COM Reading Bank: Health & Wellness

Summary:
"In the spring of 2011, Leslie A. Davidson was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. About 18 months later, her husband, Lincoln, was diagnosed with dementia." (CBC)

Keywords: Health, Parkinson's Disease, Dementia, Relationships
Format: Creative Non-fiction
Source: CBC Books
Copyright Notes: CBC Content - linking allowed, reusing/distributing content requires permission

Keywords: Identity, Health & Wellness
Format: Fiction / Narrative
Source: The New York Times

Excerpt / Summary:


Keywords: Indigenous topics; Mental health
Format: Essay
Source: Malahat Review

Keywords: Canadian Content; Society and Culture; Identity; Health and Wellness; Communication; Indigenous Issues
Format: Article
Source: Transgender Quarterly

Excerpt / Summary:
Games provide me with metaphoric outlets, symbolic opportunities that give me genuine relief in my time of need. Games have kept my head above water, far more than I realized. They have served as a pixelated balm on old, deep wounds. They have provided me with mazes, again and again, and given me opportunities to find my own way out of them.

Keywords: Mental Health, Video Games
Format: Article
Source: The Globe and Mail

Summary:
Aaron Thier contemplates the connections between privilege, addiction, and recovery.

Keywords: Addiction, Poverty, Opioids, Recovery, Mental Health
Format: Article
Source: Longreads

Excerpt / Summary:
Every day there are news reports of new health advice, but how can you know if they're right? Doctor and epidemiologist Ben Goldacre shows us, at high speed, the ways evidence can be distorted, from the blindingly obvious nutrition claims to the very subtle tricks of the pharmaceutical industry.

Keywords: Science, Health
Format: Video
Source: TED Talk

Excerpt / Summary:
I remember being endlessly entertained by the adventures of my toys. Some days they died repeated, violent deaths, other days they traveled to space or discussed my swim lessons and how I absolutely should be allowed in the deep end of the pool, especially since I was such a talented doggy-paddler. I didn't understand why it was fun for me, it just was. But as I grew older, it became harder and harder to access that expansive imaginary space that made my toys fun. I remember looking at them and feeling sort of frustrated and confused that things weren't the same.

Keywords: Mental health
Format: Blog post
Source: Hyperbole and a Half blog

Excerpt / Summary:
One Peel nursing home took a gamble on fun, life and love. The most dangerous story we can tell is how simple it was to change.

Keywords: Health
Format: Video
Source: Toronto Star

Excerpt / Summary:
Girls’ Night Out tackles the prevalent and often dangerous culture of binge drinking and young women. A deeply personal point-of-view film embedded in the stories of young women engaged in, and in "recovery" from, this toxic epidemic, the film offers an intimate conversation around this very serious issue. It explores the all-too-ubiquitous story of what’s happening to 80% of the young women at university campuses across North America – with often damaging consequences.

Keywords: Health, Alcohol
Format: Video
Source: Curio (Library Database)

Excerpt / Summary:
Get the big picture about the state of workplace mental health in Canada, including tips for both employers and workers on how to improve psychological health and safety at the job, in this infographic.

Keywords: Mental health, workplace
Format: Infographic
Source: CCOHS
Copyright Note: Okay to add link to Blackboard. Permission required to re-post/distribute infographic

Excerpt / Summary:
"Last year, singer-songwriter Connie Lim, a.k.a. MILCK, gathered a group of women from two local choirs whom she had never met before to perform a song at the Women's March in Washington, D.C. The song they performed was about Lim's personal experience with the trauma of domestic violence, and thanks to someone filming, it went viral.

The result of that performance was the empowerment anthem ""Quiet,"" which quickly became the unofficial anthem of the movement. Now, MILCK has a record deal, and her platform to speak about Me Too has grown. She joins host Tom Power to perform songs at the grand piano and chat about her amazing story. (CBC Radio)"

Keywords: Mental health, Trauma
Format: Music Video
Source: YouTube

Keywords: Health & Wellness
Format: Article
Source: The Conversation

Keyword: Health and Wellness
Format: Article
Source: Wired

Keywords: Environmental Issues, Health & Wellness
Format: Article
Source: BBC

Excerpt / Summary:
"Snake Oil Salesman." The phrase conjures up images of seedy profiteers trying to exploit an unsuspecting public by selling it fake cures. In fact, the Oxford English Dictionary defines snake oil as "a quack remedy or panacea." What the OED does not note, however, is that the history of snake oil is linked to an often forgotten chapter of Asian-American history.

Keywords: History, Health
Format: Article
Source: NPR

Excerpt / Summary:
Dr. Jha spearheads an 11-year-old initiative known as the Million Death Study – an effort to figure out how one million Indians, mostly poor, mostly rural, died – and to use that information to evaluate and possibly redirect health policy. Its findings have proved so valuable that it is now expanding across the developing world.

Keywords: Healthcare
Format: Article
Source: The Globe and Mail

Keywords: Health & Wellness
Format: Article
Source: The Conversation

Excerpt / Summary:
Should you drink more coffee? Should you take melatonin? Can you train yourself to need less sleep? A physician’s guide to sleep in a stressful age.

