Helping Others Helps With Depression

MONDAY, Jan. 2 (HealthDay News) — Doing something nice for someone else often leaves people feeling good about themselves and positive about their place in the world.

But does that mean practicing random acts of kindness has scientifically proven therapeutic value in treating mood disorders like depression? Yes, according to a growing body of research that has found that “positive activity interventions” — like helping someone with groceries, writing a thank you note or even counting your blessings — can serve as an effective, low-cost treatment for depression.

“They seem really trivial. They seem like, what’s the big deal, you feel good for 10 minutes,” said Sonja Lyubomirsky, a psychology professor at the University of California, Riverside, who co-authored a recent paper on the topic. “But for a depressed person, they aren’t trivial at all. Depressed individuals need to increase positive emotions in their life, even a minute here and there.”

After a rigorous review of research on the therapeutic benefits of positive emotion, Lyubomirsky said, she and her colleagues found widespread support for the notion that people with a tendency toward depression can help themselves by helping others or otherwise introducing positivity into their day-to-day lives.

Such a simple, low-cost path to well-being could have big-time implications, given that more than 100 million people worldwide suffer with depression, according to Lyubomirsky’s study. That includes more than 16 million U.S. adults, of whom about 70 percent of reported cases either do not receive enough treatment or do not get treated at all.

Positive activity interventions come in a variety of forms, including:
Being kind to others
Expressing gratitude
Thinking optimistically
Meditating on the good things in life

“The major aspect is the positive emotion,” Lyubomirsky said. “The most significant feature of depression is the absence of positive emotion — just a feeling of nothing, of emptiness.” Not only can being positive improve your mood, it can develop into a self-sustaining “upward spiral,” she said. ”You might be more approachable to others, or be more creative and imaginative,” Lyubomirsky said. “It snowballs, and you are more likely to experience even more positive emotion.” For example, your boss might be more likely to compliment you if you are happy in your work, or your husband or wife might be friendlier after an act of kindness.

Dr. Michelle Riba, former president of the American Psychiatric Association, a psychiatry professor and associate director of the Depression Center at the University of Michigan, agreed that positivity can have a dramatic effect on people’s psychological well-being. “There’s a lot of good research that shows these kinds of actions can have a positive impact on life,” Riba said. “In general, people who help others stop focusing on their own pains and problems and worries and feel good about themselves.” And perhaps the best thing about it is that people can pursue these positive actions on their own. “They are simple,” Lyubomirsky said. “They don’t involve going to a doctor. They aren’t a substitute, but they are a great alternative or addition to therapy or medication.”

Researchers are still assessing the best ways to pursue and implement positive thought and action to help treat depression, Lyubomirsky and Riba said.
For now, those who want to improve their mood through positivity need to figure out what works best for them through trial and error. This may include thinking long and hard about the best ways they can help others and reminding themselves of the good things in their own lives. ”You have to do work,” Lyubomirsky said. “It takes effort to continually remind yourself to do acts of kindness for others, although I think it gets easier over time.”

It’s also important, she said, to vary your activities, lest you fall into a rut. “You want to do them in optimal ways,” Lyubomirsky said. “You want to vary what you do. You don’t want to do the same thing every day. You want to do them at a rate that’s optimal to you.”

More information: The U.S. National Institute of Mental Health has more on depression.

Souce: By Dennis Thompson
HealthDay Reporter | HealthDay – Mon, Jan 2, 2012 11:48 PM EST

January is National Blood Donor Month

Give Blood and Help Patients in Need

Since 1970, Blood Donor Month has been observed to educate everyone about the importance of being a blood donor and the impact blood donations can have on patients who need blood.

“We want to thank everyone who gives blood and ask them to schedule a time to donate now,” said Shaun Gilmore, president of Biomedical Services for the Red Cross. “We’d also like to encourage people who have never donated before to consider giving for the first time and join those across the country who change lives by donating blood.”

January is a time of year when blood supplies often dip drastically as winter weather blankets the country, keeping people from giving blood. At the same time, patient need for blood does not diminish.

Every two seconds, someone in this country needs blood. 44,000 blood donations are needed every day to help accident and burn victims, cancer patients, those having surgery, new mothers, premature babies and many others.

