Depression: Defeating the Mental Illness Stigma

In 2008, Dr. David Goldbloom, one of Canada’s leading expert psychiatrists, began a speech with an excerpt written by a young man in 1841: “I am now the most miserable man living. If what I feel were equally distributed to the whole human family, there would be not one cheerful face on Earth. Whether I shall ever be better, I cannot tell. I awfully forebode I shall not. To remain as I am is impossible. I must die or be better, it appears to me.” The young man who wrote these words was Abraham Lincoln, who later led his nation successfully through the American Civil War.

Broadcasting hope of recovery to the thousands of Canadians coping with mental illness, this gripping account mimics some of the symptoms of depression. “One of my darkest days is when I attempted suicide in 2004,” says Richard Braudo, who has suffered from familial major depressive disorder since he Read more

Parental Alienation: The Innocent Eyes of a Custody Storm

Stories of parental alienation in child custody disputes that leave one parent in the dark and an innocent child with irreversible repercussions may sound like faraway scenarios from shows like 20/20 and Dateline, but according to renowned psychologist Amy J. L. Baker, these tragic tales hold real-life truths. “When I interviewed 40 adults who gave up one parent in order to please the other, they talked about very profound negative effects,” says the author of Adult Children of Parental Alienation Syndrome: Breaking the Ties that Bind. “It’s a form of emotional abuse to manipulate a child to reject a parent who does not deserve to be rejected,” says Baker. There’s no question in my mind,” she adds.

Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS) was coined in the 1980s by psychiatrist Richard A. Gardner, and is now under consideration for the next revision of The Diagnostic Statistical Read more