When Rupert Isaacson decided to take his autistic son, Rowan, on a trip to Mongolia to ride horses and seek the help of shamans two years ago, he had a gut instinct that the adventure would have a healing effect on the boy. Mr. Isaacson’s instinct was rewarded after the trip, when some of Rowan’s worst behavioral issues, including wild temper tantrums, all but disappeared.

…“The Horse Boy” traces Rowan’s early difficulties with “demonic” tantrums, speech delays and incontinence. The only thing that seemed to help, Mr. Isaacson discovered, was riding horses. On horseback Rowan was calm, gave verbal directives and expressed joy.

Then Mr. Isaacson, who had previously written about the Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert in southern Africa and witnessed several shamanic ceremonies, took his son to a convention of traditional healers. For a few days Rowan improved.

Mr. Isaacson, a travel writer, wondered where he could combine horses and shamanic healing, and landed upon Mongolia… A young filmmaker agreed to record the trip.

The Isaacson family’s approach was unorthodox to say the least, and Mr. Isaacson is careful to specify that “the book isn’t really saying that shamanism cures autism or horses cure autism; it’s saying we found a way.” He added later in the article that he wanted to write a book to reassure families with newly diagnosed autistic children, to demonstrate that it was still possible to “lead a life of adventure” together.

Although the Times story makes for great reading, and I’m delighted to hear the Isaacsons have found some treatment approaches that work for them and for Rowan, it’s important to keep in mind before hopping the next plane to Mongolia that this is one story about what worked for one family. While seeing shamans worked for the Isaacsons, its validity as a treatment approach for autistic disorders certainly counts as new and uncharted territory for now.

The therapeutic value of horses, however, has made equine-assisted therapy an increasingly popular and well-researched treatment modality. I volunteered at a NARHA (North American Riding for the Handicapped Association) equine-assisted therapy barn for many years, where I saw firsthand the positive effects of interacting with horses on people living with various physical, mental, and emotional challenges. For a wheelchair-bound person, the gentle swing of the horse’s walk exercises the same pelvic and trunk muscles used for walking, improving balance and coordination. The instant height and mobility gained from sitting on a horse do equal wonders for the rider’s confidence and self-esteem.

Perhaps my favorite memory from my years working at the barn is of a tiny autistic boy who came with his mother each week to ride Hank, a former show horse. Although Hank was easily twice as tall as the boy, he carefully packed his tiny cargo around the ring, slowing or stopping whenever his rider tensed up from nervousness. The boy couldn’t speak, and communicated mainly by hand signals.

I will never forget the look on the mother’s face when, after five or six weeks of lessons, her son looked at us and very clearly said the word “trot”.

Further Reading:
More on the Isaacsons, their book, and their documentary

NARHA’s Equine Facilitated Mental Health Association main page

Google search results for scholarly papers on equine-facilitated psychotherapy

What does psychology have to say on the subject? According to a new San Francisco State University study, both camps are partially right: money can lead to greater happiness for the person possessing it and those around them, if it is used to buy experiences, not possessions.

According to SFU’s February 7 press release, the study by Ryan Howell, an assistant professor of psychology at SFU, “demonstrates that experiential purchases, such as a meal out or theater tickets, result in increased well-being because they satisfy higher order needs, specifically the need for social connectedness and vitality — a feeling of being alive.”

The remainder of the release describes the study procedure:

Participants in the study were asked to write reflections and answer questions about their recent purchases. Participants indicated that experiential purchases represented money better spent and greater happiness for both themselves and others. The results also indicate that experiences produce more happiness regardless of the amount spent or the income of the consumer.

Experiences also lead to longer-term satisfaction. “Purchased experiences provide memory capital,” Howell said. “We don’t tend to get bored of happy memories like we do with a material object.

“People still believe that more money will make them happy, even though 35 years of research has suggested the opposite,” Howell said. “Maybe this belief has held because money is making some people happy some of the time, at least when they spend it on life experiences.”

“The mediators of experiential purchases: Determining the impact of psychological need satisfaction” was conducted by Ryan Howell, assistant professor of psychology at San Francisco State University and SF State graduate Graham Hill.

I know I feel happier when I spend money on dining out, movies, travel, or other experiences — shopping is fun too, but the excitement fades quickly after I’ve made my purchases — and I’m particularly interested to hear the thoughts of our blog readers regarding these findings. What is your reaction to this research, and how does it speak to your experience? Do you think more money would make you happier? Do you think it’s necessary to spend it on non-material experiences to maximize your happiness?

