Many of us believe that SSRIs work by correcting a simple serotonin deficiency in the brain, but scientists who study depression now mostly consider that to be “last-century thinking,” as one Harvard neuroscientist put it. The new view of how depression develops, and how antidepressants work to relieve it, revolves around stress — wear and tear, that is, in parts of the brain that regulate emotions.

“What we and others have found is that chronic stress can decrease the levels of neurotrophic, or growth, factors in the brain,” says Ronald S. Duman, a professor of psychiatry and pharmacology at Yale University and a leading scientist in the field. Mental illness occurs, the theory goes, when stress mechanisms are on overdrive, causing the atrophy of neurons in such areas as the hippocampus (the region controlling mood and emotion) and the prefrontal cortex (the seat of executive thinking). “It’s very clear,” Duman says, “that antidepressants increase neurogenesis, helping the brain recover.”

No one knows exactly why the combination of antidepressants plus therapy — specifically CBT but also some types of couples therapy — helps many people recover from depression and prevents relapse better than either treatment alone, as studies have consistently shown. Psychologist Zindel Segal’s supposition is that antidepressants allow therapy’s messages to sink in “by regulating emotions, creating a buffer between you and what you’re feeling.” When your brain “is hijacked by strong emotional reactions, the cognitive learning centers shut down,” says Segal, a professor at the University of Toronto.

And evidence is building that long-lasting recovery from depression requires actually learning to behave in some new way, with brain and body fully engaged, so that harmful, ingrained thoughts are overridden by healthier ones.

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Experts also stress that antidepressants are not the only, or even the best, way to make marriage sunnier for people with mild depression. Exercise has been well established to lift mood. Increasing dietary intake of high-purity Omega 3 fatty acid to 1–2 grams per day reduces depressive symptoms, studies have found. A program known as Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT), which combines elements of CBT with mindfulness meditation, curtails anxiety and prevents relapse of major depression on par with antidepressants, Segal’s research has shown. And, yes, good couples therapy can also help people understand better the contours — weak but possibly stronger than they think — of their relationships.

What guidelines can we then follow in disciplining our children and teens? 

Counter-intuitive as it may sound, paying attention to our children when we LIKE what they are doing rather than when we don’t, will more likely produce the results we are looking for.

In other words, react with enthusiasm and generosity when your child is kind, cooperative or prompt.  When s/he is rude, uncooperative or tardy, skip the long, angry lecture and the threatening words, and instead note laconically: “I don’t like it when…”  or “It really upsets me when…”  Then return quickly to the activity in which you were engaged.

Minimizing criticism and focusing less on the negative will improve your relationship with your child, motivating him/her to want to cooperate and please you.  Sounds simplistic?  Try it!

Based on an article by Annie Murphy Paul, The Uses and Abuses of Optimism and Pessimism, in Psychology Today (11.01.11)

In recent years it feels like we’ve all been ordered to always “think positive” by an army of experts in any number of fields. Doctors inform us that optimism improves our health and helps us live longer. Corporate coaches advise us that optimistic employees earn more money and climb the career ladder more quickly. “Positive psychology” researchers produce studies showing that optimistic people are happier and have more friends.

There is currently a a pendulum swing within the field of mental health away from one-size-fits-all optimism, says Lawrence Sanna, professor of psychology at the University of Michigan.  The positive psychology movement arose in reaction to the almost exclusive focus of 20th-century psychologists on pathology and dysfunction, he notes.  “Now we’re realizing that happiness and optimism are not a complete answer, either.”

Daring to challenge the preeminence of optimism as our most sought-after state of mind, psychologists are offering a more nuanced view.  They are finding that flexible use of strategic (as opposed to black-or-white dispositional) optimism and pessimism — targeted to respond to the demands of a specific situation — may actually be more effective than a blanket policy of all optimism, all the time. Says Edward Chang, professor of psychology at the University of Michigan: “The field is starting to recognize that many of us use these mind-sets in a flexible way, and that this flexibility has a lot of advantages.”

