Human Guinea Pigs

We have to go to England to revisit a chapter in our history that many Americans are too ashamed to discuss: experimentations on people considered expendable, such as prisoners, mental patients, soldiers, blacks, and handicapped people. The Daily Mail (U.K.) has the story.

Trigger-Happy

We are still harvesting the bitter fruits of an alarming trend: criminalizing actions by children that would not have caused any alarm only a few years ago.

Fox 31 (KDVR in Denver) has a video.

Arvada Police are defending the way they handled the arrest of an 11-year-old boy. The Arvada boy was arrested and hauled away in handcuffs from his home for drawing stick figures in school - something his therapist told him to do.

His parents say they understand what he did was inappropriate, but are outraged by the way Arvada Police handled the case. The parents did not want their real names used....

NEDAwareness Week 2011 (National Eating Disorders Association)

NEDAwareness Week is sponsored by NEDA (National Eating Disorders Assocation). NEDAwareness Week is a collective effort of primarily volunteers, including eating disorder professionals, health care providers, students, educators, social workers, and individuals committed to raising awareness of the dangers surrounding eating disorders and the need for early intervention and treatment.

NEDA appreciates your efforts, together we can accomplish a world without eating disorders.

National Eating Disorders Association
www.nationaleatingdisorders.org

New Feature of L.A. Comedy Club: Psychotherapy

In the Los Angeles Times we read that Jamie Masada's Laugh Factory will be using an in-house psychologist to help the stand-up comics who perform at this venue to de-stress.

One of two clinical psychologists will be on hand four nights a week at the club to treat stand-ups; the free, no-appointment-necessary sessions will take place on a therapy couch that, appropriately enough, used to belong to Groucho Marx.

"This is serious. This is something we have to do," Masada says in a recent interview at the Sunset Boulevard club. "From Richard Jeni putting a gun in his mouth and blowing himself up [in 2007] to Greg Giraldo taking drugs and overdosing [in 2010], I just can't stand to watch all of my family, one by one [self-destruct]....

"Research shows that there is a higher degree of depression and bipolar disorder in comedians," she [Clinical psychologist Ildiko L. Tabori],says. "Laughter is a defensive mechanism. It's one of the more mature defense mechanisms, but it still masks whatever it is that's going on inside."

"Weeds" costar Kevin Nealon, who performs at the Laugh Factory, says many of his colleagues are drawn to stand-up as a form of validation. "A lot of comics, they're onstage getting attention and approval. It's one of the reasons they do stand-up," he says....