Depresh Mode with John Moe

COVID has been traumatic for young people. For a year and a half now, it’s either been impossible to go to school or the place that they go to doesn’t match what they used to know as school. The virus may have caused severe illness or death in their families. It’s a frightening time for all of us and especially so among the youngest and most vulnerable. So as in-class education really begins again in earnest, what’s the state of these people showing up to the classrooms and how can we, not just as parents or teachers but members of society, help?

We speak with Ruby Ramirez, principal in the Dallas Independent School District, about how she prepared her school for the state of mind the students are returning with. One thing that’s helped everyone feel better? Masks. Yep, the things that made everyone so uncomfortable in the earlier days of COVID now give students a sense of security in the classroom and hallways.

Masks are a big deal for Dr. Robin Gurwitch as well. She’s a psychologist and Professor in Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Duke University School of Medicine and she points out that one of the best ways to recover from our societal trauma is to stop the virus itself. To do that, wear your dang masks where you’re told to wear it. In the interview, Robin mentions some online resources that could help anyone.

Here they are:

National Child Traumatic Stress Network (www.nctsn.org or https://www.nctsn.org/what-is-child-trauma/trauma-types/disasters/pandemic-resources)
American Psychological Association (https://www.apa.org/topics/covid-19/parenting-caregiving)
National Child Traumatic Stress Network: Parent/Caregiver Guide to Helping Families Cope with COVID-19
https://www.nctsn.org/resources/supporting-children-during-coronavirus-covid19
Center for the Study of Traumatic Stress: https://www.cstsonline.org/assets/media/documents/CSTS_FS_Discussing_Coronavirus_w_Your_Children.pdf
https://www.cstsonline.org/assets/media/documents/CSTS_FS_Finding_Right_Words_Talk_Children_Teens_Coronavirus.pdf
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/daily-life-coping/for-parents.html
American Psychological Association at https://www.apa.org/topics/covid-19).

Thank you to all our listeners who support the show as monthly members of Maximum Fun.

Hey, remember, you’re part of Depresh Mode and we want to hear what you want to hear about. What guests and issues would you like to have covered in a future episode? Write us at [email protected].

Help is available right away.

The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255, 1-800-273-TALK

Crisis Text Line: Text HOME to 741741.

International suicide hotline numbers available here: https://www.opencounseling.com/suicide-hotlines

The Depresh Mode newsletter is available twice a week. Subscribe for free and stay up to date on the show and mental health issues. https://johnmoe.substack.com/

John's acclaimed memoir, The Hilarious World of Depression, is available here.

Find the show on Twitter @depreshpod and Instagram @depreshpod.

John is on Twitter @johnmoe.

You can find plenty of articles online about Amanda Knox and her Italian court case, some from more reputable publications than others. Amanda was convicted twice and cleared twice of murdering her roommate, Meredith Kercher, while the two were studying abroad in the Italian city of Perugia. She spent four years incarcerated in Italy before her name was finally cleared. Our interview picks up, for the most part, after that exoneration and it’s about how to manage one’s mental health after going through all that. We hear about some disastrous therapy sessions, a Matt Damon movie that co-opted her trauma, and her struggle to imagine how she’ll tell her newborn daughter about all this some day.

Listen to Labyrinths: Getting Lost with Amanda Knox on the podcatcher of your choice. Follow Amanda Knox on Twitter @amandaknox. Support Knox Robinson on their Patreon.

Thank you to all our listeners who support the show as monthly members of Maximum Fun.

Hey, remember, you’re part of Depresh Mode and we want to hear what you want to hear about. What guests and issues would you like to have covered in a future episode? Write us at [email protected].

Help is available right away.

The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255, 1-800-273-TALK

Crisis Text Line: Text HOME to 741741.

International suicide hotline numbers available here: https://www.opencounseling.com/suicide-hotlines

The Depresh Mode newsletter is available twice a week. Subscribe for free and stay up to date on the show and mental health issues. https://johnmoe.substack.com/

John's acclaimed memoir, The Hilarious World of Depression, is available here.

Find the show on Twitter @depreshpod and Instagram @depreshpod.

John is on Twitter @johnmoe.

Alexandra Paul wasn’t allowed sugar as a kid but she snuck it anyway, not for the taste but for the comfort it provided. As a teen, Alexandra’s modeling and acting careers were going great. Her relationship with food, on the other hand, had become a real mess. At boarding school, it seemed right and normal to deny herself food in order to be as skinny as possible. The other girls were doing it and no one ever talked about it as a disorder. Over time, as she moved into modeling in New York City and acting in Hollywood, the anorexia turned to bulimia and she got hooked on the ritual of bingeing and purging. She’s stayed away from that behavior for the last 30 years but still feels like she could slip back if she’s not careful.