…don’t wait until after choking to practice their craft. They hobble themselves, in earnest, before pursuing a goal or delivering a performance. Their excuses come preattached: I never went to class. I was hung over at the interview. I had no idea what the college application required.

“This is real self-sabotage, like drinking heavily before a test, skipping practice or using really poor equipment,” said Edward R. Hirt, a psychologist at Indiana University. “Some people do this a lot, and often it’s not clear whether they’re entirely conscious of doing it — or of its costs.”

Even if some people are able to pull the wool over their own eyes this way, others around them certainly are not deceived. A recent study by James C. McElroy of Iowa State University and J. Michael Crant of the University of Notre Dame (read the abstract here) found that outsiders begin to look negatively upon people who are constantly full of excuses for shoddy performances.

Why is this? Before you spend too much time questioning this phenomenon in others, take a look at your own behavior. When was the last time you stayed up into the wee hours of the morning, despite an important commitment early the next day? Have you ever failed to study enough for an important exam, even if it was worth a significant part of your final grade? Had too much to drink the night before a major game or race? Wondered why you weren’t trying harder on a challenging task or assignment? If you’re now berating yourself for some past failure, you’ve missed my point: most of us are guilty of self-sabotage at least occasionally, but only rarely do we admit to ourselves the real reason for our behavior.

The Times article makes a really interesting point toward the end: This phenomenon of unconsciously shooting oneself in the foot is undoubtedly related to a fear of failure. After all, if you never put your best effort in, when you fail you can always fall back on the excuse that you weren’t really trying in the first place, thus preserving your self-image. The article concludes,

“It’s like the line from the old Brando movie ‘On the Waterfront’: ‘I coulda been a contender,’ ” Dr. Hirt said. “In the long term, that may be easier to live with for some people than to know that they did their very best and failed.”

On that note, here’s a New Year’s resolution for us all: Try to be more aware of the excuses we make, and commit to taking risks sometimes in order to do our best possible work. Knowing you gave your absolute best to the task at hand, regardless of outcome, should be a reward in and of itself.

Statistics such as these, and in extreme cases murders in which a jealous ex is implicated, have spurred several states to adopt legislation requiring schools to present dating abuse prevention programs to students.

The Times article blames unmoderated technology for worsening the problem:

Experts say the abuse appears to be increasing as more harassment, name-calling and ridicule takes place among teenagers on the Internet and by cellphone.

“We are identifying teen dating abuse and violence more than ever,” said Dr. Elizabeth Miller, an assistant professor of pediatrics at the School of Medicine at the University of California, Davis, who began doing research on abuse in teenage dating relationships nearly a decade ago.

Dr. Miller cited a survey last year of children ages 11 to 14 by Liz Claiborne Inc., a clothing retailer that finances teenage dating research, in which a quarter of the 1,000 respondents said they had been called names, harassed or ridiculed by their romantic partner by phone call or text message, often between midnight and 5 a.m., when their parents are sleeping.

Young men and women who are just entering the dating world might also mistake their significant other’s controlling behavior for love and commitment; Dr. Miller points out later in the article that “few adolescents understand what a healthy relationship looks like.”

If you’re worried about your child or a friend, or if you’re concerned your own relationship might be abusive, I encourage you to begin the process of extricating your loved one or yourself from the situation as soon as possible. The following resources are a good starting point. For your safety, please be sure to access them on a public or secure computer, where the abuser cannot find out you viewed them.

1. A Psych Central Self Quiz: Am I in an Abusive Relationship?
2. Ask the Therapist: Advice from Psych Central on Getting Out of an Abusive Relationship
3. The National Teen Dating Abuse Helpline: loveisrespect.org
4. Heather’s Voice, a resource site in memory of Heather Norris, who was murdered by her abusive boyfriend: heathersvoice.net
5. Teens Experiencing Abusive Relationships (T.E.A.R.) has a list of warning signs; another about helping yourself, your child, or your friend; and much more: teensagainstabuse.org

As a naturally “with-it” type, I suppose I assumed when I began meditating regularly that my thoughts would be as orderly as my desktop, that emptying my mind would be as simple as sorting through an outdated folder. In reality, it was ferociously difficult to quiet the constant stream of thoughts, plans, images, judgments, and story lines most of us don’t even realize are playing in our heads. Allowing oneself to simply exist, to fully experience a moment, is a difficult but worthwhile undertaking; here are “Six Steps to Living in the Moment” from an article by Jay Dixit in the November/December issue of Psychology Today (read the full article, “The Art of Now: Six Steps to Living in the Moment” here):

“1. To improve your performance, stop thinking about it (unselfconsciousness).”
If you can’t stop thinking about what a terrible dancer you are or how boring your speech is, you’re wasting valuable energy by making yourself anxious. I don’t know about you, but I’d much rather watch an enthusiastic dancer make a few mistakes than a technically perfect dancer who seems on the verge of tears.

