Jayson Blair

I wrote a piece for Newsweek last night and gave a Q&A to Salon on the journalism scandal involving Jonah Lehrer. I have sympathy for him. Another young promising journalist whose self-sabotage is lead to the end of his career (he worked for The New Yorker until yesterday). I vividly remember that feeling of not being able to let go as my career crumbled like the Monte Cassino under weeks of Allied bombing in World War II Italy. Its hard to let go even when the building is crumbling. I know its probably feels like the end of something special, but I hope this bright young man finds redemption waiting for him in the future.

Shalom is a word that has many meanings. It is a Hebrew word that means peace, welfare, completeness, hello and goodbye. In his 1995 eulogy at Yitzak Rabin's funeral, Bill Clinton captured the world when he uttered the simple Hebrew phrase, "Shalom Chaver" -- Farewell, my friend.  This week I had the unfortunate duty of saying goodbye to my friend. In Beth Nielsen Chapman's song "Sand and Water," which is about the premature death of her husband, she sings "All alone, I came into this world. All alone, I will someday die." And so it was with my friend, who died under a bridge, homeless and alone. There is, however, a notion embedded in that song about the impact a person can have in between those two points of being alone -- the impact they can have on our lives. As Nielsen Chapman sings, "I will see you in the light of a thousand suns. I will hear you in the sound of the waves. I will know you when I come, as we all will com...

By Jayson Blair, Certified Life Coach The importance of a good diagnosis has become even clearer as pharmaceutical companies have further refined their biological silver bullets for mental illness. Medicines like, for example, serotonin reuptake inhibitors can be targeted to treat depression, obsessive compulsive disorder and a variety of other illness. But they can have dramatically harmful effects on those with bipolar disorder. All things considered, its amazing that doctors are not more attentive to the symptoms faced by their clients. But increasing demands of the economy and insurance companies have made it harder, to potentially devastating consequences, for psychiatrists and psychologists to effectively diagnosis. Increasingly it is fallen on clients to rapidly self-report symptoms in 15-minute to 30-minute initial evaluations and then the question of diagnosis never return. In the best practices of the profession, diagnosis is thoroughly evaluated and constantly re-evaluated. ...

By Jayson Blair, Certified Life Coach It’s a jungle out there. And one of the hard est forests to untangle your way through is the differences between stress and anxiety, and the differences between the many anxiety disorders. It’s enough to make you anxious. But no worries, we’ve put together a little guide. Anxiety disorders have one of the longest differential diagnosis lists of all psychiatric disorders. One of the biggest problems is that clients with anxiety disorders also have anxiety about their disorders, and anxiety about treatment, making self-reports and diagnosis a difficult thing to work your way through. No worries, though. It might take time, but a careful clinician can often differentiate for you, and help improve your quality of life. The importance of these differences is a key to selecting the most effective therapeutic and medical treatments. One of the most important issues is the difference between anxiety and plan old stress. Stres...