I’m pleased to introduce Movies and Mental Health with Joseph Burgo, Ph.D. This …

When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy.’ They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.
~ John Lennon

On Dec. 8th, 1980, I was in bed listening to the radio when suddenly, in a voice labored by heavy breathing and halting words, the disc jockey broke the news that John Lennon had been shot and killed in front of his New York City apartment building. The news ransacked my brain.

The Beatles weren’t just a rock band; they gave us an identity. Their songs weren’t simply catchy tunes or stray memorable lyrics. The music told us who we were. It pointed us in a whole new direction. The simplicity and clarity of their message pierced the fog of the Vietnam War, drugs, the environment, and politics. “Love is all you need” not only made sense, it gave us something to work toward.

Collectively the Beatles offered hope. But it was John Lennon who offered inspiration.

“If we couldn’t laugh, we would all go insane,” sings Jimmy Buffett. “Time spent laughing is …

Last week, I had the opportunity to report from SAMHSA’s annual Voice Awards in Hollywood and to interview one of the consumer leadership award winners. Frederick Frese, Ph.D. is a psychologist with more than 40 years experience in public mental health care. Until 1995, Frese was Director of Psychology for 15 years at Western Reserve Psychiatric Hospital. Now he is the Coordinator of the Summit County Recovery Project, serving recovering consumers in and around Akron, OH.

Dr. John M. Grohol: So you’ve had a distinguished career, but it all seemed to start with your diagnosis of schizophrenia when you joined the Marines.

Dr. Frederick Frese: Actually, I was in the Marine Corps for about four years when I had the diagnosis and was discharged. Then spent 10 years, in 10 different hospitals, being hospitalized and re‑hospitalized, at one point being committed as insane. Then I went back to school, got my doctorate, became a psychologist functioning in a state hospital. I was actually director of psychology. I was being told not to tell anybody about my condition.

But one day, and thanks in large part to the last lady you just interviewed, Pam Hodge… She changed the laws in Ohio and encouraged persons in recovery to sit on mental health boards and become open about their conditions. So I did.

Since then, I’ve had quite a career. I’ve given over 2,000 talks. I’ve had movie contracts. No movie, but I’ve had a couple contracts!

While at the Voice Awards, I had the opportunity to sit down and chat for a few minutes with the head of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), Administrator Pamela Hyde, JD.

Ms. Hyde is an attorney and comes to SAMHSA with more than 30 years experience in management and consulting for public healthcare and human services agencies. She has served as a state mental health director, state human services director, city housing and human services director, as well as CEO of a private non-profit managed behavioral healthcare firm. You can learn more about Ms. Hyde here.

Dr. John Grohol: So I wanted to understand a little bit better how the Voice Awards originated. What was the motivation behind coming up with this novel sort of way of recognizing both consumers and Hollywood contributions to mental health and substance abuse issues?

Pamela Hyde:  Well, let me start by just saying SAMHSA’s role in the federal government is to be the voice for people with mental health and substance abuse service needs and for people who might be at risk of those needs. So that means that part of our job is to try to educate the public and to try to provide information, provide materials, and just get the right information out.

So, as a part of that effort over the last many years, I think there’s been a variety of ways of trying to do that, and there’s no question that the entertainment industry has a profound impact on people’s understanding and perceptions of lots of things.

It was an honor and a pleasure to attend the 2010 Voice Awards, hosted by SAMHSA, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. SAMHSA is the agency responsible for helping to get the word out about substance abuse and mental health issues, so their focus is much aligned with ours.

This year’s theme was focused on honoring portrayals of men and women who serve in the military but come home to grapple with mental health issues and friends and family who often just don’t understand how to help. It also featured a lifetime achievement award given to Former First Lady Rosalynn Carter for her decades’ long work on helping advance mental health care in the U.S.

The annual ceremony is held to honor the realistic and often-poignant depiction of people struggling with mental health issues on the big screen, in documentaries and on television. Actors Sandra Oh, Julia Ormond, America Ferrara, Brian McNamara and Peter Krause were among the many who attended and helped to present at this year’s event, which was co-hosted by Emmy Award-winning actor Hector Elizondo and Academy Award-winning actor Louis Gossett, Jr.

I had the opportunity beforehand to hang out on the red carpet and talk to a few of these actors before the ceremony started.

Howard Stern, the ubiquitous satellite radio talk-show host, is a big proponent of psychotherapy. He has noted how he’s been in psychotherapy three times a week for the past few decades, much like Woody Allen. But what kind of psychotherapy is Howard Stern in? And why does it seem endless?