“2. To avoid worrying about the future, focus on the present (savoring).”
As Dixit puts it, “We sip coffee and think, This is not as good as what I had last week. We eat a cookie and think, I hope I don’t run out of cookies.” Where is the enjoyment there?

“3. If you want a future with your significant other, inhabit the present (breathe).”
Mindfulness makes people less aggressive and more aware of their feelings, as well as their interactions with other people. Focusing on the present frees one up to respond “thoughtfully rather than automatically”.

“4. To make the most of time, lose track of it (flow).”
Have you ever sat down, started in on a task, and become so fully absorbed in what you were doing that hours passed without your notice? Most people have attained this state, which psychologists call “flow,” at one point or another while doing something they find engaging and enjoyable. Dixit describes it as such:

As your attentional focus narrows, self-consciousness evaporates. You feel as if your awareness merges with the action you’re performing. You feel a sense of personal mastery over the situation, and the activity is so intrinsically rewarding that although the task is difficult, action feels effortless.

“5. If something is bothering you, move toward it rather than away from it (acceptance).”
It’s human nature to avoid unpleasant situations. However, I like Buddhist nun Pema Chödrön’s thoughts on the subject in her book When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times:

“…feelings like disappointment, embarrassment, irritation, resentment, anger, jealousy, and fear, instead of being bad news, are actually very clear moments that teach us where it is that we’re holding back. They teach us to perk up and lean in when we feel we’d rather collapse and back away. They’re like messengers that show us, with terrifying clarity, exactly where we’re stuck. This very moment is the perfect teacher, and, lucky for us, it’s with us wherever we are.”

“6. Know that you don’t know (engagement).”
If we know everything already, if our days are routine and predictable, where is the excitement in that? Why bother being curious about anything? As Pema Chödrön so elegantly puts it in “When Things Fall Apart”: “We long to have some reliable, comfortable ground under our feet, but we’ve tried a thousand ways to hide and a thousand ways to tie up all the loose ends, and the ground just keeps moving under us.” Embrace the unexpected in the here and now of your day. It’s what sets it apart from all the other days before it.

If you’re still wondering why you should bother with any of this, consider the following benefits of living in the present (from the Psychology Today article):

Cultivating a nonjudgmental awareness of the present bestows a host of benefits. Mindfulness reduces stress, boosts immune functioning, reduces chronic pain, lowers blood pressure, and helps patients cope with cancer. By alleviating stress, spending a few minutes a day actively focusing on living in the moment reduces the risk of heart disease. Mindfulness may even slow the progression of HIV.

Mindful people are happier, more exuberant, more empathetic, and more secure. They have higher self-esteem and are more accepting of their own weaknesses. Anchoring awareness in the here and now reduces the kinds of impulsivity and reactivity that underlie depression, binge eating, and attention problems. Mindful people can hear negative feedback without feeling threatened. They fight less with their romantic partners and are more accommodating and less defensive. As a result, mindful couples have more satisfying relationships.

So, what are you waiting for? Focus on what you’re doing right now. Even if you’re eating a cookie, and you’re about to run out of them. You can worry about buying more later, after you’ve taken the time to savor this one.

How can deceiving your brain be so simple? Benedict Carey, author of the Times article, explains:

In previous work, neuroscientists have induced various kinds of out-of-body experiences using similar techniques. The brain is so easily tricked, they say, precisely because it has spent a lifetime in its own body. It builds models of the world instantaneously, based on lived experience and using split-second assumptions — namely, that the eyes are attached to the skull.

Thanks to the brain’s easy acceptance of out-of-body avatars, the Swedish researchers’ work has many exciting potential applications for psychotherapy. As Carey points out,

…therapists often work to pull people out of themselves: to see their behavior from the perspective of a loved one, for example, or to observe their own thinking habits from a neutral distance.

