TIME Entertainment celebrity

WATCH: Hollywood Reacts to Death of Robin Williams

Comedians, actors and entertainers pay tribute to the late star

Like the rest of the nation, actors, comedians and entertainers were shocked by the sudden death of superstar talent Robin Williams. Celebrity reactions to his apparent suicide have flooded media both social and traditional, with many paying tribute to their own personal relationships with the late star.

Steve Martin referred to him as a great talent and a genuine soul. Kathy Griffin tweeted of how every moment shared with Williams was a pivotal one, and that it was a comic’s dream to be in his presence. Judd Apatow wrote about the lengths he went to simply be near the legendary comic, saying that he took an internship at Comic Relief at the age of 18 in order to work with Williams.

Billy Crystal wrote poignantly, “No words.”

Other comedians such as Jimmy Kimmel and Chelsea Handler marked the tragedy by attempting to raise awareness of depression, telling those in need of support to not be afraid to reach out for help, and to remain strong.

TIME Health Mental Health/Psychology

5 Things I Learned When I Quit Facebook

brain-blue-cord-plug
Getty Images

I have a Facebook problem.

The problem is, I love Facebook. I love posting about my day, connecting with friends near and far, and seeing the funny/crazy/sweet things people share. But I also hate Facebook, for being such a time suck, for making me feel bad about myself when other people’s lives seem so much more exciting than mine, and for leading me to spend more time interacting with a screen than with the real world. And when I log off Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are there clamoring for my attention, a never-ending scroll of links and tweets and photos and conversations that feels impossible to keep up with.

A few weeks ago, I’d had it. It seemed like social media was bringing me more guilt and frustration than happiness. So I decided to go on a fast, starting immediately. Here’s what I’ve learned:

Health.com: 27 Mistakes Healthy People Make

Cold turkey was the way to go

I’ve made attempts to cut down before, setting rules like “Only check Facebook first thing in the morning” or “Only check Twitter during lunch” or, when I came back to work after maternity leave, “Only use social media while pumping breast milk.” But one quick check in the morning always turned into needing to get back on at 11am to see if anyone commented on that one post, which turned into composing witty replies to those comments, which turned into OMG I’m late for that meeting! I had no self-control. Cutting myself off from social media completely was the only way to ensure I’d stay honest. I even deleted the Facebook app from my phone.

Health.com: 22 Ways to Boost Your Happiness—Instantly

The FOMO wasn’t as bad as I’d feared

Yes, I missed a bunch of birthdays, and yes, I would have missed the news of a former coworker’s engagement if another friend hadn’t seen the post and clued me in. But to my surprise, even from day 1 of my fast, I didn’t feel like I was truly missing out on anything. My best friend from high school texted me cute pictures of her 2-year-old. I caught up with people over email or even on the phone (remember that?). I checked my favorite news sites for the day’s headlines. I was good.

What I wasn’t getting: constant updates about the awesome vacations people were taking (making me feel like a boring homebody), or the amazing educational activities they’d planned for their kids (making me feel like a slacker mom), or the IMPORTANT POLITICAL THING WE SHOULD ALL TAKE ACTION ON NOW that inevitably devolved into a nasty name-calling flame war (making me feel tired). I didn’t miss any of that at all.

Facebook, on the other hand, seemed to think I was missing out big-time. Since day 3 of no Facebook, I’ve been getting increasingly desperate daily emails like this one…

Health.com: 14 Reasons You’re Always Tired

I was way more productive

I had never realized how often during the workday I clicked on Facebook out of sheer habit—I caught myself typing in the URL on autopilot way too many times that first Facebook-free day. But the real shocker was how much more I got done at home, when my evenings no longer disappeared into a black hole of sitting on the couch scrolling through my feeds. I read actual books! I made a quilt! I worked out! It was almost embarrassing how much time I suddenly had on my hands.

I was more present

When I wasn’t constantly thinking about how to describe every moment in a perfect tweet or status update, I got to actually live the moment. I took pictures of my kids just for me, rather than for a filtered-and-framed Instagram shot. When we went to the beach or had dinner with friends, I savored the experience for itself, not for how good it would make me look when I posted about it.

