Medication can help depression. But a type of therapy called cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)—which focuses on changing behavior, rather than talking about your childhood, for instance—can be an effective adjuvant to or even substitute for drugs. “It’s much more focused on what you seem to be doing and thinking that is keeping you depressed,” said Simon Rego, director of psychology training at Montefiore Medical Center in New York City. Some of its methods can be practiced at home, on yourself, with no special training. Here are tips for breaking the cycle of negativity.
Don’t catastrophize
One way to sabotage yourself is to take a single event and treat it as an ongoing source of negativity. “People who are unemployed do this a lot,” said Rego. “They’ve lost their job because of the economy and they personalize it.”
It’s also unhealthy to catastrophize—focus on the worst imagined outcome. Instead of thinking, “I’ll never get another job,” try to say to yourself: “I will get another job. It just may take some time.”
Stop ruminating
Ever clash with a colleague or fight with a friend and then keep obsessively thinking about it, amplifying the anger, stress, and anxiety associated with the memory? Known as rumination, this type of thinking is linked to a greater risk of becoming or staying depressed. While reflection is a good thing, and may help you solve problems, rumination does the opposite.
If you catch yourself ruminating, studies suggest it may help if you try to distract yourself, meditate, or redirect your thoughts. Cognitive behavioral therapy often targets rumination because it can be so damaging to mental health.
Retire your crystal ball
Try to stay in the present. It’s much more manageable and you’re less likely to blow things out of proportion.
Don’t dwell on the past
It’s pretty pointless to tell yourself you should have done this or shouldn’t have done that. You can’t change the past, but you can live in the present. Just accept that you made the best decisions you could have made with the information or resources you had at the time.
Reach out to others
A hallmark of depression is isolation. It can happen easily if you’re not working, or you're avoiding people because you're depressed. But reinvigorating or expanding a social network provides an opportunity to get support, perhaps even from people in the same or a similar situation, said Rego.
Stick to a structured routine
Even if you don’t feel like it, make sure you get up at a set time, eat meals at the same hour every day (even if you’re not hungry), and avoid lounging on the couch during the day lest it prevent you from sleeping well at night. If you can incorporate socializing into your routine, all the better.
Avoid black and white thinking
Depressed people tend to think in extremes: I’m a loser. No one loves me. I’ll never get a job. These thoughts can paralyze you and stop you from doing the very things that will get you out of a lousy situation. Try to think in shades of gray, said David R. Blackburn, a psychologist with Scott & White Hospital in Temple, Texas. Instead of “no one loves me,” try “lots of people (if not everybody) love me.”
Reality check your thoughts
If you're depressed, negative thoughts go with the territory. However, they are rarely grounded in reality. Once you’ve identified a negative thought, ask yourself, "Where is the evidence that I'm the most despicable human being on the entire earth?" There probably isn’t any.
Choose smart goals
Select a few simple, straightforward goals you can easily set and follow, suggested Rego. Those goals should be SMART, which stands for "specific, measurable, attainable, rewarding, and time-limited."
So for example, deciding you will have a job by the end of the week is unrealistic. But deciding to post two resumes online by the end of the week, on the other hand, is SMART. "It's specific. It's attainable. It's not that much effort to do and it could be rewarding," said Rego. http://tinyurl.com/7pvejg6
Rep. Paul Ryan, Republican House budget committee chairman, countered the Obama campaign's fresh attack on Romney's record at Bain Capital by citing the government's failed gamble on solar panel firm Solyndra.
Ryan, R-Wis., speaking on "Fox News Sunday," pointed to the "crony capitalism" of taxpayer-backed loans to well-connected firms like Solyndra.
"What Bain did is they used private capital to try and help struggling businesses," Ryan said. "What President Obama's doing is he's gambling with taxpayer money and giving money to corporate contributors like Solyndra, and he's losing taxpayer money."
The Romney surrogate drew renewed attention to Solyndra, the solar panel company that filed for bankruptcy after receiving nearly $530 million in taxpayer loans, after the Obama campaign brought up Romney's record at Bain this past week in a campaign ad.