Individuals who are 17 years of age (16 with parental permission in some states), weigh at least 110 pounds and are in general good health may be eligible to donate blood. High school students and other donors 18 years of age and younger also have to meet certain height and weight requirements.  Individuals should bring their Red Cross blood donor card or other form of positive ID when coming to donate.

For more information on giving blood, or to make an appointment to give blood or platelets in the coming days, call 1-800-RED CROSS (1-800-733-2767) or visit www.redcrossblood.org.

About the American Red Cross:
The American Red Cross shelters, feeds and provides emotional support to victims of disasters; supplies nearly half of the nation’s blood; teaches lifesaving skills; provides international humanitarian aid; and supports military members and their families. The Red Cross is a charitable organization — not a government agency — and depends on volunteers and the generosity of the American public to perform its mission. For more information, please visit www.redcross.org

Salesforce.com founder, Marc Benioff, and his philanthropist wife, Lynne Benioff.

Thanks to a Chronicle story and a bighearted donor, families of San Francisco schoolchildren now living on the street will have a home for the holidays.

As many as 200 families spending their nights in city shelters, sleeping in cars or on the streets will be moved into public or subsidized housing, with many of them in their new homes by Christmas, said Mayor Ed Lee. The $3 million for the program will come from city money and a $1.5 million contribution from Marc and Lynne Benioff of Salesforce.com, a fast-growing San Francisco tech company.

Lynne Benioff said as soon as she read the Dec. 4 Chronicle story about the plight of the growing number of homeless children in the city’s public schools, she knew something had to be done.

“Marc and I saw this as an emergency, affecting children’s health, so we reached out to the mayor’s office,” Lynne Benioff said. “We thought we could probably help the city do something about this.”

Lee and city staffers knew all about the problem and had been working on ways to deal with it. The problem, as always, was finding the needed money.

“We got a huge bump with Lynne Benioff calling and saying she wanted to help,” the mayor said. “We immediately knew that we wanted to get as many families as possible in homes before Christmas.”

Lynne Benioff cheerfully admitted that she and her husband, the founder and CEO of Salesforce, challenged the city to move the people into housing for the holidays.

“What was the mayor’s election slogan, ‘Ed Lee Gets Things Done’?” she asked. “We thought we’d test that.”

Within 24 hours, the city and the Benioffs had reached an agreement to jump-start the program to help the schoolkids.

The city and the school district have different definitions of who qualifies as homeless, which means their numbers don’t always mesh. While school officials report that nearly 2,200 of their students are homeless, nearly 1,000 of them are living in single-room-occupancy hotels or other situations that don’t meet the city’s criteria, said Malcolm Yeung, an aide to the mayor for housing matters.

The city has 79 families in long-term city shelters and an additional 253 on the waiting list for those rooms. Because children in public schools will have priority under the new program, moving 200 of those families into regular housing will help a significant percentage of the city’s homeless schoolchildren.

About 30 or 40 families will be able to immediately move into vacant public housing units, said Yeung, while an additional 160 or 165 will receive assistance finding subsidized private rental units.

The Benioffs will donate their $1.5 million to their choice of community-based organizations, which will help families find housing and provide up to 18 months of rent assistance. The organizations also will provide assistance to the families, working to help them get in a position to move into non-subsidized housing, Yeung said.

For Lee, the program is an example of how the city can work in partnership with private companies to deal with San Francisco’s problems.

“Quite frankly, we want others to help, we want other companies to join in,” the mayor said. “The Benioffs are part of the leadership of the new companies that are going to be our philanthropic leaders in the 21st century.

This isn’t the first time the Benioffs have stepped up for children’s health. Last year, the company committed $100 million toward a new children’s hospital at UCSF’s new site at Mission Bay, where Salesforce will be building its corporate headquarters.

A City Hall hearing this morning, called by Supervisor John Avalos, will look at the dramatic rise of family homelessness in the city. Members of the Coalition on Homelessness and other housing advocates have called on the city to make a concerted effort to help families now in shelters and on the streets as the winter cold sets in.