OPTIMISM

• Positive assumptions about the future may allow us to tolerate stressful situations that would otherwise be unbearable.
• Optimism can act as a bulwark against anxiety; it fills us with an expansive sense of our own power to shape events, overruling the doubts and worries that might otherwise paralyze us into inaction.
• Optimism can buoy us up when things go wrong; deluged by feelings of hopelessness and despair, optimism is the raft we cling to until the skies clear.
• Optimism allows individuals to think more flexibly and creatively.  With an optimistic mind-set, our belief  that things will work out allows us to come up with innovative solutions.
• Optimism motivates people to work as hard as they possibly can on their long-shot ventures, and buffers them from the ever-present risk of failure.

PESSIMISM

• Pessimism can assist us manage our feelings. By spinning down our expectations, it insulates us from crushing disappointment when things don’t go our way.
• Pessimism is an ego-protection strategy; if we adopt a pessimistic attitude about our chances, we aren’t nearly as affected emotionally when we lose out as we had predicted.
• Pessimism can permit a feeling of delighted relief and surprise when, despite our self-protective pessimism, we do manage to get what we wanted.
• Pessimism can be useful at moments when, successful before, we may be lulled into laziness and overconfidence; imagining all the things that might go wrong, we are spurred to take action to head off the potential catastrophes we conjure and prevent them from happening.
• Bracing ourselves for a negative outcome gives us the chance to work through in advance the emotional implications of the anticipated negative event, and the time to put some supports into place.
• In the face of an objectively grim reality — pessimism can be an ally.  According to a recent study, elderly people who are realistic and even pessimistic about the likelihood of experiencing negative life events — such as the approaching deaths of close friends and relatives — are actually less vulnerable to depression than elderly people who are more optimistic. (The International Journal of Aging and Human Development)

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Even Martin Seligman, founder of positive psychology (and author of Authentic Happiness, 1990), is rethinking the place of positive emotion.  In his latest book, Flourish, he notes that we should not be seeking happiness, but rather “a life of well-being,” one comprised of four parts, of which only one is positive emotion (the three others are engagement with what one is doing; a sense of accomplishment; and good relationships).

“The idea that optimism is always good is a caricature. It misses realism, it misses appropriateness, it misses the importance of negative emotion.”  Seligman, still an advocate of optimism, says it must be paired with “reality testing” to make sure our expectations do not lead us astray in propelling us where we want to go.

Both optimism and pessimism can help us get there — smiley face not required.

American and Dutch cultures, Schalet writes, view the construction of the individual and the role of society at large very differently.  The Dutch practice an “interdependent individualism” that takes into account the needs and feelings of others in the family and also in the society at large.  Coming into one’s sexuality is perceived on the whole as a natural part of psychological and emotional development, one that can and should be integrated into family discussions.

This perspective is aided by the wider societal assumption that older teenagers will want to have sex, and that they’ll need to take precautions in order to avoid a pregnancy or STDs. Sex education is widely taught in the schools, contraception is easily accessible, and abortions (rarely utilized) are available and require parental consent only before the age of 16.  Drinking is similarly considered an intimate way for the family to be together, thereby providing an opportunity for parents to witness and guide their teens’ drinking habits.

This attitude is in contrast to what Schalet calls “adversarial individualism” in the U.S., where American parents view teenagers as fundamentally rebellious and governed by “raging hormones.”  They likewise view the sexes as inherently antagonistic in their aims: boys are out for sex, and girls for romance. American family life views adolescence as inherently about power struggles, inviting a parenting approach that emphasizes setting limits, choosing battles, and forbidding or greatly restricting participation in sex and substance use (i.e., holding them back from the precipice for as long as you possible can).

Writes Ann Swidler, of University of California, Berkeley:  “Schalet challenges our assumptions about teenage sex and the inevitability of conflict between teenagers and parents. American adolescents rebel, and their parents impose harsh discipline because they prize individual autonomy and fear the social disorder it implies. Dutch parents expect their children to be reasonable, because they see self-regulation as a natural attribute of a cohesive society.”