The ad highlighted the case of a Kansas City steel company that went bankrupt in 2001 and laid off hundreds of workers -- in the years following Bain Capital's involvement.
Ryan pointed out Sunday that Romney wasn't even at Bain when the Kansas City company filed for bankruptcy -- he was overseeing the Olympics.
He said the Obama administration is taking its share of gambles too, only with taxpayer money.
"What happens when the government sees itself as a venture capitalist -- they end up picking lots of losers," Ryan said. "It's not working." http://tinyurl.com/7xehk7l
Three activists who traveled to Chicago for a NATO summit were accused Saturday of manufacturing Molotov cocktails in a plot to attack President Barack Obama's campaign headquarters, Mayor Rahm Emanuel's home and other targets. But defense lawyers shot back that Chicago police had trumped up the charges to frighten peaceful protesters away, telling a judge it was undercover officers known by the activists as "Mo" and "Gloves" who brought the firebombs to a South Side apartment where the men were arrested.
"This is just propaganda to create a climate of fear," Michael Deutsch said. "My clients came to peacefully protest."
On the eve of the summit, the dramatic allegations were reminiscent of previous police actions ahead of major political events, when authorities moved quickly to prevent suspected plots but sometimes quietly dropped the charges later.
Prosecutors said the men were self-described anarchists who boasted weeks earlier about the damage they would do in Chicago, including one who declared, "After NATO, the city will never be the same."
At one point, one of the suspects asked the others if they had ever seen a "cop on fire."
Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy dismissed the idea that the arrests were anything more than an effort to stop "an imminent threat."
"When someone was in the position (of having) Molotov cocktails — that's pretty imminent," he said. "It was not a completed investigation."
The men allegedly bought fuel at a gas station for the makeshift bombs, poured it into beer bottles and cut up bandanas to serve as fuses.
The suspects are Brian Church, 20, of Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.; Jared Chase, 24, of Keene, N.H.; and, Brent Vincent Betterly, 24, of Oakland Park, Fla.
If convicted on all counts — conspiracy to commit terrorism, material support for terrorism and possession of explosives — the men could get up to 85 years in prison.
Outside the courtroom, Deutsch said the two undercover police officers or informants were also arrested during the Wednesday raid, and defense attorneys later lost track of the two.
"We believe this is all a setup and entrapment to the highest degree," Deutsch said.
The suspects were each being held on $1.5 million bond. Six others arrested Wednesday in the raid were released Friday without being charged.
The three who remained in custody apparently came to Chicago late last month to take part in May Day protests. Relatives and acquaintances said the men were wanderers who bounced around as part of the Occupy movement and had driven together from Florida to Chicago, staying with other activists.
Court records indicated no prior violent behavior.
Longtime observers of police tactics said the operation seemed similar to those conducted by authorities in other cities before similarly high-profile events.
For instance, prior to the Republican National Convention in 2008 in St. Paul, Minn., prosecutors charged eight activists who were organizing mass protests with terrorism-related crimes after investigators said they recovered equipment for Molotov cocktails, slingshots with marbles and other items.