E-mail John Wildermuth at jwildermuth@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page C – 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/12/11/BA671MAS03.DTL#ixzz1gLJg1ySV

A Community Unites Around A Bay Area Family

“Two days before Thanksgiving most families were scurrying around getting ready for the holiday, a time in which families gather to celebrate.

Our neighbor, Anna So, was on her way to the hospital that Tuesday morning to deliver her second child, a boy, to be named Jake.

Pictures were posted on Facebook, by dad, Josh, showing the delivery room and their older son, Ryan, so excited to become a big brother (at the ripe age of 3). Such an exciting time for a family and their Dublin neighbors, who were sharing their joy at their family’s expansion.

But that evening our neighborhood was hit with the blow that Anna had tragically passed away during the birth of baby Jake. Jake had a rough start, struggling to take that first breath and was taken to UCSF for further intensive care.

Josh kept all of us updated daily via Facebook, as we all felt helpless as we watched Josh do his best for Ryan and Jake, knowing he just lost his wife and the mother of his two boys. Jake came home Tuesday, seven days after he was born. Such a miracle after such devastation.

Our Dublin Ranch Gleneagles community is an especially unique one. To say we are neighbors is so impersonal. To many of us, this community is our family. At the very least, we are all friends.

When something this tragic strikes, such as that which happened to the So family, we cannot help but to have the overwhelming desire to help in any way we can find.

Some made signs to welcome baby Jake, some have set up an online meal calendar, some moms are continuing the preschool research for Josh (which Anna was doing) and some are looking to make a monetary donation to the So family to help with funeral expenses.

Anna will be laid to rest this Saturday at a private ceremony in Livermore.

Josh So wrote the following letter to his wife, Anna, on Facebook after she died. Dublin Patch has posted it with his permission. Read it <here>.”

If you are interested in supporting the So family in some capacity, please email us at donations@thebstarproject.org with the subject line “The So Family”.

(source: www.dublin.patch.com)

Now Accepting Umbrellas!

The leaves are turning colors and the air is beginning to get nippy. Soon the rain clouds will be upon us and hundreds of children living in shelters or on the streets will be soaked walking to and from school.

Please help make this difficult time a little less uncomfortable by donating a new or gently used umbrella to our Third Annual Umbrella Drive.

Each year, The B* Project collects and donates 300+ umbrellas to local shelters and community service locations. The umbrellas are given to school-aged children to help make walking to and from school less grueling in harsh weather who may or may not have warm jackets or raincoats. Aside from keeping them dry, the colorful umbrellas put instant smiles on the faces of these kids.

Working parents who do most of their traveling by foot or public transit, also receive donated umbrellas. These parents are already experiencing a significant hardship and are attempting to get back on track. These donated umbrellas enable these parents to get to work more easily in unfavorable weather conditions.

Unable to donate umbrellas? Want to do MORE? Help spread the word or help collect umbrellas at your work or local school.

For more information about the Umbrella Drive, e-mail umbrellas@thebstarproject.org or call (925) 388-6890 for more information.

Halloween Candy Aftermath

Trick or Treat! Now what?

So it’s four days after Halloween and some of us are wondering what we should do with the seemingly endless heap of candy in our midsts. We’ve heard all kinds of strategies — giving leftover candy to charity, buying the candy from our children or trading it up for a toy. Some of us let the kids go hog wild until it’s gone. Others carefully dole it out throughout the year. Sociologist, Dr. Dina Rose offers up a handful of strategies on how we can, over time, learn how to reduce our role in the candy-control struggle that presents itself each halloween, and throughout the year. She also breaks down the unintended messages we are giving our children when we play the role of Candy Controller.

Dr. Rose, of It’s Not About Nutrition runs a blog on The Art & Science of Teaching Kids to Eat Right. She proposes that by giving halloween candy away, parents are missing some valuable teaching moments. By overly controlling our kids’ consumption of sweets we are effectively robbing them of opportunities to learn self control.

She outlines 3 strategies for making good use of the halloween candy pile:
1. Think of Halloween as a Big Buffet where you teach your kids to be “browsers” not “loaders”
2. Encourage Your Kids to Taste Test so that the halloween bag becomes an avenue for risk taking and trying new things.
3. Teach Your Kids to Think BIG whereby they can start to practice and understand how to keep inferior foods in their proper proportion.