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See also:  Another Problem With Porn

An experienced adult could contribute a lot in helping young women understand why they are not  enjoying sex with their boyfriends:  “Their boyfriends learned their ‘technique’ from porn, and as anyone who’s seen porn can tell you, what’s going on there may work for the camera but isn’t really doing anything for the recipient, which is why she gets the moniker ‘actress.’”

Along with information about birth control, young women need to be told they can pipe up and say what is pleasing and what is not, and in this manner help their partner learn “how to please a real life lady,” notes Marcotte.  Education along these lines for young men, as well, would go a long way in building healthier, more pleasurable sex lives for many young couples.

Educating our young people can “subtly remake their vision of what sex can be, giving them more power in their lives and especially in their relationships, along with more pleasure.”

Helped by a graduate student sleuth named Sherlock Campbell, Pennebaker discovered that a change in the use of function words, particularly pronouns, was the best indicator of shifting mental health or altered interpersonal connection.

In an FBI-initiated study, for example, Pennebaker tallied the number of pronouns, articles and adjectives in Al Qaeda communications — videotapes, interviews, letters.  He found that Osama bin Laden’s use of first-person pronouns (I, me, my, mine) remained fairly constant over several years. By contrast, his second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahri, used such words more and more often. “This dramatic increase suggests greater insecurity, feelings of threat, and perhaps a shift in his relationship with bin Laden,” Dr. Pennebaker wrote in his report  (The Content Analysis Reader, Sage Publications, July 2008).

Health improvements were seen among people whose use of causal words — because, cause, effect — increased; these subjects “were changing the way they were thinking about things.”  Among people recovering from trauma, Pennebaker  discovered a shift in pronoun use, a kind of “perspective switching” — reflecting on problems from different points of view.

Pennebaker discovered strong correlations according to such factors as gender, age and class:  Women, younger people and people from lower social classes more frequently use pronouns and auxiliary verbs — words that supposedly signal both lower status and greater social orientation. Men tend to use more articles (a, the) and women tend to use more pronouns (he, she, they), a difference that, Pennebaker hypothesizes, may suggest that men are more prone to concrete thinking and women are more likely to see things from other perspectives.

He also noted that people seeking to connect with others tend to more readily accommodate to one another’s manner of speaking through “language style matching,” getting their function words in sync (as, for example, in dropping the “I” in favor of the more inclusive “we”).

While Pennebaker is currently turning his word-counting machine toward the presidential campaign, his technique is also drawing attention in the study of social dynamics. Joseph Psotka, a research psychologist at the Army Research Institute that has given him a grant to study how leaders use language, said that over time, this kind of study “could be very helpful for training and leadership development, but precisely how we don’t know yet.”

Image: Phil Marden, WSJ; Click on image to view in full

In a recent article in The Wall Street Journal ( ‘I’m Not Your Little Baby!’ Calling a Truce in Mother-Daughter Conflict, 4.24.12), columnist Elizabeth Bernstein examines the lifelong friction between mothers and daughters.  The following is an excerpt.  

It’s common for mother-daughter relations to be stormy in the daughter’s teen years. But why do mothers and daughters continue to push one another’s buttons well into adulthood?

Some moms never stop nudging. It was their job for many years, after all. Although it is usually well-intentioned, it also is a way for them to get attention from their adult daughters. When daughters won’t listen, mothers feel powerless—and then nudge even more.

Mothers may place unrealistic and at times conflicting expectations on their daughters. They want their daughters to do things they didn’t get to do, but they also want their daughters to be like them. They want their daughters to respect them, and they want them to be a friend.

Daughters, meanwhile, tend to be very sensitive to mom’s input. They think she is being rude or doesn’t respect them as an adult. Underneath, they fear they’ve failed the one person they have been seeking approval from since before they could speak.

The conflict usually starts when the daughter hits adolescence and begins to rebel against authority. A natural break should occur between adolescence and adulthood, where the mother allows her daughter to grow up and make her own decisions. Some mothers, however, see their daughters as extension of themselves and have trouble letting go.  And daughters, for their part, are often reluctant to set boundaries.

Some ideas to help mothers and daughters improve their relationship.

