#Up to 16 million Americans suffer from depression. If you are overcome by feelings of despair have lost interest in life to the point of not

[gordonwilliamsweb]

Damage to Children’s Education — And Their Health — Could Last a Lifetime

Before the pandemic, 16-year-old Na’ryen Cayou had everything he needed. He had his own room. A partial scholarship to a boys’ prep school. A spot playing trombone in the marching band, performing in parades all over New Orleans.

Then covid-19 blew through the Big Easy like a hurricane, washing away nearly everything that helped him feel safe and secure. Schools shut down. His mom lost her job and couldn’t make the rent. Their landlord evicted them.

Na’ryen and his mom now live with his grandmother. His mom sleeps on one couch; he sleeps on the other. He spent half the school year in virtual learning rather than in class with friends. Although he has struggled with math and chemistry, his mother, Nakia Lewis, said there’s no money for a tutor.

“He went through a real deep depression,” said Lewis, 45, a single mother with two older daughters living on their own. “This is nothing anyone could have prepared them for.”

As Americans crowd into restaurants, line up at movie theaters and pack their bags for summer travel, people are understandably eager to put the pandemic behind them. Yet kids like Na’ryen won’t rebound quickly. Some won’t recover at all.

After more than a year of isolation, widespread financial insecurity and the loss of an unprecedented amount of classroom time, experts say many of the youngest Americans have fallen behind socially, academically and emotionally in ways that could harm their physical and mental health for years or even decades.

“This could affect a whole generation for the rest of their lives,” said Dr. Jack Shonkoff, a pediatrician and director of the Center for the Developing Child at Harvard University. “All kids will be affected. Some will get through this and be fine. They will learn from it and grow. But lots of kids are going to be in big trouble.”

Many kids will go back to school this fall without having mastered the previous year’s curriculum. Some kids have disappeared from school altogether, and educators worry that more students will drop out. Between school closures and reduced instructional time, the average U.S. child has lost the equivalent of five to nine months of learning during the pandemic, according to a report from McKinsey & Co.

Educational losses have been even greater for some minorities. Black and Hispanic students — whose parents are more likely to have lost jobs and whose schools were less likely to reopen for in-person instruction — missed six to 12 months of learning, according to the McKinsey report.

Missing educational opportunities doesn’t just deprive kids of better careers; it can also cost them years of life. In study after study, researchers have found that people with less education die younger than those with more.

Schools across the country were closed for an average of 54 days in spring 2020, and many provided little to no virtual instruction, said Dr. Dimitri Christakis, director of the Center for Child Health, Behavior and Development at the Seattle Children’s Research Institute. A study he co-authored found the learning that kids missed during that time could shorten an elementary school boy’s life by eight months and a girl’s by more than five months.

The total loss of life would be even larger when factoring in the loss of instructional time in the school year that just ended, Christakis said. “We’ve interrupted children’s education, and it’s going to have a significant impact on their health and longevity,” he said. “The effects will linger a very long time.”

Assaulted on All Sides

The double hit from the pandemic, which has impoverished millions of children and deprived them of classroom time, will be too much for some to overcome.

“Living in poverty, even as a child, has health consequences for decades to come,” said Dr. Hilary Seligman, a professor at the University of California-San Francisco. “Children in poverty will have higher risk of obesity, cardiovascular disease and diabetes.”

A growing body of research shows that poverty reshapes the way children’s brains develop, altering both the structure of the brain and the chemicals that transmit signals. These changes can alter how children react to stress and reduce their long-term health and educational achievements.

“Adversity literally shapes the developing brain,” said Shonkoff, of Harvard. “It affects your memory, your ability to organize information, to control impulses.”

Chronic stress in children can lead to persistent inflammation that damages the immune system, raises blood sugar and accelerates hardening of the arteries. The heart disease that kills someone in midlife can actually begin in childhood, Shonkoff said.

“What happens to children early on doesn’t just affect early language and school readiness, but the early foundations of lifelong health,” he said.

More Kids Going Hungry

The pandemic has deprived millions of children of school-related services that normally blunt the harm caused by poverty.

From March to May 2020, students missed more than 1.1 billion free or reduced-price meals that would have been provided in school.

Children who experience even occasional “food insecurity” suffer two to four times as many health problems as other kids at the same income level, said Dr. Deborah Frank, director of the Grow Clinic for Children at Boston Medical Center.

Kids who don’t consistently eat nutritious meals are more likely to develop anemia, more likely to be hospitalized and more susceptible to lead poisoning, Frank said. They also are more likely to behave aggressively and suffer from hyperactivity, depression and anxiety.

The consequences of food insecurity last well into adulthood, she said, increasing the risk of substance abuse, arrest and suicidal thoughts. “There’s going to be educational and emotional fallout that won’t disappear right away,” Frank said. “These kids have endured a year and a half of deprivation. You can’t sweep all that under the rug.”

Kids at the Breaking Point

Young people are already showing signs of strain.

The proportion of emergency room visits related to mental health among kids 12 to 17 increased 31% from 2019 to 2020, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Although overall suicide deaths haven’t increased during the pandemic, as many feared, teens are making more attempts. ERs treated 50% more adolescent girls and 4% more boys for suspected suicide attempts in February and March 2021 than in those months the year before.

Diagnoses of obsessive-compulsive disorder have soared 41% among girls 12 to 18, according to a June report from Epic Health Research Network. Diagnoses of eating disorders have jumped 38% among girls and 5% among boys.

Many children separated from their peers during the pandemic have been depressed and anxious, said Dr. Lisa Tuchman, chief of adolescent and young adult medicine at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, D.C.

“Mental illness thrives in isolation,” Tuchman said. “The longer the behaviors and thoughts persist, the more entrenched they become and the harder they are to interrupt.”

Falling Behind in School

The loss of educational opportunities has been far more extensive than many realize. Although the majority of students were back in classrooms by the end of the last school year, most spent a large part of the year in virtual learning.

And while some students thrive in virtual classes, studies generally find they provide an inferior education to in-person instruction, partly because students are less engaged. Just 60% of students consistently participated in distance learning, recent surveys found.

Test scores show students have fallen behind in math and reading. And those scores likely underestimate the damage, given that some of the most vulnerable kids weren’t able to report to school for the exams.

An estimated 3 million marginalized students — including those who are homeless or in foster care — received no instruction during the past school year, either because they had no computer or internet access, had to leave school to work or faced other challenges, according to Bellwether Education Partners, a nonprofit that focuses on disadvantaged students.

Less-educated students can expect to earn less after they leave school.

Lost educational time will cost the average child $61,000 to $82,000 in lifetime earnings, McKinsey concluded. Lifetime earning losses are predicted to be twice as great for Black and Hispanic students as for whites.

“Many of the teens I see have given up on school and are working instead,” said Dr. Sara Bode, a pediatrician at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. “It’s helping their families in the short term, but what does it mean for their future?”

Learning From Katrina

Experience with natural disasters and teacher strikes suggests that even relatively short interruptions in education can set children back years, said McKinsey analyst Jimmy Sarakatsannis, co-author of a 2020 report, “COVID-19 and Student Learning in the United States: The Hurt Could Last a Lifetime.”

When Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in 2005, for example, it disrupted the education of 187,000 Louisiana public school students.

Katrina left 80% of the city under water. Although New Orleans students missed an average of five weeks of learning, children wound up two years behind peers not affected by the hurricane, said Douglas Harris, professor and chair of economics at Tulane University.

Na’ryen Cayou was just 2 months old when Katrina submerged his house, leaving the family homeless. He contracted whooping cough in an emergency shelter, the first of four moves in eight months. His sister, O’re’ion Lewis, then 4, didn’t attend school at all that year. When she finally began prekindergarten at age 5, the other kids “were already ahead of her,” mom Nakia Lewis said. For a time, teachers even mislabeled O’re’ion as having dyslexia. It took five years — from prekindergarten until fourth grade — before she finally caught up with her peers, Lewis said.

It will be years before researchers know how far behind the pandemic will have left American kids.

After Katrina, 14% to 20% of students never returned to school, according to the McKinsey report. “As kids fall further behind, they feel hopeless; they don’t engage,” said Sarakatsannis, one of its authors.

Under normal circumstances, high school students who miss more than 10 days of school are 36% more likely to drop out. Based on the number of absences during the pandemic, dropout rates could increase by 2% to 9%, with up to 1.1 million kids quitting school, Sarakatsannis said.

Communities need to find ways to repair the damage children have suffered, said Dr. Gabrielle Shapiro, chair of the American Psychiatric Association’s Council on Children, Adolescents and their Families. “How we behave as a society now will determine the depth of the impact on the younger generation.”

Nakia Lewis is hoping for better days.

O’re’ion is now 20 and studying nursing at community college. Although her classes were virtual last year, she expects to attend class in person in the fall.

Lewis recently landed a job as a manager at a Shoney’s restaurant and is looking for an affordable home. She looks forward to reclaiming her furniture, which went into storage — at $375 a month — when she was evicted.

She said she’s relieved that Na’ryen’s mood has improved. He found a summer job working part time at a food market and will begin marching band practice this summer.

“He is happy and I’m happy for him,” Lewis said. “Now I just have to worry about everything else.”

KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.

USE OUR CONTENT

This story can be republished for free (details).

Damage to Children’s Education — And Their Health — Could Last a Lifetime published first on https://nootropicspowdersupplier.tumblr.com/

[stephenmccull]

Damage to Children’s Education — And Their Health — Could Last a Lifetime

Before the pandemic, 16-year-old Na’ryen Cayou had everything he needed. He had his own room. A partial scholarship to a boys’ prep school. A spot playing trombone in the marching band, performing in parades all over New Orleans.

Then covid-19 blew through the Big Easy like a hurricane, washing away nearly everything that helped him feel safe and secure. Schools shut down. His mom lost her job and couldn’t make the rent. Their landlord evicted them.

Na’ryen and his mom now live with his grandmother. His mom sleeps on one couch; he sleeps on the other. He spent half the school year in virtual learning rather than in class with friends. Although he has struggled with math and chemistry, his mother, Nakia Lewis, said there’s no money for a tutor.