Marriage counselors have couples role-play, each one taking the other spouse’s part. Psychologists have rapists and other criminals describe their crime from the point of view of the victim. Like novelists or moviemakers, their purpose is to transport people, mentally, into the mind of another.

Picture those troubled spouses in marriage counseling, not just imagining, but fully inhabiting the role of their partner. I will be eager to see the results of any studies looking at the clinical effectiveness of this new treatment modality; my hunch is that the added “realness” of the body-swapping experience will allow a patient to develop deeper, more genuine compassion for others than the old role-playing method.

Body swapping won’t work for everyone seeking therapy, of course. As Benedict Carey writes, “People suffering from the delusions of schizophrenia or the grandiose mania of bipolar disorder are not likely to benefit from more disorientation, no matter the intent.” Overall, however, these results are a fascinating new research development, one that many therapists are undoubtedly excited to add to their bag of tricks. Check out the full study, “If I Were You: Perceptual Illusion of Body Swapping”, here.

Early in the discussion, Trimberger describes three major “cultural factors” that she says make it “easier to be single in India”. First, singledom doesn’t have the negative connotation it does in many Western cultures; celibacy is regarded positively. Next, she says, arranged marriages, which predominate in India, take the woman’s “worthiness” out of the equation. That is, if a woman remains unmarried, there could be many factors at play: not enough dowry on the part of her family, trouble finding a good match, and so on. In the U.S., however, we still tend to view older singles, particularly women, with suspicion, assuming there must be something fundamentally wrong with the person.

Trimberger’s third cultural factor, and the one I find most interesting and relevant to the life experiences of Western readers of this blog, is, as she puts it, “the cultural imperative in the U.S. that being coupled is essential to human happiness.” Take a moment to really consider this. As a culture, we have fantastically unrealistic expectations about our relationships, as any fairy tale or breathless tabloid wedding account will show you. Haven’t you been socialized from day one, either outright or more implicitly, to pity singles older than their late twenties, operating under the assumption that all of them would rather be married and were simply unlucky in love or not desirable enough? When was the last time you read a fairy tale whose plot ventured beyond “…And they lived happily ever after?” The message implicit in these endings is simple: finding and landing a life partner is the tough part, and married life is nothing but sunshine and blue skies, with nary a screaming baby or round of marriage counseling on the horizon. Trimberger elaborates:

Marriage in India is more highly valued, but its purpose is family ties, not coupled happiness. Compatibility between spouses is not linked to finding a soul mate, but is seen as the result of patient work, along with family support. As a result, single women in India are not pitied because they are not coupled.

To illustrate the implications, let me quote from a one of India’s feminist intellectuals, Urvashi Butalia, a publisher who founded the feminist press Kali for Women. She says, “Oddly enough, the first time I really became conscious of my singleness was in, of all places, England. . . . [I found myself] in a culture that so privileges relationships, especially heterosexual one, that if you are not in one (and even if you have been in one that may have broken up you are expected to jump into another almost immediately), there has to be something wrong with you. So I was always the odd one out, the one without the man, the one to be felt sorry for. And it always bewildered me, because I did not feel sorry for myself, so why did they? It wasn’t a nice feeling.”

I spent a semester abroad in the predominantly Hindu nation of Nepal, India’s neighbor to the north, and noticed many of the points Trimberger makes firsthand. Perhaps the biggest difference I observed between married life in Nepal and in the States was the amount of time people seemed to feel obligated to spend with their spouses. In the U.S., we expect our significant others to fulfill our every need: spouse, confidant, lover, friend. Couples hang out as couples; the rare pairs who maintain separate apartments or bicoastal marriages are met with pity or disbelief. Conversely, in Nepal, I noticed much more separation between people’s married lives and their circles of friends; women spent time with other women, men spent time with other men. The undercurrent of desperation and possessiveness apparent in so many of our romantic relationships here in the West was, for the most part, noticeably absent.

Whether you’re single or coupled, I hope you’ll spend some time considering the questions raised by the work of singles researchers like Kay Trimberger and Bella DePaulo. What did your parents and society as a whole teach you about singledom and marriage? How does this affect your relationships, and/or your contentment as a single person?

Related Links:
Dr. DePaulo’s website
Dr. Trimberger’s website
The Singles Studies Annotated Bibliography, The Institute for the Study of Social Change, UC Berkeley

As it turns out, new research on the subject of “elderspeak” justifies my discomfort: such informal terms of address can cause people to view aging more negatively, adversely affecting their health and longevity, including survival rates.

