Spring Cleaning / Black Marriage Day / Antidepressants /Parental Divorce Predicts...... - 3/10/11

[Smartmarriages]

- SPRING CLEAN YOUR MARRIAGE
- BLACK MARRIAGE DAY CELEBRATION SET FOR MARCH 20 IN INDIANAPOLIS
- ANTIDEPRESSANTS:  WADING INTO SERIOUS TERRITORY
- SPEAKING OF SERIOUS: 8-DECADE STUDY FINDS PARENTAL DIVORCE IN CHILDHOOD
STRONGEST PREDICTOR OF EARLY DEATH IN ADULTHOOD

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- SPRING CLEAN YOUR MARRIAGE
WZZM-13/ABC, Michigan
March 15, 2011
(Here¹s a concept ³spring cleaning for your marriage² you can use in classes
next week as spring sprouts. Make up your own list, there are so many ways
to clean out and tidy up a marriage. - d)

Spring is a time for review, rebirth, refreshing, and renewal. Our
relationships should be no exception to the healthy rituals people undertake
in Spring - assessing the state of the union, so-to-speak, to determine
areas that need refining and improvement.

Here are some tips based on the couples' research about what works and what
doesn't between couples and for really moving your relationship forward, to
prevent distress and divorce in your marriage. You can find more about this
topic in John Gottman's book, "Why Marriages Succeed or Fail."

1.) Calm down & take space (to prevent escalating fights) - research says
you will not have a productive conversation if you are physically aroused.
2.) Talk, not Text - people are getting in to trouble in their relationships
by emailing and texting about important issues. Its like they've forgotten
how to talk! 
3.) Validate & Apologize - Empathy must be expressed and felt on both ends.
4.) Plan for prevention - Brainstorm and develop a plan to prevent spinning
your wheels - going through the same fight, another day, by trying out
various solutions to the part you got stuck with.

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- BLACK MARRIAGE DAY CELEBRATION SET FOR MARCH 20 IN INDIANAPOLIS
March 15, 2011/Frost Illustrated

INDIANAPOLIS‹The Indiana Healthy Marriage and Family Coalition Inc. (IHMFC),
in cooperation with Wedded Bliss Foundation Inc. is scheduled to host the
fifth annual statewide Black Marriage Day Celebration from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m.,
March 20 at Emmanuel Baptist Church, 4958 Ribble Road, Indianapolis. The
theme of the celebration is ³Married: And Proud of It!² The Rev. Darryl
Webster is the host pastor.

Organizers said, ³It is time to join together to accentuate the positive of
healthy African American relationships.²

They also said in a press release: ³So often we hear the disheartening
statistics on the plight of marriage today; nearly 50 percent of today¹s
marriages end in divorce. There is also good news; nearly 50 percent of
marriages thrive!

³The Black Marriage Day Celebration is a heart-felt effort to recognize, and
awaken in others, the importance and significance of marriage in the
African-American community. We seek to honor those couples who have led by
example, holding together their marriages, and whose enduring bond inspires
us. We, along with Wedded Bliss Foundation, invite you, your organization
and/or your place of worship to participate in the statewide celebration of
marriage.²

Please contact the Indiana Black Marriage Day Celebration Committee at (317)
927-9558 or email at ihmi at sbcgloal.net.

(See Black Marriage Day Celebrations across the country:
http://www.blackmarriageday.com/Black_Marriage_Day/Welcome.html
_______________________


