Day 921

Lady’s fingers

Naani’s food is the best in the world. Yes. Much better than Mamma’s. That is a fact and Mamma agrees without the slightest reservation. She is happy to continue being Naani’s student forever. Naani’s chicken curry is the bestest ever and she even manages to make vegetables taste yummy! – These lines would accurately reflect Saagar’s feelings.

Naani is my mother. I am spending some time with my folks back home and life is largely about food. Mangoes, ice-coffee, fried fish, momos and idlis form a fraction of a vast list that is adding further vastness to my waistline and other lines. Summer offers up only a few vegetables of which ‘bhindi’ or ‘okra’ is a big favourite in our family. The particularly yum preparation is the spicy, stuffed one. Uncooked it looks like the image above.

Here’s how , for 3-4 people:

300 grams of tender okra – cleaned, dried, topped, tailed and slit along the length.

For the stuffing:

Salt to taste
Turmeric powder – half tsp
Red chilly powder – half tsp
Coriander powder – 5 heaped tsp
Dried mango powder – 1 tsp
Garam masala – 1 tsp
Method:
Stuff the okra with the mixture of dried spices above.
Heat 1 tablespoon of mustard oil till lightly smoking. Splutter 1 tsp of cumin seeds in it, add the stuffed okra and cook until soft. Serve hot. Garnish with roasted sesame seeds before serving.

Saagar loved this dish. We often cooked it together. I prepared the okra and the spice mix and he put them together. We had it with yellow masoor daal and plain basmati rice.

Today, we made bhindi, sending him our love and blessings.
We missed him at the dinner table. A lot.

Day 920

Posted by kidsaregifts20

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He’s her son. His mother, Em, lives with Bipolar Disorder.
Here he describes how he feels about the depressive phase of her illness.
I know that feeling.

“As if it were a wild animal with flecks of foam at its mouth, I feared her depression.

Imagine you were walking in a pleasant meadow with someone you love, your mother. It’s warm and there’s just enough of a breeze to cool you. You can smell earth and cut grass and something of a herb garden. Lunch is a happy memory in your stomach and dinner awaits you – a three course meal you have devised – all your comfort foods. The light is golden with a touch of blue, as if the sky were leaking.

Suddenly, your mother steps into a patch of quicksand. The world continues to be idyllic and inviting for you but your mother is being sucked into the centre of the earth. She makes it worse by smiling bravely, by telling you to go on, to leave her there, the man with the broken leg on the Arctic expedition who says ‘Come back for me, it’s my best chance, ’because the lie allows everyone to believe that they are not abandoning him to die.

Some part of you walks on and some part of you is frozen there, watching the spectacle. You want to stay but you must go. The imperium of the world’s timetable will allow you to break step and fall out for a while, but it will abandon you too if you linger too long by your mother, now a curled up foetal ball, moaning in pain, breathing only because her body forces her to.

Granny loved Em and she thought that should be enough. It wasn’t. Love is never enough. Madness is enough. It is complete, sufficient unto itself. You can only stand outside it, as a woman might stand outside a prison in which her lover is locked up. From time to time a well-loved face will peer out and love floods back. A scrap of cloth flutters and it becomes a sign and a code and a message and all that you want it to be. Then it vanishes and you are outside the dark tower again. At times, when I was young, I wanted to be inside the tower so I could understand what it was like. But I knew even then that I did not want to be a permanent resident of the tower. I wanted to visit but visiting meant nothing because you could always leave. You’re a tourist. She’s a resident.”

Source: ‘Em and the Big Hoom’ a profoundly moving book by Jerry Pinto, winner of the Crossword Book Award 2013.

Day 919

Posted by kidsaregifts20

Prozacation

BN-OQ602_YHEALT_P_20160624161415

In 2004 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued a black-box warning against the use of all antidepressants in individuals up to 24 years old due to concerns about the increased risk of suicidal thoughts and behavior.

Depression often presents differently in children and adults. The very condition that the antidepressants are supposed to treat is made worse by their use in the young because their brains are still developing.

A meta-analysis of 34 RCTs published by Oxford University in the Lancet in August 2016 says that only one drug among all antidepressants is statistically better than placebo and that is Fluoxetine or Prozac. The lead author, Dr Andrea Cipriani claims no influence of the pharmaceutical industry on these findings.

