The Rosalynn Carter Fellowships for Mental Health Journalism
1999-2001

Annie Murphy Paul
Senior Editor
More Magazine
New York, New York

TOPIC: The promises and perils of self-help approaches to mental and emotional problems

A Rehab of One's Own: Gender-Specific Recovery Programs for Women are Gaining Ground, Despite Criticism of Their Warm and Fuzzy Approach
Welcome to the Hanley-Hazelden Center for Women's Recovery, a kinder, gentler -- and gender-specific -- sort of rehab.

Self-Help: Shattering the Myths
It's no surprise that America-land of second chances, fabled site of self-invention-also harbors an endless appetite for self-help. From Poor Richard to Dale Carnegie to Tony Robbins, we love the idea that we can fix what's broken by ourselves, without the expensive ministrations of doctor or shrink. The limits of HMOs, and the limitlessness of the Internet, have lately made self-help even more appealing: Americans spent $563 million on self-help books last year, and surfed more than 12,000 Web sites devoted to mental health. An estimated 40 % of all health-related Internet inquiries are on mental health topics, and depression is the number-one most researched illness on the Web.

Final Report for The Rosalynn Carter Mental Health Journalism Fellowship, 1999-2000, Self-Help for Psychological Problems: Empowering, or Endangering?
Say the words 'self-help,' and the image that leaps to many minds is a cheap paperback, written, perhaps, by Dale Carnegie or Norman Vincent Peale, the cover of which promises fame, fortune and a gaggle of new friends in thirty days or less.

Chains of Love
"Love is a bodily process," declare Thomas Lewis and his collaborators, and no, they're not talking about sex. The three psychiatrists (Fari Amini and Richard Lannon are the others) are making the case for "A General Theory of Love," which is, simply stated: Stop thinking so much. Our romance with logic and reason, they contend, has obscured the fact that underneath our cerebral conversation and witty banter, we're still primitive creatures, hungry for the touch of another's skin and the sound of another's heartbeat. Bodies carry on their own love affairs, and the intellect doesn't have much to do with this visceral experience.

Painting Insanity Black: Why Are There More Black Schizophrenics?
Lawson immediately took the men off the anti-psychotic medication they'd been prescribed, replacing it with the psychotherapy and antidepressants that have proven effective in relieving PTSD.