It’s time again for “Dear Wendy Updates,” a feature where people I’ve given advice to in the past let us know whether they followed the advice and how they’re doing today. After the jump, we hear from “Excited but Lost,” who was eager to start dating a year and a half after being diagnosed bipolar and working on managing her disorder and getting her life on track. After the jump, find out how it’s going. Keep reading »
The smell of ammonia—a holdover from when the cat was sick—is the first thing I notice, before the dust seeps into my nostrils, making my eyes itch. The door doesn’t fully open, blocked by boxes in the entryway. The piles of craft projects, winter coats, and litter are pushing out from the walls, trying to escape outside. I have to turn sideways to get into the hallway, to the foot-and-a-half kept clear of debris so people can pass to the kitchen or living room. The dining room, with a hanging lamp and large oak table, was long ago lost entirely to the clutter.
There’s too much stuff. It’s disgusting. I hate it here.
But it’s home. Keep reading »
I love a meta-commentary as much as the next person, but some things are just tacky — invoking the Nazis while discussing health care reform, for example. T-shirts emblazoned with the words “I love anorexia” also fit the bill. Keep reading »
When I was growing up I had a friend who was as aloof as she was glamorous. She had a way of holding the cutest and most charming boys in her thrall and all the girls wanted her to like them. Whenever she had problems with her romances, her schoolwork, her friends or her family, she was very mysterious about it. Her glass facade never shattered in public and very seldom would she even admit to having problems at all. Some days, random Tuesdays or Thursdays, she wouldn’t be in school, even though she hadn’t looked sick the day before. She would call them her “mental health days.”
She seemed very melodramatic to me, as if this were all just part of her act. But it was also exciting. My mother is a lot like Betty Draper and she would say to me when I was growing up that if I was not bleeding, I was fine. That kind of mothering doesn’t exactly teach someone self-care: if I didn’t want to go to school, I would lock myself in my bedroom and shriek at my mother through the door that I wanted to be left alone. A “mental health day,” on the other hand, sounded so grown-up, like she was taking a “personal day” at the office and we weren’t just a couple of 10th graders. I could imagine my friend calm and collected, attending to her own needs like a cat licking his paws. Maybe it was melodramatic, but it still sounded nice. Keep reading »
“This is a sickness. I have an illness. Every time someone uses a bathroom and they flush, all the bacteria is shot into the air.”
— Megan Fox, who very well may have OCD, but nevertheless lacks a basic understanding of how pathogens actually work. [People via Allure] Keep reading »
It’s the time of year when production companies start working on pilots for shows they hope will be picked up to air next year. One such show is “The Quickening,” which will be written by the awesome Jennifer Salt of “Nip/Tuck” and will star the lovely Radha Mitchell as a bipolar detective whose medication stabilizes her mood swings but damages her otherwise brilliant talent for solving the crime. I gotta say that, lately, I’m noticing a lot of shows where the protagonist struggles with mental illness, and I think it’s pretty amazing since it can help people understand and be more accepting of the wide variety of mental illnesses out there. [Variety] Keep reading »
A Pennsylvania mother is suing her daughter’s school system because she said classroom bullying caused her daughter to develop anorexia.
The lawsuit alleged that in 6th grade, three boys called the girl “fat” and two more boys joined the taunting during her 7th grade school year. One year later, the girl checked into an in-patient program for an eating disorder. The family is suing Pittsburgh Public Schools because she said the school’s guidance counselor failed to deal with the alleged bullying, which would likely make it the first lawsuit of its kind. [CBS News] Keep reading »
Meet Nisan, a 37-year-old man who lives with his parents outside a suburb of Toyko. Now meet his girlfriend Nemu, who is about 12 years old.
Nisan’s girlfriend isn’t a real 12-year-old girl, fortunately. She’s a body pillow with a picture of an X-rated anime character on it, from a game called Da Capo. Nisan brings Nemu, who has wide, child-like eyes, a pixie haircut, a blue bikini and gold ribbons in her hair, to restaurants, karaoke and the beach.
A reporter for the New York Times magazine joined Nisan and his pillow for lunch to talk about their real-life “Lars And The Real Girl” relationship—glibly scribbling about their sick relationship with no mention whatsoever of how this tween girl fetish is one wrong move away from being criminal. Keep reading »
Ironically, hormones, the thing that causes women to become emotionally irrational at times (specifically once a month), may actually help ladies who suffer from schizophrenia. Dr. Jayashri Kulkami, MBBS, PhD, applied the old adage that there’s a grain of truth in every joke when she heard her patients were covering up for their symptoms by blaming them on hormones. So, she set up a study with 102 women diagnosed with the mental disorder. In addition to their regimen of medication, half of the women were given a patch of estrogen and that group reported a decrease in delusions, hallucinations, and disordered thinking. While estrogen had been linked to mental illness over a century ago, medical science is still trying to figure out the exact relationship. Surprisingly enough, the estrogen was even a success when tested on men! But there are side effects to taking these hormones besides moobs — it increases the risk of cervical and breast cancer. With these factors in mind, Dr. Kulkami is continuing her research and currently examining the effectiveness of an alternative known as SERMs (selective estrogen receptor modulators). [Health News] Keep reading »
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