Dr. Becca Levy, an associate professor at Yale University who studies elderspeak’s health effects on senior citizens, was interviewed for this October 6 New York Times article. Here’s a summary (from the article) of findings from two of her research studies:

In a long-term survey of 660 people over age 50 in a small Ohio town, published in 2002, Dr. Levy and her fellow researchers found that those who had positive perceptions of aging lived an average of 7.5 years longer, a bigger increase than that associated with exercising or not smoking. The findings held up even when the researchers controlled for differences in the participants’ health conditions.

In her forthcoming study, Dr. Levy found that older people exposed to negative images of aging, including words like “forgetful,” “feeble” and “shaky,” performed significantly worse on memory and balance tests; in previous experiments, they also showed higher levels of stress.

Interestingly enough, the Times article goes on to say that health care professionals are often “the worst offenders” when it comes to respectful treatment of elderly people, citing research by Dr. Kristine Williams of the University of Kansas School of Nursing. Williams videotaped daily life in a nearby nursing home, looking closely at the interactions between 20 residents and professional caregivers. She found that patients “addressed as [though they were] infants… showed their irritation by grimacing, screaming or refusing to do what staff members asked of them”, and that the feeling of incompetence incited by elderspeak “begins a negative downward spiral for older persons, who react with decreased self-esteem, depression, withdrawal and the assumption of dependent behaviors.”

Of course, not everyone of retirement age objects to labeling by the “sweetie” set — some consider “dear” and its kin warm and friendly, a playful way to connect verbally. However, healthcare professionals and others who spend time with older people would do well to weigh their words carefully. Elderspeak isn’t just annoying to most elderly folks, or disrespectful — it can have an adverse effect on the person’s views toward aging, relationships with caregivers, health, and even longevity. Plus, I don’t have to cringe when I overhear you calling my 86-year-old grandmother “honey”.

The decision by Judge Jack B. Weinstein of Federal District Court came as part of a ruling that gave class-action status to a case brought by insurance companies, pension funds and unions that want Lilly to repay them billions of dollars they spent on the drug. They contend that Lilly hid the side effects of the drug and marketed it for unapproved uses.

The confidential documents were produced by Lilly in response to a related lawsuit filed by patients who said that Zyprexa had caused excessive weight gain and diabetes. The papers were placed under a protective court order soon after the suit was filed in 2004.

“Lilly’s legitimate interest in confidentiality does not outweigh the public interest in disclosure at this stage,” Judge Weinstein wrote.

The article goes on to mention that some of the confidential papers were provided in December 2006 to Times reporter Alex Berenson, who used them to write “Eli Lily Said to Play Down Risk of Top Pill”:

The drug maker Eli Lilly has engaged in a decade-long effort to play down the health risks of Zyprexa, its best-selling medication for schizophrenia, according to hundreds of internal Lilly documents and e-mail messages among top company managers.

The documents, given to The Times by a lawyer representing mentally ill patients, show that Lilly executives kept important information from doctors about Zyprexa’s links to obesity and its tendency to raise blood sugar — both known risk factors for diabetes.

Lilly’s own published data, which it told its sales representatives to play down in conversations with doctors, has shown that 30 percent of patients taking Zyprexa gain 22 pounds or more after a year on the drug, and some patients have reported gaining 100 pounds or more. But Lilly was concerned that Zyprexa’s sales would be hurt if the company was more forthright about the fact that the drug might cause unmanageable weight gain or diabetes, according to the documents, which cover the period 1995 to 2004.

Zyprexa has become by far Lilly’s best-selling product, with sales of $4.2 billion last year, when about two million people worldwide took the drug.

Also, months before that article went to press, the FDA was already warning people about Zyprexa’s numerous side effects on its Patient Information Sheet for the drug.

According to yesterday’s Times article, Eli Lilly “denied having withheld [the information used in Berenson’s 2006 article]” and accused Berenson of “cherry-picking” documents to get his argument across.

To me, this whole situation is a textbook example of something that’s all too easy to forget: drug companies are just that, companies, meaning their success depends on making a profit. While we all like to think that people’s health and well-being drive the business decisions of these organizations, that may or may not always be the case.

So, whether you’re on Zyprexa or not, take the time to educate yourself about all of the substances you’re putting into your body. What are the potential side effects? Does there appear to be any controversy over the safety of the substance? What does your health care professional think? Who did the research trials on this drug, and where did they get their research money?