• Daughters, when you speak to your mother, speak as an adult. Remind yourself that you are not 10 years old and always in trouble, and remind your mother, too. (‘It’s interesting you always think I am late. I haven’t been late since 1974.’) Hear what your mother is saying at face value, not through the filter of the past.
• Tell your mom how you do things. Explain that you will ask for her advice if you need it.
• Don’t lie to your mom. It puts distance between you. And she always finds out: She has eyes in the back of her head— remember?
• Mothers, ask your daughter, ‘What do you need help with?’ Don’t assume you know. ‘Asking is the most important thing that the mom can do, because it gives credibility to the daughter as an adult,’ says Mikki Meyer, a marriage and family therapist.
• Tell your daughter what your mother was like. Share how she treated you and how it made you feel. ‘This is very interesting for the daughter to hear,’ Dr. Meyer says.
• Ask, ‘What are we are really fighting about?’ Does your daughter feel disrespected? Is Mom mad that you never call? Discuss what is really wrong.
• Examine your contribution to the problem. Are you passive-aggressive? Overreacting? Passing blame? Accept responsibility.
• Explain your anger; don’t show it. Better yet, leave it at the door. ‘You can pick it up on the way out,’ says Lisa Brateman, a licensed clinical social worker and family therapist.
• Be willing to be vulnerable. Say, ‘The tension is upsetting me. I miss you.’
• Find something fun and mutually satisfying to do together instead of succumbing to the negative pattern. Art? Hiking? Antiquing? Couples who try new activities together are happier. It can be true of moms and daughters, too.
• Imagine a satisfying relationship. ‘You can only have it if you can picture it in some way,’ Ms. Brateman says.

Illustration: Jason Hunt, 1999

In the wonderful ancient Indian tale The Six Blind Men and the Elephant (made popular by 19th-century English poet John Godfrey Saxe), six blind men touch an elephant. Although each man touches the same animal, his determination of the elephant is based only on what he is able to perceive.

The tale, with origins most likely in Hindu lore,* illustrates how people form their realities and belief systems based on limited and subjective experiences. The tale has been used to teach tolerance for other religions and cultures. It also suggests how the collective sharing of  individual perspectives might ultimately afford us deeper and more comprehensive understanding.

Blind Men and the Elephant
by John Godfrey Saxe (1816–1887)

It was six men of Indostan
To learning much inclined,
Who went to see the Elephant
(Though all of them were blind),
That each by observation
Might satisfy his mind.

The First approached the Elephant,
And happening to fall
Against his broad and sturdy side,
At once began to bawl:
“God bless me! but the Elephant
Is very like a wall!”

The Second, feeling of the tusk,
Cried, “Ho! what have we here
So very round and smooth and sharp?
To me ’tis mighty clear
This wonder of an Elephant
Is very like a spear!”

The Third approached the animal,
And happening to take
The squirming trunk within his hands,
Thus boldly up and spake:
“I see,” quoth he, “the Elephant
Is very like a snake!

The Fourth reached out an eager hand,
And felt about the knee.
“What most this wondrous beast is like
Is mighty plain,” quoth he;
“‘Tis clear enough the Elephant
Is very like a tree!”

The Fifth, who chanced to touch the ear,
Said: “E’en the blindest man
Can tell what this resembles most;
Deny the fact who can,
This marvel of an Elephant
Is very like a fan!”

The Sixth no sooner had begun
About the beast to grope,
Than, seizing on the swinging tail
That fell within his scope,
“I see,” quoth he, “the Elephant
Is very like a rope!”

And so these men of Indostan
Disputed loud and long,
Each in his own opinion
Exceeding stiff and strong,
Though each was partly in the right,
And all were in the wrong!

Moral

So oft in theologic wars,
The disputants, I ween,
Rail on in utter ignorance
Of what each other mean,
And prate about an Elephant
Not one of them has seen!

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*  A version of the story has been used in the Buddhist culture as well as the Jain and Sufi Muslim culture.

Apter maintains that recognizing the teen’s own uncertainty about who he is, alongside his eager need to establish a sense of identity, is more helpful in understanding (and navigating) the frequently volatile parent-teen relationship.

