Congratulations, Cherie!

You’re the winner of a copy of Surviving Ben’s Suicide: A Women’s Journey of Self-Discovery, the moving memoir by C. Comfort Shields.

Thanks to everyone who entered, and stay tuned later today for your weekly Brain Break.

Image: Amazon

Post from: Blisstree

Winner of Surviving Ben’s Suicide By C. Comfort Shields

Saturday’s just don’t have the same magic they had when I was a kid. Saturday’s used to mean no school. Sleeping in. Hanging out with friends until all hours of the night. Going to the pool, or the mall, or some other such fun place.

Now, Saturdays mean catching up on work. Getting a quick call in with a friend. Doing chores I didn’t have time to do during the week. Going grocery shopping, doing laundry, or some other such mundane task.

It’s sad when you have to plan a lazy Saturday, yes?

In any event, enjoy this week’s Saturday Sanity. And the reason for the little smiley faces above is two-fold: One, there’s a lot of good news below, so yay! Two, there’s a lot of bad news below, so you’ll need some perking up!

This week at Mental Health Notes, in addition to participating in the Health & Wellness Channel’s September theme day with 5 Tips To Keep Your Child’s Mind Healthy This School Year and telling you about all the drugs that may or may not be in your water, I ran a five-day series on becoming a mental health advocate called – unsurprisingly – The Top 5 Ways To Be A Mental Health Advocate. Don’t worry; you don’t have to dig through a week’s worth of posts to find them. I’ve provided a convenient round up for you. Oh, and I’m running a contest to win a copy of Surviving Ben’s Suicide, which ends tonight – so hurry on over and enter!

Regarding mental health advocacy, Project Helping Hands is providing mental health services to Gustav victims (and Ike victims, as well, I just found out), Mental Health America set National Parity Call-In Day in motion, the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance (DBSA) announced the 16 finalists in the Facing Us 2008 Music Contest, and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) is hosting a free teleconference on Tuesday regarding the challenges providers face when treating people with mental health problems. It’s too late for me to register (I just found out about it!), but maybe if any of you reading this are participating, you’d like to take notes and share with the class, hmm?

In the world of mental health news, there’s not a lot of good. Suicide is up for soldiers and still high for teens. Parents are doing a lot more talking with school personnel and health care providers about their kids’ mental health (well, now wait – that’s a good thing), and the number of young adults who’ve abused prescription drugs is up (okay, we’re back to the bad stuff). ADHD is causing adults to have lower levels of educational and occupational attainments, IBD is causing a whole plethora of mental problems (or, at least, being connected to them), and dialysis patients with depression are more likely to die or be hospitalized within a year than those who aren’t suffering from depression. Wow, I wish there was more good news. Well, I did find some stuff I’m saving for next week.

Here at b5media’s Health & Wellness Channel, we’ve all been pretty dang busy! In addition to checking out Grace Ibay’s round up of theme day posts, you may also be interested in checking out:

• Mark’s look at medications and other drugs in relation to alcohol and substance abuse.
• Kendra’s recount of her experiences during 9/11.
• Mary Emma Allen’s thoughts on caregivers lifting their spirits when they’re down.
• Angelique’s five reasons parents ignore eating disorders.
• Ruth’s report of coffee perks for women.
• Kristen’s hysterical post about guppy sex (well, it’s hysterical to me!).
• Marijke’s report on how Wii Fit has been working for her.
• Karen’s quote in a Health.com article (go Karen!).
• My guest post over at Weighting Line. (Hint: It’s dripping with sinfully superficial ways to perk up on crap days – and some good advice, too.)

Enjoy your Saturday!

Image: SXC and Aleksandra P.

Post from: Blisstree

Saturday Sanity: The Good, The Bad, And The Smiley Faces

On Friday, I posted my review of Surviving Ben’s Suicide: A Women’s Journey of Self-Discovery, the amazing memoir by C. Comfort Shields.

Today, I’m offering you a chance to win your very own copy!

Entering is easy. All you have to do is:

• Be at least 18 years old and live in the continental United States.
• Leave a comment on this blog post saying anything from “Pick me!” to “I really want this book because…”
• Make sure you enter a valid email address in the comment box labeled “Mail.” You can enter the contest anonymously (i.e. leave a screen name or otherwise fake name in the “Name” section), but you must put a valid email address in the “Mail” space (it doesn’t show up for the public to see); otherwise, I can’t contact you if you’re the winner!
• Do it all before midnight (Eastern Time) Saturday, September 13, 2008!

I will select the winner using the List Randomizer tool at Random.org, and announce the winner on the morning of Sunday, September 14, 2008.

Good luck!

Image: Amazon

Post from: Blisstree

Contest: Win A Copy Of Surviving Ben’s Suicide By C. Comfort Shields

Just when I think I’m going to have a normal week (i.e. one not bogged down with getting caught up with work and chores, but one actually spent working and “choring” at a regular pace!), a gigantic tree about 20 feet from my house decides to give up on life and take a few power and telephone lines down with it.

Fortunately, no one (and no homes) were hurt, but most of my street went without power and/or telephones for two days – which not only blows for people who, you know, want to keep the food in their refrigerators cold, but also really blows for people who work from home.

