Full disclosure: My approach to work was forged in the Hobbesian, hierarchical world of television news in the 1990s and 2000s. While my workplace-ABC News-has become immeasurably more humane in recent years, I nonetheless retain an unfortunate amount of the militant, suck-it-up ethos that was drilled into me as a younger man. Which is why, when the editors of this magazine asked me to write about the benefits of taking a mental health day, my initial reaction was: Youve come to the wrong gu...
We are living in an era of increasing unhappiness. Diagnoses of major depression in the United States went up 33 percent from 2013 to 2016. Loneliness abounds. Anxiety affects 8 percent of children and teens. Hospitalizations for child suicide ideation or attempts rose for all age groups-including 5- to 11-year-olds-between 2008 and 2015.
My wife proudly flashed her phone in my direction the other day to show off a pictures hed recently taken of me holding our young son in a swimming pool.I promptly grabbed the device and used my fingers to zoom in on my belly, whose size and general flabbiness I have been loudly and repeatedly bemoaning of late. I knew you were going to do that, she tskd.
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