Studying Tolerance

Inaugural vs Policy Matters
We are less than a month away from a history making event: the inauguration of the 44th President of these United States, who also happens to be African-American. Already, President-elect Barack Obama is making waves.

In selecting Evangelical Pastor Rick Warren to bless the inauguration's opening ceremony, President-elect Obama has chosen to spend some hard earned political capital. Some pundits call it a risky move. To me, its a progressive President recognizing the breath of views he has to work with; Warren, on the other hand, is someone suffering from poor word choice (he compared gay marriage to pedophilia and polygamy). For those who don't know Warren, he's a Christian pastor who rejects the right-wing and the left-wing for the whole bird, but holds some of the typical conservative views without out letting them dominate his agenda which is mainly ending poverty.

With that said, I can understand why Warren being given such an important role, can piss some people off, particularly in the lesbian and gay community. My answer to them is to focus on what matters: policy decisions and action. Symbolic rhetoric is simply not a game changer by itself.

A Real Issue
Here is a real issue to work with. How do we effect behavioral changes from parents apt to reject their homosexual children? Homosexual teens have one of the highest rates of suicide attempts.

A study was released today in the journal Pediatrics. Lead author, Caitlin Ryan, director of Adolescent Health Initiatives at the Cesar Chavez Institute at San Francisco State University, and her researchers interviewed 200 gay and lesbian teens and young adults. Those in the study that "experienced high levels of rejection were nearly 8.5 times more likely to have attempted suicide. They were nearly six times more likely to report high levels of depression and almost 3.5 times more likely to use illegal drugs or engage in unprotected sex. That was compared with adolescents whose families may have felt uncomfortable with a gay kid, but were neutral or only mildly rejecting."

Upon learning of their child's homosexual tendencies, most conservative parents are likely to want to significantly reject, hide, or "change" their child. This does more harm than good, especially for a teen or young adult. Those are impressionable years. The lesson is that a little show of tolerance can go a long way. As a parent, fake it until you make it if you must, recognizing that kids are indeed perceptive. Life is hard enough in the world. Everyone wants to be loved at home, as is.

The Take Away
What happens at home has a much greater effect than any blessing a random man has to give who isn't really felt in your world. You dig?

The Afterw@rd

Counting Blessing this Holiday Season

Looking Back
Holidays are one of the toughest times for a survivor. This is particularly true for individuals who have experienced a recent loss. The one consolation is that tomorrow will be better, because when you are down, the only way to go is up. Know, it doesn't always hurt this much.

It may sound cheesy, but I find comfort in the Serenity Prayer. Regardless of your religious affiliation, or not, there is a lot about life in those wise words, because we will never have all the answers:

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

Looking Forward
This year has been a year of many revelations and blessings. I had friends and family that supported me this year in ways that will forever be with me. It defied odds and defined friendship. I count them as my angles.

One of these hard lessons was that I finally understood what it must have been like for my mother. Depression is a disease. You can't hide, change your genes, ignore your family history, or just snap out of it. You have to tackle it head on.

It took me 30 years to get a clue, Once I understood, everything that I saw in my life growing up and my own personal experiences clicked. Because people who avoid treatment, find ways to self-medicate. Be it constructive or destructive. You choose. But face it you must, because at some point you will run out of lucky charms.

Responsibility is a bittersweet pill. Engage. Be. Think. Act.

If you are touched by this topic join me on this journey.

Let's raise awareness and help educate. Mental health and depression is a disease. Treat it like one.

Be Blessed,

The Afterw@rd

Unintentionally, Made Crook?

French aristocrat Rene-Thierry Magon de la Villehuchet, 65, a founding partner and chief executive officer of Access International Advisors, was found dead early this morning in his Manhattan office in New York. The cause? Suicide. (No need to get descriptive.) He didn't leave a note, something that many survivors know, will haunt Claudine, the wife he left behind. They had no children, but that doesn't mean that his friends or family will not bear the scars.

De la Villehuchet had invested $1.4 billion into Bernard Madoff's pyramid scheme. He made a temporary problem into a permanent solution, and fulfilled a statistic while he was at it. One in four elderly, those 65 and over, dies to suicide.

Not to beleaguer the point, but this is what happens when "the best and the brightest" are pushed aside for unprepared, ideology-focused friendships with benefits, and placed in positions of power. The Security Exchange Commission, which regulates markets and protects investors funds, ha!, was repeatedly asked by credible sources to investigate Madoff for fraud and nothing was repeatedly found.

According to the Washington Post, "Madoff was a Wall Street legend, an acquaintance of senior regulators and a major political contributor, mostly to Democrats. The SEC is investigating whether relationships between Madoff's family and regulators played a role."

Yet again, the level of incompetence that reverberated throughout the current Administration just leaves me stunned and saddened me beyond belief.