This type of intensive, long-term psychotherapy is almost always psychoanalysis — a specific type of psychotherapy that focuses on how a person’s unconscious conflicts impact a person’s everyday functioning. People who undergo psychoanalysis almost always meet with their analyst 2 to 3 times a week, every week, for years on end. Howard Stern has said he sees his analyst 3 times a week, but sometimes feels like he would like to cut down to twice a week.

Psychoanalysis is considered a specific form of psychodynamically-oriented psychotherapy and is far more popular in European countries than the U.S. And it’s no wonder — it’s the form of treatment invented by Sigmund Freud himself. Contrary to popular belief, there’s been a fair amount of empirical research conducted on psychodynamic therapy demonstrating its general effectiveness (see, for example, Shedler, 2010). Psychoanalysis is indeed a valid, effective form of therapy.

But at three times (or more) a week, who can afford such intensive therapy (other than celebrities like Howard Stern or Woody Allen)? And why would you bother if other forms of less intensive psychotherapy can be just as effective?

As Mel Gibson’s voicemails to his ex-girlfriend continue to be leaked to the Internet this week, many media outlets are asking questions about Mel Gibson’s mental health. That’s no wonder — the voicemails are laced with profanity, racial epithets, and threats. In a 2008 documentary, Acting Class of 1977, he first talked about being diagnosed with bipolar disorder.

But are the rants to his ex-girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva related to a possible mental health diagnosis? Alcohol? Or something else?

It’s not easy to answer this question, because nobody except Mel Gibson, 54, and his doctors know. All we can do is speculate, based upon observations of his reactions, tone and behavior as recorded in the voicemails that are publicly available. So let’s take a look at some of Mel Gibson’s words and behaviors on these recordings.

One of the most notable developments in the book business in the last decade or so has been the rise of the likes of Malcolm Gladwell (The Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers, etc.), Steven Leavitt, Stephen Dubner (Freakonomics, SuperFreakonomics), Ian Ayres (Super Crunchers), and Nicholas Taleb (Fooled by Randomness, The Black Swan). All of their books are best-sellers; all of them have been embraced as business books, management books, and general interest books. For anyone trained in the sciences, this is a thrilling development, a sure sign that scientific thinking has enthralled the public.

This welcome development was an inspiration for writing my new book, titled Numbers Rule Your World: The Hidden Influence of Probability and Statistics on Everything You Do (McGraw-Hill, 2010). As a long-time reader of my Junk Charts blog noted, the book is an attempt to “humanize the subject of statistics.”

In a perceptive essay, Bending Science in Service of Promotion, John Grohol pointed out that this class of non-fiction bestsellers relies on three secrets to success, namely, Sales, Sexiness, and Simplicity.

This comes as no surprise to anyone, but in the heat of a rugby match the other day in Australia, Storm fullback Billy Slater’s allegedly taunted the Knights forward Cory Paterson with the words, “go to your room and have a cry.” This referred to Paterson’s battle with depression over the past two years, keeping him off the playing field all of last season.

In sports, one would expect a certain level of smack talk on the playing field. Most of it is meant to incite the other team’s players, so that they react and play more emotionally. A player who plays from anger rather from their rational mind is likely to make more mistakes, so goes the common wisdom.

Where do we draw the line on the playing field?

Entertainment Tonight recently reported that TV and music star Marie Osmond’s 18-year-old son, Michael Blosil, committed suicide last Friday in Los Angeles. In his suicide note, he described a life-long battle with depression, the reason for his suicide.

Osmond said Michael became depressed after she and her ex-husband, Brian Blosil, separated, and that he entered rehab in November 2007.

According to suicide.org, a teen takes his or her own life every 100 minutes. Suicide is the third-leading cause of death for young people ages 15 to 24. Approximately 20 percent of teens experience depression before they reach adulthood, and between 10 to 15 percent suffer from symptoms at any one time. Only 30 percent of depressed teens are being treated for it.

With the recent spate of celebrity-related suicides — Alexander McQueen (a fashion designer), Andrew Koenig (from the TV series, Growing Pains), and now Michael Blosil, Marie Osmond’s 18-year-old son — it seems like a sad but appropriate time to weigh in on this tragic outcome of untreated (or under-treated) depression, which is the leading cause of suicide.

Alicia Sparks, blogging over at Celebrity Psychings, notes recommendations for the media when reporting on suicide, because suicide contagion is a real phenomenon. That is, there is a small but statistically significant increase in suicide deaths after a reported suicide makes the media rounds. Especially when the person who died by suicide is a celebrity.