- ANTIDEPRESSANTS:  WADING INTO SERIOUS TERRITORY
Ouch, I really stepped on a live wire with the post about the book, The
Emperor¹s New Clothes (that ³explodes the antidepressant myth²).  I
APOLOGIZE to those who were offended by my promotion of this book ­ who
wrote to say antidepressants have literally saved their lives and/or the
lives of loved ones and/or their marriages.  I send my SYMPATHIES to those
who, on the other end of the continuum, feel they have basically lost long
stretches of their lives, their loved ones, their marriages because of the
side-effects of antidepressant treatment.  And, I also STAND very much
CORRECTED by those who reminded me and quoted myself back to me ­ that I
have always maintained that Smart Marriages is focused on increasing access
to Marriage Education and that we don¹t have the time or energy to wade into
other battles and campaigns.  It turns out that antidepressants are as
divisive a topic as any you can name ­ abortion, gun control, vaccines,
immigration, etc. ­ there are as many blogs, websites, bumper-stickers in
the antidepressant pro and con campaigns as any other. Several of you also
pointed out that this book is not, by far, anything new ­ there are many
books that rail against ³legal drug pushers - people licensed by the govt
and paid huge incentives by the billion dollar pharma industry to push
antidepressants.²  You said if I want to blow the whistle, blow it about the
10¹s of millions of children being put on antidepressants. (Hmmmm, 10s of
millions?)  And one of you wrote that I should consider myself blessed that
I¹ve not (yet) felt the need for antidepressants.  Some of you said I could
use your letters and your names, including your diagnosis and suicide
attempts.  I don¹t think that¹s necessary.  I get it.  And, as I said, my
apologies and I do stand corrected.  - diane

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- SPEAKING OF SERIOUS: 8-DECADE STUDY FINDS PARENTAL DIVORCE IN CHILDHOOD
STRONGEST PREDICTOR OF EARLY DEATH IN ADULTHOOD

How to Keep Going and Going
In an eight-decade study, parental divorce in childhood was the strongest
predictor of early death in adulthood.

By LAURA LANDRO
The Wall Street Journal
March 9, 2011

What can 1,500 Americans born a century ago, most of them long dead, tell us
about the secret to a long life? Plenty, according to Howard S. Friedman and
Leslie R. Martin, two psychologists who, in "The  Longevity Project," mine
an eight-decade research  effort for answers to the kinds of questions that
sent Ponce de León searching for the Fountain of Youth. . . .

The study's participants, dubbed Terman's Termites, were bright students,
but having a high IQ didn't seem to play a direct role in longevity. Neither
did going on to an advanced degree. The authors suggest that persistence and
the ability to navigate life's challenges were better predictors of
longevity.

Some of the findings in "The Longevity Project" are surprising, others are
troubling. Cheerful children, alas, turned out to be shorter-lived than
their more sober classmates. The early death of a parent had no measurable
effect on children's life spans or mortality risk, but the long-term health
effects of broken families were often devastating. Parental divorce during
childhood emerged as the single strongest predictor of early death in
adulthood. The grown children of divorced parents died almost five years
earlier, on average, than children from intact families. The causes of death
ranged from accidents and violence to cancer, heart attack and stroke.
Parental break-ups remain, the authors say, among the most  traumatic and
harmful events for children.
 
. . . The book offers quizzes so that readers can assess various
qualities‹such as sociability, neuroticism and the tendency to
"catastrophize"‹and compare the results with those of Terman's Termites. The
respondents to the study who fared best in the longevity sweepstakes tended
to have a fairly high level of physical activity, a habit of giving back to
the community, a thriving and long-running career, and a healthy marriage
and family life. They summoned resilience against reverses and challenges‹
including divorce, loss of a spouse, career upsets and war trauma. By
contrast, those with the darkest dispositions‹catastrophizers, who viewed
every stumble as a calamity‹were most likely to die sooner. (The book
doesn't say by what margin; a study published in 1998  reported that men in
the Terman group were 25% more likely to die by age 65 if they were
catastrophizers.) 

And what about those cheerful, relatively doomed kids? The authors tell us
that, later in life, such children would be more likely than their peers to
throw caution to the wind when it came to life-shortening habits like
smoking, drinking and driving fast cars. The chipper types were also more
likely to die from homicide,  suicide or accident. Of course, the authors
don't suggest telling happy kids to wipe the grins off their faces, but Mr.
Friedman and Ms. Martin do make a case for instilling values such as
forethought and purposefulness.  Indeed, "The Longevity Project" is not just
an exercise in  numbers-crunching; its larger aim seems to be to  improve
public health by encouraging a society with more goal-oriented and
conscientious citizens. Now that's a long-term project.

Full article: http://tinyurl.com/4n6a3n7
 Ms. Landro writes The Informed Patient column for the Journal.
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