Prozac has made hundreds of court appearances and billions of dollars have been paid out in compensation lawsuits.

‘The idea that it’s been a major step forward for Prozac to select serotonin only is just hypothesis,’ says Malcolm Lader, professor of clinical psychopharmacology at the Institute of Psychiatry. ‘There’s no science behind it.’ Some SSRI users have reported agitation and an inability to keep still, a preoccupation with violent, self-destructive fantasies and a feeling that ‘death would be welcome’. In Germany, Prozac was initially refused a licence after trials resulted in 16 attempted suicides, two of which were successful.

For mild depression, talking therapies are recommended. Young people with moderate to severe depression are often believed to need medication. They need frequent and close monitoring. However, there are huge variations in practice. It is easier to write out a prescription at a brief consultation rather than delve deep into details. As for the usefulness and safety of antidepressants, the jury is still out.

Saagar was on Citalopram for a few weeks before he died. The GP investigator said he should have been on Prozac but she didn’t write it down in her report. The representative of the Psychiatric hospital was a Clinical Psychologist. She said she could not comment on medications. The mud is watery.

Ref:

Lancet August 2016: http://thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(16)30385-3/fulltext

Prozac and lawsuits:
http://thesandersfirm.com/dangerous-drugs/ssri-antidepressant-lawsuits/

History of Prozac:
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2007/may/13/socialcare.medicineandhealth

Day 918

Posted by kidsaregifts20

Biggest cause of avoidable deaths in children and young people – Suicide and self-inflicted injuries

The Office of National Statistics published a report in 2015 saying that the single cause with the highest number of avoidable deaths in children and young people was suicide and self-inflicted injuries (14% or 206 deaths of all avoidable deaths in this age group).

Of the top five causes of avoidable deaths among children and young people, suicide and self- inflicted injuries was the only cause to see an increase since 2014 by 13% or 24 deaths.

Avoidable mortality accounted for 3 out of 10 deaths of children and young people (aged 0 to 19 years), nearly the same as in 2014. Males accounted for almost two-thirds (63%) of avoidable deaths in children and young people.

The other top causes each saw a decline since 2014, with accidental injuries, which was the leading cause in 2014, experiencing the largest decline of 8% or 15 deaths.

Key Points for London

The rate of avoidable mortality in London has increased to 210.4 deaths per 100,000 population from 204.6 in 2014. This is significantly lower than for England (222.9).
The South East, East of England and South West Regions have lower rates of avoidable mortality than London. The highest rate is in the North East (266.4).
As in all other regions, avoidable mortality rates in London are higher for males (274.0 deaths per 100,000 population) than for females (152.9). Rates have increased for males (from 259.9 in 2014) and slightly reduced for females (154.3 in 2014).
Ref: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/avoidable-mortality-in-england-and-wales-2015

Day 917

Posted by kidsaregifts20

Entertainment or murder?

Screen Shot 2017-04-30 at 12.35.22 The Blue Whale ‘suicide game’ is believed to be an online social media game which is encouraging people to kill themselves. An administrator assigns daily tasks, such as self-harming, watching horror films and waking up at unusual hours. The tasks get progressively more extreme which the members have to complete for 50 days. On the last day, they are instructed to end their life.

130 teenage deaths in Russia between November 2015 and April 2016 have been linked to this game. Yulia Konstatinova, 15, joined her friend Veronica in jumping from the roof of a 14-storey block of flats. She left a note saying ‘End’ on her social media page after she posted a picture of a big blue whale. The game is making inroads into Europe. Teenagers in Portugal, Devon and Cornwall have been found to have accessed it.

It must take a certain special kind of a sick mind to create ‘games’ like this.

’13 Reasons why’ is a Netflix series about a teenage girl’s perplexing suicide followed by tapes to unravel the mystery of her tragic death. The haunting images in it and the traumatic content is inciting self-harm within the teenage community. It is highly controversial to introduce such material into the media.

Both the above are perfect examples of everything that goes against suicide prevention best practices in the media. They are intense and they romanticise suicide.

Parents beware. Young minds, be ware.

Ref:

Blue Whale:
https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/3003805/blue-whale-suicide-game-online-russia-victims/

13 reasons why:
https://www.netflix.com/in/title/80117470