The teen years involve significant self-questioning, self-discovery and self-development across a range of issues — including gender, faith, intellect and relationship. Parents become mirrors:  Teens want that mirror to reflect back to them the vividness and clarity they themselves do not feel.

While the arguments teens will have with their parents focus on seemingly trivial or superficial issues, the real issue at hand for the adolescent is more likely whether his parent acknowledges (or challenges) his maturity, capability and human value — something that is  causing the adolescent ongoing and agonizing self-doubt.

Writes Apter: “Teens get so heated in arguments with parents because so much is at stake: they are fighting to change their relationship with a parent, to make a parent see that they are not the child the parent thinks she knows. They want to shake a parent into an awareness of the new and exciting person they hope to become…

“Perversely, teens expect the parent to appreciate who they have become, even before they know; they demand recognition for the new person they see themselves to be — or on the way to being.”

Apter’s research reassuringly shows that quarreling with one’s teen is not necessarily the sign of a bad relationship. The quality of a parent-teen bond has several measures:

• the comfort of simply being together;
• the willingness to share a range of daily experiences; and
• the willing to express a range of feelings (happiness as well as unhappiness).

What a teen is aiming for is, after all, to gain recognition and new respect for the parents he still loves.

*                                *                                *

Terri Apter, Ph.D. (Newnham College, Cambridge) has published several books on family dynamics, identity and relationships, to great international acclaim (among them: You Don’t Really Know Me; The Myth of Maturity; The Sister Knot).

This article by Tara Parker-Pope appeared in The New York Times Magazine (3.25.2012).  I found it most interesting and thought I’d share it in its entirety.   

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Once during a disagreement with my husband, I complained that he wasn’t helping enough with our daughter, and I gave him a long list of the parenting chores I was shouldering on my own. “But you like doing all that stuff,” he blurted in his defense. I don’t recall how the conversation ended (probably badly), but I thought of it while reading a new study about the more mundane responsibilities of parenting. Researchers asked 181 heterosexual college professors who had children 2 or younger to rate, on a scale of 1 to 5, the pleasure they experienced from child care.

On 16 out of 25 child-care tasks — like changing diapers, taking a child to the doctor or getting up in the middle of a night to attend to a child — women reported statistically significant higher levels of enjoyment than men. The only parenting issue that gave women less pleasure than it gave men was having to manage who does what for the child. Over all, women’s scores were 10 percent higher than men’s.

Is it really true that women end up shouldering more of the parenting burden simply because they like it more — or at least dislike it less? Steven Rhoads, a University of Virginia political-science professor and the study’s lead author, surmised that some women may have inflated their enjoyment scores because of feelings of guilt or cultural pressure. But he also said some research suggests that a woman’s parenting skills are deeply rooted in biology. Women with high levels of testosterone, for instance, often show less interest in babies, while a father’s testosterone levels are known to drop when a new baby arrives, ostensibly a biological mechanism to encourage bonding with the infant.

Women are also far more likely to take advantage of family-leave benefits to care for children. In the study, all the universities offered paid family leave, and 69 percent of the women took it, while only 12 percent of the men did. In Sweden, where family leave for both parents is particularly generous, men use about 20 percent of the 480-day benefit. Women use nearly all of it.

It’s difficult to untangle how cultural and economic pressures or biological hard-wiring influence parenting. Plenty of men change diapers, and studies show that mothers and fathers alike spend more time with their children than they used to. Men have more than doubled the time they spend on child care since 1985. Yet women still spend twice as much time with the kids as men, says the University of Maryland sociologist John Robinson, who oversees the Americans’ Use of Time project.

Notably in Rhoads’s study, the two parenting activities that gave men the most pleasure (and women, too) were playing and talking with their kids. But when men were asked to rate how often they actually did those things, their scores were about 10 and 40 percent lower, respectively, than women’s. In the end, perhaps the issue is not that mothers are overburdened by their children — my husband was right when he said I liked being a mom — but that men, for all their progress as fathers, are still missing out.