Madoff was someone that could have been contained. De la Villehuchet saw the concentrated returns and tried to disinvest for five years. His due diligence demanded it for his business and his clients. Unfortunately, the will of a charming salesman prevailed. It cost De la Villehuchet his life.

Here again is another life lost under our watch.

The Afterw@rd

Diplomatically Terrorized

The Case
The Bush Administration kept getting it wrong at home and abroad. The bad policy didn't seem to stop. Financial regulators looked the other way, as unbridled greed knew no bounds. In this post-9/11 world, we have a pair of shoes now symbolizing an unwanted, inextricable war in Iraq, a country proven to have had no connect to the 9/11 attack.

Yet, we are a country not unfamiliar with terrorism pre-9/11. We had experienced several incidents abroad. On September 19, 1989, we knew who struck UTA Flight 772. So did Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi and the Libyan officials charged. 17 countries lost citizens. France, several African countries, and the United States to list a few. In a 2004 settlement, Libya agreed to pay those families $170 million for the lost lives, $1 million per victim.

The Loss
But for the Pugh family of Vermont, that simply was not enough. They wanted to hold Libya accountable for the actions of their citizens. The loss of Bonnie Barnes Pugh came at too high a price. You see Former Ambassador to Chad, Robert Pugh, lost a wife, and eventually due to the trauma, his career as a diplomat. Anne Carey (Pugh) lost a mother. Her son, Malcolm Pugh, after her loss, took his own life. This was a family that knew pain and the cost of a life or two.

The Judge
Under the Anti-Terrorist Act of 1996, the Pugh family, along with 44 relatives took their case before U.S. District Judge Henry H. Kennedy and, in January 2008, won a $6 billion judgment. But they haven't seen a dime, stalled in the bureaucratic machine called U.S. Government. In July, Congress approved the Libyan Claims Resolution Act. This Act while it re-established a diplomatic relationship with Libya it also placed the State Department as the roadblock for families to go through to receive their financial compensation. The State Department granted a sum of $10 million to the estates of seven Americans, an amount roughly equal to the 2004 settlement (a far cry from $6 billion). They have also refused to forward Judge Kennedy's writings and the evidence presented in court to the Foreign Claims Settlement Commission in the Department of Justice, charged with handling the appeals for this Act.

The Jury
When did the State Department become the law, the judge and the jury? This major foreign policy decision passed without so much as a public hearing or announcement, according to Andrew Cochran of Counterterrorism Blog, who tracks these kinds of issue.

Experts in the know, had never seen this done. While I am no lawyer, I know that the stepping in of the State Department into a civil case matter sets a bad precedent because it gives other questionable state actors like Iran, Sudan and Zimbabwe equal access under the law, thus deflating the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1996.

Wrap Up
So let's see if I get this right. We can spend trillions of dollars in a country that has not committed one terrorist act against the United States. Yet we can buy off on the cheap known, proven and charged terrorist actors such as Libya. Hey, may be we should settle with Saudi Arabia for Osama bin Laden's actions for a few barrels of oil and $2 million per victim. A life simply isn't worth what it used to be. Thanks Bush.

This is just one more suicide that will not be vindicated under the Bush Administration.

The Afterw@rd

Becoming of Age

Today is a doozie for me. I've been preparing mentally, physically, spiritually for it for years. It was even one of the reasons why I even began this blog (smile).

Today I become the same age as my Mom when she completed.

Glad to see the day. I'm just working real hard to count my many blessings.

If this day is hard, wait 'til the anniversary date of her passing. I can hardly wait.

It's been over 30 years and it still hurts. But tomorrow is always better.

The Afterw@rd

A Suicide Per Day...

Yup. There you have it. To make sure we get it right, let's make a clear distinction between correlation and causality. We'll lay it out real clear. Living in or going to Las Vegas, Nevada doesn't cause suicide. Yet, a whole bunch of people who live there or end up visiting the Sin City are correlated to have a higher risk of suicide, 50 percent for residents and two-fold increase for visitors when compared to other visitor destination options. The city's current rate is one suicide per day, a rate that is twice as high as the rest of the country. This finding is also reinforced by another interesting correlation from the same study. City residents who leave the state to visit elsewhere are less at risk to complete suicide.

Who Dunnit?
The gambling doesn't do it, rather the want for a last chance sinful workout, unbeknown to your family and neighbors, is the correlation between suicide and Las Vegas.

Sinful Study
Dr. Matt Wray et. al. published the article and their findings in the current issue of Social Science and Medicine. With the support of his buddies from Harvard, "they looked at 40 million death records from across the country, spanning 30 years..." amounting to 600,000 suicides.

Any Beef?
Nope, not really. But I am curious. What if, as Morton Silverman of University of Chicago said, it's that people predisposed to suicide are some how drawn to Las Vegas? How large of an effect does predisposition have, if any? What role does religious faith play, if any? Are the suicide rates by race or by age proportional to what is found for the rest of the country? Once the fun was had, what if the emptiness for sinful living once had was just too painful to bear?

