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We hope that the world will become more just, peaceful and humane. Every day, TV, radio, Internet and newspapers report on violence, terror and wars. About 30 armed conflicts are occurring now around the globe involving more than 25 countries. Possibly, human mental functions have differentiated unevenly: emotionally, the contemporary human functions almost like the Stone Age human, but human intellectual capacity has developed enormously. Emotions control human behavior, and humans employ their intellect to reach their goals. It is amazing to watch how people create more and more advanced methods to study brain receptors and, at the same time, they create more and more advanced weapons to kill each other.

Let's be kind to each other. People inflict pain on others in the selfish pursuit of their happiness or satisfaction. But true happiness comes from love and compassion.

Let's free our hearts from hatred. Let's give more. Let's expect less. Let's remember that life is not primarily a quest for pleasure, or a quest for power, but a quest for meaning...

Mental disorder categories are not “aseptic” scientific schema

María Dolores Braquehais Conesa, M.D., Ph.D.

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900) was one of the first thinkers who started to critique reason as the will to instrumental power. The French Philosopher, Michel Foucault (1926-1984) also believed that knowledge was inextricably linked to power ¹. More recently, Jürgen Habermas (1929- ) has stated that scientists tend to ignore that their science is not "innocent" but it is deeply shaped by different psychological and socio-cultural interests ².

According to professor G. E. Berrios, although we can admit that mental disorders have a “neurobiological” underpinning, this fact does not make them more stable than any other world denizen ³. Like the rest of conceptual objects, their descriptions and categorizations change over time, although we may not notice it because we live in a short time frame and we tend to believe that our time is unique and our updated beliefs are, with no doubt, right. However, historians of psychology and psychiatry remind us that behavioral descriptions in general, and mental symptoms and diseases, in particular, are constructs changing in time and therefore, they require periodic calibration. Undertaking the later happens to be the role of the clinicians but, at the same time, Berrios reminds us that irrespectively of the changing or unchanging nature of the objects themselves, the descriptions of mental disease categories themselves are not sub specie æternitatis: the way we talk about mental health and symptoms is closely related to the socio-cultural needs of our time ³.

New deadly virus

Researchers have identified a lethal new virus in Africa that causes bleeding like the dreaded Ebola virus. The so-called "Lujo" virus infected five people in Zambia and South Africa last fall. Four of them died, but a fifth survived. It's not clear how the first person became infected, but the bug comes from a family of viruses found in rodents. The outbreak started in September, when a female travel agent who lived on the outskirts of Lusaka, Zambia, became ill with a fever-like illness that quickly grew much worse. She was airlifted to Johannesburg, South Africa, where she died. A paramedic in Lusaka who treated her also became sick, was transported to Johannesburg and died. The three others infected were health care workers in Johannesburg. Researchers believe the virus spread from person to person through contact with infected body fluids. The drug ribavirin was given to the fifth Lujo virus patient, a Johannesburg nurse. It's not clear if the medicine made a difference or if she just had a milder case of the disease, but she fully recovered.

Men who marry younger women live longer

An interesting study by German experts revealed that men who marry younger women enhance their chances of longevity, and those who tie the knot with older women meet a premature death. The analysis was carried by a research group at Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock, Germany. The researchers looked at the deaths of the entire population of Denmark between 1990 and 2005. Danish men who marry women much younger than them live longer.

According to the research, if a man marries a woman 15 and 17 years his junior, his chances of dying early are cut by one fifth. Also, it suggests that men cut the risk of premature death by 11 percent if their wives are seven to nine years younger. Another aspect highlighted by the study was that men who opted for older wives have an 11 percent higher chance of dying earlier.

Put Down the Phone

The National Safety Council is calling on motorists to stop using cell phones and messaging devices while driving, and is urging governors and legislators in all 50 states and the District of Columbia to ban the behavior.

The two biggest distractions on the road today: talking on cell phones and text messaging. People know that such mobile multi-tasking is dangerous, yet people do it anyway, choosing to disregard common sense, the scientific record and the rising human toll.

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