![//www.democracymeansyou.com/brown/images/but-still-embarrassed-RED15.gif' cannot be displayed]](https://i0.wp.com/www.democracymeansyou.com/brown/images/but-still-embarrassed-RED15.gif "I'm Still Embarrassed...")
April 1st; no fooling! National “I’m Still Embarrassed by My President” Day. Wear a brown ribbon to protest the BS from the White House.
And thanks, Seth, for suggesting readers go to www.itmfa.com as well.
Embarrassed by the President Day 2006
Daily Archives: 30 Mar 06
Patients with Tourette’s have more self-control, not less
“People with Tourette’s syndrome can’t stop themselves from making sudden repeated movements or noises, so you might infer that they have an impairment in their mental control processes. On the contrary, according to a new study they actually have greater cognitive control than healthy people, suggesting the cause of their symptoms lies deeper, in their subcortical inhibitory mechanisms.”
They should have conferred with novelist Jonathan Lethem, whose most extraordinary achievement, IMHO, was his portrayal of a petty gangster with Tourette’s syndrome, the main character of Motherless Brooklyn. (Lethem, as far as I know, does not himself have Tourette’s.) He nailed this issue of the dialectic between disinhibition and increased control, and what it does to one’s experience of self in relationship to the world.
Tourette’s and obsessive-compulsive disorder have some epidemiological intersection and some phenomenological similarity, nevertheless they are not exactly the same thing psychiatrically. My only quibble with Lethem’s character is that his Tourette’s has alot of OCD to it.
Health Benefits of Moderate Drinking May Be Statistical Haze
“All those health benefits of moderate drinking may be based on nothing but a common methodological error in the studies, a meta-analysis suggested.” (Medpage Today)
Mass. high court says nonresident gays cannot marry in the state
“The court that made Massachusetts the first state to legalize gay marriage ruled Thursday that same-sex couples from other states where gay marriage is prohibited cannot marry here.
The Supreme Judicial Court ruled in a challenge to a 1913 state law that forbids nonresidents from marrying in Massachusetts if their marriage would not be recognized in their home state.” (Boston Globe) And Gov. Mitt Romney breathes a sigh of relief vis á vis his 2008 Republican Presidential aspirations…
Study Backs Equal Coverage for Mental Ills
“Providing insurance coverage for mental illness equal to that for physical illness does not drive up the cost of mental health care as many insurers feared, a new study of health benefits for federal employees says.
President Bill Clinton ordered such equal coverage for federal workers in 1999, and the changes took effect in 2001. Under the policy, known as parity, insurers were forbidden to charge higher co-payments or impose stricter limits on psychiatric care or treatment for alcohol and drug abuse.” (New York Times )
Parity is one of the rallying cries of the battle for fair treatment and against societal stigmatization of mental health problems.