The protesters, who became known as the RNC Eight, denied the allegations and accused authorities of stifling dissent. The terrorism charges were later dismissed. Five of the suspects eventually pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges, and three had their cases dismissed altogether. http://tinyurl.com/7n4cxjl
Russ Caswell, 68, is bewildered: “What country are we in?” He and his wife, Pat, are ensnared in a Kafkaesque nightmare unfolding in Orwellian language. This town’s police department is conniving with the federal government to circumvent Massachusetts law — which is less permissive than federal law — to seize his livelihood and retirement asset. In the lawsuit titled United States of America v. 434 Main Street, Tewksbury, Massachusetts, the government is suing an inanimate object, the motel Caswell’s father built in 1955. The U.S. Department of Justice intends to seize it, sell it for perhaps $1.5 million and give up to 80 percent of that to the Tewksbury Police Department, whose budget is just $5.5 million. The Caswells have not been charged with, let alone convicted of, a crime. They are being persecuted by two governments eager to profit from what is antiseptically called the “ equitable sharing” of the fruits of civil forfeiture, a process of government enrichment that often is indistinguishable from robbery. The Merrimack River Valley near the New Hampshire border has had more downs than ups since the 19th century, when the nearby towns of Lowell and Lawrence were centers of America’s textile industry. In the 1960s the area briefly enjoyed a high-tech boom. Caswell’s “budget” motel, too, has seen better days, as when the touring Annette Funicello and the Mouseketeers checked in. In its sixth decade the motel hosts tourists, some workers on extended stays and some elderly people who call it home. The 56 rooms rent for $56 a night or $285 a week. Since 1994, about 30 motel customers have been arrested on drug-dealing charges. Even if those police figures are accurate — the police have a substantial monetary incentive to exaggerate — these 30 episodes involved less than 5/100ths of 1 percent of the 125,000 rooms Caswell has rented over those more than 6,700 days. Yet this is the government’s excuse for impoverishing the Caswells by seizing this property, which is their only significant source of income and all of their retirement security. The government says the rooms were used to “facilitate” a crime. It does not say the Caswells knew or even that they were supposed to know what was going on in all their rooms all the time. Civil forfeiture law treats citizens worse than criminals, requiring them to prove their innocence — to prove they did everything possible to prevent those rare crimes from occurring in a few of those rooms. What counts as possible remains vague. The Caswells voluntarily installed security cameras, they photocopy customers’ identifications and record their license plates, and they turn the information over to the police, who have never asked the Caswells to do more. The Caswells are represented by the Institute for Justice, a libertarian public-interest law firm. IJ explains that civil forfeiture is a proceeding in which property is said to have acted wrongly. This was useful long ago against pirates, who might be out of reach but whose ill-gotten gains could be seized. The Caswells, however, are not pirates. Rather, they are victims of two piratical governments that, IJ argues, are violating the U.S. Constitution twice. They are violating the Eighth Amendment, which has been construed to forbid “excessive fines” that deprive individuals of their livelihoods. And the federal “equitable sharing” program violates the 10th Amendment by vitiating state law, thereby enabling Congress to compel the states to adopt Congress’s policies where states possess a reserved power and primary authority — in the definition and enforcement of the criminal law. A federal drug agent operating in this region roots around in public records in search of targets — property with at least $50,000 equity. Caswell thinks that if his motel “had a big mortgage, this would not be happening.” “Equitable sharing” — the consensual splitting of ill-gotten loot by the looters — reeks of the moral hazard that exists in situations in which incentives are for perverse behavior. To see where this leads, read IJ’s scalding report “Policing for Profit: The Abuse of Civil Asset Forfeiture” ( http://ow.ly/aYME1), a sickening litany of law enforcement agencies padding their budgets and financing boondoggles by, for example, smelling, or imagining to smell, or pretending to smell, marijuana in cars they covet. None of this is surprising to Madisonians, which all sensible Americans are. James Madison warned (in Federalist 48) that government power “is of an encroaching nature.” If unresisted, it produces iniquitous sharing of other people’s property. http://tinyurl.com/7c5oe6z
