Posted by: Uticopa in Untagged on
Dec 14, 2009
Christmas is almost upon us. We are bombarded on all sides by lures and enticing goods on display, coupled with increasing demands for more, more, and more from our families. But, this is not the time to be weak. Some people, particularly men, will resort to things like gambling to feed their craving for money. Others, particularly women, will treat shopping as an addiction rather than a necessity.
Let's start with gambling. How to treat it?
Some new research says that the same drugs used to treat substance addictions could prove effective in treating pathological gambling. They tested medications designed to decrease urges and increase inhibitions in two groups of male and female pathological gamblers: those driven by urge (those who gamble when the desire becomes too strong to control) and those who don't have normal inhibitions of impulsive behaviour (they're unable to control the desire to gamble even when the urges are minimal or nonexistent).
Posted by: Uticopa in Untagged on
Dec 13, 2009
If you can't afford all the things your family wants, you just need to be strong and tell them enough's enough.
As far as your mental health is concerned, being stressed can actually be good for you, but you've got to find the right balance. There's no point in spending more and more in an effort to please everyone and end up making yourself too ill to enjoy it.
There are good and bad types of stress. The bad kind is chronic and uncontrollable, like the tension caused by an unhappy marriage or a sick relative. But there are a lot of positives associated with short bursts of stress, especially now with that big build up to Xmas. The reason? Stress jolts you into repair mode. When you injure yourself, your body goes into alert mode and starts to repair itself - healing your injury and revving up your immune system to protect against infection. Short-term stress works the same way. Initially, it produces free radicals and hormones such as cortisol that wreak havoc on your tissues. But then, when your body senses the damage, it begins to repair itself. If the stress is short-lived, you can heal quickly and still have enough energy left over to heal everyday wear and tear, like a scratch or a bruise.
It's now official. Mentally-scarred veterans are being medically discharged from the British army with...wait for it....a golden handshake of £3000! Is that all they're worth? Soldiers whose lives have been shattered by the traumas of fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq are being paid as little as £3000 as compensation for all they've suffered after their medical discharge.
What price bravery? What price to sacrifice your own mental health in pursuit of fighting for your country?
Of course, none of this is ever mentioned in those exciting ads inviting you to apply for a career in the British forces. The ads are full of enticing scenes of far-away exotic locations, team-work with your mates, and you get paid too. What a wonderful job! However, there isn't even any small-print to warn you against the worst thing of all. You might just lose your life in pursuit of this new ‘wonderful' job, and at the very least return home injured and battle-scarred. What? I hear you say. A small price to pay for all that this career offers you?
