Before therapists and medication, were kids better off working out mental health problems for themselves?

That’s the question explored by psychotherapist Erik Kobell in today’s New York Times Cases column, which was inspired by a bar patron who overheard Dr. Kobell’s conversation with a fellow therapist.

“I can tell you one thing,” he announced, as I recall. “Back in my day, you didn’t have young kids going around talking to shrinks. . . .Back in my day, kids were kids! We worked out our problems on our own. We didn’t go crying to some stranger with a whole bunch of initials after his name.”

But were kids better off working things out for themselves? To learn more, read the full column, “Fake Nostalgia for a Pre-Therapy Past” and then join the discussion.

For all those dismayed by scenes of looting in disaster-struck zones, whether Haiti or Chile or elsewhere, take heart: Good acts – acts of kindness, generosity and cooperation – spread just as easily as bad. And it takes only a handful of individuals to really make a difference.

In a study published in the March 8 early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers from the University of California, San Diego and Harvard provide the first laboratory evidence that cooperative behavior is contagious and that it spreads from person to person to person. When people benefit from kindness they “pay it forward” by helping others who were not originally involved, and this creates a cascade of cooperation that influences dozens more in a social network. [continue reading…]

Today is International Womens Day.