Keywords: Health, Sleep
Format: Article
Source: The Atlantic

Excerpt / Summary:
A leaked memo obtained by Crooked Media gives a glimpse into the administration’s views on reproductive health, revealing a policy agenda that would gut evidence-based pregnancy prevention and family planning programs in order to fund abstinence-based education and “fertility awareness” initiatives — otherwise known as “the rhythm method,” a type of birth control that fails to prevent pregnancy for one out of every four couples who use it.

Keywords: Politics, Feminism, Health
Format: Article
Source: Medium

Excerpt / Summary:
Generation Z has grown up online – so why are a surprising number suddenly turning their backs on Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat?

Keywords: Social media
Format: Article
Source: The Guardian

Excerpt / Summary:
This report reflects expert testimony given to the Standing Senate Committee on SocialAffairs, Science and Technology during the previous parliament between October 2014 and June 2015. The committee acknowledges that there have been some government activities since that time that are not included here. In particular, the committee notes that the Minister of Health received a Mandate Letter in late 2015 directing Minister Philpott to restrict the marketing of unhealthy food and beverages to children, to regulate trans fat and salt in processed foods and improve food labelling with respect to added sugars. In addition, both the Minister of Health and the Minister of Indigenous and Northern Affairs have been given a mandate to improve the Nutrition North program for Northern communities.

Keywords: Health, Nutrition
Format: Report
Source: Sencanada.ca

Keyword: Health & Wellness
Format: Article
Source: The New York Times

Format: Article
Source: Forbes.com

Excerpt / Summary:
Parents, therapists and schools are struggling to figure out whether helping anxious teenagers means protecting them or pushing them to face their fears.

Keywords: Mental health
Format: Article
Source: The New York Times

Excerpt / Summary:


Keywords:
Format: Article
Source: The New York Times

Keywords: Health & Wellness
Format: Article
Source: Big Think

Keywords: Canadian Content, Health & Wellness, Media & Technology
Format: Article
Source: The Conversation

Excerpt / Summary:
During the first week of September thousands of first-year students will attend frosh week at university and college campuses across this country. It is a week of orientation, socializing, and fun. But it is a week when the consumption of alcoholic beverages reaches its peak. Why would universities, where the young minds of our nation are learning and doing research, passively accept or even facilitate the killing of billions of brain cells in these same young minds?

Keywords: Health
Format: Article
Source: The Globe and Mail
Copyright Note: DELETE IF NONE

Excerpt / Summary:
Addiction is neither a choice nor primarily a disease, genetic or acquired. It is, writes Gabor Maté, a forlorn and ultimately futile attempt to solve the dilemma of human suffering

Keywords: Mental health, Addiction
Format: Article
Source: The Globe and Mail

Excerpt / Summary:
Addictions always originate in unhappiness, even if hidden. They are emotional anesthetics; they numb pain. The first question - always - is not "Why the addiction?" but "Why the pain?" The answer, ever the same, is scrawled with crude eloquence on the wall of my patient Anna's room at the Portland Hotel in the heart of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside: "Any place I went to, I wasn't wanted. And that bites large."

Keywords: Addiction, Mental health
Format: Article
Source: The Globe and Mail

Excerpt / Summary:


Keywords: Social media, Mental health
Format: Article
Source: The New York Times

Keywords: Health and Wellness; Identity
Format: Article
Source: Psychology Today

Excerpt / Summary:
The idea of using scientific-sounding language to sell bunk is hardly new. In the 1800s, magnetism and electricity got a lot of coverage in popular media. These topics were that era's cutting-edge science. And, no surprise, this led to the marketing of health products that leveraged this excitement. There were magnetic and electric devices that could cure, allegedly, almost anything, from general malaise to erectile dysfunction. Some of these products are still around today and the same sciencey, but science-free, nonsense is used to justify their unproven benefits.

Keywords: Science, Health
Format: Article
Source: The Globe and Mail
Note: Library database version titled "The Sound Of Science: Quantum physics! Stem cells! We live in a scientific age, so it's no surprise that deceptive language is being used (and abused) to market nonsense"

Keywords: Health; Nature & environmental issues
Format: Article
Source: The Walrus

Excerpt / Summary:


Keywords: Indigenous topics; Mental health
Format: Essay
Source: Malahat Review

Keywords: Employment; Health and Wellness
Format: Article
Source: ZDNet

Excerpt / Summary:
While I acknowledge the power of health narratives, especially as pedagogical tools in the classroom, tools that I too have used in my own bioethics courses, I couldn’t help but ponder our privilege and how much our status contrasts with the people we are discussing. As we are sharing other people’s stories and using them as lessons in the classroom we owe it to our students and to the people in these stories to think about who is allowed to tell marginalized people’s stories. What precautions should we take to make sure that people remain the owner of their stories?

Keywords: Cultural representation, Health
Format: Article
Source: Bioethics.net

Excerpt / Summary:
People should not be bullied into giving up meat by humourless, judgmental souls using spurious arguments

Keywords: Lifestyle
Format: Article
Source: The Guardian

Keywords: Health and Wellness; Society and Culture; Employment; Economic Issue
Format: Article
Source: The Atlantic

Keywords: Canadian Content, Health & Wellness, Media & Technology
Format: Article
Source: The Conversation

Excerpt / Summary:
Modern lifestyles are at war with the way our bodies evolved to function.

Keywords: Health, Lifestyle
Format: Article
Source: Popular Science