|
|
I recently ran across a fascinating article: Why rejection hurts: A common neural alarm system for physical and social pain. According to the authors, physical pain and social pain (which happens when social relationships are threatened, damaged or lost) are both processed in the same part of the brain.
It seems that the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) is activated when we experience pain in order to create a sense of distress. There’s a different part of the brain in charge of the actual sensation of pain. You can think of it as a partnership- one portion receives the message that some part of the body has been damaged, so it sends a signal to the ACC, which sets off the alarms so you know …
Continue reading The Pain of Rejection and Shame
This post also appeared on the Good Vibrations Magazine.
For years, safer sex advocates have been saying that self-esteem has a huge effect on how much people engage in risk-reduction and harm-reduction behaviors. That’s why many of the most effective intervention programs & organizations, whether online like Scarleteen.com or in-person like the StopAIDS Project, offer counseling and support, in addition to information.
So I was really interested to read this post on ScienceDaily.com about research showing that among the 1,000 HIV-positive and negative gay and bisexual men surveyed:
Almost 10 percent of the participants reported that they had been victims of childhood sexual abuse and nearly 30 percent had experienced gay-related victimization between the ages of 12 and 14, including verbal insults, bullying,
…
Continue reading Shame as a Public Health Issue
While this post isn’t about sex per se, I think it’s sufficiently connected for it to be relevant here.
We know that breastfeeding is one of the least expensive and more effective ways to promote a child’s health. And one of the barriers to it (besides people getting freaked out when they see a woman breastfeeding in public) is that it’s really hard for most women to continue breastfeeding when they return to work. Yes, some workplaces accommodate the need to pump every few hours, but lots of companies don’t. So it makes sense that many women choose to stop breastfeeding.
The US House of Representatives recently passed H.R. 626, the Federal Employee Paid Parental Leave Act of 2009, which would give federal employees …
Continue reading breastfeeding: an investment in the future
According to the latest report from the Guttmacher Institute, publicly funded family planning services prevent 1.94 million unintended pregnancies and 810,000 abortions each year. They are also “… highly cost-effective. More than nine in 10 women receiving them would be eligible for Medicaid-funded prenatal, delivery and postpartum care services if they became pregnant. Avoiding the significant costs associated with these unintended births saves taxpayers $4 for every $1 spent on family planning.”
They save money and they reduce the number of women who seek abortions. Somehow, that sounds like a no-brainer to me. Plus, it’s much more effective than trying to convince people to not have sex.…
Continue reading public health & family planning
|
|
% Category: 
