Never Simple Childhoods, Shorter Phone Numbers, and, Somehow, Race Car drivers?
In this edition of the newsletter, Madness is just a very large band
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When your home isn’t all that stable
My guest on the podcast this week is Liz Scheier, who has been in the book business a long time and has now written a book of her own. Never Simple is mostly about the effect of Liz’s mom on the life that Liz had to craft. The wrinkle: her mom had borderline personality disorder, and this led to some pretty extreme behavior and the keeping of pretty huge secrets.
From Mayo Clinic:
Borderline personality disorder is a mental health disorder that impacts the way you think and feel about yourself and others, causing problems functioning in everyday life. It includes self-image issues, difficulty managing emotions and behavior, and a pattern of unstable relationships. With borderline personality disorder, you have an intense fear of abandonment or instability, and you may have difficulty tolerating being alone. Yet inappropriate anger, impulsiveness and frequent mood swings may push others away, even though you want to have loving and lasting relationships.
Something that comes out a lot in her book, and something that I’ve been telling a lot of people for a long time, is that mental illness doesn’t remain solely with the person who has been diagnosed. It spreads to everyone in that person’s family and social circle and entire orbit. When it’s a parent, that illness can significantly influence the forming of a child’s reality.
So if you sense that something is wrong but you figure you’ll just deal with it on your own, please know it’s not just you going through it.
988 is easier to remember than 1-800-273-8255
July 16th is set to be the day for the National Suicide Lifeline to transition to being a lot easier to use when the phone number becomes simply 988.
The Lifeline is imperfect, of course, but incredibly valuable and important. So of course the funding has to be a friggin’ problem.
When Congress enacted legislation to designate 988 as the new Lifeline number in 2020, that law included a provision allowing states to place a tax on cell phone bills to support the service. Similar taxes are used to support emergency medical and law enforcement services through 911 call centers.
Few states have enacted legislation to impose these taxes so far. A handful of others have implemented exploratory committees or provided some funding for the rollout of the new number.
So now we have to just wait for fifty state legislatures to get their act together and everything should be fine! RIGHT?
And why is this so urgent?
The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), which allocates federal funding for the program, estimates a 25% increase in callers to the Lifeline for fiscal year 2022. The 988 number will only be operational for the final three months of that period.
During the first full year of 988 implementation, FY2023, SAMHSA estimates calls received will reach 7.6 million, which is more than double the most recently recorded metrics.
Okay, guys. Sounds like, uhhh, sounds like you’re working stuff out
I think this headline got my attention because it involved a bull, a wolf(f), and Toto, who is a pretend dog. And I like animals.
Red Bull boss Christian Horner praises Mercedes' Toto Wolff for mental health openness
Red Bull Formula One boss Christian Horner praised Mercedes rival Toto Wolff for speaking out about the mental health issues that he has dealt with for more than a decade during unprecedented success.
Wolff, an Austrian, told the Sunday Times last week that he had been seeing a psychiatrist since 2004 and has had more than 500 hours of therapy.
"All credit to Toto for having the courage to talk out about his issues with mental health," he said. "I think that it is something in this business that we are acutely aware of and something that we're looking to be proactive on.
Apparently these guys have been, I guess, testy?
Wolff and Horner waged a season-long war of words last year as the battle between their teams raged and Mercedes' seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton fought Red Bull's Max Verstappen for the title.
Verstappen won the final showdown, with Hamilton and Mercedes feeling robbed by a controversial late safety car decision made by now-departed race director Michael Masi.
Wolff called Horner a "windbag" during last season's verbal sparring and likened the Briton to a driver going the wrong way on the autobahn and still thinking he was the only one in the right, while the Red Bull boss had compared Wolff to a pantomime dame.
Pantomime Dame!
And now here are more pictures of pantomime dames than I need to put up here:
Being home makes depressed people more depressed
I mean, it’s one study and a pretty small sample size and the conclusion is about what you’d expect BUT it’s nice to see the information. That I’m reading from home. On a weekday.
The findings showed that those who spent more time at home within the 2-week study period reported more severe symptoms of depression. Further analyses revealed that those who were older and more severely affected by depression had spent more time at home during the two weeks prior to symptom reports.
The association between time spent at home and symptom severity was stronger on weekdays than on weekends.
I hadn’t seen the :30 lead-in to this video before. Huh: