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Mental Health Break

Speed skating meets Mario Kart:

The Bellwether State

Ohio is pro-legal pot and pro-marriage equality:

Ohio voters also support 51 – 44 percent allowing adults to legally possess small amounts of marijuana for personal use, the independent Quinnipiac University poll finds. Ohio voters support same sex marriage 50 – 44 percent.

And here is the generational challenge for the GOP:

Voters 18 to 29 years old support personal marijuana use 72 – 25 percent, while voters over 65 years old are opposed 65 – 31 percent. … Voters 18 to 29 years old support same sex marriage 71 – 28 percent, while voters over 65 years old are opposed 59 – 33 percent.

How do you hold onto your elderly base and maintain some electoral viability for the future? Apart from changing the subject or refusing to talk about it?

The Sublime Genius Of Harold Ramis

Don’t miss this Tad Friend classic profile – released to the public for the next 24 hours on Byliner, on the news of Ramis’ untimely death. On a day in which insecure egos seem collapsing of their own narcissism, it’s worth recalling the calm, glib, hilariously assured sense of himself that gave Ramis his edge. Money quote:

Crude as Animal House was, it was also rambunctiously optimistic. By setting the film in the early sixties, the writers tapped the source of their earliest ideals. “Our generation’s revolutionary energy had slipped away after Kent State and the rise of the violent fringe of the Weather Underground,” Ramis says. “We revived it.” They revived it by making their obvious outsiders into not so obvious insiders. “Woody Allen had defined the American nebbish as a loser,” Ramis adds. “But we felt instinctively that our outsiders weren’t losers. They may not achieve anything in the traditional sense—they may not even be smart—but they’re countercultural heroes. The movie went on after the credits to tell you that these were your future leaders, while the guys from the ‘good’ frat would be raped in prison and fragged by their own troops.”

Yglesias Award Nominee

“There are several possible explanations for why Republicans would not denounce Nugent and his statement in unqualified terms. One is that they aren’t all that offended by what Nugent said. A second is Nugent is on their “team” and therefore needs to be treated with kid gloves. A third explanation is that they fear that in denouncing Nugent they will upset elements of the GOP base. Any of these explanations is an indictment,” – Pete Wehner, Commentary.

Sport As Masochism

“Training can’t make athletes numb to pain,” explains Michael Thomsen, “but it can condition them to tolerate it”:

‘I remember the best race I ever had where the pain was almost enjoyable because you see other people hurt more than you,’ one Olympic athlete admitted during a study of pain tolerance published in The Journal of Sport Behavior in 2007. ‘If nothing is going wrong and there are no mechanical problems during the race then sometimes you can just turn the volume up a little higher and then a little higher and other people suffer and you almost enjoy it, even though you are in pain.’

On the subject of the movie seen above, Prefontaine:

“Steve knew he didn’t have the speed or the talent of some other runners, yet he willed himself to be great,” says Linda Prefontaine, Steve’s sister. “If other runners were going to beat him, Pre once said, They are going to have to bleed to do it.”

Are Colleges Failing Their Mentally Ill Students? Ctd

A reader writes:

I find this thread very interesting, though not surprising. I was suicidal in college for a time, and I did get counseling for depression. And it helped, a lot. But I never, ever admitted to anyone on campus that I was suicidal. I can’t remember why, exactly, but I knew the reaction from admin would make things worse. I believe the Resident Advisers told us during orientation that they were required to report anyone who acknowledged suicidal tendencies, so that might have been the tip off that something was up.

What’s especially strange to me is that from my perspective, it seems like everyone goes through a time where they feel somewhat suicidal.

I’m sure the intensity varies, but I suspect everyone considers it at some point. I think it’s pretty normal, and natural, and most people reject it. Which is good. But the fact that you can’t acknowledge those kinds of feelings without triggering a massive over-the-top freakout from people who are supposed to be there to help you is very counter productive. Even acknowledging having had suicidal thoughts in the past sends therapists spinning – the only time the student counselor I saw in graduate school really pressed me on anything was when I admitted to having been suicidal in college, and she clarified several times that I wasn’t suicidal anymore.

In a way, this whole debate seems similar to the counseling for child molesters discussion. Mandatory reporting in both cases drives the sufferer underground where they can’t get the help they need and are more likely to act on their thoughts. And that’s not good for anyone.

Another shares an old story:

I was a law student working in the library one night about 20 years ago now, when a woman came to the desk where my co-worker and I were softly chatting and said “Excuse me, I’m sorry, what did you say?” At first we responded normally, but after she repeated this phrase like a stuck record about the sixth time and threw in a “what did you say about being submissive?” we ignored her and she wandered off.  After we started getting reports about her saying odd things to other students, I called the campus police – not sure what else to do.  I really just wanted to make sure she was safe, because she didn’t seem very functional.  They ended up taking her out of the library in handcuffs.

I have no idea what happened after that, though I later heard she was a staff member who had been discharged as a result of mental illness and had been trying to look up information about the Americans with Disabilities Act, to the extent that here poor, afflicted brain would let her.  It’s not just suicide we don’t know how to handle, it’s any malfunctioning brain.  And sadly, I doubt the response today would be any different than it was 20 years ago.

Another with present-day experience:

As a human resources management professor, I feel sensitive to the needs of students with mental health issues. I include a statement relating to Americans with Disabilities Act in all of my syllabi to let any student know that my university and I are committed to providing reasonable accommodation to any student in need. However, helping any student with a mental health problem is difficult.  Might I note that:

1) Does any entity or organization in the U.S. really do a good job handling mental health issues?

2) We have ADA, the Privacy Rule of HIPAA, and FERPA all interacting to cause a lot of apprehension and confusion among professors.  While I’m not a lawyer, I understand all of these laws; yet I’m not a lawyer and many times have to make numerous phone calls to even understand what I can, can’t, should, or shouldn’t do.

3) My employer has several resources available to help educate professors and to help students in need of mental health treatment. However, I cannot force a student to seek help.  I can only recommend.  I can notify the proper people on campus if I suspect a student needs help, and those people can contact that student.  That student doesn’t have to accept the help.  Unless the student poses an immediate threat to him or herself, a professor, or classmates, I can’t do much except make it known that resources are available.

In the wake of the Virginia Teach shootings, I know many of my colleagues have increased their efforts the help those with mental health issues.  That is, if we can determine symptoms correctly.  I mentioned I have an ADA statement in my syllabus, which asks students to contact me as soon as possible so we can agree on reasonable accommodation. What if a student doesn’t tell me? I have a graduate student this semester that demonstrates clear impulse control and manic behaviors.  I and other faculty members have discussed his behaviors with him. We cannot make clinical diagnoses but can recommend counseling services.  Even doing that carries a risk. What if we’re wrong?  In this case, the student came to us after several meetings over months and several demonstrations of inappropriate behaviors to finally tell us he has a problem. Now, almost halfway into the semester, we can try to get him help, if he accepts it.

How many of your readers have ever had a student tell them that he went through double-agent espionage training? That the Russians and Americans are both after him?  That his former girlfriend injected him with a tracking device?  That his own mother is a Russian agent? And … oh … he received military training and carries a licensed weapon. How safe would they feel? All you can do is notify the proper people on campus, hope he doesn’t get upset with you, and takes the help offered. It’s easy to say higher ed has failed, but how many of your readers have grappled with these issues? It’s not as simple as going up to a student and saying, “Hey, I think you have a mental health problem…let’s walk to the counselor.” We’re not trained lawyers or clinical psychologists, but most of us are trying very hard to do what’s in the best interests of affected students AND their classmates.

Headline Of The Day

Sometimes you have to just sit back and marvel at British punnery. From today’s Scottish Daily Record (via a reader):

Update from a reader:

“Obama Lama Ding Dong” is hardly original.

Chavistas Of The Free World

Moynihan considers the odd politics of Western progressives who support Venezuela’s “Bolivarian revolution”:

A pro-Chavez academic writing in The Nation argued that the massive street demonstrations across the country “have far more to do with returning economic and political elites to power than with their downfall.” The Guardian headlined a news story: “Venezuela’s hardliner reappears as Nicolas Maduro expels US officials.” That hardliner wasn’t Maduro, whose government is arresting regime opponents and strangling the free press, but Leopoldo Lopez, the opposition leader currently languishing in jail. Flip over to the Guardian’s editorial for the bizarre excoriation of President Obama for his supposed “support for regime change in Venezuela.”

It’s a thought experiment I often present to the Western Chavista, one that usually ends up demonstrating that sympathizers of the regime, both in this country and in Europe, have something of a colonialist attitude towards Venezuela. Because one wonders the reaction of these faux progressives if Prime Minister David Cameron, President Barack Obama, Chancellor Angela Merkel–pick your the imperialist lackey!–arrested an opposition leader who had organized peaceful street protests? Or if the CIA shut off the internet in politically restive cities like Berkeley and Brooklyn; blocked Twitter traffic it found politically suspect; and took over PBS, forcing it to broadcast only pro-administration agitprop, never allowing the opposition party to traduce the government across public airwaves? Or if the president forced the removal of BBC America from all cable providers for being too anti-American?

Putin Freaks Out

There was something rather delightful in the way that Ukraine’s refusal to be forced into a Euro-Asian Community of Putin-favored despots ruined the new Tsar’s Olympics. The revolt of the Ukrainians – even some supporters of Yanukovych -  exposes the stark limits of Putin’s approach to politics: always zero-sum, contemptuous of the West, posturing across the globe, acting the way dumb tyrants always act. The Kremlin is now touting the Friday “truce” agreement that its representative refused to sign. And so it is unsurprising that the Kremlin has gone completely over-the-top in reacting to the weekend’s epic events:

“If you consider Kalashnikov-toting people in black masks who are roaming Kiev to be the government, then it will be hard for us to work with that government,” prime minister Medvedev said. “Some of our foreign, western partners think otherwise, considering them to be legitimate authorities. I do not know which constitution, which laws they were reading, but it seems to me it is an aberration … Something that is essentially the result of a mutiny is called legitimate.” …

The Russian foreign ministry statement pressed all the buttons that will have the west and Kiev alarmed about ethnic and religious strife fracturing the country in two. It complained that ethnic Russian rights were already being violated after the parliament rescinded the status of Russian as a second language. “Referring merely to revolutionary expediency, [the parliament] is imposing decisions and laws aimed at repressing the human rights of Russian and other national minorities. There are even calls for a complete ban of the Russian language,” it said.

Now we’ll see how mature the opposition is, and whether it can control its more radical elements, which would only goad Russia to more brinksmanship. Fisher says it’s a positive sign that the parliament took the lead in pushing out Yanukovych on Friday:

What makes this an even bigger deal is that, while foreign countries have played a role, it’s ultimately Ukrainians pushing through a resolution, and doing it democratically. Most of the time, these sorts of crises end when one side is simply defeated outright, or cuts a middle-of-the-night deal brokered by foreign powers. But what’s happening right now in Kiev is being driven by procedural, by-the-letter votes in the country’s own parliament. In many ways, it’s a victory not just for but by democracy and the rule of law.

And that’s maybe the most amazing thing about Parliament so aggressively undermining Yanukovych — that they’re doing it democratically, within the rule of law, following all the rules of procedure and form. That’s just extremely rare in “transitional” states in the long process of developing from an authoritarian to democratic system, particularly post-Soviet states.

It is. But now the president is being charged with mass murder:

The Kyiv Post reports that acting Interior Minister Arsen Avakov announced on his Facebook page this morning that Mr. Yanukovych and “other [former] government officials” are wanted for “mass killings of civilians.”

Though the charges do not name the alleged victims, the Post writes that it is “presumed that the investigation centers on whether Yanukovych hired snipers or ordered riot police to shoot EuroMaidan [Independence Square] demonstrators in January and February.” At least 100 people have been killed in Ukraine‘s political turmoil, including at least 75 in the past week.

Ioffe worries that demobilizing the protesters’ armed contingent might be a challenge:

The so-called self-defense groups patrolling and ruling the Maidan these last few months are now highly organized groups of men who have tasted victory—and their own power. What do you do after you take up a baseball bat and topple a president? Go back to your day job? The new interim Interior Ministry head said he promised the groups posts inside the Ministry, but the devil will absolutely be in the details: there are a lot of these guys, and some of them really are extremists. Will there be room for all of them? If not, what will happen to the rest?

Uri Friedman says to watch the power struggle:

It’s also worth keeping an eye on what happens among Ukraine’s opposition leaders. The triumvirate —Oleh Tyahnybok of the Svoboda (Freedom) party, Vitali Klitschko’s of the Udar (Punch) party, and Arseniy Yatsenyuk of the Batkivshchina (Fatherland) party—may have united against Yanukovych, but their uneasy alliance is beset by power struggles and ideological divides, particularly between the mainstream opposition parties and the far-right Svoboda party (what U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt, in his leaked “Fuck the EU” call with U.S. diplomat Victoria Nuland, referred to as “troubles in the marriage”). Now the powerful Tymoshenko, who some activists support and others view as part of the corrupt political elite, has entered the mix. And the extent to which these leaders can win over the diverse mix of protesters in the street remains an open question.

Max Boot predicts shenanigans from the Kremlin:

We can expect a riposte from Putin before long, and from his allies in Ukraine who are down but not defeated. How the revolution will unfold no one knows, but Ukraine has had plenty of experience of thwarted upheavals.

This is, after all, the second popular uprising against Yanukovych, the first being the Orange Revolution of 2004-2005. Although thwarted in his attempt to steal that election, Yanukovych returned to power in 2010, managing to win a fair election after his political adversaries failed to show results while in office.

Bershidsky points out that revolution or no revolution, Ukraine is still broke:

Sweet as revenge may be, what Ukraine needs now isn’t a Yanukovych trial or tourist destinations such as Mezhihirya (pictures of gold-laden interiors of the former prosecutor general’s home are also popular on the social networks). Right now, the country needs $35 billion to avoid default, according to acting Finance Minister Yuri Kolobov, until recently a Yanukovych loyalist. If Ukraine is to get that money from the International Monetary Fund, the European Union the U.S. and, possibly, Russia, it needs to concentrate on finding ways to go forward, not look back at its ugly past. Otherwise, there will be plenty of politicians and bureaucrats hungry for a bite of the aid package, and their gnawing will go unheard in the revolutionary din.

And lastly, Brian Merchant implores us not to stop watching now that that the “excitement” appears to be over:

It’s certainly an overused technique, but framing stories as “apocalyptic” or “dystopian” gives audiences an easy window for empathy. We’re all afraid that our world will fall apart, after all, and seeing it happen anywhere gives us a paroxysm of worry, fear, and guilt. The bombs and clubs are coming down on our fellow humans, and we imagine their specter looming over us too—it’s healthy, I think, to stare, engrossed, with trepidation and sympathy.

But in order for the experience to amount to much more than looking at porn, we have to keep watching. The livestream is still rolling, you know. After the fire-licked glow and apocalyptic combat comes real, 3D-life: the scenes now filling the stream reveal the tumult of compromise, the measuring of loss, and a mass of people groping for the next step.

(Photo: A wanted poster showing a portrait of ousted Ukrainian president Victor Yanukovych on February 24, 2014 in Kiev, Ukraine. Ukrainian interim interior minister has today announced that an arrest warrant has been issued for the ousted president. By Rob Stothard/Getty Images.)

Mental Health Break

AC/DC finally gets the cello duet we all deserve: