Archive for the ‘mental health’ tag
A Reason not to Marry #
I’ve been hearing a lot recently about how beneficial marriage is, so I was somewhat gratified to see that it’s not always good for you.
On average, the unhappily married had higher daytime and 24-hour blood pressure readings than single people. Having a wide social network had no effect on the trends for either married or single people. But marital satisfaction was significantly associated with satisfaction with life, lower stress, less depression and lower waking blood pressure.
“Just being married per se isn’t helpful,” Dr. Holt-Lunstad said. “because you can potentially be worse off in an unhappy marriage. So choose wisely.”
Fighting in Afghanistan #
Elizabeth Rubin’s piece on Afghanistan in yesterday’s NY Times Magazine is good, if weighted a little heavily toward the mental cost of serving in the military.
One full-moon night I was sitting outside a sandbag-reinforced hut with Kearney when a young sergeant stepped out hauling the garbage. He looked around at the illuminated mountains, the dust, the rocks, the garbage bin. The monkeys were screeching. “I hate this country!” he shouted. Then he smiled and walked back into the hut. “He’s on medication,” Kearney said quietly to me.
Then another soldier walked by and shouted, “Hey, I’m with you, sir!” and Kearney said to me, “Prozac. Serious P.T.S.D. from last tour.” Another one popped out of the HQ cursing and muttering. “Medicated,” Kearney said. “Last tour, if you didn’t give him information, he’d burn down your house. He killed so many people. He’s checked out.”