Get ready for more sightings of balloons that aren't really all that especially there
Depresh Mode Newsletter: Now With Less!
Quick note
For the next while anyway, this newsletter will be a weekly affair, coming out on Mondays but not, as has been the case, Thursdays. This is because I’m launching a NEW THING coming later this month and, well, yer pal needs to not work himself into the ground in the process. Thank you for understanding.
Christian Finnegan on the pod
I’ve been making podcasts about and writing about mental health for many years now and I’ve talked with hundreds of people who struggle with one problem or another. And yet! And yet and yet and yet! I STILL get fooled about who might be struggling out there in the world, basing my judgments on factors that don’t have any correlation to predispositions toward mental disorders.
For instance, Christian Finnegan. I’ve seen him on tv for years and we’re mutuals on Twitter. I saw this guy who was funny, confident, good-looking, and so I surmised that he must be FINE. I know this to be an inaccurate predictor of whether someone actually is fine and yet I fall for it anyway.
In reality, Christian has had it rough. His family of origin was once five people and all that’s left now is Christian and his dad, who struggled with alcoholism and has now been sober for many years. His older and younger brother have passed away, both from heart problems, as has his mom, who struggled with borderline personality disorder for as long as Christian could remember. It was a lot.
From the show description for this week’s Depresh Mode:
In many ways, Christian Finnegan’s earlier career path made a lot more sense given the path he has traveled. He went to NYU, tried and then dropped acting, and then set out to be a very serious writer and artist. He worked in publishing and fancied a career where his writing would be at the center of his work, possibly as a monologist but never as a stand-in-front-of-a-brick-wall comedian. The serious path would make sense given that Christian reached he has experienced some serious stuff: the death of both his older brother and his younger brother, a mother who was unstable and dealing with some mental health issues, an alcoholic father.
Whether it’s despite the difficult times he had or maybe because of them, Christian did enter the world of standup comedy where he’s been performing for many years, in specials on Amazon, on several comedy albums and on shows like Best Week Ever, Conan, and The Today Show. He has acted on Chappelle’s Show and The Good Wife.
Prompt to AI engine You.com: write a poem about why donating to Depresh Mode is better than donating to Bad Bunny
I donate to Depresh Mode, It's a cause that's worth its weight in gold. For those who suffer, emotions overflow, Their hope is what we seek to hold.
Donating to Bad Bunny is nice, But the impact is not the same. Depresh Mode is where we need to place our trust, Supporting those who struggle with their mental game.
We can help them find the light, And give them the tools to fight. With a little help, we can make a difference, Donating to Depresh Mode, that's our mission.
(editor’s note: try harder on that last rhyme, robot)
George Santos may lead to more attention to pathological lying
U.S. Rep (no really!) George Santos has been found to be a lying liar who lies all the time. I don’t have the finger strength to write out all the lies he’s been caught in since he somehow won his election but there have been a lot. The latest being his claim that he was one of the producers on the ill-fated Spiderman musical.
The notoriety of Santos is drawing at least some attention to the idea of pathological lying as people try to understand exactly why the dude just keeps making stuff up.
Psychiatrists have recognized pathological lying as a mental affliction since the late 1800s, yet experts say it has never been given serious attention, funding or real study. It doesn’t have its own diagnosis in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM, the bible of psychiatry. Instead, it is recognized as a feature of other diagnoses, like personality disorders.
…
“It’s more the clinical category of people who tell excessive amounts of lies that impairs their functioning, causes distress, and poses some risk to themselves or others,” Curtis said, sharing the working definition of pathological lying that he and Hart hope will eventually be included in the DSM.
“What we found, examining all the cases, is that the lying appears to be somewhat compulsive,” Hart said. “That is, they’re lying in situations when a reasonable person probably wouldn’t lie, and it seems like even to their own detriment in many cases.
“It tends to cause dysfunction in their lives,” Hart said, including social, relationship and employment problems.
Telehealth comes to public schools
In case you’ve been living under a rock for the past few years, you should know that there’s a youth mental health crisis going on. More kids than ever are needing help, more kids than ever are seeking help, and, unfortunately, more kids than ever are finding help hard to come by.
In Los Angeles, help is now available to some students outside the building.
The Los Angeles County Office of Education announced last week that it’s offering K-12 students access to free telemedicine services.
That comes from a two-year $24 million agreement — funded through a state program — that now gives districts the option to make virtual therapy available to students, with the telehealth services being provided by the company Hazel Health.
Compton Unified is one of the districts which have chosen to opt in, meaning that students can now sign up for screenings and short sessions online, with those who need extra support sitting down for sessions with social workers, according to district leaders. Students can access these services from outside of school.
Because of the Chinese balloon, get ready for more UFO sightings
Writing in Psychology Today, Robert Bartholomew says that when there has been something frightening in the sky, rockets for instance, the reports of other frightening things in the sky, well, skyrocket. And this is the case even when there is nothing there.
In Sweden after World War II, there were widespread sightings of ghost rockets that were believed to have been fired by the Soviets who were occupying Peenemunde, Germany’s former center of rocket technology. This gave rise to rumors that the observations were of German V-rockets test-fired in an effort to intimidate the Swedes. An investigation by Swedish defense officials found that of nearly 1,000 sightings and several “crash” reports, there was no evidence that rockets were over-flying Sweden and they attributed most sightings to either meteorological or astronomical causes.
In 1947, a wave of "flying saucer" sightings swept across the United States as people began to interpret an array of ambiguous, mostly nocturnal aerial stimuli as a foreign or domestic weapon. A Gallup Poll at the time found that many respondents believed they were American or Russian weapons, while less than 1% thought they were "alien visitors."
It’s important, I think, to note that UFOs are a thing, in that the acronym stands for unidentified flying object. If you see something and you don’t know what it was, that makes it a UFO automatically.
Also of note: there have been objects spotted and filmed that people cannot identify. Which isn’t to say that they’re from other planets or the future or something, just that we can’t identify them and they’re flying and they’re objects.
Who do you think it would be good to phone?
