Source: TLC

Towards the end of last month, many were shocked to learn that Lamar Odom’s 14-year-old  daughter Destiny, whom he shares with Starter Wives Confidential star, Liza Morales is battling some serious issues regarding her mental and emotional health. The bomb was dropped when the teen took to her Twitter page to express her low emotional state.

“I feel as If I am drowning in my own emotions, and I have no home to save me,” she tweeted.

What came after that tweet is what grabbed the attention and concern of many. While we’re not exactly sure what prompted this, a follower asked her how frequently she cuts herself and when was the last time she did it.

 “Tonight and I don’t count,” Destiny replied.

Since then, a slew of stories have been circulating around the rumor mill regarding Destiny, her step-mother Khloe’s desperate attempts to pull her out of the fragile state that she has found herself in and Lamar being an absentee dad for the earlier years of her life. According to Star Magazine, it has also been rumored that Destiny’s sorrowful state has been a result of the limited amount of time she’s been able to spend with her mother Liza over the past few months due to the filming of Starter Wives Confidential.

Liza recently spoke to Radar Online regarding these rumors and expressed that although Destiny may be experiencing depression, both she and Lamar are doing everything that they can to tend to their daughter’s needs.

“My children have always and will always be my top priority in life.”

“This matter has been addressed with our daughter. We have a professional on board to evaluate the situation; Destiny is not hurting herself but we are not taking this lightly,”

“With the added pressures of Hollywood and the instant attention of social media, it’s not always easy for a teenager to express their emotions in the best way. This is a private family matter, and we would appreciate respect and privacy during this time.”

It’s good to see that Liza and Lamar have not taken their daughter’s cry for help lightly and are seeking professional help.

Jazmine Denise is a news writer for Madame Noire. Follow her on Twitter @jazminedenise.

Shutterstock

Even the most positive of people will have their down days when life gets the best of them; when so much has stacked up against them that their usual cheery defenses are shot. So don’t panic if your man hits a rough patch. But that’s all it should be—a patch. Because being someone’s cheerleader every day, and having to believe in someone when he doesn’t believe in himself, is not only exhausting; it’s unhealthy. All your energy will go to supporting the other person, and you’ll have none left for yourself. And the saddest part is, that energy will be wasted because you can’t make a person think positively who doesn’t want to. So, are you dating a negative man? Here are the signs.

Source: WENN

Mental health and depression can be such taboo topics in the Black community as well as in our society in general. No one wants to be labeled as “unstable” or “crazy”, which is why so many suffer in silence. Anytime a person can speak out about their personal struggles with these issues, it illustrates great strength. The latest heroine in the fight against depression has been singer, actress and one-third of Destiny’s Child, Michelle Williams. The 32-year-old shocked many when she opened up to Mark Kennedy of The AP and revealed that she has struggled on and off with depression since she was fifteen or sixteen years old.

“I’ve dealt with depression. I had to choose to get out of bed and do whatever I needed to do to be happy.”

She shared that she was able to avoid needing medication, but advises anyone who is struggling with this issue to seek professional help:

“We’re taught, ‘Just go to church and pray about it. The Lord is going to heal you.’ Well, in the meantime, I believe God-gifted people, physicians, doctors, therapists — that’s your healing. Take advantage of it. Go see a professional so that they can assess you. It’s OK if you’re going through something. Depression is not OK, but it is OK to go get help.”

It seems that the singer isn’t allowing anything to slow her down, though. She is currently gearing up to release another solo album as well as to assume a starring role in Broadway musical “Fela!”, not to mention the highly anticipated, upcoming Superbowl performance with Destiny’s Child.

It’s great that Michelle has found the strength to speak openly about her battle with depression. Hopefully her transparency can serve as an inspiration to others. You just never know what a person is going through.

What do you think of Michelle openly discussing her experiences with depression?

Jazmine Denise is a news writer for Madame Noire. Follow her on Twitter @jazminedenise

Even though celebrities live the life that we all wish for, we all know that there isn’t enough money or fame in the world that can buy happiness. As surprising as it may seem, there are several celebrities who have battled depression but thankfully many of them have been able to see the brighter side of things. Here are 15 celebs who battled depression in spite of their ranking in society but  have still been able to climb to the top.

Nikki Nelson/WENN

Ashley Judd

Ashley Judd suffered from depression back when she was in 6th grade. She admitted to considering suicide and went to a rehab clinic to help remedy her depression. She says her humanitarian efforts have helped her regain perspective in life.

Getty Images

Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Javon Belcher was pronounced dead early Saturday morning after taking the life of his girlfriend and then committing suicide.