Resources: Zyprexa Safety Information from Eli Lilly

For patients with Irritable Bowel Syndrome (I.B.S.), a disorder characterized by medically inexplicable diarrhea, constipation, or a cycle of the two, these findings are provocative to say the least.

…learning to minimize stress and emotional disturbances can reduce the symptoms of I.B.S., perhaps more effectively than medications, recent research has indicated.

…This is perhaps an overreaction to the past when most patients with I.B.S. were told there was nothing physically wrong with them — it was all in their heads. After all, they had no obvious organic cause like a tumor, infection or ulcer.

In the modern era of medicalization, the pendulum swung the other way. Gastroenterologists now recognize that I.B.S. is a real physiological, or “functional,” disorder, though no specific cause has been discovered.

While many I.B.S. patients do find relief through diet changes alone, steering clear of potential problem foods such as wheat, chocolate, caffeine, and alcohol, others find they can manage their symptoms best with both diet and counseling or stress-reduction training. One promising British study on hypnotherapy, cited by Brody, found that 81 percent of the 204 participants felt better for up to six years after treatment. Just try and find a pill with such long-lasting positive effects!

A good friend of mine suffers from I.B.S., and spent several frustrating years eliminating potential “trigger” foods to no avail. Once he started to focus on stress reduction, however (psychotherapy plus regular sessions of meditation and relaxation), his flare-ups were greatly reduced. It certainly seems like the estimated 15 percent of Americans living with I.B.S. would do well to acknowledge both the “mind” and “body” components of their disorder, managing their symptoms through a combination of both dietary changes and stress-reduction techniques.

Resources: The Mind-Body Digestive Center

Although, according to their press release, the APA researchers did find that “some studies indicate that some women do experience sadness, grief and feelings of loss following an abortion, and some may experience clinically significant disorders, including depression and anxiety”, they found “no evidence sufficient to support the claim that an observed association between abortion history and mental health was caused by the abortion per se, as opposed to other factors.”

Those studies selected for evaluation were chosen for their methodological soundness; this APA press release says the task force noted that “many” published studies “suffered from serious methodological problems”, particularly when a woman undergoes more than one abortion:

“The best scientific evidence published indicates that among adult women who have an unplanned pregnancy, the relative risk of mental health problems is no greater if they have a single elective first-trimester abortion or deliver that pregnancy,” said Brenda Major, PhD, chair of the task force. “The evidence regarding the relative mental health risks associated with multiple abortions is more uncertain.”

…The report noted that other co-occurring risk factors, including poverty, prior exposure to violence, a history of emotional problems, a history of drug or alcohol use, and prior unwanted births predispose women to experience both unwanted pregnancies and mental health problems after a pregnancy, irrespective of how the pregnancy is resolved. Failures to control for these co-occurring risk factors, the task force noted, may lead to reports of associations between abortion history and mental health problems that are misleading.

I don’t know about you, but the APA task force’s results don’t surprise me, nor do the methodological weaknesses of many of the original studies. As the press release and report both note, “women have abortions for many different reasons and within different personal, social, economic and cultural circumstances, all of which could affect a woman’s mental state following abortion…consequently, global statements about the psychological impact of abortion can be misleading.” In other words, any researcher who wants to prove that the emotional stress of abortion directly causes mental illness in women is going to have a difficult time teasing apart and controlling for all these potential confounds.

Read the full APA report here.

Opponents of the bill believe that separation “is the best way to foster a stronger sense of self and independence in the children and minimize the likelihood that they will cover for one another’s academic weaknesses”:

“Twins are never 50-50 in their skills and abilities,” said Stuart Goldman, an assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School who also works at Children’s Hospital Boston. “You want them to develop skills and competencies on their own.”

…”Many people may think this might be micro-parenting . . . but this idea that twins won’t be individuals if they stay in the same classroom is so misguided and not based on research,” said Nancy L. Segal, a psychology professor and director of the Twins Studies Center at California State University, Fullerton.

Other parents would prefer to keep their twins together, however, or at least have the power to decide when their children are ready to move into separate classrooms. The Globe article references “a rising number” of parents who complain that “forcing twins to separate in the classroom can cause anxiety and depression, with crying, bed-wetting, withdrawal from classmates, and disengagement from classwork.”

