Or Stephen’s Ministry: http://www.stephenministries.org/

This is a driving point of HOP. I believe the answer is up front and personal. Grass roots.

Looking fwd to the carnegie post.

BTW, ’sorry to have used “griever” term. As a medical writer, I should have known better. We say, the person grieving, the person experiencing grief, etc.

(On to the article on Carnegie family later.)

But if grief turns into, what my grief therapist calls, morbid grief, that can be a mental illness like major depression and should be treated. A useful rule of thumb on major depression is that it persists for two weeks. And there is really no mistaking major depression. The person basically can’t function.

I’m convinced by what I’ve read that depression is progressive … the next episode can come easier, or you can sink deeper … that is why it is good to ask for help and be treated.

There are lots of risk factors–both nature/genetic and nurture/environment. You points about the psychological constitution prior to incident are spot on. Do the griever have a history of depression for example? And yes, it does seem that there is a breaking point, and the death of a loved one could be the straw the breaks the camels back as you say.

I recommend grief therapy.

How does one standardize the “correct” grief experience? It is not possible; the experience is unique to each and entirely subjective. Following, in my experience, are some variables that can differ greatly amongst those who grieve.

o The psychological constitution of the griever prior to incident. Is the one experiencing the grief a “well-adjusted” (whatever that means) person from a fully functional and loving family? Or, is this incident the proverbial straw that breaks the camels back after a life of disappointment and sorrow? [There will be a quiz @ end of discussion. Not really, no.]

o Similarly, how invested has the griever been in the loved one for whom he/she grieves? For example, there are mothers/fathers/wives/husbands whose entire existence has been defined by the existence of the one who is gone. Does the griever have optimal facets to his/her life otherwise to which to fall back?

o And, what about the presence/absence or degree of the griever’s support network?

o Moreover…Let’s say the griever,for the sake of argument, is a parent who has suffered a huge loss. Does he/she have other children who provide reason to hang on? And, if not?
(Personally, I can envision myself just “checking out” if this were not the case.)

o Is griever a “person of faith,” and to what extent? Whether yes or no can impact experience and acceptance enormously.

Any other thoughts? Let’s get the ball rolling here!

(I put quotes around that because “overpopulation” is relative. Is New Jersey overpopulated? Ultimately we know there is a limit to what each habitat can regeneratively support, but that limit can be shifted by better technology and better social practices.)

The program of the sustainable development we’re proposing does indeed address the issue, though I’m not sure we’ve addressed it head-on. But economic prosperity, readily-available contraception, women’s empowerment, and other factors lead naturally to smaller family sizes. And internal social pressures are the only factors that can effectively lead to a society’s limiting its population growth.

New NYT article reports on mental health survey of Gulf Coast residents:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/03/us/03gulf.html

What rings especially true to me in these comments is the “fear factor.” So many in our generation–probably more so with men–have had it ingrained in them that to seek help is demonstrative of some weakness. The opposite is true. When one recognizes the need to get help, he/she is actually taking an empowering step. The alternative–living with anxiety, depression and the nihilistic tendency attached to these–is choosing to live with treatable illness that, in all likelihood, had roots in childhood. We can learn to transcend our scripts. We can reinvent ourselves. In order to get there, we need friendship, kindness, and encouragement. In order to have these, more needs to be done to slay the stigma for once and for all.

Through this conduit, we are off to a good start.

Share on, brave bloggers! It is all means to a better outcome for us all.

Quoting below:

There has, however, been a tenfold increase in the use of prescription opioid painkillers like oxycodone in the past 15 years, caused by a shift toward more aggressive pain management. This large upswing is linked to a jump in accidental drug overdoses, particularly among 45- to 54-year-olds. The increased drug use might be related to suicide rates, Dr. Ortega said. Given that suicide rates among middle-aged Americans have been rising for five years, Dr. Ortega said, “we anticipate that the trend might continue.”

Myrna Weissman, an epidemiologist at the New York State Psychiatric Institute, offers a more intriguing theory. She believes that the baby boom generation has a higher incidence of depression than previous ones. Dr. Weissman, who first published her theory more than 20 years ago, said, “We did predict in 1989 that there could be an increase in suicide attempts and suicide as that cohort, which was showing very high rates of depression, aged.”

[Dr. Eric Cain] complained that all of the theories were gropes in the dark. “People put a tremendous amount of research and prevention into youth and elders,” he said, but when it comes to suicide, those in middle age have been ignored.

“For the second year in a row, middle-aged adults have registered the highest suicide rate in the country, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Historically, the eldest segment of the population, those 80 and older, have had the highest rates of suicide in the United States. Starting in 2006, however, the suicide rate among men and women between the ages of 45 and 54 was the highest of any age group.”

In 2007, the 45-to-54 age group had a suicide rate of 17.6 per every 100,000 people.