Details are still somewhat sketchy but Yahoo! Sports reports that around 7am, Belcher and his girlfriend Kasandra Perkins got into an argument.  While the reason for the argument remains unclear, it resulted in Belcher shooting Perkins multiple times. She was taken to the hospital and pronounced dead.

Belcher then proceeded to Arrowhead Stadium’s team facility, home of the Kansas City Chiefs, where he ran into the team’s General Manager Scott Pioli and head coach Romeo Crennel, along with at least one other employee. The facility was evacuated and locked down by police after Perkins’ mom, who witnessed her daughter being shot, notified them of what had happened in the home.  The GM and coach attempted to talk Belcher out of hurting anyone else but he then shot himself in the head.

A police spokesman said Belcher thanked the coaches and staff for everything they’d done for him. They continued to try to talk to him but he walked in the opposite direction and that was when they heard the gunshot.

The rest of the team was called to the main facility to be made aware of what had happened.  In a statement prepared by Chairman and CEO Clark Hunt, he expressed the following:

“The entire Chiefs family is deeply saddened by today’s events, and our collective hearts are heavy with sympathy, thoughts and prayers for the families and friends affected by this unthinkable tragedy. We sincerely appreciate the expressions of sympathy and support we have received from so many in the Kansas City and NFL communities, and ask for continued prayers for the loved ones of those impacted.

“We will continue to fully cooperate with the authorities and work to ensure that the appropriate counseling resources are available to all members of the organization.”

What makes the story even more tragic is that Belcher and Perkins had a three month old daughter. Thankfully, she is safe and is with a relative.

The Kansas City Chiefs have a home game on Sunday against the Carolina Panthers; according to sources, the league has told the Panthers to travel to Kansas City as though the game will be played.

Image: Anthony Behar/Sipa USA (Sipa via AP Images)

From The Root

It is not exactly a surprise that Obama supporters were less than happy with their candidate’s performance after the first presidential debate. Many talked about the night as though their favorite sports team had let them down.

“I feel like the Red Sox just blew a lead,” Greg Atkins, a die-hard Red Sox and Obama fan based in Brooklyn, N.Y., said to his wife after the president’s debate debacle. And much like the melancholy that accompanies the loss of a favorite baseball, basketball, football or hockey team, many Obama fans found themselves grappling with feelings of dismay and disappointment after his debate “loss.” It’s a feeling some Romney supporters might be feeling after the final presidential debate.

But a question that has rarely been explored is whether the performance of a particular candidate can affect supporters so deeply as to lead to actual depression. According to interviews with various mental-health experts and experts on fan behavior, the short answer is yes.

Read more at The Root

From Alternet.org

It’s the semen study that won’t stop. In the 10 years since its publication, it has continued to make news – despite being preliminary and involving a measly 293 undergraduate participants. “Every two to three years there will be something about it on the Internet,” says Gordon Gallup Jr., the lead researcher behind the 2002 study. “I don’t know why, other than it’s a very interesting topic.”

Interesting, indeed: Gallup — who started our phone conversation with, “So you want to talk about semen?” — found that women who were practicing unprotected heterosexual sex reported significantly fewer depressive symptoms than women who had protected sex or no sex at all. He and his co-authors concluded that semen might act as an antidepressant.

The study just made headlines again this week — despite being a decade old — appearing on Gawker, the Huffington Post, the venerable Daily Mail and other online outlets. Just as it has before, it inspired headlines like, “Giving blow jobs makes women happier” and “0-ral sex can help women beat depression!” The study made an appearance just last year when the president-elect of the American College of Surgeons controversially riffed in a Valentine’s Day editorial about semen’s potential mood-boosting qualities and suggested it might be “a better gift for that day than chocolates.” (He … later resigned.)

Clearly, the idea of ejaculate as Prozac is captivating. It could have something to do with the stereotype of women’s hostile relationship toward the stuff. Surely some misogynists see comedic comeuppance in the thought that all those spitters or “not in my mouth-ers” have been depriving themselves of a dose of happy. (Never mind that the study itself has nothing to do with 0-ral sex.) It also certainly fulfills that Adult Videos-fantasy of women hungrily, insatiably devouring come (as for why that trope is so pervasive, see here).

Or it could be as simple as Gallup says: It’s just a very interesting idea.

It’s also controversial. When the study first came out some criticized it, speculating that women having condomless sex were more likely to be on birth control, be in a long-term commitment, engage in risk-taking behavior or experience greater sexual pleasure, and that those factors might better explain the results. But Gallup says they either controlled for those influences or the results contradicted them. Others wondered about the negative implications for lesbians.