Is this really a legislative issue, though? Why not make decisions regarding classroom placement on an individual, case-by-case basis, instead of falling back on a blanket piece of legislation? District officials in Carlisle, MA operate under a policy that seems both sensible and effective to me: discuss the benefits and drawbacks of separating a set of twins with their parents, taking the individual needs, idiosyncrasies, and desires of the children into account.

At the only elementary school in Carlisle, the principal, teachers, and a psychologist will advocate for separation after meeting with parents on kindergarten placements, but Superintendent Marie Doyle said the district ultimately lets parents choose.

“The challenge with twins is that you have a dominant and submissive twin,” Doyle said. “If you keep them together in same classroom, the dominant twin will continue to speak for the other sibling and make decisions.”

Certainly a valid point, but should school officials still be allowed to overrule parents who want their twins to remain together, as has been the practice in many Massachusetts school districts for decades? I’m not so sure.

The main premise of “The Baby Borrowers”, which airs Wednesdays at 8:00 PM, is simple: showing inexperienced teenagers the realities of raising children through, well, reality. NBC’s website for the “intriguing new social experiment” describes the process like this:

“The Baby Borrowers”…[is] based on the hit British program that asks five diverse teenage couples — ages 18-20 — to fast-track to adulthood by setting up a home, getting a job and becoming caring parents first to babies, toddlers, pre-teens and their pets, teenagers and senior citizens — all over the course of three weeks.

As the social experiment begins, the five young volunteer couples are asked to literally grow up overnight when they are each given a home in a quiet cul-de-sac outside Boise, Idaho and attend pre-natal classes as each “mother” wears a simulated “empathy” belly to prepare them for the arrival of their “baby.”

When a real baby (all aged six-11 months old) appears at their door — courtesy of five pairs of real volunteer parents (some of whom were teen parents themselves) who entrust their infants to one of the couples — the nervous, fumbling teens are in for three long, arduous days that make chilling out a distant memory. They must stick to rigid routines, handle the feeding chores, diaper duty and crying jags that might be shared by baby and teens — all the while under 24-hour supervision by nannies and the real parents who are stationed next door, watching via monitor, and able to step in at any time. Plus, one teen from each of the couples must start a job, ranging from working in a local vet’s office to a lumberyard, leaving the other alone as caregiver for the day.

Multiple advocacy groups, such as The Natural Child Project, Zero to Three, and the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, have issued statements calling for the removal of the show (follow the previous links to read them), on the grounds that separating babies and toddlers from their parents for three days is too traumatic and could damage healthy parent-child attachment. Furthermore, opponents of the show argue, parents who “loan” their children to “The Baby Borrowers” are not acting responsibly because they have no way of knowing whether their child’s teenage “parents” will be competent caregivers or not. (The “hit British program” was criticized for the same reasons, by the way.)

NBC has responded with this message board, on which some of the parents discuss their positive experiences with the show and entertain questions from curious viewers. One parent, Chet Nichols, describes the surprisingly lengthy and thorough-sounding evaluation process he and his family had to go through before their acceptance to the show:

“After making the decision to move forward, we were informed of the process of not only selecting the teens, but us (the actual parents) as well. We were informed that the teen couples, the parents and the children would have to all undergo a psychological evaluation, as well as a thorough background check. This included a very long, in depth psychological test, as well as the children having to go under psychological observation away from the parents. We were informed that all the houses would be professionally baby proofed, there would be a nanny watching the babies 24 hours a day who could only intervene if the safety and/or welfare of our children was being compromised, and that a psychologist would be watching what was going on as well. We were also informed that we could intervene at any time and remove our children at any time without any repercussions or breach of contract. Once we had a full disclosure of all the precautions that were put in place, we agreed to allow both of our youngest children, Etta age 6 months and Benjamin age 2 years old, to participate.”

Bill and Julie, who give no last name on the message board, feel that “people don’t actually care who we are, they just want to complain about us and judge without actually knowing who we are and why we participated. But the question keeps being asked without a real answer. Who would let someone “borrow” their baby?”

From what I read, the main goal of parents who submitted commentary to the NBC message board was to encourage would-be teen parents to think twice before having children; several of the “Baby Borrower” parents say they were teen parents themselves and want to warn others against making the same mistakes.

That’s all well and good, but it does seem ridiculous to me that the parents and NBC would willfully ignore and claim to know better than the experts on child development who have repeatedly raised concerns about the adverse effects “The Baby Borrowers” might be having on its youngest participants. It could certainly be worse — remember CBS’ slightly creepy “Kid Nation”? — but I’m still not comfortable with the way “The Baby Borrowers” works. As Zero to Three’s press statement points out, “Legitimate social experiments are not conducted on national television or on reality shows.”