“He went through a real deep depression,” said Lewis, 45, a single mother with two older daughters living on their own. “This is nothing anyone could have prepared them for.”

As Americans crowd into restaurants, line up at movie theaters and pack their bags for summer travel, people are understandably eager to put the pandemic behind them. Yet kids like Na’ryen won’t rebound quickly. Some won’t recover at all.

After more than a year of isolation, widespread financial insecurity and the loss of an unprecedented amount of classroom time, experts say many of the youngest Americans have fallen behind socially, academically and emotionally in ways that could harm their physical and mental health for years or even decades.

“This could affect a whole generation for the rest of their lives,” said Dr. Jack Shonkoff, a pediatrician and director of the Center for the Developing Child at Harvard University. “All kids will be affected. Some will get through this and be fine. They will learn from it and grow. But lots of kids are going to be in big trouble.”

Many kids will go back to school this fall without having mastered the previous year’s curriculum. Some kids have disappeared from school altogether, and educators worry that more students will drop out. Between school closures and reduced instructional time, the average U.S. child has lost the equivalent of five to nine months of learning during the pandemic, according to a report from McKinsey & Co.

Educational losses have been even greater for some minorities. Black and Hispanic students — whose parents are more likely to have lost jobs and whose schools were less likely to reopen for in-person instruction — missed six to 12 months of learning, according to the McKinsey report.

Missing educational opportunities doesn’t just deprive kids of better careers; it can also cost them years of life. In study after study, researchers have found that people with less education die younger than those with more.

Schools across the country were closed for an average of 54 days in spring 2020, and many provided little to no virtual instruction, said Dr. Dimitri Christakis, director of the Center for Child Health, Behavior and Development at the Seattle Children’s Research Institute. A study he co-authored found the learning that kids missed during that time could shorten an elementary school boy’s life by eight months and a girl’s by more than five months.

The total loss of life would be even larger when factoring in the loss of instructional time in the school year that just ended, Christakis said. “We’ve interrupted children’s education, and it’s going to have a significant impact on their health and longevity,” he said. “The effects will linger a very long time.”

Assaulted on All Sides

The double hit from the pandemic, which has impoverished millions of children and deprived them of classroom time, will be too much for some to overcome.

“Living in poverty, even as a child, has health consequences for decades to come,” said Dr. Hilary Seligman, a professor at the University of California-San Francisco. “Children in poverty will have higher risk of obesity, cardiovascular disease and diabetes.”

A growing body of research shows that poverty reshapes the way children’s brains develop, altering both the structure of the brain and the chemicals that transmit signals. These changes can alter how children react to stress and reduce their long-term health and educational achievements.

“Adversity literally shapes the developing brain,” said Shonkoff, of Harvard. “It affects your memory, your ability to organize information, to control impulses.”

Chronic stress in children can lead to persistent inflammation that damages the immune system, raises blood sugar and accelerates hardening of the arteries. The heart disease that kills someone in midlife can actually begin in childhood, Shonkoff said.

“What happens to children early on doesn’t just affect early language and school readiness, but the early foundations of lifelong health,” he said.

More Kids Going Hungry

The pandemic has deprived millions of children of school-related services that normally blunt the harm caused by poverty.

From March to May 2020, students missed more than 1.1 billion free or reduced-price meals that would have been provided in school.

Children who experience even occasional “food insecurity” suffer two to four times as many health problems as other kids at the same income level, said Dr. Deborah Frank, director of the Grow Clinic for Children at Boston Medical Center.

Kids who don’t consistently eat nutritious meals are more likely to develop anemia, more likely to be hospitalized and more susceptible to lead poisoning, Frank said. They also are more likely to behave aggressively and suffer from hyperactivity, depression and anxiety.

The consequences of food insecurity last well into adulthood, she said, increasing the risk of substance abuse, arrest and suicidal thoughts. “There’s going to be educational and emotional fallout that won’t disappear right away,” Frank said. “These kids have endured a year and a half of deprivation. You can’t sweep all that under the rug.”

Kids at the Breaking Point

Young people are already showing signs of strain.

The proportion of emergency room visits related to mental health among kids 12 to 17 increased 31% from 2019 to 2020, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Although overall suicide deaths haven’t increased during the pandemic, as many feared, teens are making more attempts. ERs treated 50% more adolescent girls and 4% more boys for suspected suicide attempts in February and March 2021 than in those months the year before.

Diagnoses of obsessive-compulsive disorder have soared 41% among girls 12 to 18, according to a June report from Epic Health Research Network. Diagnoses of eating disorders have jumped 38% among girls and 5% among boys.

Many children separated from their peers during the pandemic have been depressed and anxious, said Dr. Lisa Tuchman, chief of adolescent and young adult medicine at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, D.C.

“Mental illness thrives in isolation,” Tuchman said. “The longer the behaviors and thoughts persist, the more entrenched they become and the harder they are to interrupt.”

Falling Behind in School

The loss of educational opportunities has been far more extensive than many realize. Although the majority of students were back in classrooms by the end of the last school year, most spent a large part of the year in virtual learning.

And while some students thrive in virtual classes, studies generally find they provide an inferior education to in-person instruction, partly because students are less engaged. Just 60% of students consistently participated in distance learning, recent surveys found.

Test scores show students have fallen behind in math and reading. And those scores likely underestimate the damage, given that some of the most vulnerable kids weren’t able to report to school for the exams.

An estimated 3 million marginalized students — including those who are homeless or in foster care — received no instruction during the past school year, either because they had no computer or internet access, had to leave school to work or faced other challenges, according to Bellwether Education Partners, a nonprofit that focuses on disadvantaged students.

Less-educated students can expect to earn less after they leave school.

Lost educational time will cost the average child $61,000 to $82,000 in lifetime earnings, McKinsey concluded. Lifetime earning losses are predicted to be twice as great for Black and Hispanic students as for whites.

“Many of the teens I see have given up on school and are working instead,” said Dr. Sara Bode, a pediatrician at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. “It’s helping their families in the short term, but what does it mean for their future?”

Learning From Katrina

Experience with natural disasters and teacher strikes suggests that even relatively short interruptions in education can set children back years, said McKinsey analyst Jimmy Sarakatsannis, co-author of a 2020 report, “COVID-19 and Student Learning in the United States: The Hurt Could Last a Lifetime.”

When Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in 2005, for example, it disrupted the education of 187,000 Louisiana public school students.

Katrina left 80% of the city under water. Although New Orleans students missed an average of five weeks of learning, children wound up two years behind peers not affected by the hurricane, said Douglas Harris, professor and chair of economics at Tulane University.

Na’ryen Cayou was just 2 months old when Katrina submerged his house, leaving the family homeless. He contracted whooping cough in an emergency shelter, the first of four moves in eight months. His sister, O’re’ion Lewis, then 4, didn’t attend school at all that year. When she finally began prekindergarten at age 5, the other kids “were already ahead of her,” mom Nakia Lewis said. For a time, teachers even mislabeled O’re’ion as having dyslexia. It took five years — from prekindergarten until fourth grade — before she finally caught up with her peers, Lewis said.

It will be years before researchers know how far behind the pandemic will have left American kids.

After Katrina, 14% to 20% of students never returned to school, according to the McKinsey report. “As kids fall further behind, they feel hopeless; they don’t engage,” said Sarakatsannis, one of its authors.

Under normal circumstances, high school students who miss more than 10 days of school are 36% more likely to drop out. Based on the number of absences during the pandemic, dropout rates could increase by 2% to 9%, with up to 1.1 million kids quitting school, Sarakatsannis said.

Communities need to find ways to repair the damage children have suffered, said Dr. Gabrielle Shapiro, chair of the American Psychiatric Association’s Council on Children, Adolescents and their Families. “How we behave as a society now will determine the depth of the impact on the younger generation.”

Nakia Lewis is hoping for better days.

O’re’ion is now 20 and studying nursing at community college. Although her classes were virtual last year, she expects to attend class in person in the fall.

Lewis recently landed a job as a manager at a Shoney’s restaurant and is looking for an affordable home. She looks forward to reclaiming her furniture, which went into storage — at $375 a month — when she was evicted.

She said she’s relieved that Na’ryen’s mood has improved. He found a summer job working part time at a food market and will begin marching band practice this summer.

“He is happy and I’m happy for him,” Lewis said. “Now I just have to worry about everything else.”

KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.

USE OUR CONTENT

This story can be republished for free (details).

Damage to Children’s Education — And Their Health — Could Last a Lifetime published first on https://smartdrinkingweb.weebly.com/

[kamerionbeaudry91]

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[timclymer]

Depression in Black Men

Depression is a disorder that is treatable. That is an important thing to keep in mind. People can bounce back from it. One of the biggest issues with depression is the lack of talking about it. Around 16 million people deal with depression in America. Studies suggest that an equal percentage – 12 percent – of black males and white males suffer from depression. The real difference is in treatment. Fewer blacks are being treated. While only one-third of all Americans with a mental illness receive care, less than half that number of African-Americans receive mental health treatment.

Depression can bring on feelings of worthlessness, sadness and hopelessness that tends a way to get clogged his brain. Some think, in comparison, death seems soothing.

Men who suffer from depression may think suicide is the answer. It is not. Men that become suicidal don’t realise that they are repeating the cycle, burdening their children with the same loneliness the father had endured. Their kids would grow up with the knowledge that their father had taken his life. Depression can be very paralyzing to African Americans.

This vile illness affects men from all walks of life, and as I’ve said before depression strikes everyone – from the black executive to the young street hustler. In many documented cases, several socially advanced black men suffered from depression for many year and refused to receive treatment. There is a very disturbing undercurrent: If an accomplished, highly informed black man refused to seek treatment for depression, how difficult is it for uneducated or poor black men to seek help?

As we come to the end of Black History Month, some mental health experts who work with black males suggest that these questions deserve greater study and discussion.

Some experts believe that depression is likely a key factor in a 233 percent increase in suicide in black males ages 10-14 from 1980 to 1995.

“Black men feel that they have to be twice as good as other people, that you can’t be weak because other people will take advantage of you,” said Dr. David Satcher, former U.S. surgeon general in a phone interview last week. Satcher oversaw the 1999 surgeon general’s report on mental health in the United States. “Those [pressures] work powerfully against a black male seeking treatment for depression and other mental illnesses.”

