Published: August 3, 2010
An excellent article from Atul Gawande Letting Go about hospice medical care for dying patients in The New Yorker
People have concerns besides simply prolonging their lives. Surveys of patients with terminal illness find that their top priorities include, in addition to avoiding suffering, being with family, having the touch of others, being mentally aware, and not becoming a burden to others. Our system of technological medical care has utterly failed to meet these needs, and the cost of this failure is measured in far more than dollars. The hard question we face, then, is not how we can afford this system’s expense. It is how we can build a health-care system that will actually help dying patients achieve what’s most important to them at the end of their lives. link to read this article
Published: August 2, 2010
Image: iStockphoto
The University of Otago study, published in the August issue of the British Journal of Psychiatry, found that people who had episodes of psychiatric disorder between the ages of 18 and 25 were – by the age of 30 – less likely to be in full-time employment, were earning less money, and had a lower standard of living than people who had not experienced mental health problems. [continue reading…]
Published: August 2, 2010
In several experiments, the shirt of the man in the photographs was digitally colored either red or another color. Participants rated the pictured man’s status and attractiveness, and reported on their willingness to date, kiss, and engage in other sexual activity with the person. (Faces above and below are blurred for privacy.) PHOTO CREDIT: University of Rochester
What could be as alluring as a lady in red? A gentleman in red, finds a multicultural study published Aug. 2 in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.
Simply wearing the color red or being bordered by the rosy hue makes a man more attractive and sexually desirable to women, according to a series of studies by researchers at the University of Rochester and other institutions. And women are unaware of this arousing effect.
The cherry color’s charm ultimately lies in its ability to make men appear more powerful, says lead author Andrew Elliot, professor of psychology at the University of Rochester. “We found that women view men in red as higher in status, more likely to make money and more likely to climb the social ladder. And it’s this high-status judgment that leads to the attraction,” Elliot says. [continue reading…]
Published: August 2, 2010
Photograph: Martin Godwin for the Guardian
If you suffer from depression you are not alone – it affects 15.5 million in the US, and more than 3 million in the UK. Mark Rice Oxley eloquently talks about his own experience with depression in today’s Guardian
I can’t say exactly when it started. Maybe the day in July last year when a headache in the shape of a question mark curled itself around my right eye and made itself at home. Or a month later, when a liquid fatigue poured into my legs and set. The autumn perhaps, when short, surreal episodes would come and go, like I was seeing the world through the bottom of a highball glass.
“Life has become more stressful and there is more alienation than there used to be. People who meet disadvantage meet it very much alone,” says Tim Cantopher, a psychiatrist and author of Depressive Illness: Curse of the Strong
link to read the article
Source: The Guardian