Kathryn wanted pants. And short hair. Then trucks and swords. Her parents, Jean and Stephen, were fine with their toddler’s embrace of all things boy. They’ve both been school teachers and coaches in Maryland and are pretty immune to the quirky stuff that kids do. But it kept getting more intense, all this boyishness from their younger daughter. She began to argue vehemently — as only a tantrum-prone toddler can — that she was not a girl. “I am a boy,” the child insisted, at just 2 years old. And that made Jean uneasy. It was weird. “I am a boy” became a constant theme in struggles over clothing, bathing, swimming, eating, playing, breathing. Jean and Stephen gave up trying to force Kathryn to wear the frilly dresses that Grandma kept sending. Kathryn wanted nothing to do with her big sister Moyin’s glittery, sparkly pink approach to the world. Her little girl’s brain was different. Jean could tell. She had heard about transgender people, those who are one gender physically but the other gender mentally. Who hadn’t caught the transgendered Chaz Bono drama on “Dancing With the Stars”? “But this young? In kids?” Jean wondered. She had grown up in a traditional family in the Midwest, with a mother who’d gone to medical school after having children. Jean considered herself open-minded, but this was clearly outside her realm of experience. She went online to see if a book about transgender kids even existed. It did — “The Transgender Child: A Handbook for Families and Professionals.” Its summary read: “What do you do when your toddler daughter’s first sentence is that she’s a boy? What will happen when your preschool son insists on wearing a dress to school? Is this ever just a phase? How can you explain this to your neighbors and family?” Bingo. Tyler doesn’t really like to talk about Kathryn or even acknowledge she existed. “I’m not transgender,” he fumes when he hears the word, often spoken by his mom as she explains things. “I. Am. A. Boy.” During one of my visits a few months ago, he showed me their family picture wall, full of pictures of two girls in lovely dresses. “No Tyler,” he pouted. Those are issues that are easy for Tyler’s parents to fix. But in about five years, they will have to decide whether to put Tyler on puberty blockers to keep his body from maturing and menstruating. Using those drugs represents a leap of faith, psychiatrists said, though the effects are reversible if the puberty blockers are halted. The much tougher call comes when kids are about 15 or 16. At that age, they can begin hormone injections that will make them grow the characteristics of the opposite biological sex. That’s a method being pioneered by Norman Spack, the director of one of the nation’s first gender identity medical clinics at Children’s Hospital Boston and an advocate of early gender transitions. Those hormone treatments essentially create a nearly gender-neutral being, making sex-change surgery far less painful and expensive for young adults. But the hormones also make people infertile — a daunting and irreversible decision for parents to make when a child is 15 or 16. Only a handful have opted to do so, Spack said. Jean e-mailed me an article about the drug controversy late one night, the time that many parents stay up and fret about their kids. “See what we’re facing?!” she wrote. She acknowledges anxieties about what lies ahead. But Jean and Stephen aren’t harboring doubts about what they are doing now. “If Tyler wants to be Kathryn again, that’s fine,” she said. “But right now, this works. He’s happy. I just want my child to be happy.” http://tinyurl.com/7tecd74
NATO weekend is officially here. Busloads of Occupiers, anarchists, communists, and other radicals have been arriving for the past few days in Chicago. Events and “actions” began on Monday this week with 8 arrests that morning at the Obama campaign headquarters and continued that afternoon on the south side of Chicago at a protest organized by the Chicago Teachers Union and Occupy Chicago. That protest was against “corporate higher education” and, more specifically, over budget cuts to Dyett High School that led to the termination of an art teacher.
Actions continued Tuesday morning with a march demanding an end to detentions of illegal aliens, with a vigil supporting rights for illegal aliens and immigrant families. Tuesday night marked the beginning of a violent anarchist/occupy presence in Chicago, with a violent march on the city’s south side.
The march featured masked anarchists, communists, and occupiers chanting “f*ck the police,” which also happened to the name of the march (“FTP March”). Protesters harassed and taunted police, with support from some local residents, under the banner of ending police brutality, but there was some very vocal opposition from area neighbors who did not appreciate the presence of the protesters.
The event ended with protesters storming the Halsted L Station and attempting to illegally enter the city transit system. After Chicago Transit Authority officials halted the train, the protesters left and continued their romp through back alleys, knocking over garbage cans and using construction horses as well as dumpsters to create barricades, slowing the police down from following them.
More “actions” followed Wednesday throughout the day and concluded in the evening at the Wellington United Church of Christ, a member of the Chicago Coalition of Welcoming Churches, where Occupiers and radicals have been invited to use the church as a base for planning their actions. Buses began dropping off hundreds of protesters at the church Wednesday evening and were still arriving as of Friday afternoon.
“Spontaneous” protests and marches took place Thursday on Chicago’s north side, in Lincoln Park, near the church. Several hundred protesters took over Halsted St. as they did Tuesday, this time on the opposite end of the city. The protest was in response to the arrests of nine more Occupiers the previous night. Those arrests took place at the home of two Occupy Chicago activists over suspicion they were producing Molotov cocktails. The police claimed they found equipment inside used for that purpose; the occupiers denied it, claiming the equipment is used for brewing beer.