Dr. Jillian Lampert, who also dealt with eating disorders herself as a young person, is the Chief Strategy Officer for the Emily Project, an organization that treats and studies eating disorders. She says there’s a lot of recent research indicating that genetics are much more responsible for who will develop eating disorders of all kinds than we previously thought.

Alexandra Paul personal site

Alexandra Paul IMDb page

Alexandra Paul Wikipedia

Alexandra Paul on Twitter - @alexandra_paul

The Emily Program - https://www.emilyprogram.com/

Dr. Jillian Lampert - https://www.emilyprogram.com/about-us/leadership-team/jillian-lampert/
Reward sensitivity article: https://jeatdisord.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40337-017-0138-2
Sensation and emotion study in progress: http://eatingdisorders.ucsd.edu/research/our-research.html
Sensation study: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3955712/
Another sensation study: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7230430/
Bodily sensations study: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29483865/
Sensation study looking particularly at disgust: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6759364/
Broader study on interoceptive awareness (awareness of body cues): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7927286/
Genetics and neurobiology: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21243469/

Thank you to all our listeners who support the show as monthly members of Maximum Fun.

Hey, remember, you’re part of Depresh Mode and we want to hear what you want to hear about. What guests and issues would you like to have covered in a future episode? Write us at [email protected].

Help is available right away.

The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255, 1-800-273-TALK

Crisis Text Line: Text HOME to 741741.

International suicide hotline numbers available here: https://www.opencounseling.com/suicide-hotlines

The Depresh Mode newsletter is available twice a week. Subscribe for free and stay up to date on the show and mental health issues. https://johnmoe.substack.com/

John's acclaimed memoir, The Hilarious World of Depression, is available here. https://read.macmillan.com/lp/the-hilarious-world-of-depression/

Find the show on Twitter @depreshpod and Instagram @depreshpod.

John is on Twitter @johnmoe.

Rock music isn’t a cure for depression or anxiety. You can’t wail away on “Smoke on the Water” and have all your mental difficulties melt away. That would be awesome, sure, but that’s not how it works. But for Chelsea Ursin, playing was a lot of other things: a break from the nagging mental disorders that created so many problems from a young age, a channel through which to express herself, and an opportunity to help the next generation of girls have a smoother and healthier time than she did. Ursin is the creator and host of Dear Young Rocker, a podcast that started with letters from her modern-day self to her teenage self and which now features other women in rock telling the stories of their younger selves.

Listen to Dear Young Rocker here or on the podcatcher of your choice. Listen to Chelsea's band Banana on Bandcamp. Follow Chelsea on Twitter @RockerDear and on Instagram @dearyoungrocker.

Thank you to all our listeners who support the show as monthly members of Maximum Fun.

Hey, remember, you’re part of Depresh Mode and we want to hear what you want to hear about. What guests and issues would you like to have covered in a future episode? Write us at [email protected].

Help is available right away.

The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255, 1-800-273-TALK

Crisis Text Line: Text HOME to 741741.

International suicide hotline numbers available here: https://www.opencounseling.com/suicide-hotlines

The Depresh Mode newsletter is available twice a week. Subscribe for free and stay up to date on the show and mental health issues. https://johnmoe.substack.com/

John's acclaimed memoir, The Hilarious World of Depression, is available here.

Find the show on Twitter @depreshpod and Instagram @depreshpod.

John is on Twitter @johnmoe.

Therapy isn’t about hating your mother. It’s not about crying over something that happened when you were six and then dwelling on it for the rest of your life. And the difficulty or trauma you faced back then is not something you can simply “get over” or “move past”.

Good therapy is much more like what Jackie Kashian did, as she describes in this episode. She talks about the violence in her home growing up. And the neglect. And the substance use and death of her mother. Then she talks about going to therapy and figuring out how that past informed her adult life, how it guided her decisions, and how it laid a foundation for the life she would live.

With that understanding in place, she could better distinguish between healthy and unhealthy habits. It’s not dwelling in the past, it’s getting a map for the future.

Listen to Jackie Kashian's podcasts, The Jackie and Laurie Show and The Dork Forest on the podcatcher of your choice. For tour dates, visit Jackie's website, JackieKashian.com. Follow her on Twitter @jackiekashian.

Thank you to all our listeners who support the show as monthly members of Maximum Fun.

Hey, remember, you’re part of Depresh Mode and we want to hear what you want to hear about. What guests and issues would you like to have covered in a future episode? Write us at [email protected].

Help is available right away.

The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255, 1-800-273-TALK

Crisis Text Line: Text HOME to 741741.

International suicide hotline numbers available here: https://www.opencounseling.com/suicide-hotlines

The Depresh Mode newsletter is available twice a week. Subscribe for free and stay up to date on the show and mental health issues. https://johnmoe.substack.com/

John's acclaimed memoir, The Hilarious World of Depression, is available here.

Find the show on Twitter @depreshpod and Instagram @depreshpod.

John is on Twitter @johnmoe.