And about one in four African-Americans is uninsured, compared with about 16 percent of the U.S. population overall. African-Americans are less likely to receive antidepressants, and when they do, they are more likely than whites to stop taking them.

Particularly troubling to those who study and treat mental illness in black men is their disproportionately higher rates of incarceration than other racial groups. Nearly half the male U.S. prison population is black, and about 40 percent of those in the juvenile justice system are black. About 12 percent of the U.S. population is black.

It’s a very difficult and very serious situation for these young men and for society. Psychiatrists who work with Atlanta’s homeless and black youth said they see dozens of black males each year head to jail or juvenile justice when they should be in treatment centers. They blame in some form or another, depression.

“It happens all the time, and it’s very alarming,” said Dr. Raymond J. Kotwicki, medical director of community outreach programs, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, at Emory University School of Medicine.

While all mental illnesses come wrapped in stigma, mental illnesses in black men are even more entangled. Historical racism and current cultural biases and expectations all play a part, mental health advocates said.

Nearly two-thirds of African-Americans believe mental illness is a shortcoming that can be overcome through prayer and faith, according to a studyby the National Alliance for the Mentally Il.

The neglect of emotional disorders among men in the black community is nothing less than racial suicide. Many experts argues that the problem of depression in black America can be traced back to the time of slavery, when it was believed that blacks were unable to feel inner pain because they had no psyche. This myth has damaged generations of African American men and their families, creating a society that blames black men for being violent and aggressive without considering that depression might be a root cause

If you have any thoughts on the subject, I’d love to hear them.

Source by Reginald D Johnson

from Home Solutions Forev https://homesolutionsforev.com/depression-in-black-men/ via Home Solutions on WordPress from Home Solutions FOREV https://homesolutionsforev.tumblr.com/post/185884302680 via Tim Clymer on Wordpress

[homesolutionsforev]

Depression in Black Men

Depression is a disorder that is treatable. That is an important thing to keep in mind. People can bounce back from it. One of the biggest issues with depression is the lack of talking about it. Around 16 million people deal with depression in America. Studies suggest that an equal percentage – 12 percent – of black males and white males suffer from depression. The real difference is in treatment. Fewer blacks are being treated. While only one-third of all Americans with a mental illness receive care, less than half that number of African-Americans receive mental health treatment.

Depression can bring on feelings of worthlessness, sadness and hopelessness that tends a way to get clogged his brain. Some think, in comparison, death seems soothing.

Men who suffer from depression may think suicide is the answer. It is not. Men that become suicidal don’t realise that they are repeating the cycle, burdening their children with the same loneliness the father had endured. Their kids would grow up with the knowledge that their father had taken his life. Depression can be very paralyzing to African Americans.

This vile illness affects men from all walks of life, and as I’ve said before depression strikes everyone – from the black executive to the young street hustler. In many documented cases, several socially advanced black men suffered from depression for many year and refused to receive treatment. There is a very disturbing undercurrent: If an accomplished, highly informed black man refused to seek treatment for depression, how difficult is it for uneducated or poor black men to seek help?

As we come to the end of Black History Month, some mental health experts who work with black males suggest that these questions deserve greater study and discussion.

Some experts believe that depression is likely a key factor in a 233 percent increase in suicide in black males ages 10-14 from 1980 to 1995.

“Black men feel that they have to be twice as good as other people, that you can’t be weak because other people will take advantage of you,” said Dr. David Satcher, former U.S. surgeon general in a phone interview last week. Satcher oversaw the 1999 surgeon general’s report on mental health in the United States. “Those [pressures] work powerfully against a black male seeking treatment for depression and other mental illnesses.”

And about one in four African-Americans is uninsured, compared with about 16 percent of the U.S. population overall. African-Americans are less likely to receive antidepressants, and when they do, they are more likely than whites to stop taking them.

Particularly troubling to those who study and treat mental illness in black men is their disproportionately higher rates of incarceration than other racial groups. Nearly half the male U.S. prison population is black, and about 40 percent of those in the juvenile justice system are black. About 12 percent of the U.S. population is black.

It’s a very difficult and very serious situation for these young men and for society. Psychiatrists who work with Atlanta’s homeless and black youth said they see dozens of black males each year head to jail or juvenile justice when they should be in treatment centers. They blame in some form or another, depression.

“It happens all the time, and it’s very alarming,” said Dr. Raymond J. Kotwicki, medical director of community outreach programs, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, at Emory University School of Medicine.

While all mental illnesses come wrapped in stigma, mental illnesses in black men are even more entangled. Historical racism and current cultural biases and expectations all play a part, mental health advocates said.

Nearly two-thirds of African-Americans believe mental illness is a shortcoming that can be overcome through prayer and faith, according to a studyby the National Alliance for the Mentally Il.

The neglect of emotional disorders among men in the black community is nothing less than racial suicide. Many experts argues that the problem of depression in black America can be traced back to the time of slavery, when it was believed that blacks were unable to feel inner pain because they had no psyche. This myth has damaged generations of African American men and their families, creating a society that blames black men for being violent and aggressive without considering that depression might be a root cause

If you have any thoughts on the subject, I’d love to hear them.

Source by Reginald D Johnson

from Home Solutions Forev https://homesolutionsforev.com/depression-in-black-men/ via Home Solutions on WordPress

[healthnotion]

Books So Good I’ve Read Them 2X (Or More!)

Given the fact that there are over 130 million books in existence, it’s easy to despair of ever having the chance to read even the smallest fraction of them. And given how little headway you’ll ultimately make on that number, even if you’re a regular reader and live to a ripe old age, it can be hard to justify reading the same book, not just once, but twice (and even multiple times!).

But I think there are several good reasons to do so.

The first is that each time you read the same book, you come away with new insights. You get different things out of a book when you read it at 36 than you did at 16 (and you’ll find different things at age 76, too).

Second, even when you’ve learned and affirmed the principles of a personal development or philosophical-type book, you have to revisit them regularly to keep them at the forefront of your mind. Humans are slothful, forgetful creatures; even when a book’s insights initially made your spirit soar and unlocked a new dimension in your thinking, without regular reminders, you’ll be taking them for granted in a very short time!

Third, sometimes re-reading the same book can become a special tradition (e.g., you look forward to re-reading A Christmas Carol every December), and even a cathartic ritual (see my note about The Road below). When you read the same thing on a cyclical basis, you find that rather than suffering “the horror of the Same Old Thing,” the practice can actually help you overcome it.

Finally, favorite fiction books become like old friends. When you open one up, you feel like you’re reconnecting with a beloved cast of characters who you’ve missed and are glad to be reacquainted with all over again.

Plus, few of the millions of books you could be reading for the first time are any good — and it can be more beneficial to re-read quality than to read mediocre slop anew! (I read 125+ new books a year in addition to my perennial favorites, so it’s not an either/or equation; as I know someone will ask, I have to read so many books for my work on the Art of Manliness, but you can read, or re-read more books too, using the tips I’ve outlined here.)

Below you’ll find a list of some of the books I’ve re-read at least twice, and often many times more. While I read books for both work and pleasure, and many of the books below I’ve read for both, I only re-read the books that have provided fodder for articles, that have also given me personal enjoyment.

The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey

I first read The Seven Habits of Highly of Effective People back in high school and was blown away by Covey’s ability to create fresh, compelling angles on common sense principles — put first things first; begin with the end in mind — and show how they can be implemented to create a flourishing life. Since then, I’ve re-read The Seven Habits every few years to remind myself of these important fundamentals that I already know, but that are so easy to lose sight of.

For my distillation and take on the 7 habits, read this series that covers each one.

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

The first time I read F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Great American Novel, I was a sophomore in high school. But it didn’t really resonate with me then. That changed when I took a class in college called “American History Through the American Novel” with Professor Danney Goble. He made that book come alive for me by subtly illuminating its rich metaphors and highlighting Fitzgerald’s superb style. Since then, while I haven’t read The Great Gatsby as many times as literary critic Maureen Corrigan (who’s read it 67 times; you can listen to my podcast interview with her about that here), I have re-read it so many times I’ve lost count of the number. And every time I re-read it, I uncover a new symbol or metaphor that I never noticed before, and welcome the chance the re-contemplate the theme of wanting vs. liking. This book never gets old.

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

The Road has been called by some a love story between father and son, and nothing could better describe it. The book powerfully puts the beauty and sorrow of fatherhood in stark perspective, revealing paternal love intensely close to the bone.

The first time I started it, I read it all in a single flight coming home from a vacation. While I didn’t have kids at the time, and was surrounded by strangers, I was blubbering like a baby by the time the wheels hit the tarmac in Tulsa.

When Gus was born, I decided to re-read The Road again since I figured it would have more meaning now that I was a dad. Indeed, it made me cry even harder the second time. Since then, I’ve made it a personal tradition to read The Road once a year. It’s a cathartic ritual: I read it, cry as my heart gets squeezed in a vise of emotion, and then hug and kiss my kids while they wonder what’s wrong with Dad.

The Road makes me re-evaluate how I’m doing as a father. It forces me to ask if I’m preparing my kids so they can survive without me — not only physically, but spiritually.

It forces me to ask myself “Am I teaching my children to carry the fire?”

As the answer is always, “I could do a little better,” it’s a question worth reflecting on annually.

After Virtue by Alasdair MacIntyre

In After Virtue, Scottish philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre argues that we’ve lost the idea of having a telos — an ultimate aim — as well as the language needed to talk about the virtues required to achieve it. One of the results is that our discourse on morality has become increasingly shrill.

After Virtue is a really hard book to read and fully understand, but it’s the enjoyable kind of hard. When you put in the effort to grasp what MacIntyre is arguing, you’re rewarded with fresh insights about our current age. And because he’s writing about such a broad and deep topic, every time I read After Virtue, I walk away with some new idea to contemplate.

The Odyssey by Homer

I’ve read Homer’s The Iliad multiple times, but I did so for school and work. It’s mighty good, but it doesn’t grasp me by the heartstrings. It’s a different, ahem, story with The Odyssey, which I’ve read dozens of times for pure pleasure. There are a couple of reasons I turn to one of these ancient tales much more than the other.