Dr. Thomas Joiner, author of Why People Die by Suicide, found in his research three factors that mark those most at risk of death by suicide: the feeling of being a burden on loved ones; the sense of isolation; and, the learned ability to hurt oneself. Maybe a visit to Vegas allows you to bat two out of three?

After the Fact
While people can focus on the numbers of those passed and on the preventive measures that can be instituted to prevent further suicides, I am a stand for those who live in the aftermath. If for every death an estimated 10 people are significantly affected, what of the 6,000,000 left-behind? What of them, indeed. Just another set of members in the silent majority.

The Afterw@rd

Quiet Power

President-elect Barack Obama officially announced today, on the anniversary of Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, the selection of four-star General Eric K. Shinseki to head Veteran Affairs (VA). General Shinseki is a Japanese-American from Hawaii who courageously fought in Vietnam from which he came home seriously wounded and having lost most of a foot. He served and climbed through the Army ranks for the last 40 years, accomplishing many firsts as an Asian-American. As a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he is notoriously known for getting the troop numbers right in Iraq, upsetting then-Secretary Rumsfeld's vision of a leaner, meaner armed force. A man of quiet power, integrity and strength, vindicated at last.

He is a man who has actually been at war and knows what it means to come back from the darkside. The Afterw@rd will be looking forward to following General Shinseki as he runs the VA, a bureaucratic behemoth that's been too busy being unaccountable for the rising tide of suicide and post-traumatic stress disorders among the ranks of soldiers returning home.

It's refreshing not to expect to hear any more about paper shredding or e-mail trails with instructions on how to cover-up or curb the diagnosis of soldiers and veterans with PTSD and/or suicidal idealation. A new chapter of hope beings for the VA. I trust General Shinseki will deliver in his own quiet way.

The Afterw@rd

The Happiness Contagion

I just turned off the TV, started to read today's newspaper. And guess what I found? Another happy article. There have been two of them in the news over the last few weeks. Funny. For a minute I thought I was in Bhutan, a country that takes happiness seriously enough to have a Gross National Happiness meter. The GNH measures the citizenry's collective psychological well-being and quality of life. Talk about political will. In the U.S. we just check whether we shop or not.

The Study, The Findings
So what makes this recent article on happiness so special? It's contagion. Dr. Nicholas Christakis of Harvard University and Professor James Fowler of UC San Diego produced a groundbreaking study published today in the British Medical Journal. They analyzed information, gathered from 1983 to 2003, on the happiness of 4,739 people and their social networks, including spouses, relatives, close friends, neighbors and co-workers, amounting to a social network of 50,000 links.

The findings, widely publicized on TV, radio and newspaper, indicate that your happiness may depend on how happy your friends' friends' friends are (folks, you read that right), even if you haven't even met them or know them at all. Happiness, literally, as a rub off effect. That's deep.

Hey the love doesn't last forever. According to the study, happiness has a two-year affect-effect span. The incident that makes your link's link's link happy must have happened over the last year to affect you and, in turn, its effect on you is only expected to last for a year. So tell your friends, to get happy slowly, spread out the wealth.

But how happy is happy? Well, as with all regression and time-series data, it's relative. Once you neutralize for the typical exogenous factors, like age, sex, occupation, etc., "...[a] friend living half a mile away was good for 42% percent bounce, but almost half as much for a friend who lived two miles away." We're talking about happiness that is relative to the average "happiness level" of those with like profiles. Similarly, "[a] next-door neighbor's joy increased one's chances of being happy by 34 percent, but a neighbor down the block had no effect." Yet, what I find most astonishing is the finding that a spouse's happiness had less impact (8%) than a next-door neighbor's (34%).

Where The Beef?
With limiting concessions, I would just love to say that I accept this study because Dr. Daniel Kahneman says I should (disclaimer: he taught a grad school class I took), but life is not that simple. If Dr. Christakis believes that taking cues from your own gender leads to a neighbor having a greater effect than you spouse, then what happends in gay and lesbian marriages? (Hey, I'm just asking!)

The good researchers found that the transmission of sadness was not as reliable as happiness. I'm simply not surprised by that finding. To me it reveals the tenuousness of these studied links and the weakness of the study. It is easier for people to ignore and emotionally disengage from someone who is suffering. In turn, the first thing that folks do when suffering from the disease of depression is to emotionally and socially retreat, thereby isolating themselves. Hence it makes sense that they would be on the fringe of the social network. Happy popular people are simply a self-fulfilling prophecy. While it would be great to just self-select "into circumstances that allow us to stay in a good mood" that is easier said than done for people suffering from depression or other mood disorders.

While further replication of this study is needed, now, more than ever we have a responsibility to do everything we can to be and feel our very best.

The Afterw@rd