Speaking of controversial, in a follow-up study, which was published as a graduate dissertation but never in a scientific journal, researchers in Gallup’s lab found evidence of what they termed “semen withdrawal”: women who had unprotected sex in their relationship reported greater sadness post-breakup and tended to have rebound sex more quickly. What’s more, Gallup suggests that postpartum and menopausal depression may relate to semen withdrawal, and that PMS – a period during which many women abstain from sex, he says – “may represent anticipatory semen withdrawal effects.”

Despite his capacity for entertaining seemingly far-fetched hypotheses, Gallup admits that the antidepressant effects of semen “are largely correlational.” As the study itself noted, the “findings raise more questions than they answer.” He explains, “We haven’t independently manipulated the presence or absence of semen in the reproduction tracks. In order to conduct a compelling, definitive study that would demonstrate beyond a shadow of a doubt that semen had antidepressant qualities, you would have to directly manipulate the presence or absence of semen — and that’s obviously problematic for ethical reasons.” That explains why there haven’t been peer-reviewed follow-ups to Gallup’s original study, despite the obvious public interest in the topic.

Amusingly, Gallup says he receives “semen testimonials” from women who come across word of his research online and feel compelled to write him with their own tales of seminal joy.

Even if researchers could reliably prove that semen has an antidepressant effect, he says it’s likely “relatively modest” and certainly “not the way to cure depression.” Although he notes that it’s possible Big Pharma could “develop some sort of simulated semen suppository.” (You’re welcome for introducing that phrase — and image — into your brain.)

But the correlational nature of the study — not to mention its age— is rarely communicated each time this 10-year-old study is dug up and dusted off.

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We know what a polarizing topic corporal punishment is and the line between those who do and those who don’t is probably about to get a lot thicker now that a study has claimed to have found a link between being spanked as a child and developing a mental illness as an adult.

In a new study published in the journal Pediatrics, researchers examined data from more than 34,000 adults and found that being spanked significantly increased the risk of developing mental health issues as adults. Specifically, corporal punishment was associated with mood disorders like depression and anxiety, as well as personality disorders and alcohol and drug abuse. According to investigators, as much as 7 percent of adult mental illness may be attributable to childhood physical punishment, including slapping, shoving, grabbing, and hitting. Furthermore, the study concludes that spanking increases the risk of major depression by 41 percent, alcohol and drug abuse by 59 percent, and mania by 93 percent.

Study author Tracie Afifi, PhD, of the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, said in a statement:

“We’re not talking about just a tap on the bum, we were looking at people who used physical punishment as a regular means to discipline their children. [This study] definitely points to the direction that physical punishment should not be used on children of any age.”

For the results the researchers observed, it would seem they were talking about physical punishments far more severe than a parent getting a switch and hitting their child with it, but their analysis excluded individuals who reported more severe punishments such as physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, physical neglect, emotional neglect, or exposure to intimate partner violence. Most of us know someone who was regularly disciplined as a child by spankings and was better off for it (heck, we might even be that person), and as one facetious commenter said on a Yahoo write-up of the study:

“In a related study, children who were given no consequences at all for bad behaviors turned out to be psychopaths, sociopaths, and politicians.”

I think studies like this need to be clear about the line between spanking and beating or physically harming your child. I don’t think physical punishment should always be the first choice of discipline but there are times when it’s needed and there was a time when it was socially acceptable without the threat of being labeled a child abuser because of data like this.

Thankfully, psychologist Robert Larzelere, of Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, provided more of a voice of reason when asked to comment on the study by USA Today. He said:

“Certainly, overly severe physical punishment is going to have adverse effects on children, but for younger kids, if spanking is used in the most appropriate way and the child perceives it as being motivated by concern for their behavior and welfare, then I don’t think it has a detrimental effect.

“[This study] does nothing to move beyond correlations to figure out what is actually causing the mental health problems,” he added criticizing the fact that the study relied on adults’ memories of events from years earlier, adding that it’s not clear when punishment occurred. “The motivation that the child perceives and when and how and why the parent uses [spanking] makes a big difference. All of that is more important than whether it was used or not.”

What do you think about this study? Do you think spanking and physical punishment is dangerous to kids’ psyches?

Brande Victorian is the news and operations editor for madamenoire.com. Follow her on twitter @Be_Vic.

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Do you know what today is? Aside from it being another Monday and the second day in July (and a hot one in NYC), it’s “No Shame Day,” or #NoShame in Twitter talk. If you’re wondering what “No Shame Day” is about, it’s a campaign launched by The Siwe Project to help black people all over be able to sit down and talk about issues with mental health. It’s an attempt to take the stigma out of going through these things and out of seeking help for mental health problems. On the website of The Siwe Project, there are discussion boards set up to allow people to talk about options for treatment, to share their stories and more.