First, The Odyssey is just a grade A adventure story. Just a plain fun book to read.

Second, and more importantly, the character of Odysseus is a lot more relatable than Achilles. Achilles is a demigod; Odysseus is fully mortal. Achilles doesn’t seem to miss his family, of whom we learn little about; Odysseus just wants to get back to his family — in fact, he gives up spending eternity with an ageless sex nymph so he can return to his mortal wife Penelope. Achilles only wants glory; Odysseus wants that too, but he wants to survive and make it back home more.

A mortal dude who’s just trying to survive in a crazy, topsy-turvy world so he can spend time with his family? I can relate to that.

The book has taken on different meanings for me when I read it after getting married, after having kids, and now that I’m approaching middle age.

Antifragile by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Nassim Nicholas Taleb is a former trader and current intellectual provocateur (see his Twitter and Medium accounts) who writes about philosophy and probability. He’s the guy that popularized the idea of “Black Swan” events in history. Wikipedia succinctly describes a Black Swan event as one “that comes as a surprise, has a major effect, and is often inappropriately rationalized after the fact with the benefit of hindsight.” The Great Depression. The Great Recession. Both World Wars. These are examples of Black Swan events.

In his book Antifragile, Taleb offers heuristics for businesses and individuals on how to not only survive a Black Swan, but thrive in it.

I’ve read all of Taleb’s books and they’re all great, but Antifragile is the one that I go back to over and over again. Taleb’s ideas are often counterintuitive and iconoclastic, but he makes great cases for them. I think the biggest reason I keep re-reading Antifragile, though, is that it’s just so damn fun to read. Taleb’s pugnacious and doesn’t suffer fools. The literary punches he throws at those he deems “imbeciles” not only crack me up, but the way he presents his ideas as a debate between a street smart spokesman (Fat Tony) and his traditionally smart, yet clueless rival (Dr. John), helps make the ideas more understandable. I also enjoy the occasional digressions he takes throughout the book. They’re fun, and always illuminating.

Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle

Thanks to famous entrepreneurs and digital influencers, Stoicism has become the ancient philosophy of choice for many young people today. But there’s an ancient philosophy that I think is even more useful and life affirming than Stoicism: Aristotelian virtue ethics. I think part of the reason Stoicism is seen as the “cool” philosophy and Aristotelian virtue gets overlooked is that Aristotle’s writing doesn’t really have any pithy, quotable maxims like the writing of the Stoics does. But it’s richly rewarding for those who dig into it.

Aristotle’s answer to the question how to live a good life is “it depends.” In his Nicomachean Ethics, he lays out how to live a life of eudaimonia, or flourishing. It requires a person to use their practical wisdom to figure out what the right thing to do is in whatever situation they find themselves in. There are no iron-clad rules, which makes deciding how to act more challenging, but I think more wise.

Should you get angry at a business rival who copied your idea? The Stoics would say “Don’t get angry because that disrupts tranquility and could lead to poor decisions.” Aristotle would say “Well, maybe you should get angry because it’s just to do so, it will spur you to take action, and if the rival is directly confronted, he’ll back down. Or maybe in this particular instance, direct confrontation will end up damaging you and it’s better to hide your emotions and quietly best the rival from behind the scenes. Use your judgement.”

I love Aristotle because he understood that life is complex and there is no one right answer for the situations we find ourselves in. His Nicomachean Ethics provides a flexible framework for navigating these complexities, which is why I’ve re-read it multiple times.

Roman Honor by Carlin Barton

Roman Honor is a book quite unlike any other I’ve read. It’s one part history, one part philosophy, and one part insight into the modern age. Altogether it adds up to quite possibly the most interesting and incisive book I’ve come across. Even the footnotes are utterly fascinating.

Barton traces the way Rome’s honor culture dissolved as it moved from a Republic to an Empire, and how its original definition of dishonor transformed into the new definition of honor along the way. That is, whereas Rome’s traditional honor culture elevated being fiery, passionate, thin-skinned, and competitive, and disdained being independent, immovable, and callous — someone who didn’t care what anyone else thought and was literally shameless — honor in the Empire became the exact reverse, where only personal integrity mattered, having a rock-like disposition was celebrated, and the philosophy of Stoicism rose in popularity. It’s a fascinating lens by which to see how the same factors that led to the dissolution of traditional honor and the rise of Stoicism in Rome, have led to parallel trends in our own time.

The book has greatly influenced my perspective on the world, and I’ve re-read it multiple times both for pleasure and for work; I’ve gotten more than half a dozen article ideas from it, and as we’ve only covered a couple so far, look out for more in the years to come!

The Way of Men by Jack Donovan

I’ve read a lot of books about the anthropology, psychology, and biology of manhood written by top rate experts in their field. The Way of Men by Jack Donovan distills all of that into a highly potent and highly readable ode to sweaty, muscular masculinity. Do I entirely agree with the philosophy of manhood laid out in the book? Nope, which is why I like re-reading it so much. The Way of Men challenges your assumptions and makes you think hard about what it means to be a man.

While media pundits, and academics, and pop culture influencers debate and endlessly dither on about what it really means to be a man, and a hundred disparate definitions of manhood get thrown around, this book cuts through the noise to locate the central core of masculinity.

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

Just because I’m not all-in on Stoicism and have some critiques of the philosophy, certainly doesn’t mean that I find nothing redeemable or useful about it. While I don’t think the philosophy is one you should center your whole life around (I think Aristotelianism is better suited to that purpose), I do think it is extremely useful, and even indispensable, when strategically employed as a tool in certain situations. I see Stoicism as proto-cognitive behavioral therapy — a way to challenge incorrect, detrimental thinking about the world, and to find peace in circumstances you truly can’t control.

My favorite book of Stoic philosophy is Meditations by the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius. It’s short so it lends itself well to re-reading, and it’s packed with pithy maxims you can use as practical heuristics in navigating life. And because the book is basically Aurelius’ private journal, Meditations gives you a firsthand look at a prominent figure in history trying his damndest to be stoic and grappling with the tensions that come with seeking to mold your life to an ideal.

Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl

I read Man’s Search for Meaning after seeing a reference to it in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. I was 16 or 17 years old. This book blew me away the first time I read it and was my gateway into existential philosophy. I printed off quotes from this book, framed them, and gave them as gifts to friends.

The big takeaway from Man’s Search for Meaning is arguably life’s most important lesson: there is one freedom that no one can ever take away from you, and that’s the freedom to choose how to respond in any given circumstance. If a man can choose to be happy while imprisoned in a concentration camp, as Frankl did and was, then a man can choose to be happy in any situation. This radical autonomy is what makes us human.

I’ll re-read this book whenever I feel helpless and need a reminder that I do in fact have control over my life.

Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry

Lonesome Dove is the greatest cowboy story ever told, and my hands-down favorite book of all time. It’s the American Odyssey. The story follows two long-time friends on a cattle drive from the Rio Grande to Montana. Along the way they encounter outlaws, Indians, and old flames. I love this book so much, I even named my son Gus after one of the protagonists, Gus McCrae.

Despite being over 700 pages long, I’ve read this book four times in the past 10 years or so. It never gets old. Each time I start it again, it feels like I’m catching up with old friends. I still laugh out loud and cry at the same parts.

Are there lessons on life from Lonesome Dove? Sure, but I can’t say I re-read it for them. I read it over and over again because I like it. A whole heck of a lot.

Click here for more of AoM’s book lists and reading recommendations.

The post Books So Good I’ve Read Them 2X (Or More!) appeared first on The Art of Manliness.

Books So Good I’ve Read Them 2X (Or More!) published first on https://mensproblem.tumblr.com

[cheapfaresnews]

Take All of Your Vacation Days

Given the ready availability of cheap travel options, including cheap airplane tickets, cheap fares, cheap deals, cheap auto rentals, discount hotel rooms, discount travel deals, and cheap vacation packages, it is surprising that new studies have found that Americans are forfeiting more vacation days than ever.

Some workers decide not to take vacation for fear of looking not motivated enough, or anxiety around being replaced, or being overworked and fearing being drowned in work upon return.

U.S. employees only took about half (54 percent) of their paid vacation days in the past 12 months. A U.S. Travel Association survey of 5,600 full time workers found that in 2016 over half (54 percent) of Americans did not use all of their earned vacation days, a significant increase from 42 percent in 2013.  This equates to 662 million vacation days going unused.

A recent study for Society for Human Resource Management found that among companies that allow vacation rollover, 31 percent indicated that most employees use all of their vacation days each year.  One quarter report an average of up to two unused vacation days, 39 percent report three to five unused days, and 34 percent report six or more unused days.

Studies have found that even when Americans use their vacation days, 66 percent report working during off-time which is up from three years ago when that figure was 61 percent. 78 percent of employees want to be able to connect while away.  This was true across generations, whether baby boomers, Gen Xers, or millennials.

For decades, Americans took an average of 20 vacation days each year.  Beginning in 2000 the number of vacation days American workers took each year began declining.  By 2015 Americans were using an average of 16 vacation days annuals, nearly a full workweek less than the long-term average.

Surprisingly is that this Lost Week was not taken away from American workers; most still earned it from their employers.  They just walked away from it, opting instead to essentially work for free one week per year.

Economic conditions do not explain the Lost Week.  There is no indication that Americans take more vacation when consumer confidence is up. Instead the reason for declining vacation time appears to be the spread of technology.  As Internet and smartphone technology took off, people started taking less time off.

Even when workers were on vacation, technology tethered them to the office like never before.  A recent AARP Travel survey of boomers found that a third of them did some work on vacation, with 40 percent saying that it was “somewhat” to “extremely important to do so.

Research found that workers are leery of returning to work only to face mountains of work.  Some fear that their supervisors will look askance at their taking time off.  Demands on workers have risen exponentially with technology that makes it easy for them and the office to stay connected.  

Studies have demonstrated that there are very real ramifications, both physical and mental, to vacation phobia.  Men who skipped their vacations for five years running were 30 percent more likely to suffer a heart attack than those who took at least a week off each year. Women who vacationed less than once every six years were almost eight times as likely to have heart problems.

