more)

What do you believe was the cause of the murderous rampage, misogyny, mental illness, both?

Study: "Funnymen's personalities are similar to those with mental health conditions"

"Madcap antics may be part of a comedian’s on-stage persona."

But the madness may not be just an act, say researchers.

The ability to make people laugh comes from a personality of the kind displayed by those with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.

Historically, the creativity of painters and playwrights has been linked to madness, but now British experts have found a link with comedians.

Top comment - Lee from London said...

Hence why people make you laugh and you say, you are so crazy! Thank goodness for the crazy people who make you laugh I say.

Historically, painters and playwrights has been linked to madnessNow British experts have found a link with comedians

"Dolphins players defend Incognito"

"To the accompaniment of circus-like music, turmoil surrounding the Miami Dolphins escalated Wednesday as players rose to the locker room defense of teammate Richie Incognito and questioned the motives of his alleged harassment victim, fellow offensive lineman Jonathan Martin."

Martin, a second-year offensive tackle from Stanford, left the team last week amid allegations of bullying and racist and threatening emails from Incognito, a ninth-year offensive guard.

The Dolphins organization, after initially putting out a statement that nothing of the sort had gone on, ended up suspending Incognito, one of Miami's most popular teammates.

"If you asked Jonathan Martin who his best friend is on this team two weeks ago, he'd say Richie Incognito," quarterback Ryan Tannehill told news reporters Wednesday. "It's tough for us to sit here and hear all that when we have each others' backs."

Martin has yet to talk publicly about the bullying he said he experienced, but his alma mater has come to his defense. "We're proud of Jonathan," is the tweet sent out today by Stanford football.
"He was a quiet guy. Never said much," Tannehill said of Martin, one of his protectors on the offensive line. "He was the same guy every day. ... Tough to see warning signs."

Many of the Dolphins players just find it difficult to believe the harassment was so intense that Martin felt he needed to leave. 

"We joke with each other. You can't have thin skin around here," defensive tackle Randy Starks told news reporters. "We're trying to clear Richie's name. He's getting a bad rap."

Gary Mihoces, USA TODAY Sports

"Mental health bills may limit young Americans' clout"

"High mental health costs for young adults threaten to undermine a key assumption of the Affordable Care Act: that insuring more young people will lower costs because they are healthier and require less expensive care."

The Obama administration estimates that 2.7 million people between the ages of 18 and 30 need to buy health insurance through the federal and state marketplaces to offset the health care needs of older Americans buying insurance as required by the Affordable Care Act. But while those younger Americans may not have physical ailments, they are more likely to have mental health issues that will now be treated the same as physical problems because of the law.

NRA: "They Need to be Committed"

LaPierre: They Need to Be Committed