Today the National Nurses United held a large rally in Daley plaza downtown. There were about 2,000 in attendance. Nurses donned Robin Hood hats and watched a stage show mocking the leaders of the G-8. Bill Ayers was in attendance with his wife Bernadine Dohrn. The show was topped off with a performance by Tom Morello, the guitarist of rap-rock group Rage Against the Machine. Morello showed his solidarity with the nurses by wearing a red star sewn into his black shirt--a pretty expensive looking shirt, I might add.
During the protest I attempted to conduct several interviews. However, the Nurses Union--apparently worried about certain media being around--had given wrist bands to approved media to wear and instructed nurses not to speak to anyone that was not wearing one. When I inquired with the press relations personnel regarding this, and told her I was with Breitbart, she said they would not be doing any interviews with anyone from Breitbart, and then went over to her supervisor and informed him, “Breitbart is here.” Had you seen it, and you still may, you would laugh and probably imagine Andrew is having a laugh about it too.
Not so funny, however, is that these radical organizations like the National Nurses United are afraid to talk to media which they fear do not fully support their radical ambitions. The group chanted for a “Robin Hood Tax” and, of course, the latest in left-approved forms of taxation, an “international transactions tax.” http://tinyurl.com/cnxjag6
Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), the chairman of the Budget Committee, defended House Republicans' approach to student loan rates in message for new graduates. In an op-ed published Saturday by the Wisconsin State Journal, Ryan wrote of problems facing this year's new college graduates. He said even after almost four years under President Obama, new graduates face the same kind of problems that graduates faced in 2008, including high debt and low employment prospects. "Over half of recent college graduates are either jobless or underemployed," he wrote. "That's unacceptable." Ryan wrote about how the House-passed budget plan, which was originally proposed by Ryan, would tackle the biggest obstacles hampering job growth for new graduates, including the tax code, tuition inflation and student loan debt. "We need a fiscal and higher-education strategy that spurs economic growth, tackles tuition inflation, and gets spending and debt under control," he wrote. "The House-passed budget accomplishes all three." The op-ed is a chance for Ryan to reach out for the same audience that Obama has addressed in recent campaign-style speeches, directly criticizing Ryan's budget plan. Obama, speaking at a variety of campuses around the country, is looking for support from college students who are concerned about student loans — Obama is pushing Congress to prevent the current interest rates for federal loans from expiring in July — and employment rates. Ryan defended his budget in the op-ed while also attacking the president's plan. "[W]e focus aid on low-income students who need help most," he wrote. "Furthermore, we propose to remove regulatory barriers that restrict competition, flexibility and innovation in higher education. By contrast, the president's approach has proven woefully short-sighted. Instead of addressing the structural causes of tuition inflation, his policies have simply chased ever-higher college costs with ever-higher subsidies, encouraging students to go deeper into personal debt while adding billions more to the national debt." The current interest rate on Stafford student loans will double in July from 3.4 to 6.8 if Congress does not pass an extension. http://tinyurl.com/cgfbf5c
A new drug used to treat advanced prostate cancer may also help men if used early in the course of the disease, before an operation, researchers reported Wednesday. In a small clinical trial, six months of treatment with the drug, Johnson & Johnson’s Zytiga, added to standard therapy, eliminated or nearly eliminated tumors in about one-third of men whose disease had not yet spread beyond the prostate gland but was considered likely to do so. The exact significance of this must still be determined through larger studies. But researchers said that with breast cancer and bladder cancer, patients whose tumors are eliminated before an operation, by what is called neoadjuvant chemotherapy, tend to live longer. “This is the first time we’ve seen this degree of complete response in prostate cancer given neoadjuvant therapy,” Dr. Nicholas J. Vogelzang, who represents the American Society of Clinical Oncology, said during a telephone news conference on Wednesday. The prostate study is one of more than 4,500 that will be presented at the oncology society’s annual meeting in Chicago in early June. http://tinyurl.com/c36du6g
Borrowing a page from New York City, Houston and other cities, Newark could soon use money from the foundation started by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to offer buyouts to teachers in a cost-saving move.
Schools Superintendent Cami Anderson has approached the teachers' union with the idea, which has a twofold intent: give weak educators incentive to leave and pare what she calls the district's oversize payroll.