Engaging in regular leisure activities such as vacations led to lower blood pressure, thinner waistlines, and an overall feeling of improved health.  

Improvements in people’s relations are a side benefit of regular holidays.  Women who take at least two vacation a year are less likely to become tense or depressed and are more satisfied with their marriages.

The following are tips on how to overcome vacation phobia, according to Cait DeBaun:

·      Planning is the first and most important step. Take a day early in the year to plan out your vacation for the entire year.  Do not worry if you do not yet know what you will do with the time off. Americans who plan in advance are more likely to use all of their vacation time.

 ·      Make a bucket list which you continue to update with great vacation ideas to consider the next time you are deciding where to go on vacation.

 ·      Squeeze in extra downtime one day at a time by tacking on a day or two days on a business trip or taking a midweek break in your own city to visit a museum or theme park.

Workers need to ditch their work martyr mentality and take a more holistic view of holidays, which is good for companies, the economy, families, and workers themselves.

Europeans place a much higher value on vacations and get and take at least four weeks (and in many cases much more) of paid vacation, mandated by law, each year.

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[gordonwilliamsweb]

The ‘Grief Pandemic’ Will Torment Americans for Years

Cassandra Rollins’ daughter was still conscious when the ambulance took her away.

This story also ran on USA Today. It can be republished for free.

Shalondra Rollins, 38, was struggling to breathe as covid overwhelmed her lungs. But before the doors closed, she asked for her cellphone, so she could call her family from the hospital.

It was April 7, 2020 — the last time Rollins would see her daughter or hear her voice.

The hospital rang an hour later to say she was gone. A chaplain later told Rollins that Shalondra had died on a gurney in the hallway. Rollins was left to break the news to Shalondra’s children, ages 13 and 15.

More than a year later, Rollins said, the grief is unrelenting.

Rollins has suffered panic attacks and depression that make it hard to get out of bed. She often startles when the phone rings, fearing that someone else is hurt or dead. If her other daughters don’t pick up when she calls, Rollins phones their neighbors to check on them.

“You would think that as time passes it would get better,” said Rollins, 57, of Jackson, Mississippi. “Sometimes, it is even harder. … This wound right here, time don’t heal it.”

With nearly 600,000 in the U.S. lost to covid-19 — now a leading cause of death — researchers estimate that more than 5 million Americans are in mourning, including more than 43,000 children who have lost a parent.

The pandemic — and the political battles and economic devastation that have accompanied it — have inflicted unique forms of torment on mourners, making it harder to move ahead with their lives than with a typical loss, said sociologist Holly Prigerson, co-director of the Cornell Center for Research on End-of-Life Care.

The scale and complexity of pandemic-related grief have created a public health burden that could deplete Americans’ physical and mental health for years, leading to more depression, substance misuse, suicidal thinking, sleep disturbances, heart disease, cancer, high blood pressure and impaired immune function.

“Unequivocally, grief is a public health issue,” said Prigerson, who lost her mother to covid in January. “You could call it the grief pandemic.”

Like many other mourners, Rollins has struggled with feelings of guilt, regret and helplessness — for the loss of her daughter as well as Rollins’ only son, Tyler, who died by suicide seven months earlier.

“I was there to see my mom close her eyes and leave this world,” said Rollins, who was first interviewed by KHN a year ago in a story about covid’s disproportionate effects on communities of color. “The hardest part is that my kids died alone. If it weren’t for this covid, I could have been right there with her” in the ambulance and emergency room. “I could have held her hand.”

The pandemic has prevented many families from gathering and holding funerals, even after deaths caused by conditions other than covid. Prigerson’s research shows that families of patients who die in hospital intensive care units are seven times more likely to develop post-traumatic stress disorder than loved ones of people who die in home hospice.

The polarized political climate has even pitted some family members against one another, with some insisting that the pandemic is a hoax and that loved ones must have died from influenza, rather than covid. People in grief say they’re angry at relatives, neighbors and fellow Americans who failed to take the coronavirus seriously, or who still don’t appreciate how many people have suffered.

“People holler about not being able to have a birthday party,” Rollins said. “We couldn’t even have a funeral.”

Indeed, the optimism generated by vaccines and falling infection rates has blinded many Americans to the deep sorrow and depression of those around them. Some mourners say they will continue wearing their face masks — even in places where mandates have been removed — as a memorial to those lost.

“People say, ‘I can’t wait until life gets back to normal,’” said Heidi Diaz Goff, 30, of the Los Angeles area, who lost her 72-year-old father to covid. “My life will never be normal again.”

Many of those grieving say celebrating the end of the pandemic feels not just premature, but insulting to their loved ones’ memories.

“Grief is invisible in many ways,” said Tashel Bordere, a University of Missouri assistant professor of human development and family science who studies bereavement, particularly in the Black community. “When a loss is invisible and people can’t see it, they may not say ‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ because they don’t know it’s occurred.”

“You would think that as time passes it would get better. Sometimes, it is even harder. … This wound right here, time don’t heal it.”

Cassandra Rollins, of Jackson, Mississippi

Communities of color, which have experienced disproportionately higher rates of death and job loss from covid, are now carrying a heavier burden.

Black children are more likely than white children to lose a parent to covid. Even before the pandemic, the combination of higher infant and maternal mortality rates, a greater incidence of chronic disease and shorter life expectancies made Black people more likely than others to be grieving a close family member at any point in their lives.

Rollins said everyone she knows has lost someone to covid.

“You wake up every morning, and it’s another day they’re not here,” Rollins said. “You go to bed at night, and it’s the same thing.”

A Lifetime of Loss

Rollins has been battered by hardships and loss since childhood.

She was the youngest of 11 children raised in the segregated South. Rollins was 5 years old when her older sister Cora, whom she called “Coral,” was stabbed to death at a nightclub, according to news reports. Although Cora’s husband was charged with murder, he was set free after a mistrial.

Rollins gave birth to Shalondra at age 17, and the two were especially close. “We grew up together,” Rollins said.

Just a few months after Shalondra was born, Rollins’ older sister Christine was fatally shot during an argument with another woman. Rollins and her mother helped raise two of the children Christine left behind.

Heartbreak is all too common in the Black community, Bordere said. The accumulated trauma — from violence to chronic illness and racial discrimination — can have a weathering effect, making it harder for people to recover.

“It’s hard to recover from any one experience, because every day there is another loss,” Bordere said. “Grief impacts our ability to think. It impacts our energy levels. Grief doesn’t just show up in tears. It shows up in fatigue, in working less.”

Rollins hoped her children would overcome the obstacles of growing up Black in Mississippi. Shalondra earned an associate’s degree in early childhood education and loved her job as an assistant teacher to kids with special needs. Shalondra, who had been a second mother to her younger siblings, also adopted a cousin’s stepdaughter after the child’s mother died, raising the girl alongside her two children.

Rollins’ son, Tyler, enlisted in the Army after high school, hoping to follow in the footsteps of other men in the family who had military careers.

Yet the hardest losses of Rollins’ life were still to come. In 2019, Tyler killed himself at age 20, leaving behind a wife and unborn child.

“When you see two Army men walking up to your door,” Rollins said, “that’s unexplainable.”

Tyler’s daughter was born the day Shalondra died.

“They called to tell me the baby was born, and I had to tell them about Shalondra,” Rollins said. “I don’t know how to celebrate.”

Shalondra’s death from covid changed her daughters’ lives in multiple ways.

The girls lost their mother, but also the routines that might help mourners adjust to a catastrophic loss. The girls moved in with their grandmother, who lives in their school district. But they have not set foot in a classroom for more than a year, spending their days in virtual school, rather than with friends.

Shalondra’s death eroded their financial security as well, by taking away her income. Rollins, who worked as a substitute teacher before the pandemic, hasn’t had a job since local schools shut down. She owns her own home and receives unemployment insurance, she said, but money is tight.

Makalin Odie, 14, said her mother, as a teacher, would have made online learning easier. “It would be very different with my mom here.”

The girls especially miss their mom on holidays.

“My mom always loved birthdays,” said Alana Odie, 16. “I know that if my mom were here my 16th birthday would have been really special.”

Asked what she loved most about her mother, Alana replied, “I miss everything about her.”

Grief Complicated by Illness

The trauma also has taken a toll on Alana and Makalin’s health. Both teens have begun taking medications for high blood pressure. Alana has been on diabetes medication since before her mom died.

Mental and physical health problems are common after a major loss. “The mental health consequences of the pandemic are real,” Prigerson said. “There are going to be all sorts of ripple effects.”

The stress of losing a loved one to covid increases the risk for prolonged grief disorder, also known as complicated grief, which can lead to serious illness, increase the risk of domestic violence and steer marriages and relationships to fall apart, said Ashton Verdery, an associate professor of sociology and demography at Penn State.

People who lose a spouse have a roughly 30% higher risk of death over the following year, a phenomenon known as the “the widowhood effect.” Similar risks are seen in people who lose a child or sibling, Verdery said.

Grief can lead to “broken-heart syndrome,” a temporary condition in which the heart’s main pumping chamber changes shape, affecting its ability to pump blood effectively, Verdery said.

From final farewells to funerals, the pandemic has robbed mourners of nearly everything that helps people cope with catastrophic loss, while piling on additional insults, said the Rev. Alicia Parker, minister of comfort at New Covenant Church of Philadelphia.

“It may be harder for them for many years to come,” Parker said. “We don’t know the fallout yet, because we are still in the middle of it.”

Rollins said she would have liked to arrange a big funeral for Shalondra. Because of restrictions on social gatherings, the family held a small graveside service instead.

Funerals are important cultural traditions, allowing loved ones to give and receive support for a shared loss, Parker said.

“When someone dies, people bring food for you, they talk about your loved one, the pastor may come to the house,” Parker said. “People come from out of town. What happens when people can’t come to your home and people can’t support you? Calling on the phone is not the same.”

While many people are afraid to acknowledge depression, because of the stigma of mental illness, mourners know they can cry and wail at a funeral without being judged, Parker said.

“What happens in the African American house stays in the house,” Parker said. “There’s a lot of things we don’t talk about or share about.”

