In his newest book, “After You Believe: Why Christian Character Matters,” Anglican bishop and biblical scholar N. T. Wright advises his readers not to cheat on their tax returns. Because that deceitful act may very well carve a neural pathway inside the brain that makes it easier to cheat on other things or people.

Scary thought.

But the reverse is also true: that the decision to grin and bear a conversation with a boring neighbor on the train–to try ever so painfully to remain patient–also leaves a pathway in the brain that facilitates patience the next time you are confronted with an obnoxious, the-armrest-is-mine train mate.

What happens when you take 200 journalism students and cut them off from the Internet for 24 hours?

It’s something I might call “information anxiety,” because the students expressed a great deal of anxiety in the narratives they provided the researchers after the experiment was over (But I would be quick to add, I’d never consider this a ‘disorder’ — just a simple, predictable result of removing an important set of tools we’ve come to rely on from our everyday world).

“Students expressed tremendous anxiety about being cut-off from information,” observed Ph.D. student Raymond McCaffrey, a former writer and editor at The Washington Post, and a current researcher on the study.

“One student said he realized that he suddenly ‘had less information than everyone else, whether it be news, class information, scores, or what happened on Family Guy.”

“They care about what is going on among their friends and families and even in the world at large,” said McCaffrey.

The study demonstrated how reliant college students were on their technology and social media — texting, always-on Internet connections, iPods. Without these tools, some of the students felt helpless and anxious.

But why would the researchers expect any other result?

Wow can this week really be over?! Perhaps it was all of the celebrations that took place this week that made it go by in a flash. If you haven’t already heard, it was our birthday over here at Psych Central. Can you believe it’s been fifteen years since we began? Thanks to all of you who have sent a ton of b-day wishes on Twitter, Facebook and on our blogs! We really couldn’t have made it this far without you!

And if that wasn’t enough, it was Earth Day yesterday. What did you do to celebrate? One fan on Facebook got creative by donating money, picking up trash and getting some exercise at the same time! Speaking of which, scroll down to the first post and see how you can keep the celebration going.

Here are the posts that made it to the best of our blogs this week:

10 Ways to Celebrate Earth Day

(World of Psychology) – Earth Day may be over, but as a few Facebook fans told us, “Every day is Earth Day.” Read here to learn ten pretty painless things you can still do today and every day.

On April 25th, Hallmark Hall of Fame will broadcast the movie “When Love Is Not Enough — The Lois Wilson Story,” starring Winona Ryder and Barry Pepper (CBS, 9:00 pm ET). The movie, which portrays the life of Lois Wilson, co-founder of Al-Anon Family Groups and wife of Alcoholics Anonymous co-founder Bill Wilson, is based on William G. Borchert’s 2005 book, The Lois Wilson Story: When Love Is Not Enough.

Borchert’s earlier screenplay was the basis of the acclaimed movie My Name is Bill W. which starred James Woods, James Garner, and JoBeth Williams. The premiere of the movie also falls during the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence, Inc.’s (NCADD) 24th Annual Alcohol Awareness Month with its theme, “When Love Is Not Enough: Helping Families Coping With Alcoholism.”

Lois Wilson fell in love with a man whose alcoholism brought his life and their relationship to the brink before he began his personal recovery and helped found Alcoholics Anonymous. Lois and many of the other wives of early AA members also began to band together for mutual support, formalizing these meetings into Al-Anon Family Groups in 1951.

When Love is Not Enough is the story of Lois Wilson and her life with Bill Wilson.

A red flag always goes up in my mind when I see an entire industry sprout up around something that doesn’t have a lot of research backing. That’s been the problem with these so-called “brain games” — you know, those video or online games that supposedly improve your memory or thinking.

Makers of these games like to point to studies of people who were older (usually seniors), had existing memory or cognitive problems or other issues who engaged in specific tasks and then were shown to have some improvement in memory or cognition. Few studies have been done on these games with everyday folks like you and I. And fewer still studies have been done on the specific games being marketed to consumers (often the studies use tasks that the games then try and replicate, but we don’t know if they’re replicating all the important bits or not).  And fewer still studies have been done and published in peer-reviewed professional journals (not just on people’s websites).

So when the prestigious journal Nature publishes a study about real brain games used on a large sample size, this is going to be a piece of research that gets our attention.

Imagine a GPS navigational system that said something like this: “In approximately 30 minutes, you will run into your old boss, who will want to make you feel like a worthless pile of feces. Erect personal boundaries immediately…. I said, Get in your bubble, Woman … Are you listening? She’s approaching you on your left. Lock up all childhood tapes now (the ones that convinced you that were weak, ugly, and pathetic) and DO NOT, I said DO NOT play them for her. Remember, their messages are no longer valid. Proceed carefully. You will speak to her in approximately 3, no 2, no 1 second.”

Me? I would like one of those.

So I made one. In book form.

