The
Chicago Tribune reports:
With the Halloween season under way, mental health advocates have a simple request:
Scare people with ghouls and goblins. Fill your haunted house with trap doors and tombstones. But leave out the "psychiatric wards," the "insane asylums" and the bloodthirsty killers in straitjackets.
Such themes, which have become as much a part of Halloween as pumpkins, reinforce negative stereotypes and a stigma that discourages people from seeking treatment, say activists who wage a yearly fight to remove the images from holiday events.
"It's our annual Halloween horror cycle," said Bob Carolla, spokesman for the National Alliance on Mental Illness, or NAMI. "The cases vary by size and level of offensiveness, but for some reason, this year has been worse than most."
So far, word of about 10 particularly egregious attractions has reached the Arlington, Va.-based organization.
The group's protests have had some effect. The Wheaton Jaycees, (a Chicago-area branch of the United States Junior Chamber), last week scrambled to change the theme of their haunted house from "Insanitarium" to something more generic. They retooled an "electroshock therapy" scene into an electric chair; posters and ads touting the theme were quickly pulled; apologies were issued.
Others have not been as receptive, including organizers of an asylum-theme house in Murfreesboro, Tenn., and Paramount's Kings Island, a popular amusement park outside Cincinnati that is touting its "PsychoPath" -- an outdoor trail of fright.
The story adds:
According to a U.S. Surgeon General's report, stigma remains one of the greatest barriers to mental-health care. Next month, several groups -- including the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration -- will launch the first national campaign to stamp out stereotypes that rarely extend to other ailments.
Over the years, other groups have tried and failed to slow the growth of horror shows that depict the mentally ill.
In Provo, Utah, the Daily Herald editorialized in favor of reopening the "Haunted Castle," which for years was a Halloween attraction hosted at the state mental hospital that featured real mental patients. The paper blamed NAMI for spoiling the community's Halloween fun.
Bees and Bats Declining
Last year, I wrote about
the steady decline of the bee population in the United States. Since then, a nasty little parasite has emptied even more hives. The problem is so big that farmers are now importing bees.
The Washington Post reports:
Birds, bees, bats and other species that pollinate North American plant life are losing population, according to a study released yesterday by the National Research Council. This "demonstrably downward" trend could damage dozens of commercially important crops, scientists warned, since three-quarters of all flowering plants depend on pollinators for fertilization.
American honeybees, which pollinate more than 90 commercial crops in the United States, have declined by 30 percent in the last 20 years. This poses a challenge to agricultural interests such as California almond farmers, who need about 1.4 million colonies of honeybees to pollinate 550,000 acres of their trees. By 2012, the state's almond farmers are expected to need bees to pollinate 800,000 acres.
Gene E. Robinson, an entomologist at the University of Illinois and one of the 15 researchers who produced the report, said U.S. farmers had to import honeybees last year for the first time since 1922, underscoring the extent of the problem.
"The honeybee industry is at a critical juncture," Robinson said. "The time for action is now."
A number of factors have cut pollinators' numbers in recent decades, the researchers said. Introduced parasites such as the varroa mite have hurt the honeybee population, and pesticides have also taken a toll. Bats, which carry pollen to a variety of crops, have declined as vandalism and development have destroyed some of their key cave roosts.
John Karges, a Nature Conservancy conservation biologist who works with the endangered Mexican long-nosed bat in West Texas, said the bat's U.S. population fell from 10,000 in 1967 to 1,000 in 1983. The species feeds on nectar from the agave plant, which can be used to produce a sweetener as well as tequila.
National Geographic wrote about this issue in 2004, and the West Virginia University's Extension Service has some great information, too.
Many states and communities have beekeeper associations. Here is a partial list to get you started. Learn more about beekeepers and the industry they serve at the American Beekeeping Federation and the National Honey Board.
Media Help Politicians
I thought it would be interesting to take a peek at how much money media companies are contributing to mid-term election campaigns.
News Corp., Hubbard Broadcasting Inc. and Clear Channel Communications all have spent big bucks in this campaign cycle. See a summary from OpenSecrets.org.
Newspaper, book and magazine groups gave a lot less this year, as compared to TV outlets. Google and Yahoo! were the top online contributors to politicians.
Caffeine Crazed
The folks at WebMD.com told me they took an Al's Morning Meeting idea about people's rising caffeine consumption and turned it into a nice piece. Their story says:
If you crave caffeine to get you through the day, you're not alone. About 68 percent of Americans say they're hooked on coffee this year, compared with 64 percent last year, according to the National Coffee Association.
Sales of caffeine-laced energy drinks such as Red Bull and Monster are expected to rise 60 percent this year, says Gary Hemphill of the Beverage Marketing Corp., a consulting firm in New York.
If those don't give you enough of a buzz, you can turn to sodas, coffee-flavored yogurt -- some of it has as much caffeine as a 12-ounce soda -- coffee ice cream, chocolate candy, or iced tea.
We are always looking for your great ideas. Send Al a few sentences and hot links.
Editor's Note: Al's Morning Meeting
is a compendium of ideas, edited story excerpts and other materials
from a variety of Web sites, as well as original concepts and analysis.
When the information comes directly from another source, it will be
attributed and a link will be provided whenever possible. The column is
fact-checked, but depends upon the accuracy and integrity of the
original sources cited. Errors and inaccuracies found will be corrected.
