It’s World Mental Health Day! (October 10th.) So I thought it might be useful to compile mental health resources for the Jewish community into one post. If you know of any that aren’t listed, please feel free to add them.
RELIEF – connects/refers Jewish people to therapists and other
mental health resources (focuses mainly on the frum community)
Elijah’s Journey – suicide prevention for the Jewish community (Facebook page)
The Aleph Institute – provides spiritual support for Jews in
institutional environments such as prison, health facilities, and
rehab
No Shame On U – aims to de-stigmatize mental illness by providing
comprehensive education
OHEL – comprehensive services for those facing mental health issues, with professionals fluent in English, Yiddish, and Hebrew
Yad Rachel – for mothers facing postpartum depression, also helps educate family and health providers
I just did a quick perusal of the Coptic resources on this site, and it has all the resources I’ve personally found worthwhile and then some. These are resources that took me months, if not years, to discover and compile. I am thoroughly impressed. The other languages featured on the site are:
Akkadian
Arabic
Aramaic
Church Slavonic
Egyptian (hieroglyphics and Demotic)
Elamite
Ethiopic (Ge’ez)
Etruscan
Gaulish
Georgian
Gothic
Greek
Hebrew
Hittite
Latin
Mayan (various related languages/dialects)
Old Chinese
Old English
Old French
Old Frisian
Old High German
Old Irish
Old Norse
Old Persian
Old Turkic
Sanskrit
Sumerian
Syriac
Ugaritic
For the love of all the gods, if you ever wanted to learn any of these languages, use this site.
Likely helpful for various recon-oriented polytheists.
gentle reminder in this cold-n-flu season to not take mucinex if you’re also taking an SSRI (antidepressant)
always google “drug interactions [insert drug names]” to make sure that combining meds won’t make you more sick
mucinex DM specifically
the dextromethorphan reacts badly with the serotonin and can cause really bad anxiety and insomnia. it can also cause something called serotonin syndrome, or serotonin poisoning.
regular mucinex is ok, but you should always double check medication reactions!
dextromethorphan also reacts with bupropion (wellbutrin) which is not an ssri (like lexapro or zoloft) and is used to treat anxiety and eating disorders in addition to depression! even if you aren’t on an ssri for depression, double check the interactions of your specific anxiety and depression meds (and other mental illness medications) just to be safe
Expository dialogue techniques that don’t rely on characters randomly explaining things to each other that they should already know, but do rely on your characters being obnoxious gits:
1. Character A fucks something up hilariously; character B upbraids them at great length about exactly what they did wrong.
2. Character A wildly misreads a situation; character B corrects their misconceptions.
3. Character A tells a complicated and implausible lie; character B points out the obvious holes in their story.
4. Character A can’t find their destination; character B provides rambling and discursive directions.
5. Character A has a straightforward question; character B requests a series of extremely pedantic clarifications.
Valuable information if some of your prized books were affected by recent flooding. The video even shows you what to do if you can’t dry the book out right away.
This you can even make with a cereal box, pop bottles, a craft or box cutter knife, and some duct tape. For those who are trying to beat the heat and don’t have an AC unit, or are trying to save money on their electricity bill.
To make your own, please follow the following steps for a window strip:
Materials: Cardboard (i used a cereal box), Duct tape (in the colour of your choice), pop bottles or water bottles (just the tops as you can see how they were cut), some cutting device to cut cardboard and/or tape, and a marker, or marking device of your choice that will mark onto cardboard
Step 1) Cut off your pop or water off at the widest point so it makes kind of a funnel shape
Step 2) you can make these bigger, but I made mine into a strip. Cut the cardboard into how big you want your panel or strip. Trace the base of your cap and mark the centre of where the lid goes with an X (thats where the opening will go. In the picture, I made mine just a bit wider than the pop bottle tops
Step 3) Cut the X where you marked it, and make it so it’s cut big enough to push the smallest part of your bottle through the X
Step 4) Secure all the spout parts with Duct tape (in the colour of your choice. Mine’s purple.) You do not have to do step 4, but it is advised so the pop bottle tops dont pop out of the openings you made.
Step 5) Place your strip or panel with the biggest part facing the screen or opening of your window, and have the smallest part facing the inside of the building.
The science: as the air blows into the wider part of the pop bottle cone, it compresses the air and cools it down as it goes through the smaller part, hence cooling the air around you without having to use any electricity to make this work.
Just an FYI for those in the US with insurance issues
this sounds oddly plausible
a good doctor will pester the insurance company on your behalf. a couple times in my Back Pain Odyssey my insurance noped out on a procedure, and my doctor called them up and was like “no, really” and they gave in.
so if your insurance is in the habit of going “you don’t actually need TWO months of physical therapy, just walk it off,” tell the doctor who ordered it, and they may very well volunteer to, or agree to, call up the insurance people and go “simon says pay for the fucking therapy.”
For all my peeps out there fighting the good fight against Big Pharma Bureaucratic Bullshit.
Death By Catchphrase 