Funerals play an important psychological role in helping mourners process their loss, Bordere said. The ritual helps mourners move from denying that a loved one is gone to accepting “a new normal in which they will continue their life in the physical absence of the cared-about person.” In many cases, death from covid comes suddenly, depriving people of a chance to mentally prepare for loss. While some families were able to talk to loved ones through FaceTime or similar technologies, many others were unable to say goodbye.

Funerals and burial rites are especially important in the Black community and others that have been marginalized, Bordere said.

“You spare no expense at a Black funeral,” Bordere said. “The broader culture may have devalued this person, but the funeral validates this person’s worth in a society that constantly tries to dehumanize them.”

In the early days of the pandemic, funeral directors afraid of spreading the coronavirus did not allow families to provide clothing for their loved ones’ burials, Parker said. So beloved parents and grandparents were buried in whatever they died in, such as undershirts or hospital gowns.

“They bag them and double-bag them and put them in the ground,” Parker said. “It is an indignity.”

Coping With Loss

Every day, something reminds Rollins of her losses.

April brought the first anniversary of Shalondra’s death. May brought Teacher Appreciation Week.

Yet Rollins said the memory of her children keeps her going.

When she begins to cry and thinks she will never stop, one thought pulls her from the darkness: “I know they would want me to be happy. I try to live on that.”

KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.

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This story can be republished for free (details).

The ‘Grief Pandemic’ Will Torment Americans for Years published first on https://nootropicspowdersupplier.tumblr.com/

[topmixtrends]

I’M IN A GROUP for professionals of color in the Bay Area. Many of them are younger newcomers drawn to California’s great weather, liberal political climate, and high-paying tech jobs. Since living here, a number of them are surprised by the racism — both overt and systematic. They believed the “California is not racist” myth, until they experienced it for themselves. I ask them, “Don’t you know about the Black Panther Party, the Watts Riots, the beating of Rodney King, and the L.A. Uprisings?”

I can’t totally blame them for not knowing the racial history of this state. People are still misinformed by the narrative that racism only happens in the Deep South. The common narrative of the Civil Rights movement is just as narrow as stories of racial injustice. There was more to the movement than Dr. King’s inspirational speeches and Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat on the bus. Racial division didn’t go away in a chorus of “We Shall Overcome.” There were freedom fighters before King and Parks, after them, and well beyond Southern borders.

In A More Beautiful and Terrible History: The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History, author Jeanne Theoharis bursts the bubble on what we’ve learned about the Civil Rights era to show a larger movement with layers. She critiques some of the tributes (such as museum exhibits, national honors, et cetera) and stories of Civil Rights icons as diluting their activism and the power of racism.

“The history of American racism has become just that … history,” Theoharis writes. “While these tributes honored the movement, they simultaneously depoliticized the scope of the struggle, distorted the work of activists honored, demonized Black anger, and obscured ongoing calls for racial justice through a celebration of a nearly postracial, self-correcting America.”

Theoharis is known for challenging what she would call “fables” of leaders. Her biography The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks is a 2014 NAACP Image Award winner. Her latest book is the result of 16 years of research. The book covers huge movements outside of the South, such as desegregating schools in Boston and Los Angeles. It explains how media on the coasts focused more on covering racism in the South, instead of the local injustices.

¤

JENEÉ DARDEN: A More Beautiful and Terrible History looks at the complexities behind other Civil Rights icons and moments during that time. I’ve read comments online from people who say, “Rosa Parks and Dr. King were quiet protesters and effective. Why can’t the activists today be like that?” But they weren’t quiet.

JEANNE THEOHARIS: The story of the Montgomery Bus Boycott is often told in ways that make it hard to imagine how to do it. In part because it seems to just happen, right? It seems like Rosa Parks sits down, people are outraged, there’s a boycott, they win. We’re told that she’s just this accidental heroine when they’d been organizing for years.

I like that you used the word “fable” to describe the stories we’re fed about the Civil Rights movement.

The fable of the Civil Rights movement has a couple of different parts. It’s about courageous individuals, not community or the collective. It’s about individualism. It’s about how we had a problem, shined a light on it, and we fixed it. That’s a very simplified notion. It’s about how the problem and movement are in the past. And it’s about American exceptionalism. There’s an idea that this is possible in America and it’s not possible in other places. Reagan literally says that when he signed the legislation for the King holiday. What we’ve seen is the fable being used as a weapon against the contemporary movements like Black Lives Matter or [Colin] Kaepernick. But the criticisms being waged at them were waged at the Civil Rights movement.

You address mental health in your book. Dr. King suffered from depression. Rosa Parks did, too. Coretta Scott King went into a deep depression after President Kennedy’s assassination. I’ve read stories about activists today taking their own lives.

In some of the quotes from Rosa Parks, she’s talking about how she feels crazy, and how lonely she is. She said it’s hard to stay mentally sane in the midst of white supremacy. It’s easy for us to look back now and say what she did is so clear, so righteous. I think we missed the part of how oppressive systems maintain themselves is by making people who critique them feel crazy, feel like they’re the problem.

It wasn’t just white supremacy she had to deal with. Some black people thought she was too radical.

Definitely! It’s really hard to do the right thing. It’s really hard to press forward again and be ostracized.

How do we honor social justice leaders without depoliticizing them?

One of the things I was trying to point out in the book is: Does the commemoration become an act of justice in and of itself? Think about in 2013, putting the Rosa Parks statue in the Capitol on the same day they’re hearing Shelby County v. Holder [the 2013 Supreme Court decision dismantling voter protections in the Voting Rights Act for the elderly, poor, and people of color].

It would have been a very different thing had President Obama used that event to discuss voting rights. There are a whole host of racial justice issues that he really could have done something on. Instead it becomes a day of celebrating America. If you think about all the speeches, most of them were: “What a great day for America.”

The story of the Civil Rights movement is usually focused on the South. You wrote about movements in the North and West Coast.

The erasing of the Northern movements makes it seem like there wasn’t a racial problem in the North. From Los Angeles to Boston, public officials that saw themselves as being open and liberal said they didn’t keep records of race. Then lo and behold they come out in [desegregation] court cases in the 1970s.

I’d never heard of the Harlem Nine, a group of mothers who fought to overturn segregated schools in Harlem. The building conditions were horrible. Some schools had two bathrooms for 1,600 kids and a sheet of wood with a hole for a toilet seat.

The Harlem Nine were surveilled because the FBI considered them a threat. They homeschooled their kids to protest [then were] charged for keeping their kids home — while white parents were willing to put their kids on buses to keep them in segregated schools. One judge found the mothers guilty. Another judge said the schools are segregated and the mothers have the right not to send their kids there. That was an important decision but what it did not do was desegregate New York schools. It protected the mothers from going to jail. There’s a compromise made where these nine families get to attend different schools. Not to the ones the mothers wanted, but that option was not made available in a large-scale way. After this, in the 1960s, is a burgeoning, broader movement to desegregate schools in New York. In the 1964 boycott, nearly half a million students and teachers stay out of school because there’s still no comprehensive plan for desegregation in New York.

Was this ever resolved?

I ask my students when did New York schools comprehensively desegregate. And the answer is never. There are pockets of it. A few years back, UCLA put out a study about the most segregated school systems in the country; New York is at the top of that list.

I was shocked by the chapter on media. You wrote that the Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, and The New York Times won awards for covering racism in the South. Yet, they weren’t critical of the racism in their own cities. For instance, when the Watts Riots erupted.

The L.A. Times could’ve said, “People have been raising these issues for years. We need to hold ourselves and city leaders accountable that there’s been a movement in the city for years around police brutality and nothing happened.” But you don’t see the L.A. Times doing that. In fact, the L.A. Times calls for more police.

In Los Angeles, black and Mexican students were segregated from white students. Did Los Angeles’s school desegregation movement happen before the Watts Riots?

Yes. After World War II, Los Angeles gets more segregated. As more people migrate to L.A., black people are being funneled into particular neighborhoods. The neighborhoods are getting crowded. You see high schools that were racially mixed become nearly all black.

Before Watts, you see this growing black parent movement around desegregation. The board of education responds by throwing money at programs for juvenile delinquency. The Los Angeles board, like New York and Boston, doesn’t embrace segregation on the face of it. They say these students are culturally deprived; their families don’t have the right cultural values and practices to succeed so we’re going to culturally uplift them. The education board casts black students as the problem.

You reference census data from the 1960s that shows Los Angeles schools were more segregated than Southern schools. How did people protest?

The L.A. school board readjusted the boundary lines of these schools to basically funnel the black kids into Jordan High School, into Fremont. In 1963, there are regular downtown protests, sit-ins at the board of education. People are trying to go through the system, similar to New York, and getting nowhere.

And Dr. King came to help?

Yes. King is in and out of Los Angeles multiple times between 1961 and 1964. In ’63, he comes, shortly after getting out of jail in Birmingham, and speaks to a crowd of 35,000 at Wrigley Field [originally opened in Los Angeles in 1925 after the Chicago Cubs owner bought the Los Angeles Angels, the Cubs played at Chicago’s Cubs Park] saying, “Set L.A. free!” Then he talked about police brutality and school and housing segregation.

In 1963, the Rumford Fair Housing Act reached the state level. It prohibited discrimination in the rental and sale of housing. White people rise up and get in contact with realtors and neighborhood associations to get Prop 14 on the 1964 ballot. Prop 14 returns the right of Californians to discriminate in housing. King comes multiple times to fight it and called it a vote for ghettos.

In 1964, Californians overwhelmingly send Lyndon Johnson back to the White House. And they overwhelmingly support Prop 14. It passes. Our story of Northern liberals needs to be much more complicated. On one hand Californians [voted for] Lyndon Johnson, arguably the most Civil Rights–oriented president we’ve ever had. On the other hand, they say we want the right to discriminate.

There’s a myth about white racists as poor, white men who live in rural America. But those you write about in the book are in New York, Boston, L.A.; educated and middle class who thought themselves somehow better than those who were lower income.

Lots of people who stood against the Civil Rights movement looked down upon other racists like they would never have burned a cross or called King’s house and said nasty things. Even though lots of middle- and upper middle-class people in Boston resisted desegregation in 1974.

King took on the limits of Northern liberalism and wanted his allies who praised his work in the South to look in their own backyards as well.

