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Feeling Upset? Try This Special Writing Technique
After his father was rushed to the hospital with gastrointestinal bleeding, Yanatha Desouvre began to panic. So he did the one thing he knew would calm himself: He wrote. “I’m so scared,” Mr. Desouvre started. “I don’t know what I’ll do if I lose my dad.” In the next few weeks, Mr. Desouvre filled several notebooks, writing about his worry as well as his happy memories—the jokes he’d shared with his dad, the basketball games they’d watched, the time they put up hurricane shutters together, then cooled down with ice cream. Sometimes he cried as he wrote. Often he laughed. “Writing allowed me to face my fear,” says Mr.
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Scanning the Brain to Predict Behavior, a Daunting ‘Task’ for MRI
New research indicates that task-fMRI lacks the reliability to predict individual behavior or how a person might respond to mental-health therapies. [June 3, 2020]
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How to Talk to Your Children About Protests and Racism
As cities and social media explode with anger over the killing of yet another black man at the hands of police, worried parents struggle with how to protect their children from seeing the worst of the violence while simultaneously explaining the ravages of racism. It couldn't have come at a worse time. Sheltering at home for months to avoid the deadly coronavirus, many parents stressed by juggling work and child care from home had eased their restrictions on screen time for their children. Now it's even more likely that kids might find the video of George Floyd, an unarmed and handcuffed black man in Minneapolis, gasping for breath as a white police officer pressed a knee into his neck.
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APS Statement on Confronting Racism and Discrimination
APS statement to the membership on confronting racism and discrimination.
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Can the “New Normal” Ever Go Back to the Old One?
If you're looking for a window on the new normal, it may very well be made of plexiglass. Russ Miller, who manages TAP Plastics in San Leandro, California, says business is booming. "It's absolutely insanely busy. In 40 years of doing this, I've never seen anything like this." Miller said that as soon as the number of COVID-19 cases exploded, so did sales of the transparent acrylic barriers. "The first customers were the large grocery stores," he said.
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In Defense of a Good Cry, and Other Options for ‘Losing It’
As an urban anthropologist, Katrina Johnston-Zimmerman felt a duty to record her experiences in lockdown. After all, this was a once-in-a-century global pandemic. And so, for the past 49 nights or so, she has noted her mood at the end of the day. Mostly, her moods have been fairly positive. But then, last Sunday, her local farmer’s market was sold out of cut flowers — which she had wanted to brighten up her home. “It was the stupidest thing. I almost lost it there on the street,” she said. Ms. Johnston-Zimmerman, an adjunct professor at Drexel University, made it home, “but then I was baking bread, and I just completely broke down.