The effort comes as lawmakers in Trenton negotiate a bill to weaken tenure protections and evaluate teachers based on student performance, which is supported by Newark Mayor Cory Booker.
"Superintendent Anderson has two hands tied behind her back," he said at a meeting of education writers in Philadelphia on Friday. "If we could fire the 300 to 400 lowest-performing teachers, she wouldn't have a financial crisis."
In an interview, Mr. Booker said he hoped the buyouts would be a temporary fix until schools can oust teachers based on performance rather than seniority. Mr. Booker, unlike New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, doesn't have control of the schools and isn't part of negotiations over a new contract.
Ms. Anderson declined to comment, citing contract negotiations.
As charter schools have grown in Newark, students have been leaving traditional public schools, and taking funding with them. District enrollment fell to 36,068 this year from nearly 39,695 in the 2007-08 school year, while charter enrollment grew to 7,878 from 3,940, according to Newark schools figures. Meanwhile, Newark expects to send $148 million to charter schools next year, up from $93 million in 2010-11.
Union President Joseph Del Grosso said he is open to buyouts if the offer is sweet enough. But he said if the highest-paid teachers leave the system, the union as a whole could suffer from the loss of their dues.
"I'm not financially stupid," he said. "I have to understand that that would cause a hardship to the union if that was done at a mass scale."
In other districts, such as Dallas, less-experienced teachers were offered $1,000, while those with the most experience were offered $20,000. On Thursday, New York City Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott said he would offer buyouts to hundreds of teachers who don't have permanent teaching positions. Amounts would have to be bargained with the union.
It is too early to say how much the buyouts would cost Newark. But combined with other plans, such as professional-development funding, it could wind up being one of the bigger expenditures by the group that controls the Facebook money, the Foundation for Newark's Future.
As in New York City, Newark now has a group of teachers (84 in Newark's case) without permanent positions who often serve as substitutes or teachers' aides. To Ms. Anderson, they represent an $8.5 million drain on her $1 billion budget. The number will likely increase next year, when the city closes and consolidates schools as part of a reorganization. http://tinyurl.com/7um7lvw
368%: The jump since 2007 in the measure of consumer credit held by the government comprised primarily of student loans. If a student loan bubble were to pop, the government, not private banks, would be the one standing around with gum in its hair. Issuance of student loans has soared in recent years, hitting $867 billion at the end of 2011, according to an analysis from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, more than credit cards or auto loans. The jump has led some to classify the student-lending market as a bubble, comparing it with the housing mess that nearly brought down the banking system in 2008. But there are some big differences between student loans and housing. For starters, mortgage credit absolutely dwarfs lending for higher education — by nearly a 10-to-1 ratio. Troubles in an $8 trillion market pose a much higher systemic risk. The other big difference is who holds the loans. Commercial banks and investment firms held the bulk of the mortgages that were going sour when the housing bubble burst. But that’s not the case with student loans. Despite some recent signals of banks getting back into the student-loan business, private lending has been pretty much stagnant since the recession hit. Since December 2007 nonrevolving consumer lending by commercial banks — a measure tracked by the Federal Reserve that includes student loans as well as auto and other personal credit — is up less than 11%. Over the same period, total consumer loans owned by the federal government — a measure that includes loans originated by the Department of Education under the Federal Direct Loan Program — has more than quadrupled. The good news in all of this is that if a student loan bubble pops, there’s little chance of a systemic crisis similar to the one that hit in 2008. But there’s still a lot of bad news to go around. For one, though banks likely wouldn’t take a big hit, the government — meaning the taxpayer — would. That’s not great news for the deficit, but the numbers aren’t large enough to be a huge concern. At the same time, it’s much harder for the borrower to discharge a student loan than a mortgage. You can’t get rid of student loans in bankruptcy, for example. So there’s a much higher chance that the government would get its money back eventually. The bulk of any burden from a student-loan debt bubble bursting is likely to fall on the borrowers themselves. While that means the broader economy can avoid a systemic crisis, it will struggle with a younger generation whose spending power is constrained limiting growth for years. http://tinyurl.com/cwr568s
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