There have been 100 (or so it seems) articles published in the last week about pro-eating disorder websites. It’s not a new phenomenon. I think it was in 2001 that Yahoo removed “pro-anorexia” sites hosted on their servers? More recently, it’s been an ongoing battle on facebook (searching out and removing unhealthy ED pages/groups). What has sparked the flurry of posts about it this week, though, is a new study in the American Journal of Public Health: “e-Ana and e-Mia: A Content Analysis of Pro–Eating Disorder Web Sites.”
I haven’t read …

The growing obesity epidemic is nothing new, and I’ve written about government-imposed food restrictions in elementary schools before, but I’m pretty disappointed that the government would charge non-dieting, overweight Americans: State’s Obesity Risk: Lose Weight or Lose Insurance
To summarize this article in a couple of lines:
Alabama is giving its employees roughly a year to start getting in shape or state employees will be charged $25 a month for insurance that would otherwise be free.
Some states offer benefits for healthy living, but Alabama is the first state to punish those not …

This article came out last week, but just caught my article today: Prozac Over the Counter? – TIME
The article makes some great points, so I definitely recommend reading it… but I of course have to give my two cents.
Why do I think that Prozac should NOT be OTC?  Well, my biggest concern, is that depressed individuals who would take OTC Prozac would not seek the help that they need — and they may very likely need MORE help than just an SSRI.  It’s hard to seek mental health treatment — …

This has to be the study to top all studies (in terms of uselessness) — Children eat healthier when all snacks are banned. You should really go and read the whole article (it is that newsworthy), but to highlight a few gems:
According to a study from researchers at Cardiff University, one way to encourage children to eat healthily is to ban all unhealthy snacks in schools.
So…. if only healthy snacks are allowed in school… then children will eat more healthy snacks because their only alternative is… not eating?
An even greater …

Keeping Our Daughters Active
I guess that this isn’t really an article on mental health, but I thought that it deserved a few comments. Having been anorexic as a teen, I think that there is something to be said about the role of physical activity.
To sum up the article: Physical activity has health and psychological benefits, so it’s important for your daughters to stay active.
As a father of two little girls, I sometimes get to spend my weekend afternoons watching my elder daughter run around on the playground, chasing after …

New York Times: The New Year’s Cocktail: Regret With a Dash of Bitters
This is a great article on rumination.  I’m not going to do much to explain / summarize it, so you might want to read it before continuing:
Complexity reflects an ability to incorporate various points of view into a recollection, to vividly describe the circumstances, context and other dimensions. It is the sort of trait that would probably get you killed instantly in a firefight; but in the mental war of attrition through middle age and after, its value …