Health.com: 12 Surprising Causes of Depression

I might be cured of my Facebook addiction

I stayed on total social media blackout for two full weeks. Then I decided to let myself hop back on Instagram once, to post a photo of the Lightning McQueen cake I made for my son’s birthday. A few days later, I started sending out a few tweets. But Facebook…oh, Facebook, you ultimate time-suck. I was really worried that I would get back on Facebook and immediately fall back into my old ways. Was it even possible for me to use Facebook in a healthy way?

Last night I got on Facebook, for the first time in more than three weeks. I scrolled through my feed for about five minutes. And then…I closed my browser. I put away my laptop. And I went to bed. And I don’t really feel like going back.

It turns out my Facebook addiction was just a (really) bad habit. By interrupting the habit, I might have broken the cycle. I won’t quit Facebook completely—all those things I love about it haven’t changed. But now that I know I can go without it entirely, it seems easy to limit myself to just checking in, say, twice a week. Wish me luck!

Health.com: 22 Ways to Boost Your Happiness—Instantly

This article originally appeared on Health.com.

Jeannie Kim is the Executive Deputy Editor at Health.

TIME Living health

Losing Weight Could Make You Depressed, Study Says

Woman standing on scale.
Woman standing on scale. TommL—Getty Images/Vetta

Yet another reason not to listen to diet product hype

Going on that diet may help you shed a few pounds, but it could also worsen your mood.

A new study at University College London examined 1,979 overweight or obese individuals in the U.K. to investigate the effects of weight loss on both physical and mental health. Unsurprisingly, losing weight led to significant physical benefits: those in the study who lost 5% or more of their original body weight over four years exhibited a drop in blood pressure and reduced serum triglycerides, both of which lower the risk of heart disease.

However, controlling for health issues and major life events that could cause depression, those participants were 52% more likely to report a depressed mood than those who stayed within 5% of their original weight. Though the study doesn’t prove that dieting causes depression, it does show that weight loss doesn’t necessarily improve mental health, as many people assume.

“We do not want to discourage anyone from trying to lose weight, which has tremendous physical benefits, but people should not expect weight loss to instantly improve all aspects of life,” said lead author Sarah Jackson in a statement. “Aspirational advertising by diet brands may give people unrealistic expectations about weight loss. They often promise instant life improvements, which may not be borne out in reality for many people. People should be realistic about weight loss and be prepared for the challenges.”

But Jackson points out that this negative effect on mental health could be more a function of the stress of dieting, rather than a consequence of the actual weight loss. “Resisting the ever-present temptations of unhealthy food in modern society takes a mental toll, as it requires considerable willpower and may involve missing out on some enjoyable activities. Anyone who has ever been on a diet would understand how this could affect wellbeing,” she said. “However, mood may improve once target weight is reached and the focus is on weight maintenance. Our data only covered a four year period so it would be interesting to see how mood changes once people settle into their lower weight.”

In other words, it looks like supermodel Kate Moss may have been way off when she uttered her infamous motto, “Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.”

TIME Health Mental Health/Psychology

Young Kids Diagnosed with Depression Can’t Shake It Later, Study Says

New research shows it's hard for young children to get past depression

Children diagnosed with depression in preschool are likely to continue to be depressed throughout adolescence, according to a new study.

Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis tracked 246 children ages 3-5 to ages 9-12 and found that depressed preschoolers are 2.5 times more likely to suffer from the condition in elementary and middle school, according to the study published in the July issue of The American Journal of Psychiatry.

At the beginning of the study, 74 of the children were diagnosed with depression. Six years later, 79 of the children from the larger group had clinical depression, and 51% of the 74 children originally diagnosed were still depressed. By contrast, only 25% of the 172 children who were initially not depressed went on to develop depression during elementary and middle school.

“It’s the same old bad news about depression; it is a chronic and recurrent disorder,” child psychiatrist Joan L. Luby, who directs Washington University’s Early Emotional Development Program, said in a statement. “But the good news is that if we can identify depression early, perhaps we have a window of opportunity to treat it more effectively and potentially change the trajectory of the illness so that it is less likely to be chronic and recurring.”

The researchers also identified some of the factors that put children at a higher risk of becoming depressed: Children with depressed mothers were more likely to become depressed themselves, and children who were diagnosed with a conduct disorder in preschool were more likely to become depressed by middle school (though significant maternal support mitigated the latter risk). But neither of these factors mattered as much as an early depression diagnosis.

