Laura Zera

Stories to Connect Cultures

You and Mental Health: A Specialized First Aid Class

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Many of us have had enough exposure to cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) training over the years that if someone needed CPR, it’s likely we could respond, regardless of the expiry date on that little white certification card. (If you’re not feeling comfortable with that statement, here’s a simple, one-minute video for hands-only CPR that can help.) In the U.S. alone, about 92,000 people are saved by CPR each year. Some are random strangers and some are loved ones; either way, we continue to train in and administer CPR because it saves lives.

Now let’s talk about what to do when a person’s mental health reaches a crisis state. In the wake of such tragedies as the Arizona, Colorado and Connecticut shootings, and with suicide deaths numbering around 30,000 per year in the U.S. (11 times that for attempted suicides), the conversation turns to prevention. We need to stop the tragedy from unfolding. But in the realm of mental illness, do you feel trained to identify the symptoms and equipped to do something to help? And what would the opportunity to have that kind of training mean to you? Continue Reading

Mental Health: A Link Between Depression and Dementia

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A study in the May issue of the British Journal of Psychiatry has concluded that late-life depression is associated with an increased risk for dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. After conducting meta-analysis on 23 existing studies that studied nearly 50,000 adults over several years, researchers concluded that adults with depression are more than twice as likely to develop vascular dementia and 65 percent more likely to get Alzheimer’s.

Holy crap. Them are some hefty numbers.Continue Reading

Mental Health: The Impact of Unpredictable Relationships

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Everyone would agree that it can really take the wind out of your sails when you spend a lot of time around someone who undermines you, but a recent workplace study published in the Academy of Management Journal tells of an interesting twist. An interactive model was developed to test three types of employee relationships within a police department in the Republic of Slovenia: relationships with social support, ones that were undermining and ones with a mix where someone was both supported and undermined by the same person.Continue Reading

Mental Health: Class-action Suit Challenges Insurance Coverage

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‘Mental illness is a disease, just like diabetes or multiple sclerosis, except the organ it attacks is the brain.’ We’ve heard this statement before; it’s an oft-used one in attempts to shift public perception with regard to the origins of mental illness. To me, it sounds like a no-brainer (pun intended), but in some arenas, the struggle to translate this into a practical reality rages on.Continue Reading

Mental Health: My, What a Pretty Brain You Have

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It’s true, we really are wired, and now we have gorgeous, multi-colored images to prove it. Okay, wait, our brains aren’t multi-colored, but the scientists who are creating these brain mapping images figured it’d be easier to sort out what goes with what, kind of like Garanimals, but for bundles of fiber. On a side note, does anyone else think that not making Garanimals for adults is a total missed opportunity? I do, and so does Ellis D. He asked this *exact* question seven years ago on Yahoo! and got nowhere, but I think it deserves far more consideration than it’s thus far been granted.

And THAT, people, is a prime example of why we need this kind of color coding to figure out what the heck is going on in our complex (and in my case, often tangential) brains. This mapping process is made extra tricky by the popular belief that our brain wiring changes after each experience. It’s no wonder people have been having a hard time understanding the causes and treatments for mental illness—we’re presenting researchers with a rapidly moving target!Continue Reading

When Your Mother is Crazy, by Jeri Walker

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There’s nothing I could say that would do justice to Jeri Walker’s moving account of growing up with a mother who has a mental illness except please read it. For those of you who have lived through it, her words will seem all too familiar. For those of you who haven’t, you will soon understand. Jeri is a unique and beautiful writer and I’m truly honored to share her story here today.

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When your mother is crazy and you’re five, no one bothers to explain exactly what that word means. Your state of mind is of no consequence: mom has center stage. So crazy means you get to ride in the red Chevy Nova with your mom and your aunt once a month to Spokane where the big hospitals and important doctors are. (Local facilities cannot accommodate her. Somehow, crazy is big-city material.) As Mom talks with the doctor—a distinguished gray-headed man who looks like Phil Donahue—your aunt takes you to a park that has a bridge over a small stream of water. Crazy must be good if it means monthly park visits.Continue Reading

Mental Health: Guided Self-Help Therapy for Depression

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How many times have you purchased a workbook and then put it on your shelf, never to be opened again? (Trois pour moi.) Now compare that to the progress you made when the workbook was tied to a class and there was an element of accountability—probably got more done, huh?

A variant of this concept was recently tested by the National Health Service (NHS) in the United Kingdom. BBC News reported that in an effort to cope with high demand for therapy, more than 200 patients who had already been diagnosed with depression were assigned self-help cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) workbooks. They were also given up to four guided sessions of approximately 40 minutes each with an adviser.Continue Reading