Despite recent attention — and even jail sentences — being handed out for teen bullying, it remains an all-too-common problem. School administrators and parents are often frustrated in trying to curb this behavior. It’s insidious, underground, and few teens want to talk about it openly — out of fear and stigma.

The fear is very real, because adults can’t watch kids and teens every moment of every day. The possibility of repercussions — such as even worse bullying — for reporting bullying behavior reinforce the fear and cycle of bullying.

That’s why it’s so refreshing and gives us hope to have come across this video the other day by 16-year-old Canadian Megan Landry. Join over 105,000 others (as of this writing) who’ve already watched and give a view below.

With the recent bombings at the 2013 Boston Marathon, many of us find ourselves asking the same questions… How do we make sense out of senseless brutality?

How do we deal with those who embrace an ideology of destruction?

How do we reckon with those who suckle their children on hatred?

What do we say to ourselves, to our kids, to our loved ones when a horrible thing happens?

We will all have different responses to these questions. Here are mine…

Wednesday night I attended the first Boston Bruins game after the Boston Marathon bombings on Monday. The TD Garden was packed for the opening ceremonies, where a tearful montage of the scenes from the aftermath of the bombings reminded us of all the care, help and compassion that was in large supply by first responders and others.

And in a patriotic showing of support and love for our country, the national anthem was begun by Rene Rancourt … but then was handed off to the crowd, who sang it with the soul and heart of a nation standing together. Standing strong. Boston Strong.

Click through to watch the video, or to consider a donation to the fund setup by civic leaders and local businesses to help support the victims of the Boston Marathon bombings.

While the police are still sifting through the clues for information about who was behind the Boston Marathon 2013 bombings on Boylston St., it’s time for the rest of us to take a deep breath and start healing from this tragedy. With over 100 people injured — some quite seriously — and three people dead, that healing is going to take some time.

Other countries have long had to deal with seemingly random bombings in urban areas; the U.S. is relatively late to this particular brand of horror. I’m not sure how one ever gets used to the idea that by just going shopping or watching a parade or sporting event, something really bad could happen.

But life carries on — we cannot stop living out of fear.

Could the bystander effect be partially to blame for the lack of anyone intervening in the rape and sexual assault of Rehtaeh Parsons and Audrie Pott while it occurred?

The bystander effect is a psychological phenomenon whereas the more people that are present when a person is in distress, the less likely anyone intervenes to help that person. Both cases involved a young girl being sexually assaulted and raped while at a house party with other teenagers.

Add alcohol to the mix — and the emotionally-based (often poor) judgment associated with the teenage years — and yes, it appears to be the perfect recipe for disaster.

Antisocial personality disorder is thought of as an uncommon …

This guest article from YourTango was written by Dr. Susan Campbell.

Relationship addiction might be called “the hidden epidemic.” You could be a love or relationship addict without even knowing it because your symptoms are only triggered by a certain type of person. You might be a sucker for the mysterious, silent, withholding type or the demanding, controlling type or the impulse-driven, pleasure seeker. If you have ever thought, ‘this relationship is not good for me but I can’t keep myself from going back,’ it might be time to recognize you’re addicted to love.

I was inspired to write this article after reading about the highly publicized romance between superstars Chris Brown and Rihanna.

As I read about their on-again-off-again relationship and their public feuds, including his beating and bruising her several years ago, I can’t help but think about so many other young romantics who, in seeking true love, find only a dramatization of their inner conflicts.

As lawmakers across the country continue to pass ill-conceived laws implicating people with mental illness as having a greater penchant for violence (despite the scientific evidence that says otherwise), a new study has come out showing what most mental health advocates have long known. People with mental illness are far more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators of it.

The study — published in the BMJ and conducted on data derived from the entire population of Sweden (can we say, “Big study!”) — found “After adjustment for sociodemographic confounders, any mental disorder was associated with a 4.9-fold risk of homicidal death, relative to people without mental disorders.”

In plain English — people with mental illness in Sweden were at nearly 5 times the risk of being murdered than citizens without a mental illness diagnosis.

Rather than wasting time passing laws to try and minimize outlier, tragic events (which, by their very definition, cannot be minimized by the passage of new laws), we instead should be putting more resources into protecting and helping treat people with mental illness.

Americans take considerable pride in our Constitutionally guaranteed civil liberties, yet our government and institutions often abridge or ignore those rights when it comes to certain classes of people.

According to a National Council on Disability report, people with psychiatric illnesses are routinely deprived of their civil rights in a way that no other people with disabilities are (2). This is particularly so in the case of people who are involuntarily committed to psychiatric wards.

Under present standards of most states, a person who is judged by a psychiatrist to be in imminent danger to self or others may be involuntarily committed to a locked psychiatric ward and detained there for a period of time (3). Some would argue that involuntary civil commitment is a necessary approach justified by safety and treatment concerns. Others would counter that it is an inhumane and unjustifiable curtailment of civil liberties.

Let’s look at the example of recent suicide survivors in order to examine this debate in more depth.

“Anger can destroy marriages, business partnerships and countries,” said Joe Shrand, M.D., an instructor at Harvard Medical School and co-author of the valuable, practical and science-based book Outsmarting Anger: 7 Strategies for Defusing Our Most Dangerous Emotion with Leigh Devine, MS.

Fortunately, each of us holds the power to defuse our own anger and even others,’ Dr. Shrand said. This is especially critical because often it’s not our own fuse that hinders our success; it’s someone else’s, he said.

The key in cooling anger lies in respect. As Dr. Shrand said, when was the last time you got angry with someone who showed you respect?

“Anger is designed to change the behavior of someone else. Being respected feels great, so why would we want to change that?”

As though a new law would prevent violence, state legislatures across the country are “doing something” about gun violence. The only problem is their focus has been on mental illness, when most murders have little connection with mental illness, and most deaths by guns are not committed by someone with a mental illness.

But it sure makes a legislature feel good about themselves, doesn’t it? “Hey, look, we’re doing something. We’re going to keep guns out of the hands of those crazies.”

Such laws won’t even make a dent in the annual murder rate in the U.S. And at the same time legislators are “doing something,” they are reinforcing the discrimination against those with a mental illness label. Because most of the laws are focused on the labels of mental illness — not actual violent or criminal behavior.

On Tuesday, January 15, society was met with news that may bring hope to some. But others may encounter problems rather than hope as a result. New York legislators passed a gun control bill requiring mental health therapists who believe their client has the potential to become violent to report to law enforcement that the individual has weapons that need to be confiscated.

As a firm believer in gun control laws and restrictions on violent video games, I am in favor of an in-depth conversation on legislative reform. However, as I read multiple reports on the passing of this new law, I began to question whether this legislative act will actually remedy gun violence. I pondered whether the confiscation of weapons from an individual deemed mentally impaired could lead to more problems than expected.

Severe, untreated mental illness is a complex phenomenon, and dealing with it can be quite a challenge. I have identified three issues that should prompt further consideration before such gun laws are implemented in other states.