TIME Health mental health

How Do You Spot a Narcissist? Just Ask

Like the view? The original Narcissus and his BFF
Like the view? The original Narcissus and his BFF John William Waterhouse; Getty Images/The Bridgeman Art Library

It's not easy to diagnose most personality disorders. But narcissism is a snap—since the narcissists themselves know who they are

Narcissus got a bad rap. Sure, the guy was self-absorbed—what with all that staring at his own reflection in a stream. But once he fell in and drowned, well, lesson learned, and he wasn’t around to cause anyone else any grief. But the modern-day people who suffer from the disorder named after him? They’re a whole different matter.

Narcissists are alternately preening, entitled, aggressive, greedy, insensitive, vain, unfaithful, dishonest, lethally charming (a charm you buy at your peril) and sexually exploitative. They may represent merely 1% to 3% of the general population—but that’s only full-blown, capital-N narcissism, the kind formally known as narcissistic personality disorder. There are plenty of other people with lowercase, sub-clinical cases of the condition who can do all kinds of damage—and the odds are very, very good there are at least a few in your life.

How can you learn to recognize a narcissist at a glance? Easy, suggests a new study published in PLOS ONE: Just ask them.

Narcissism is typically diagnosed with a 40-item questionnaire known as the Narcissistic Personality Inventory, or NPI. (Take it here.) The NPI is a so-called forced choice test, one that asks people to choose between two generally contradictory statements such as “I prefer to blend in with the crowd” and “I like to be the center of attention,” or “I like to have authority over other people” and “I don’t mind following orders.” In many cases, both qualities may apply—it’s entirely possible to like to be the boss and to accept another person’s authority as well. But the “forced” part of “forced choice” means you must pick the quality that more closely describes you.

The lowest you can score on the NPI is a zero, the highest is a 40. Average in the U.S. is between 15 and 16, depending on age, gender and other variables.

The problem with the NPI is it’s time-consuming and inconvenient—hardly the kind of thing you can administer on a first date to find out if you’re getting mixed up with a charming louse before you accept a second date. But a team headed by psychologist Sara Konrath of the University of Michigan suspected that in some cases it might be possible to go at things more directly, asking people one carefully phrased written question:

“To what extent do you agree with this statement: ‘I am a narcissist.’ (Note: The word ‘narcissist’ means egotistical, self-focused, and vain.)” The parenthetical was included to ensure that all participants in the study were working from the same definition. They were then asked to rate themselves on a 1 to 7 scale, with 1 meaning “Not very true of me” and 7 meaning “very true of me.”

To a remarkable, statistically significant extent, the scores on this Single Item Narcissism Scale (SINS) correlated with the subjects’ scores on the more-complex NPI. Even with those results in hand, the researchers wanted to probe further, so they also tested their subjects on ten other personality metrics such as extraversion, agreeableness, aggression, sexual adventurousness, entitlement and more—all of which are either direct or inverse indicators of the narcissistic personality. Here too, the results lined up tidily.

The reason narcissists are so honest—a lot more honest than you’d be if someone asked you, say, “Are you a sociopath?”—is because they just don’t think their narcissism is a problem, which is perfectly consistent with people who think so highly of themselves. “Narcissists have these great mental health outcomes,” Konrath told me when I was researching my upcoming book The Narcissist Next Door. “If you’re trying to think of a group of people who are low in depression and anxiety, high in creativity and accomplishment, that’s narcissists.”

That, by itself, doesn’t sound bad at all. But narcissists often possess those good qualities to the general exclusion of others—especially social and relationship skills, a shortcoming that can hurt both them and those around them. Indeed, one of the metrics Konrath’s group looked at was whether the subjects rated primal rewards—such as a favorite food—higher than social rewards, such as seeing a friend. The friendship thing just doesn’t mean much to someone in the grip of narcissism.

“If you told a narcissist he’s not good in interpersonal relationships, he wouldn’t be any more upset than anyone else,” said Ohio State University psychologist Brad Bushman, another participant in the study, whom I also interviewed for my book. “But if you tell them they’re not smart, they get angry.”

All of this—the fragile ego, the tenuous human ties, the overweening self-regard–inevitably comes crashing down, even if less calamitously than it did for the proto-Narcissus. It’s for the narcissists themselves to recognize the dangers in the condition to which they admit so readily. And it’s for everyone else to get out of the way while they’re figuring it out.

