Word: mental
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...depression is characterized primarily by unusual sleep patterns (extremely heavy and lethargic sleep, far less common than the usual insomnia most other patients suffer), fatigue, mental misery even in the midst of usually satisfying activities and often what the experts term `anhedonia' (utter lack of pleasure on a prolonged basis). This can greatly burden work and social life. It feels like a case of `mononucleosis' that never ends (I have twice had `mono' and the similarities are striking). Hardly anyone else has ever been aware of my inner mental states, and even renowned professionals have not been able to detect...
Understanding, mental health care and socio-economic support are so pitifully inadequate in part because few patients or families want to speak openly, facing social stigma and becoming objects of popular prejudice. Yet few others are in a position to understand or care enough to help the situation. It is bad enough to suffer such an illness without also enduring the ignorant and sometimes malicious speech and behavior of others. There are risks in speaking openly about one's condition, of course, but I have decided to bear such risks to provide a forceful personal testament which would be less...
...major change in public attitudes is required if vital measures such as greater health care access with follow-up treatments, vastly intensified research and minimum economic security from disaster (read: universal health insurance, with sufficient mental health coverage) are to be realized. We need many more leaders at all levels to write, speak and effect change on these issues. Among my leading heroes is Tipper Gore for exhibiting the courage to take up the burden of insisting that mental health care become a major national priority...
...some essential "awareness-imperatives:" Prevalence: You probably have no conception of how many people around you suffer some kind and degree of mental illness for at least some portion of their lives. Given estimates that at least 20 percent of the U.S. population fall into this category, this suggests that several thousand members of the Harvard community have suffered or will suffer a mental illness at some point in life. Many more of us will have relatives and/or friends directly affected. There are so many degrees and varieties of conditions that it is difficult to say much about the entire...
...number of the mentally ill may need to take time away from a school or job to get well, pursue new options, change focus, etc. (and many people with no mental illness may also pursue such paths as well). One of the best things to happen in recent years is the greater tolerance and affirmation of such varied life options: The old mentality that life is a treadmill of college, professional school, job, without any pause or variation, is fading. Yet the use of pejorative expressions such as "drop-out" continues...