Healthcanc

We're always saying it around here, sex is marital glue. But it isn't always. New study, University of Toronto, published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin,  summed up in last week's  WSJ . Worth a look.  What you learn: We have two ways of dealing with this particular bodily function, sex.   We participate  because either: (1) we want to feel good, make our partner feel good, or (2) we want to avoid a bad feeling about ourselves or about our partner or relationship-- the negative consequences of not participating. Whereas it might seem that our motivations to approach or avoid are relatively circumscribed and few, a previous study at the University of Texas (2007) found 237!!! motives to have sex, everything from spiritual closeness to the Old Mighty to retaliation for a partner's affair. That retaliation could be sex  with the partner, or with someone else. These are mind-boggling motives no matter how they shake out, and great fodder in t...

Rebecca Sedwick, suicide victim of bullying People are pretty disgusted by the news of twelve year-old Rebecca Ann Sedwick's suicide jump from a tower at an abandoned concrete plant in Florida last month. On Monday, the county sheriff, Grady Judd took a hard stand and charged two Lakeland teenage girls, 12 and 14 (12 and 14!) with felony aggravated stalking . Bullying, technically, isn't a crime; it is something kids do. But aggravated stalking is an adult crime across the nation, and juveniles can be just as guilty as adults. Who stalks? There are many reasons, and we'll discuss them below, but the behavior seems to be generated by either insecurity or sociopathy.  Those fearful of abandonment take matters into their own hands and punish the ones who try to leave. The sociopaths or almost sociopaths, are criminal-- they have no remorse, no guilt for the harm they cause. Sociopaths (legal determinations) are often diagnosed with personality disorders,  antisocial personal...

When patients come to me distressed about a recent loss, we go through the process of differential diagnosis because there are many types of depression associated with grief.  At some point we get right down to facts: How we grieve, or bereavement, is beyond our control. We're powerless for the most part.  Crying, tearing up, feeling adrift, lost, disengaged from the rest of humanity-- is a natural response to having lost something of tremendous value, something, someone, that we cannot see anymore, can't feel, touch, hug, cherish, even care for anytime soon, maybe ever.  It is especially natural when the object of grief was complicated, difficult to grasp, or the relationship suffered strain and miscommunication. I received email yesterday from Mario Trucillo, a doctor under the assumption that I'm a caregiver by trade. He asked for a link to his blog,   The American Recall Center .   It's about FDA recalls .  I'm put in the context of caregiver ...