TIME Politics Health Care

Obamacare Leads to Surge in Mental-Health Treatment

A provision means more mentally ill young people are getting medical treatment

A provision in the health care reform law allowing parents to keep their adult children on their health-insurance plans has led to millions more young people with mental-health and substance-abuse problems getting treatment, according to a new study.

Between September 2010, when the Obamacare provision went into effect, and 2012, when the study ended, young adults between the ages of 18 and 25 who had already screened positive for mental disorders or substance abuse increased their use of mental-health treatment by 5.3% compared with a similar group of 26- to 35-year-olds who weren’t eligible for their parents’ coverage. Researchers in the study, published Monday in Health Affairs, also found that due to that same Obamacare provision, the number of mental-health visits the younger group had to pay for out-of-pocket declined by 12.4% compared with the older group.

This could be good news not only for young adults with mental-health issues, but also for their friends, families, neighbors, and parents, who often suffer most directly when their mentally ill or addicted loved ones are unable to access affordable treatment.

The findings are related to the fact that uninsured people, as well as those with bare-bones insurance plans, often rely on “community clinics and other safety net providers” for emergency mental-health treatment. They therefore have trouble affording specialized or residential treatment, or accessing individualized psychotherapy. In contrast, young adults who are able to remain on their parents’ plans often have access to a more generous range of treatment options, according to the study.

The research, which was funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, comes with a few caveats, one of which is that the study period was relatively short and spanned the financial crisis, which hit young people disproportionately hard. It’s possible that during that period, young people may have been more likely to seek mental-health treatment. The research was conducted by Brendan Saloner, an assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg Schools of Public Health, as well as Benjamin Le Cook, a senior scientist and assistant professor of psychiatry at the Cambridge Health Alliance and Harvard Medical School.

TIME Health Mental Health/Psychology

This Is the Equation for Happiness

Researchers accurately predict people's happiness

Researchers at University College London were able to create an equation that could accurately predict the happiness of over 18,000 people, according to a new study.

First, the researchers had 26 participants complete decisionmaking tasks in which their choices either led to monetary gains or losses. The researchers used fMRI imaging to measure their brain activity, and asked them repeatedly, “How happy are you now?” Based on the data the researchers gathered from the first experiment, they created a model that linked self-reported happiness to recent rewards and expectations.

Here’s what the equation looks like:

Robb Rutledge, UCL

Then, in their study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers tested their model by having 18,420 people play a smartphone game called The Great Brain Experiment for points. They found that their equation was also accurate at predicting the gamers’ happiness.

The researchers were not surprised by how much rewards influenced happiness, but they were surprised by how much expectations could. The researchers say their findings do support the theory that if you have low expectations, you can never be disappointed, but they also found that the positive expectations you have for something—like going to your favorite restaurant with a friend—is a large part of what develops your happiness.

The fact that the researchers could accurately predict happiness was notable, but the implications are even better. Having a predictable standard for how people respond to moment-to-moment gains and losses could actually make mood disorders easier to understand by learning how someone with a mood disorder differs in their reactions to events.

TIME U.S. Crime

Slender Man Stabbing Suspect Deemed Incompetent for Trial

Enthusiasts Enjoy Comic Con As It Opens In London
Yasmin Ouard poses as Slenderman from the series Mobile Hornets ahead of the MCM London Comic Con Expo Dan Kitwood—Getty Images

A 12-year-old suspect in the stabbing linked to the fictional online character reportedly believes she has Vulcan Mind control

A Wisconsin circuit court judge ruled Friday that one of the two 12-year old girls charged with stabbing a classmate in Wisconsin is incompetent to stand trial for attempted homicide.

This May, two girls allegedly stabbed their classmate during a sleepover to prove their loyalty to the popular online fictional character Slender Man. The creepy figure has been linked to three separate acts of violence, according to ABC News.

Wisconsin law requires any person age 10 and over to be charged as an adult for severe crimes. In this case, the victim was allegedly stabbed 19 times in a nearby woods, with the blade narrowly missing an main artery near her heart. She managed to crawl out of the woods and was found by a passing biker.

Psychologist Brooke Lundbohm of the Wisconsin Forensic Unit analyzed the suspect in question this June. According to the Journal Sentinal, Lundbohm said the 12-year old claimed she could hear and see things like unicorns, the Slender Man and the Harry Potter character Voldemort. Psychiatrist Kenneth Robbins testified that the suspect believes she has Vulcan mind control and is more concerned with angering Slender Man than the prospect of a long prison sentence.