If you’re also inquiring about what The Siwe Project is, it’s actually named after a young lady named Siwe Monsanto who committed suicide on June 29, 2011. She was only 15 at the time, and after going through the storm with a boyfriend, dealing with health problems, saying she felt pain every day, and altogether, battling depression and anxiety, the young woman jumped from the roof a six-story building near her own home. It was not her first attempt at suicide, but it was her last, and sadly, she did not go immediately, but died in the hospital. A family friend, author Bassey Ikpi founded the non-profit and did so to tell Monsanto’s story, and her own as a woman living with Bipolar II disorder. It is her hope that through sharing stories and having an organization like this, it will foster individual and community healing. As Ikpi says, “The aim is to create community. People with illness forging with those who support or have loved ones with an illness.”

We’ve spoken in the past on Madame Noire about the importance of black folks not being afraid or embarrassed by the concept of acknowledging mental health issues and trying to obtain help for them. And as someone who has gone through some hardcore depression issues and had family deal with mental health problems, I can respect and see the importance of a campaign and day like this.

Coincidentally, my own brother was actually born on June 29, 1983. June 29 is the same day Siwe Monsanto took her life, and as of just a few days ago, my brother would have been 29 on June 29, his golden birthday. However, he was stressed by the birth of his daughter, legal issues (his license was suspended and he was jailed for a few days for driving on it when he didn’t know), and the struggle to find a good job to take care of his new responsibility (and a thirsty girlfriend). Because of all that, my brother had a public nervous breakdown on April 27, 2006 and he was shot and killed by police when they were called to his home after he caused a scene at his apartment complex. This breakdown wasn’t something that up and happened out of the blue it seems, because when friends of his would contact us to send their condolences, they would claim that his demeanor had changed gradually, as he would go from funny and good spirited one day, to calling people heathens and freaking out at work. A few days before he passed, he called my parent’s home highly upset about the fact that was being kept from seeing his newborn daughter, and my father gave him an answer that I believe he now regrets: You’ve got to grow up. The signs were there, I guess we just didn’t see them, or we didn’t see them as anything more than melodramatic stress.

After his death I thought I was all right to go forth with my studies and my life, only to have a breakup, struggles at school and drama with so-called “friends” send me spiraling down a wave of depression during my Freshman year of college. I hadn’t really grieved, and because of that, I threw more pain and baggage onto a bag that hadn’t been unpacked. With a lot of thinking and reading, I decided to seek help from a therapist at my school. While it was nothing like the movies (laying on a Freudian-style couch talking about everything I could remember since childhood), I got to sit and talk to someone who wasn’t family, who wasn’t a pastor, who wouldn’t give me some simple and easy advice. Instead, I spoke with someone who specialized in listening to help me slowly but surely get through my numbing depression.

On this day, I think we should all be supportive of one another and especially those who are battling mental illness so that they can see that it’s nothing to be ashamed of. It’s something that many men and women go through. In fact, it’s more of a shame if you or they refuse to do anything about it at all. Get the word out and tell your story: #siwelives, #noshame.

Have you or someone you’ve known battled with mental illness?

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This news is a little early but still good nonetheless. No Shame Day is coming up and though there are a million different ways you can take that, the true meaning is having no shame as black women regarding our mental health issues.

July 2 marks the date of the first international no shame day, created by The Siwe Project, a global non-profit dedicated to promoting mental health awareness throughout the international black community. Bassey Ikpi, a well-known mental health advocate and poet, who has written extensively about her own experience having Bipolar II disorder, is the founder of the Siwe Project. On the campaign’s website she said:

“The aim is to create community. People with illness forging with those who support or have loved ones with an illness. We’re encouraging people to tend to their mental health that day without shame.”

This is a real-life example of someone putting the rubber to the road and not just speaking on the fact that black women need to let go of the stigma surrounding mental health issues, but actually providing a platform and an opportunity for us to do so in a comfortable environment, proving that we truly aren’t ashamed and backing up the supportive nature we’ve been praised for.

All organizers are asking people to do on July 2, which marks the first Monday of National Minority Mental Health Month, is to “publicly share their mental health journeys or speak as allies for loved ones in their lives.” Individuals can also log on to The Siwe Project website and participate in the ongoing conversations about self-care and mental health options.

A safe place for black women to be open about what weighs them down is definitely good news.

*Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.com

Brande Victorian is the news and operations editor for madamenoire.com. Follow her on twitter @Be_Vic.

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