January 5, 2024

By Courtney Wise

Eliminating even moderate amounts of alcohol can lead to clearer skin, better sleep, which in turn yields a better mood, and better relationships. NPR’s Life Kit explained how scores of people approach the practice, and what one can expect as a result.

And if kindness seems hard these days, here’s some incentive from the reporters at NPR to build a regular kindness practice. Research shows it can lower pain and improve your brain. 

Below, we’re sharing links to some of our original reporting that we hope you’ll dig back into before our official return to the office next week. Below, I’ll start by linking back to a story that I appreciated personally, as it made me think of my father, now deceased, who struggled with hoarding disorder.

A San Francisco Program Helps Older People Manage Their Hoarding Behavior – and Stay Housed (from February 2024)

There are still a handful of vintage hat boxes in Vera Oliver’s closet. Wrapped in smooth satin and crushed velvet, they sit high on a shelf, stacked one on top of another. The boxes are from a time when Oliver worked as a makeup artist at big department stores. She had a gift for eyes, and with one glance could name someone’s best eyeshadow color.

At 80 years old, wearing brightly colored porcelain earrings, Oliver still knows beauty when she sees it. She pulls down a box, rubbing her hand over the white satin. “See the bottom?” she asks, pointing to a cloth label inside the box. “Nordstrom’s 1992. This is a collector’s item.” 

Oliver used to have a couple of hundred of those boxes; the white satin is one of the few she has saved. She won them at work and used them as giveaways filled with cosmetics for her private clients. But after a while, she had difficulty parting with them.

“That’s how I got in trouble with collecting,” she said. “They each have a story and a memory.”

Oliver, whose home is now clean and spacious thanks to a special service in San Francisco, is one of the estimated 12,000 to 25,000 people in San Francisco with hoarding behavior. A stigmatized mental health issue prevalent among older adults, it also can increase risk of eviction. In San Francisco, where the unhoused population is aging, a handful of services are attempting to keep low-income older adults with hoarding behavior out of shelters and off the streets. Read the full story here. 

Author Celeste Hamilton Dennis also reported this piece in January 2024  on Rypins House, a program run by San Francisco’s Progress Foundation, which helps older adults receive treatment for both addiction and mental illness, as well as MindSite News pieces on a Chinatown dental clinic that offers mental health services and undocumented immigrants who’ve become therapists.

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Tasers Can Kill. When They Don’t, They Can Still Do Lasting Damage (from June 2024)

Jarontez Garrett, a promising baskeball player at Norwich University in Vermont

Just ask the mom of Jarontez Garrett. Shortly before 11 pm on August 2, 2022, the Atlanta police department received a call from a crisis hotline asking police officers and emergency medical workers to respond to a Hyatt hotel, where 20-year-old Jarontez Garrett was reportedly acting erratically. 

He was talking to himself and expressing “suicidal ideations,” according to a police report, so the officers filled out paperwork to have Garrett involuntarily committed to a hospital for a mental health evaluation. Garrett’s mother was there and asked officers to “stand off,” since her son had recently had negative interactions with police. 

About three hours after officers were called to the hotel, an ambulance still had not arrived. Garrett told MindSite News he felt uncomfortable with the police surrounding him and talking about him, so he tried to run from them. In the following confrontation, he was shot with two Taser darts, handcuffed, and taken to jail before being transported to a hospital for mental health treatment. Since that night, he told MindSite News, he’s had a hard time adjusting to regular life. “It just felt like everybody was against me,” Garrett said. Read the full story here.

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Mental Health Experts Continue Their ‘Duty to Warn’ About Trump’s Mental Unfitness Up to 11th Hour (from November 4)

Trump’s dangerous cabinet picks and declaration that he intends to take Greenland from Denmark by force if Denmark won’t sell it to him, along with threats to take over Canada and Mexico, bring to mind our recent article on psychiatrists’ warnings that Trump has lost touch with reality and is showing classic signs of dementia. The 25th Amendment can be invoked to remove someone from the presidency who is mentally and cognitively unfit –  some of Trump’s cabinet discussed doing so during his first term for other reasons.  Read the full article here.

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In other news…

How to administer naloxone, the life-saving overdose medicine: Simply put, Narcan saves lives. If you’re willing to administer it to a person suffering from the physical effects of an overdose, you can be a life saver. To that end, the Washington Post shared the stories of three people who sprung into action or were saved by the drug. The paper also shared a step-by-step guide detailing how you can administer Narcan, when necessary, right after calling 911.

Becoming a senior is no reason, on its own, to slow down, say these folks, all in their golden years, who find delight jumping out of airplanes: Skydiving helps them to feel free and ever-connected to the “daredevil” parts of their identities. It’s also offered a great community to people clear-eyed about the nearness we share with death. “You know in reality that any given day in the drop zone might be your last,” John Miller, 77, told the New York Times. “We’ve all had to look at our own mortality. We accept that if it’s your time, it’s your time.”

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If you or someone you know is in crisis or experiencing suicidal thoughts, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline and connect in English or Spanish. If you’re a veteran press 1. If you’re deaf or hard of hearing dial 711, then 988. Services are free and available 24/7.

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