Dr. King visited Los Angeles to do social justice work, but his widow, Coretta Scott King, also has a legacy as an activist too.

I’m completely fit to be tied about how we commemorated the 50th anniversary of Dr. King’s assassination, and she’s still getting sidelined. Her work influenced his growing internationalism and antiwar stance. She was a lifelong activist: her anti-poverty work, her antiwar work, her commitment to black voting and political power, her support for gay rights.

Days after his assassination in April 1968, she goes to Memphis to lead the march for sanitation workers he was supposed to lead. In May, she did an address in Central Park that he was supposed to give and continued to oppose US involvement in Vietnam. The FBI surveilled her for years because they were worried about how much she’s tying the antiwar movement to the Civil Rights movement. One of the ways we approach Martin Luther King’s assassination is to say the Civil Rights movement is over. If we were to center Coretta Scott King and see what she did, it is very clear the movement is not over.

¤

Jeneé Darden is a journalist from Oakland, California. Visit her blog CocoaFly.com to read her research series Under the Covers: The Popularity and Debate Over Black Erotic Literature. 

The post “A More Beautiful and Terrible History” Corrects the Fables Told of the Civil Rights Movement appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

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[fearoffailure123]

12 Types of Depression, and What You Need to Know About Each

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Under the big tent of depression there are many shades of gray. Depression can be mild or severe. It can be short-lived or chronic. Special circumstances, like the birth of a baby or the changing of the seasons, can trigger depressive symptoms.

Understanding the type of depression a person is experiencing helps doctors determine treatment. And for people who are diagnosed with depression, having information about their specific disorder can be helpful. “Folks seem comforted in knowing what’s going on for them,” says Sarah Noble, DO, a psychiatrist with the Einstein Healthcare Network in Philadelphia. “At least they have an answer for why they’re experiencing what they’re experiencing.”

Here’s what you should know about the different types of depression. If you suspect you or a loved one has one of these, get evaluated by a mental health professional. They can help you figure out a diagnosis–and the best course of treatment.

RELATED: 10 Foods to Help Fight Depression

Major depressive disorder

In a given year, more than 16 million Americans (a majority of them women) experience this very common type of depression, also known as major depression or clinical depression. Under diagnostic criteria published by the American Psychiatric Association, people must have at least five symptoms persisting for two weeks or longer to be diagnosed with major depressive disorder. Those symptoms can include feelings of sadness, emptiness, worthlessness, hopelessness, and guilt; loss of energy, appetite, or interest in enjoyable activities; changes in sleep habits; and thoughts of death and suicide. Most cases are highly treatable.

Major depressive disorder has two subtypes: “atypical depression” and “melancholic depression.” People who fall into the former category tend to sleep and eat a lot. They are emotionally reactive and very anxious, Dr. Noble explains. Those in the latter category have trouble sleeping and tend to ruminate over guilt-ridden thoughts, she says. Young adults tend to present with atypical depression, and the melancholic type is seen more often in seniors.

Treatment-resistant depression

Sometimes people with major depressive disorder don’t readily respond to treatment. Even after trying one antidepressant and then another–and maybe a third or fourth–their depression stubbornly hangs on. “Maybe it’s genetic, maybe it’s environmental,” Dr. Noble says. “Their depression is just tenacious.”

Helping people overcome treatment-resistant depression begins with a thorough workup to ensure a proper diagnosis and identify other psychiatric and medical causes of their symptoms. Patients are counseled on proper dosage and duration of treatment. If a medicine isn’t working, doctors will try switching to a similar drug or one from a different class. Patients may benefit from adding a second antidepressant from a different class and perhaps another type of medicine, such as an antipsychotic.

RELATED: 10 Surprising Antidepressant Facts

Subsyndromal depression

A person who has depressive symptoms but doesn't quite check all the boxes for a diagnosis of major depression may be deemed “subsyndromal.” Maybe she has three or four symptoms, not five, or maybe she’s been depressed for a week, not two, Dr. Noble explains.

“Rather than look at symptoms, I usually look at functionality,” she says. Is the patient able to go to work and take care of day-to-day responsibilities? If the person is struggling, they may still benefit from treatment, including with medication, she says.

Persistent depressive disorder

People with persistent depressive disorder (PDD) have a low, dark, or sad mood on most days and at least two additional symptoms of depression lasting two years or more. In children and teens, PDD (also called dysthymia) may be diagnosed if symptoms of irritability or depression persist for a year or more. “It may wax and wane in intensity, but generally it’s a low level of depression,” Dr. Noble explains.

To be diagnosed with this type of depression, people must also have two of the following: sleep problems (too much or too little); low energy or fatigue; low self-esteem; poor appetite or overeating; poor concentration or difficulty making decisions; and feelings of hopelessness.

Usually PDD requires treatment with a combination of medication and psychotherapy.

RELATED: 7 Types of Therapy That Can Treat Depression

Premenstrual dysphoric disorder

Up to 10% of women of childbearing age experience premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD). This severe form of PMS can trigger depression, sadness, anxiety, or irritability, as well as other extreme symptoms, in the week before a woman’s period.

“It can be really uncomfortable, disabling, and interfere with a woman’s day-to-day life,” says Dorothy Sit, MD, associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago.

Scientists believe these women may have an abnormal sensitivity to hormonal changes during their menstrual cycle. Taking antidepressants, specifically selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, in the two weeks before their period or throughout the month can be very effective, Dr. Sit says. Certain types of contraception may help too. Researchers at the University of California San Diego are exploring the use of light therapy to improve sleep quality and mood in women with PMDD.

Bipolar depression

Wide swings in mood and energy, from elation to hopelessness, are the signature of bipolar depression, also called bipolar disorder or manic-depressive illness. To be diagnosed with this form of depression, a person must have experienced at least one bout of mania. Bipolar usually shows up in young adulthood. While women and men are diagnosed in equal numbers, studies point to possible gender differences: Men appear to have more manic behavior; women tend toward depressive symptoms. Bipolar usually worsens without treatment but can be managed with mood stabilizers, antipsychotic medicines, and talk therapy.

While further research is needed, a recent study by Dr. Sit and colleagues suggests light therapy may be a potential treatment for bipolar depression too. Compared with dim placebo light, daily exposure to bright light at midday may reduce symptoms of depression and improve functioning in people with bipolar disorder, the study found.

RELATED: 10 Subtle Signs of Bipolar Disorder

Disruptive mood dysregulation disorder

Screaming and temper tantrums can be features of disruptive mood dysregulation disorder (DMDD), a type of depression diagnosed in children who struggle with regulating their emotions. Other symptoms include an irritable or angry mood most of the day nearly every day and trouble getting along in school, at home, or with their peers.

“These are the kids with strong emotional outbursts,” Dr. Noble says. “They’re just not able to contain their emotions,” so they “act out and act on” their feelings.

Currently, DMDD is treated using medications, psychotherapy, and parent training on how to effectively deal with a child’s irritable behavior.

Postpartum (or perinatal) depression

The birth of a baby brings enormous joy but can sometimes lead to postpartum depression (PPD), a type that affects one in four women and one in eight men. In women, postpartum depression is likely triggered by shifts in hormones, fatigue, and other factors. In men, it’s environmental, brought on by shifting roles and lifestyle changes that come with parenting.

Postpartum depression can begin any time in the first year following a child’s birth, although it usually appears soon after the new arrival. Intense feelings of sadness, anxiety, and exhaustion become overwhelming and can interfere with daily life. It can provoke thoughts of hurting yourself or your baby.

Compared to the “baby blues”–which is a mild, short-lived, and extremely common condition causing anxiety and depressive symptoms in the immediate wake of a baby’s birth–PPD usually requires treatment with antidepressants and/or talk therapy.

RELATED: 11 Celebrities Who Opened Up About Postpartum Depression

Seasonal affective disorder

Seasonal affective disorder (SAD) is a recurring type of depression (also known as seasonal depression) that usually strikes in the fall or winter. Along with a change in mood, SAD sufferers tend to have low energy. They may overeat, oversleep, crave carbs, gain weight, or withdraw from social interaction.

Women and younger adults are at higher risk of developing SAD. It can also run in families. SAD is diagnosed after at least two years of recurring, seasonal symptoms. While the exact cause is unclear, research suggests it may be related to an imbalance of the brain chemical serotonin. An overabundance of the sleep hormone melatonin and insufficient levels of vitamin D may also play a role.

SAD is typically treated with a daily dose of light therapy and sometimes medication.

RELATED: 8 Ways to Cope With Seasonal Affective Disorder

Substance-induced mood disorder

Using or abusing sedating drugs can change your mood. Symptoms, such as depression, anxiety, and loss of interest in pleasurable activities, typically appear shortly after taking or abusing a substance or during withdrawal.

Substances that can lead to this type of depression include alcohol (if you drink too much), opioid painkillers, and benzodiazepines (which act on the central nervous system).

To diagnose someone with a substance-induced mood disorder, doctors must rule out other potential causes of depression, and the depression must be severe enough to interfere with daily activities.

Psychotic depression

People with psychotic depression have severe depression accompanied by psychosis, which is defined as losing touch with reality. Symptoms of psychosis typically include hallucinations (seeing or hearing things that aren't really there) and delusions (false beliefs about what's happening)

One of Dr. Noble’s patients, two years after beginning treatment, confessed that she had a year during which she would not eat anything her father cooked because she thought he was poisoning her. The woman was otherwise lucid; she simply suffered from psychotic depression that had not been fully treated.

Doctors usually prescribe antidepressants and antipsychotic medicines together to treat psychotic depression.

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Depression due to an illness

Coping with a serious chronic disease, like heart disease, cancer, multiple sclerosis, and HIV/AIDS, can be depressing in and of itself.

Adding insult to injury, there’s now evidence that disease-related inflammation may also play a role in the onset of depression. Inflammation causes the release of certain chemicals by the immune system that cross into the brain, leading to brain changes that can trigger or worsen depression in certain people, Dr. Noble explains. Antidepressants may help prolong their life and improve their ability to function, she says, and therapy can help many patients cope with mental and physical illnesses.

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The ‘Grief Pandemic’ Will Torment Americans for Years

Cassandra Rollins’ daughter was still conscious when the ambulance took her away.