I realize many of you have been discussing “The Baby Borrowers” already in the NeuroTalk communities, so, what do you think? If you have children, would you volunteer them for such a project? Are the concerns of such organizations as AACAP, Zero to Three, and the Natural Child Project valid? Or, as NBC and the participating parents would have us believe, are these professionals just big old wet blankets who don’t know a good teen birth control initiative when they see one?

Subjects in the original study were screened to rule out any predisposition toward psychosis or other serious mental illnesses, which can be exacerbated by hallucinogenic drug experiences. The rigorous process involved two different 8-hour laboratory visits, during which subjects received psilocybin on one occasion and a placebo (Ritalin) on the other. The study was double-blind, meaning neither the participants nor their highly trained “monitors”, who were present for safety reasons during the trials, knew who was getting what. These precautions ensured that nobody entered the psilocybin experience with any prior expectations.

For the first follow-up paper, researchers checked back in with subjects fourteen months after their hallucinogenic experiences:

[Lead investigator Dr. Roland] Griffiths re-administered the questionnaires used in the first study — along with a specially designed set of follow up questions — to all 36 subjects. Results showed that about [two thirds] of the volunteers ranked their experience in the study as the single most, or one of the five most, personally meaningful or spiritually significant events of their lives and regarded it as having increased their sense of well-being or life satisfaction.

“This is a truly remarkable finding,” Griffiths says. “Rarely in psychological research do we see such persistently positive reports from a single event in the laboratory. This gives credence to the claims that the mystical-type experiences some people have during hallucinogen sessions may help patients suffering from cancer-related anxiety or depression and may serve as a potential treatment for drug dependence. We’re eager to move ahead with that research.”

This is all well and good, but I’m sure many of you are wondering about safety. Enter the researchers’ second paper, also published recently in the Journal of Psychopharmacology, which discusses “best practices” for safety, standardization, and “providing psychological support during and after the hallucinogen experience”:

“With appropriately screened and prepared individuals, under supportive conditions and with adequate supervision, hallucinogens can be given with a level of safety that compares favorably with many human research and medical procedures,” says that paper’s lead author, Mathew W. Johnson, Ph.D., a psychopharmacologist and instructor in the Johns Hopkins Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences.

That’s “under supportive conditions” and “with adequate supervision”, mind you. Consuming mushrooms at home without proper supervision has more potential for harm than good; even under the controlled conditions of the Johns Hopkins study, for example, some volunteers reported short-term fear or anxiety following their psilocybin experiences, and they had mental health professionals and trained monitors around to help them. Psilocybin mushrooms are also illegal in every U.S. state except Florida unless you have a special DEA license.

However, this research certainly opens up some exciting possibilities concerning the therapeutic use of psilocybin and other hallucinogenic compounds.

Study participants were shown 16 digitally altered versions of the same face (check them out here), each with different eyebrow placement, lid shape, and level of wrinkling. For each photograph, they were asked to rank on a scale of one to five the presence of tiredness, happiness, surprise, anger, sadness, disgust and fear.

The results might surprise you:

“…many of the pictures that mimicked various plastic surgery procedures, such as eyelid surgery or brow lifts, actually generated worse scores, with study participants rating those faces as looking angry or tired.

For instance, drooping of the upper eyelid was the biggest indicator of tiredness, but a picture that simulated a type of eyelid surgery — involving the removal of excess skin from the upper eyelid — made the woman look even more tired and sad, the study participants reported. Raising the upper eyelids produced an increase in the perception of surprise and fear.

“A significant number of plastic surgery patients opt for eyelid surgery, forehead lifts and face-lifts not only for rejuvenative reasons, but to change an unattractive facial expression as well,” said Dr. John A. Persing, one of the study authors. “Our findings indicate that moderation is best when removing excess skin in the upper eyelid. You do not want to create an overdone look that actually makes you look more tired.”

It’s about time researchers conducted a study like this, and I’m impressed with the ethics at play here: plastic surgeons telling people to scale back on plastic surgery? Yet another good reason to save your money and avoid going under the knife, if you ask me.

If the extra money in your pocket isn’t enough to make you smile, though, remember – photographs with crow’s feet added around the eyes were ranked as particularly happy. So swallow any self-consciousness and smile wide!