A Web Page with Heart

SAMHSA has come up with a new feature, "What a Difference a Friend Makes," which offers tools to help people with mental illness & their friends, a chat room, and links to other sites (including Spanish-language sources).

Humor Break

One of my Facebook friends, Chato B. Stewart, gets a glowing report on another blog, "Sugar Filled Emotions." Here's a sample of one of his cartoons:

Thought for the Day, Part 3

"The essence of true forgiveness Is the giving up of all hope of having a better past." – Gerald Jampolsky

Keeping Track of Things

One coping strategy that can be helpful to consumers, doctors, and therapists alike is creating a record, to include journals and mood charts.

David Oliver of BipolarCentral.com recommends the following mood-charting system for persons with bipolar disorder at Moodchart.org. It's part of a research study, and the only personal information they have on you is your e-mail address, which is encyrypted.

DBSA also has a mood-tracking tool, which they call the Wellness Tracker.

Putting Your Poster Child on Display Doesn't Always Work

Dr. Danit Ein-Gar (right)


This may sound counter-intuitive, but an Israeli researcher says that the audience's psychological distance to the object of a charity needs to be taken into consideration.

"While the Sally Struthers approach — such as using a starving African child to personify the aims of the organization — may elicit an effective emotional response, this kind of 'victim highlighting' isn't always right when givers are geographically distant from the victim, the researchers found. And in some cases, says Dr. [Danit] Ein-Gar, it's not always appropriate. Child abuse and battered women's charities, for instance, need to protect the victims' identities. And in environmental NGOs, there are often no human victims — the victim is the world itself."