This story also ran on USA Today. It can be republished for free.

Shalondra Rollins, 38, was struggling to breathe as covid overwhelmed her lungs. But before the doors closed, she asked for her cellphone, so she could call her family from the hospital.

It was April 7, 2020 — the last time Rollins would see her daughter or hear her voice.

The hospital rang an hour later to say she was gone. A chaplain later told Rollins that Shalondra had died on a gurney in the hallway. Rollins was left to break the news to Shalondra’s children, ages 13 and 15.

More than a year later, Rollins said, the grief is unrelenting.

Rollins has suffered panic attacks and depression that make it hard to get out of bed. She often startles when the phone rings, fearing that someone else is hurt or dead. If her other daughters don’t pick up when she calls, Rollins phones their neighbors to check on them.

“You would think that as time passes it would get better,” said Rollins, 57, of Jackson, Mississippi. “Sometimes, it is even harder. … This wound right here, time don’t heal it.”

With nearly 600,000 in the U.S. lost to covid-19 — now a leading cause of death — researchers estimate that more than 5 million Americans are in mourning, including more than 43,000 children who have lost a parent.

The pandemic — and the political battles and economic devastation that have accompanied it — have inflicted unique forms of torment on mourners, making it harder to move ahead with their lives than with a typical loss, said sociologist Holly Prigerson, co-director of the Cornell Center for Research on End-of-Life Care.

The scale and complexity of pandemic-related grief have created a public health burden that could deplete Americans’ physical and mental health for years, leading to more depression, substance misuse, suicidal thinking, sleep disturbances, heart disease, cancer, high blood pressure and impaired immune function.

“Unequivocally, grief is a public health issue,” said Prigerson, who lost her mother to covid in January. “You could call it the grief pandemic.”

Like many other mourners, Rollins has struggled with feelings of guilt, regret and helplessness — for the loss of her daughter as well as Rollins’ only son, Tyler, who died by suicide seven months earlier.

“I was there to see my mom close her eyes and leave this world,” said Rollins, who was first interviewed by KHN a year ago in a story about covid’s disproportionate effects on communities of color. “The hardest part is that my kids died alone. If it weren’t for this covid, I could have been right there with her” in the ambulance and emergency room. “I could have held her hand.”

The pandemic has prevented many families from gathering and holding funerals, even after deaths caused by conditions other than covid. Prigerson’s research shows that families of patients who die in hospital intensive care units are seven times more likely to develop post-traumatic stress disorder than loved ones of people who die in home hospice.

The polarized political climate has even pitted some family members against one another, with some insisting that the pandemic is a hoax and that loved ones must have died from influenza, rather than covid. People in grief say they’re angry at relatives, neighbors and fellow Americans who failed to take the coronavirus seriously, or who still don’t appreciate how many people have suffered.

“People holler about not being able to have a birthday party,” Rollins said. “We couldn’t even have a funeral.”

Indeed, the optimism generated by vaccines and falling infection rates has blinded many Americans to the deep sorrow and depression of those around them. Some mourners say they will continue wearing their face masks — even in places where mandates have been removed — as a memorial to those lost.

“People say, ‘I can’t wait until life gets back to normal,’” said Heidi Diaz Goff, 30, of the Los Angeles area, who lost her 72-year-old father to covid. “My life will never be normal again.”

Many of those grieving say celebrating the end of the pandemic feels not just premature, but insulting to their loved ones’ memories.

“Grief is invisible in many ways,” said Tashel Bordere, a University of Missouri assistant professor of human development and family science who studies bereavement, particularly in the Black community. “When a loss is invisible and people can’t see it, they may not say ‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ because they don’t know it’s occurred.”

“You would think that as time passes it would get better. Sometimes, it is even harder. … This wound right here, time don’t heal it.”

Cassandra Rollins, of Jackson, Mississippi

Communities of color, which have experienced disproportionately higher rates of death and job loss from covid, are now carrying a heavier burden.

Black children are more likely than white children to lose a parent to covid. Even before the pandemic, the combination of higher infant and maternal mortality rates, a greater incidence of chronic disease and shorter life expectancies made Black people more likely than others to be grieving a close family member at any point in their lives.

Rollins said everyone she knows has lost someone to covid.

“You wake up every morning, and it’s another day they’re not here,” Rollins said. “You go to bed at night, and it’s the same thing.”

A Lifetime of Loss

Rollins has been battered by hardships and loss since childhood.

She was the youngest of 11 children raised in the segregated South. Rollins was 5 years old when her older sister Cora, whom she called “Coral,” was stabbed to death at a nightclub, according to news reports. Although Cora’s husband was charged with murder, he was set free after a mistrial.

Rollins gave birth to Shalondra at age 17, and the two were especially close. “We grew up together,” Rollins said.

Just a few months after Shalondra was born, Rollins’ older sister Christine was fatally shot during an argument with another woman. Rollins and her mother helped raise two of the children Christine left behind.

Heartbreak is all too common in the Black community, Bordere said. The accumulated trauma — from violence to chronic illness and racial discrimination — can have a weathering effect, making it harder for people to recover.

“It’s hard to recover from any one experience, because every day there is another loss,” Bordere said. “Grief impacts our ability to think. It impacts our energy levels. Grief doesn’t just show up in tears. It shows up in fatigue, in working less.”

Rollins hoped her children would overcome the obstacles of growing up Black in Mississippi. Shalondra earned an associate’s degree in early childhood education and loved her job as an assistant teacher to kids with special needs. Shalondra, who had been a second mother to her younger siblings, also adopted a cousin’s stepdaughter after the child’s mother died, raising the girl alongside her two children.

Rollins’ son, Tyler, enlisted in the Army after high school, hoping to follow in the footsteps of other men in the family who had military careers.

Yet the hardest losses of Rollins’ life were still to come. In 2019, Tyler killed himself at age 20, leaving behind a wife and unborn child.

“When you see two Army men walking up to your door,” Rollins said, “that’s unexplainable.”

Tyler’s daughter was born the day Shalondra died.

“They called to tell me the baby was born, and I had to tell them about Shalondra,” Rollins said. “I don’t know how to celebrate.”

Shalondra’s death from covid changed her daughters’ lives in multiple ways.

The girls lost their mother, but also the routines that might help mourners adjust to a catastrophic loss. The girls moved in with their grandmother, who lives in their school district. But they have not set foot in a classroom for more than a year, spending their days in virtual school, rather than with friends.

Shalondra’s death eroded their financial security as well, by taking away her income. Rollins, who worked as a substitute teacher before the pandemic, hasn’t had a job since local schools shut down. She owns her own home and receives unemployment insurance, she said, but money is tight.

Makalin Odie, 14, said her mother, as a teacher, would have made online learning easier. “It would be very different with my mom here.”

The girls especially miss their mom on holidays.

“My mom always loved birthdays,” said Alana Odie, 16. “I know that if my mom were here my 16th birthday would have been really special.”

Asked what she loved most about her mother, Alana replied, “I miss everything about her.”

Grief Complicated by Illness

The trauma also has taken a toll on Alana and Makalin’s health. Both teens have begun taking medications for high blood pressure. Alana has been on diabetes medication since before her mom died.

Mental and physical health problems are common after a major loss. “The mental health consequences of the pandemic are real,” Prigerson said. “There are going to be all sorts of ripple effects.”

The stress of losing a loved one to covid increases the risk for prolonged grief disorder, also known as complicated grief, which can lead to serious illness, increase the risk of domestic violence and steer marriages and relationships to fall apart, said Ashton Verdery, an associate professor of sociology and demography at Penn State.

People who lose a spouse have a roughly 30% higher risk of death over the following year, a phenomenon known as the “the widowhood effect.” Similar risks are seen in people who lose a child or sibling, Verdery said.

Grief can lead to “broken-heart syndrome,” a temporary condition in which the heart’s main pumping chamber changes shape, affecting its ability to pump blood effectively, Verdery said.

From final farewells to funerals, the pandemic has robbed mourners of nearly everything that helps people cope with catastrophic loss, while piling on additional insults, said the Rev. Alicia Parker, minister of comfort at New Covenant Church of Philadelphia.

“It may be harder for them for many years to come,” Parker said. “We don’t know the fallout yet, because we are still in the middle of it.”

Rollins said she would have liked to arrange a big funeral for Shalondra. Because of restrictions on social gatherings, the family held a small graveside service instead.

Funerals are important cultural traditions, allowing loved ones to give and receive support for a shared loss, Parker said.

“When someone dies, people bring food for you, they talk about your loved one, the pastor may come to the house,” Parker said. “People come from out of town. What happens when people can’t come to your home and people can’t support you? Calling on the phone is not the same.”

While many people are afraid to acknowledge depression, because of the stigma of mental illness, mourners know they can cry and wail at a funeral without being judged, Parker said.

“What happens in the African American house stays in the house,” Parker said. “There’s a lot of things we don’t talk about or share about.”

Funerals play an important psychological role in helping mourners process their loss, Bordere said. The ritual helps mourners move from denying that a loved one is gone to accepting “a new normal in which they will continue their life in the physical absence of the cared-about person.” In many cases, death from covid comes suddenly, depriving people of a chance to mentally prepare for loss. While some families were able to talk to loved ones through FaceTime or similar technologies, many others were unable to say goodbye.

Funerals and burial rites are especially important in the Black community and others that have been marginalized, Bordere said.

“You spare no expense at a Black funeral,” Bordere said. “The broader culture may have devalued this person, but the funeral validates this person’s worth in a society that constantly tries to dehumanize them.”

In the early days of the pandemic, funeral directors afraid of spreading the coronavirus did not allow families to provide clothing for their loved ones’ burials, Parker said. So beloved parents and grandparents were buried in whatever they died in, such as undershirts or hospital gowns.

“They bag them and double-bag them and put them in the ground,” Parker said. “It is an indignity.”

Coping With Loss

Every day, something reminds Rollins of her losses.

April brought the first anniversary of Shalondra’s death. May brought Teacher Appreciation Week.

Yet Rollins said the memory of her children keeps her going.

When she begins to cry and thinks she will never stop, one thought pulls her from the darkness: “I know they would want me to be happy. I try to live on that.”

KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.

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