And I once again found myself scrambling to meet a deadline last night.

In any event, all’s well with the world (and electricity!) again, and here’s your Saturday dose of sanity!

This week at Mental Health Notes, Karen Lynch contributed tips on how to manage emotional distress (and gave me a much needed break!), and then I told you about a few mental health blogs I’m reading, asked you if you’re happy with your psychiatrist’s services, reminded you about the chance to have your donations to Mental Health America matched, posted my review of Surviving Ben’s Suicide, rolled out another edition of What Do You Really Want?, and shared five brain cancer resources. Oh, and I also announced the winner of Dr. David Clarke’s They Can’t Find Anything Wrong!, spread some doggy humor, and publicly announced my extreme jealousy of Nikki Katz.

Regarding mental health advocacy, along with the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, and the Suicide Prevention Action Network USA, Mental Health America published their statement on the JAMA study that shows a continued high rate of suicide among youths after the “Black Box” warnings, the DBSA’s Power of Peers National Conference is right around the corner, and there’s still plenty of time to participate in NAMI’s Grading the States survey.

In the world of mental health news, it’s a big day for women. Researchers believe dialectical behavior therapy may help women who suffer from both an eating disorder and borderline personality disorder, a large study suggests women who experience extreme stress right before or during pregnancy have a higher risk of giving birth to underweight babies, researchers have reported young women who’ve experienced extreme stress have a higher risk for developing breast cancer, and another study suggests that babies born to depressed mothers have “more chaotic sleep patterns early in life.”

Here at b5media’s Health & Wellness Channel, Karen Lynch of Pink Ribbon review hosted a live blogging event during Friday night’s Stand Up To Cancer event, and also featured each one of us Health & Wellness Channel bloggers, and a few others, who participated in helping to spread the word about cancer awareness. Check it out!

• Susan Watiker is Standing Up 2 Cancer
• Alicia Sparks is Standing Up 2 Cancer
• Kristen King is Standing Up 2 Cancer
• Michelle Smith is Standing Up 2 Cancer
• Ruth Schaffer is Standing Up 2 Cancer
• Scott Wharton is Standing Up 2 Cancer
• Kendra James, RN is Standing Up 2 Cancer
• Angela White is Standing Up 2 Cancer
• Marijke Durning, RN is Standing Up 2 Cancer

Enjoy your weekends!

Image: SXC and Andrew Faulkner

Post from: Blisstree

Saturday Sanity: If A Tree Falls 20 Feet From Your House…

In July 1993, after a tumultuous relationship filled with emotions from each end of the spectrum and everywhere in between, C. Comfort Shields’s college boyfriend and first true love, Ben, drove from Washington, D.C. to Maine and shot himself in the head, completing the suicide he’d been flirting with since she met him 18 months before.

What Shields didn’t really know at the time, however, was that the 18 months she knew Ben was just the tail end of a mental hurricane that had spiraled so out of control no amount of love from anyone could have kept Ben alive. How does one compete with an army of prostitutes, years of troubled family relationships, and deep insecurities and confusion galore?

There comes a point when a person’s only hope for life is his will to keep breathing, and Ben just didn’t have that will anymore.

Surviving Ben’s Suicide: A Women’s Journey of Self-Discovery is exactly what the title suggests. It’s the memoir of a woman who doesn’t just survive the suicide of a loved one, but who also grows along the way and becomes more aware of herself, her abilities, and all the things over which she has no control. And, while the journey of self-discovery is never truly complete for any of us, Shields is one of the lucky few who has grown enough to realize her past is an assortment of valuable experiences and memories – some crystal clear and others a bit out of focus – from which she can find guidance but in which she should never remain for too long.

Naturally, Shields experiences a montage of emotions after Ben’s suicide. Like many survivors, she feels somewhat responsible for Ben’s success at killing himself. She wonders if there were anything she could have said or done differently to prevent his death. Shields is also angry, comparing Ben’s exit to the accidental death of her high school friend and wondering why Ben would choose to take his life when her friend’s had been unwillingly taken from her.

She also feels a bit “left out,” as she was Ben’s girlfriend (not his wife), and not only struggles with Ben’s family’s decision to keep some things private from her, but also struggles with finding resources geared toward people who’ve lost girlfriends and boyfriends to suicide.

As the years pass, however, Shields begins to use her experience with Ben and his suicide to handle new situations. She realizes she can’t “save” a depressed friend she suspects may be suicidal and actually backs out of the friend’s life to allow the girl to seek professional help. And, when she almost loses her first son in delivery and does lose a twin during her second pregnancy, she understands even as a mother she can’t fully protect her children or be completely responsible for their development.

Often times we must rely on help from professionals, and sometimes even they can’t control or fix everything.

Reading Surviving Ben’s Suicide is akin to picking up the phone or sitting down to coffee with a friend you haven’t seen in a long while – a friend who’s experienced some pretty intense things in your absence. From the day she meets Ben to the day she marries her husband, Shields covers various time periods in her memoir, informally blending them all together to tell her story. I am very glad I listened.

To learn more about C. Comfort Shields and Surviving Ben’s Suicide, visit ConfortShields.com.

Image: Amazon

Post from: Blisstree

Book Review: Surviving Ben’s Suicide