So this is it folks — 15 years of providing mental health information and resources online. Can you believe it!?? This was pre-Google. Pre-WebMD. Even before the NIMH. The web was brand new and I thought it might be helpful to move my reviews of great online resources onto the web (these indexes I had been doing since 1992 online).

What better place than to put all of this information in one place, on a website? And symptom lists of common mental disorders would be helpful to people too, since folks were always asking, “Are these symptoms of depression?” “What are the symptoms of bipolar disorder?” and so on.

Just for fun, here’s what that first version of Psych Central looked like…

It will be Earth Day in a few days. How will you celebrate? I caught the last half of Nostradamus 2012 on the The History Channel this weekend and was temporarily freaked out. I don’t know about you, but I’m not ready for the world to end in a few years. This Earth Day, you’ll find me recycling paper, reusing old bottles and even unplugging my laptop so that I can relax and reboot by spending more time with Mother Nature. After all, it’s also almost Mother’s Day (May 9th, in case you were wondering).

Besides scaring me to be more environmentally-friendly, the show also got me thinking about the importance of appreciating the now and planning for the future; two concepts you’ll see intertwined in this week’s round up. However you celebrate the day, I hope you’ll have a happy one and please go ahead and enjoy our most popular posts.

Mental Health Court: The Future

(Forensic Focus) – Speaking of the future, Forensic Focus has important information concerning the future of mental health courts. It’s here to stay and only going to get better. Read what recommendations may help mental health courts improve and become more effective.

In an effort to better inform and educate police officers who sometimes have to interact with people with mental illness, departments around the country are instituting specialized training. Does this training actually help to de-escalate potentially violent situations? According to new research, the answer is “Yes.”

Police officers who undergo this training are less likely to use force when dealing with a situation that involves a person with mental illness:

The study, published in a recent edition of the journal Schizophrenia Bulletin, surveyed 135 police officers from Atlanta about how they would handle three different scenarios involving mentally ill people. Forty-eight officers had received crisis-intervention team training, while 87 had not received the training.

Researchers discovered officers who underwent the training –known as the CIT Academy — chose to use less force in the third scenario presented to them.

There are numerous examples throughout the country of situations where police who haven’t undergone this training have used excessive force to deal with someone who apparently has mental illness.

In my chapter about substance abuse in Beyond Blue, I wrote:

Today I realize the recovery cultures of addiction and mental illness clash. Like the Church of Scientology and neurobiology. Like Tom Cruise and common sense. Because complaining is considered whining to most twelve-steppers — “poor me, poor me, pour me a drink” — but as a smart disclosure of symptoms to mental-health professionals. Because many recovering alcoholics and drug addicts are not educated about mental illness, a lot of bad advice is doled out at meetings and/or social hours. With the best of intentions, of course. But dangerous all the same.

I was intimidated by the AA old-timers and afraid to think any differently from them, fearing that if I listened to my gut, I would become one of those people who were “too smart” for the program and relapsed continuously. Who was I to question the direction and counsel given by the guys who had been sober over a quarter of a century? They want to die, too. They just don’t talk about it, I surmised. And neither will I.

The answer to this question of the ages is found within an insightful, detailed 3,800 word article by Tara Parker-Pope over at The New York Times. Although lengthy, it explores the research into this issue and focuses on the work by Ronald Glaser and Jan Kiecolt-Glaser from Ohio State University who’ve been studying the intersection of psychology on the biology of humans since the 1980s:

The two scientists were fascinated by each other’s work, which they often discussed over meals or while jogging together. Glaser suggested that they collaborate professionally, but finding common ground was a challenge: he studied virology and immunology; she was a clinical psychologist who focused on assertiveness and other behavior. In the early 1980s, however, Kiecolt-Glaser came across a book on the emerging field of psychoneuroimmunology, which concerns the interplay between behavior, the immune and endocrine systems and the brain and nervous system. The couple were intrigued by a science that lay at the intersection of their disciplines. [...]

In their first research collaboration, they sought to measure the effect of psychological stress on the immune system. Although earlier studies had established that trauma and other major stress — like the death of a loved one or prolonged sleep deprivation — weakened the immune system, the Glasers wanted to know if lesser forms of stress, like those associated with the workplace or graduate school, had a similar effect.

Who would’ve thought that two scientists in unrelated fields would find a way to work together like that?

In our fast-paced, consumer-driven society, we often believe — wrongly — that more choices are always better. But as we’ve shown time and time again, too many choices is just as bad as too few choices.

Nowhere is this more true than in the world of dating, where previous research has demonstrated the downsides of too many online dating choices. That’s why online dating websites like Match.com work hard to try and limit your choices (although they don’t always do a good job at it). And that’s why eHarmony makes a big deal about using personality characteristics to match you at a “deeper level” (there’s no research to back eHarmony’s claims — it’s just marketing).

Today, we add yet another study to the pile of research demonstrating the downfalls of too much choice.