The defendant’s attorneys hope to move the case from adult to juvenile court, where the maximum sentence would be 25 years.

[Journal-Sentinal]

TIME Health behavior

This Blood Test Can Predict Suicide Risk, Scientists Say

Researchers report encouraging advances toward a blood test that can pick up genetic changes linked to suicide

Behaviors can’t be reduced to your genes – they’re far too complicated for that. But genes can lay the foundation for making people more or less likely to respond and act in certain ways, and suicide may be the latest example of that.

In a paper published in the American Journal of Psychiatry, researchers led by Zachary Kaminsky, an assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, found reliable differences in the activity of a specific gene among those who had committed suicide and those who had not. They conducted a series of tests to verify their result. First, they studied brain samples of mentally ill people and those not affected by mental illness, and revealed that a gene, SKA2—which is most abundant in the prefrontal regions of the brain that are involved in inhibiting negative thoughts and corralling impulses—was less active among those who ended up committing suicide than among those who had not. If there isn’t enough of SKA2, or if it isn’t working properly, then receptors that pull the stress hormone cortisol into cells to put a brake on the stress response also don’t work. That can lead to unchecked negative thoughts and impulsive behaviors, like a runaway car without brakes.

MORE: U.S. Special Ops Are Soldiers Committing Suicide in Record Numbers

The scientists also compared amounts of SKA2 among people with suicidal thoughts or those who had already attempted to kill themselves. Based on levels of the gene’s products in the blood, they could predict with 80% to 90% accuracy whether a particular participant had had suicidal thoughts or had tried to commit suicide.

The differences Kaminsky and his colleagues found isn’t a genetic mutation, but a change in how active the SKA2 gene is. Environmental exposures and life experiences can affect how and when genes are turned on or off. That’s what is happening with SKA2 in those who commit suicide; their gene is inhibited from doing its job of controlling their stress response and modulating it properly.

The work is just the first step in potentially developing a blood test for identifying people at highest risk of harming themselves, says Kaminsky. “We are not going to recommend screening everybody,” he says. “I don’t think that makes sense.” But among those at high risk of suicide, knowing that they also have a possible genetic tendency to react negatively to stress may help to them to get consistent support and more aggressive mental health services to help them cope with their stress and avoid more tragic outcomes.

TIME Health Mental Health/Psychology

The Part of Your Brain That Senses Dread Has Been Discovered

This tiny part of your brain tracks bad experiences

A tiny part of the brain can keep track of your expectations about negative experiences—and predict when you will react to an event—researchers at University College London say.

The brain structure, known as the habenula, activates in response to negative events such as electric shocks, and they may help people learn from bad experiences.

The findings, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, marks the first time this association has been proven in humans. Earlier studies showed that the habenula causes animals to avoid negative stimuli by suppressing dopamine, a brain chemical that drives motivation.

In this study, investigators showed 23 people random sequences of pictures followed by a set of good or bad outcomes (an electric shock, losing money, winning money, or neutral). The volunteers were asked to occasionally press a button to show they were paying attention, and researchers scanned their brains for habenula activity using a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner. Images were taken at high resolution because the habenula is so small—half the size of a pea.

When people saw pictures associated with painful electric shocks, the habenula activated, while it did not for pictures that predicted winning money.

“Fascinatingly, people were slower to press the button when the picture was associated with getting shocked, even though their response had no bearing on the outcome,” lead author Rebecca Lawson from the University College London Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, said in a statement. “Furthermore, the slower people responded, the more reliably their habenula tracked associations with shocks. This demonstrates a crucial link between the habenula and motivated behavior, which may be the result of dopamine suppression.”

The study also showed that the habenula responds more the worse an experience is predicted to be. For example, researchers said the habenula responds much more strongly when an electric shock is certain than when it is unlikely to happen. This means that your brain can tell how bad an event will be before it occurs.

The habenula has been linked to depression, and this study shows how it could play a part in symptoms such low motivation, focusing on negative experiences and pessimism in general. Researchers said that understanding the habenula could potentially help them develop new ways of treating depression.

  1. Pages:
  3. 1
  4. 2
  5. 3
  6. 4
  7. 5
  8. 6
  9. 7
  10. 8
  11. 9

Your browser, Internet Explorer 8 or below, is out of date. It has known security flaws and may not display all features of this and other websites.

Learn how to update your browser