It is football season in the United States. That means Friday night lights for families with high school kids, and weekends filled with games from the 5-year-old MightyMites to collegiate and professional rivalries that now don’t finish until late Monday evening. With growing awareness of head trauma in recent years, this season is also characterized […]

Isn’t that what we all want? To be healthy, and if healthy, enjoy long lives? So why should it be any different for someone with serious mental illness? But that’s not how it typically goes. The odds have it that individuals with serious mental illness (schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders, bipolar disorder and major depression) […]

Having flown halfway around the world to get to Sydney last week, I decided that a visit to Uluru Kata Tjuta National Park was worth another 3-hour flight to the Australian Outback. A UNESCO world heritage site, Uluru is a sacred place for the local indigenous people. It is also perhaps one of Australia’s most iconic destinations […]

I am in Sydney for the Eating Disorders Research Society Meeting, an annual and global convening of leading scientists in the field. Having arrived a day before the program opened, I had the opportunity to spend a few hours walking along the famous stretch from Bronte to Bondi. As serendipity would have it, I got […]

I was walking home the other evening. Replaying the highs and lows of the day. Deep in thought. The activity on the street was barely a murmur in the background. Until my gaze fell upon an old, disheveled man wrapped in ill-fitting clothes and blankets who, with agitation and clear disorganization of thought, was pontificating […]

October 10th is World Mental Health Day. Every year this date calls our attention to a particular mental health priority. This year’s focus is Young People and Mental Health in a Changing World. The focus on young people is fitting given that half of all mental disorders begin by age 14 and given that suicide is […]

Imagine being diagnosed with breast cancer and being told that treatment services were not covered. Or maybe that half of the necessary chemotherapy sessions would be covered. The rest must be paid out of pocket. Or maybe that treatment is covered on paper but when you go to the list of in-service providers, you find […]

The most iconic moment of a Jewish wedding follows many beautiful and symbolic prayers and gestures that culminate in the much anticipated crescendo when the couple standing before their community break a glass – stomping on it and shattering it to pieces. It is then that their marriage is sealed. But marriage is a time […]

This week was Yom Kippur, the holiest of holy days for the Jewish people. It’s really big. Even those who don’t go to services regularly throughout the year take themselves to synagogue on Yom Kippur. It is the last day of the 10 Days of Awe. The Day of Atonement. A day for reflection and […]

Two kids grow up in the same home or same neighborhood. How is it that only one develops major depression? One kid grows up exposed to violence the other not. Who is more prone to anxiety? Poverty? Loss? Education? What do such circumstances and experiences mean for risk of mental illness? These are the kinds of questions […]