She also reminds us of 5 unintended messages we are giving our children when we try to restrict candy eating:
1. “I’m going to dump it so you better eat as much as you can now.”
2. “Candy has power.”
3. “Feel guilty when you eat candy.”
4. “It’s best to eat candy when you’re full.”
5. “You’re not to be trusted around candy.”

To read much more about her strategies for dealing with your kids candy haul check out her article, But What Are You Going to Do With All That Halloween Candy?. To hear more about why we should think twice before giving all that candy away check out her articleThe How-to Control-Your-Kids’-Candy-Consumption Con.
(Source: Jackie Boucher via www.ohdeedoh.com)

Bay Area Spotlight: Sunnyvale, CA

Poverty in Sunnyvale

People don’t usually associate Sunnyvale with poverty or people in need, but sadly, they should. United Way Silicon Valley identified Sunnyvale as one of the two fastest growing poverty areas in the county. 27% of the city’s 140,000 population falls equally into extremely low, very low, and just plain low income categories using national standards not adjusted for our higher cost of living. Second Harvest Food Bank identified a Sunnyvale zip code, since divided into two, as among the ten neediest in the county in terms of hunger and food insecurity (not having enough food throughout the month). Over 40% of Sunnyvale School District’s students qualify for free or reduced price meals.

For volunteering opportunities or more information about Sunnyvale community services, email us at volunteers@thebstarproject.org.

Source: http: www.svcommunityservices.org

Green School Shopping Tips

As the summer begins to wind down, children of all ages will be headed back to school. It happens every year- parents will ravage malls and stores everywhere to complete the annual tradition of back-to-school shopping.  Hundreds of dollars in new clothes, shoes, and school supplies will be purchased this month bankrupting wallets and polluting our planet’s resources.  Is a package of 68 pens that smell like fruit really necessary?

The average school tosses 38 tons of paper out- that is equivalent to 644 trees-  each year.  Although it is important to be prepared, it is equally important to try and be as green as possible. Yes, even when doing back-to-school shopping.  Purchasing post-consumer paper and ensuring that paper also gets recycled can make a big difference.

Read on + learn how TreeHugger.com advises all of us to be more green when sending the kids back to school.

Top Green Back to School Tips

Get off to a Good Green Start Plan out your day (and your year) at school, and ask yourself some questions. Are they really going to ride that new bike enough to warrant a new set of wheels? Is another reusable lunch bag or canister really necessary? Do they really need a new ruler? The measurements haven’t changed over the summer.  Make a list of what you absolutely know they need, what you think they might need, and what they want.

Take Inventory and Avoid Duplicates Take a careful inventory of what you already have that can be used again — think more durable items, like clothes and shoes — and what’s still waiting to be used for the first time — extra packs of pencils, notebooks, etc. Avoid last-minute impulse purchases by making a list of what you need and sticking to it. before you head to the store.

Find Green Clothes Almost half of the money spent on back to school shopping goes to buying clothes, but new threads don’t have to come with sticker shock. Hand-me-downs are a great place to get started, and thrift stores and events like Swap-o-Rama-Rama can be a fun and an inexpensive way to send your kiddos back to school in low-impact duds. If these options are exhausted before your list is done, and you have to buy new, go for well-made, high-quality choices made from more sustainable fabrics like organic cotton or bamboo rather than disposable fashion that’ll wear out.

Choose Greener Pens and Pencils The days of package upon package of disposable pen and pencil are gone, replaced by biodegradable pencils, refillable pens, and recycled versions of both. Once you have greener options in hand, encourage your youngsters to hang on to each pencil ’til it wears down to the nub, and to each pen as long as possible.

Don’t be a Paper Pusher Buy products with the highest percentage of post-consumer recycled content possible, that is processed chlorine free (PCF). Next, use these products to their maximum efficiency by printing on both sides of the paper, using paper already printed on one side for drafts (or better yet editing all drafts in the computer itself), and filling notebooks from cover to cover before purchasing a new one. And it never hurts to ask teachers if you can email in your work.

