Healthcanc

Rape, now more commonly called sexual assault , is the end and the beginning of many things. It can be the end of innocence and trust, for as long as it takes to recapture that, and the beginning of guilt, shame, fear, sexual problems, infertility, mental and physical illnesses, isolation, and more. Tearing it apart, the perpetrator overpowers a victim, a person who protests, and having more power over this person, commits a crime of passion, of sorts, Those cries of " No , I don't want you to . . ."  (do whatever it is that is objectionable at the time) are overruled by brute force. We tend to think of a sexual assault perpetrator as larger-than-life, stronger than your average Joe, but more often than not, he's not. Sometimes he's the person you would never suspect, might even respect (think of teachers). When the suspect is a professional football player he is stronger, indomitable. Six years ago sexual violence was outed in the NFL.  Ben Roethlisberger, accus...

Most of us aren't Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) experts, but are aware of this thing we call the DSM-5, or Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders that therapists memorize. The bullet-point system of features at the corner of the desk is likely a well ear-marked spiral-bound copy of the bible.  Docs flip easily to a suspected disorder. "See?" we declare knowingly. "That's you."  Or more likely, "That's her." Some of us read the patient right away. He belongs to either the anxiety disorder family, or the affective (depressive-manic) disorder tree, because so many of us do. The lucky belong to both. The experienced professional also recognizes substance abuse, eating and gambling disorders, personality disorders, everything. Still, we work at that differential diagnosis,  want to narrow the problem down, if there even is a real disorder, one that has met the full DSM criterion. Not everyone has a particular disorder, but w...

We've talked about it before, ritualized grief. It is healing, if executed well. And at the end of an official year (especially if you do it the Jewish way) one feels different, as if a millennium has passed. We're returning from Ruby Falls, a tourist trap in Tennessee. I had the front seat of the van on the way out, but am in the back now, hosting three very little, dirty and exhausted children. They are engrossed in movies. I can stretch out my legs. Not a bad way to travel. Gazing out the window, road trip lyrics come to mind: Let us be lovers, We'll marry our fortunes together. I've got some real estate here in my bag. So we bought a pack of cigarets. And Mrs. Wagner pies, And we walked off to look for America . America, the Bookends Album Hard to get the  Bookends song out of my head. Now you've got it. That's what we do in my family, pass off songs. My son asked if we could take a short vacation, come for a visit this summer. So just before the year of mou...

Robin Williams I know he denied it, but it does seem that Robin Williams had bipolar disorder. So based upon the presentation, at the very least I'm going with a Bipolar II. You only need one manic episode for that one.   A depressive episode took his life. I get my first world news updates from Robin Meade's early morning  show. Her voice is calming. In therapy, people who work on a morning news show are at work at one a.m. They will tell you that to get through that shift: You drink a lot of caffeine . Many of us do, too, drink a lot of caffeine, if only in the morning, and it makes us a little  manic (I am typing fast) and we wouldn't trade the feeling. Half-caf is a suitable alternative.  There is a world of difference, however, between the manic feeling associated with two cups of coffee and the "manic" in manic-depressive, or bipolar disorder. We now really only use the term, bipolar disorder . I don't know why. One of my first posts on this blog, back ...

We haven't talked about family of origin in awhile, so why not get back to it. I was going to write about guilt, anyway. I have an optometrist who made me a pair of rimless glasses about fifteen years ago, glass.  "Treat these like jewelry," he warned. "They are very fragile." Random building,  random car, not the car or building in the story . The Story: Five or six days out of the week I swim. At the same time, as I walk into the looming multi-unit building, a frail older man in a white shirt and tie, black suit and hat, is leaving. A large SUV waits at the curb. The gentleman struggles with the passenger front door, steps up carefully into the car. He and his driver are likely off to morning prayers. The windows are dark, but I assume the driver is his son. I can picture the older man tossing the cane into the back seat. Hating myself for judging, it bothers me that whoever it is picking him up, for whatever reason, hasn't popped out of the car to help. I...

We are deep into summer and the activity level rises. Consequently, it's getting harder to function in the morning. I feel like a drunk, but grind the coffee beans, add water from the Ice Mountain water cooler, and pretty soon, can bless G-d, check my messages, and write a little. Always in that order, naturally. (No Keurig , although I understand there's a small one for $52.00. A thought.) Bike Selfie, therapydoc (1) FD and I try to take a bike trip on our anniversary. The day we met he won a Raleigh 10-speed in a raffle for Native Americans. He still rides it. We keep our bikes inside, no rust. And no home-invader would want them. Frankly, fixing  a bicycle, to me, has always meant filling tires with air, or perhaps grabbing a stick when the chain falls off to slip it back on. That's as far as my skill goes, and it doesn't matter because FD is a good bicycle mechanic, and Bob, who I think of as an authentic bike guy , is a bicycle savant. One night, heading home from ...

A screenshot of Alix Tichelman's Facebook page KSBW News   http://tinyurl.com/nxvkxjd All set, once again, to write about guilt and psychopathy, when Alix Tichelman's court appearance pops up in the news . Feast or famine.  On November 13, 2013, Alix Tichelman became famous as the prostitute suspected of murdering Forrest Timothy Hayes, a Google exec who worked on Google Glass. Alix is the one on the right. Who is she? A 26-year-old woman from an upper class Georgia family, her dad a CEO. She left home and lived on her own awhile, ran out of money and became a call girl, a prostitute with a heroin addiction. Not so unusual, that association, heroin and prostitution. We don't know if her addiction to drugs came before or after her decision to make large sums in the sex trade, but it would seem that heroin came first. Hayes, owner of a yacht (The Escape) lived in a 4 million dollar home with his wife and 5 children. He found Alix, or she found him, on a sugar daddy website...