Beware the Miscellaneous Supply Overload Don’t be tempted by the better deal on a dozen bottles of glue if you know you’ll only need three bottles between now and next spring. If it doesn’t have to come out of the backpack every day (or it is a backpack), think twice about loading up at the beginning of the year.

Think Outside the Lunch-Box Don’t brown bag it; instead opt for a washable, reusable container to tote your lunch too and fro. Just make sure to avoid vinyl lunch boxes which have been shown to contain harmful levels of lead. Instead, invest in a PVC-free, thermally insulated lunch bag, one made from recycled juice boxes or from organic cotton and keep lunches cool by freezing water or juice in a reusable container and putting it in the bag. Instead of using baggies and plastic wrap for sandwiches and snacks, use reusable plastic containers. For other beverages, beware of plastic bottles which may contain Bisphenol A (BPA), a hormone-disrupting chemical. Instead go with metal ones.

Don’t Start a Food Fight When it comes to the actual food that goes in the lunch box. Make extra for dinner the night before, leftovers make great lunches. Pack healthy green lunches kids will want to eat, and get them involved in choosing lunch ingredients, since they’ll be less likely to pitch stuff they want to eat. Forget the mini-packs of Cheetos and Doritos; apples, oranges, bananas, and other fruit are heathful, waste-free snackables that come with their own compostable wrapping. And, don’t forget: Kids need snacks as well as lunch. Make homemade granola bars rather than individually wrapped purchased bars. Or send them with fruit or vegetable sticks and a couple of slices of cheese.

Walking, Biking, Busing: Green Transportation to School Going green while getting back and forth to school offers a familiar refrain: human power — walking or biking — is best; riding the bus is next; driving alone is last. Events like Walk to School Month and activities like the Walking Bus are making it easier and safer for kids to get to school under their own power; if you don’t live close enough to walk, and finding a safe route to bike ride is a green way to go, too. Beyond that, even though most school buses get single-digit miles per gallon, they can also hold upwards of 60 or 70 youngsters, making them a cleaner option than single-occupancy cars. If walking, biking, or busing aren’t in the cards, be sure to divide the ride and start a parent carpool.

Do This Stuff All Year Greening your back to school experience is a great way to start the year, and a great way to make progress toward a sustainable lifestyle, but there’s no reason to stop after the year has just started. Apply the lessons you’ve learned preparing to go back to school to other parts of your non-scholastic life, and, when it comes time to re-supply, follow the tips to stay prepared, organized, and green.

Source: treehugger.com

Packing It In

Having the weight of the world on your shoulders is generally considered a burden.

Unless you’re carrying it in a Schoolbags for Kids backpack. Then it’s a privilege and an honor.

That’s because for every tote you buy from the newly launched company, the founders donate a pack full of school supplies to a child in Belize, India, or Thailand.

The schoolbags have a neat horizontal design that allows books, art projects, and even a laptop (welcome to elementary school in the new millennium) to be stowed in an orderly fashion. Interior pockets hold pencils and markers; there’s an exterior mesh pouch for kiddo’s water bottle. Worried about the heft? Wide, cushioned straps distribute the weight in a safe, comfortable way.

But it’s the durable yellow backpacks of basics — such as paper and pencils — that get sent to children in need that really have us singing “teachable moment.”

There’s power in sharing the load.

Available online at www.schoolbagsforkids.com, $55.

Source: www.dailycandy.com/kids

Third Annual Backpack Drive

It is time for our annual Backpack Drive! We are looking for Good Deed volunteers to help pack + distribute backpacks in August as well as donate any school supplies (see list below).

Please call, message, or e-mail us at donations@thebstarproject.org for more info.

ITEMS NEEDED:
- Folders
- Spiral notebooks
- Binder paper
- Pencil boxes
- Pencil pouches
- Scissors (sharp)
- Pencil sharpeners
- Scotch tape
- Staplers
- Glue
- Composition books
- Marking pens sets
- Colored pencils sets
- Ballpoint pens
- Erasers
- Rulers
- Calculators
- Assignment pads
- Binders (hard cover)
- Binder dividers/pockets
- Paperback dictionaries
- Highlighters
- Crayons
- Backpacks (no red or blue)