Ask most people to write down their favorite winter-holiday activities, and the list will include at least one item involving something edible. Chestnut latte. Chocolate truffles. Cranberry jelly. Eggnog. Fruitcake. Mashed potatoes. Peppermint bark. Pumpkin pie. Stuffed turkey. Most of…
Written By Katherine SwartsRead Time 7 Minutes The sandwich generation is defined as a subset of family caregivers who are taking care of both an adult loved one and a child. Even if your children are self-reliant for their age and your…
Many people believe that suicide rates soar in December, when nights are longest, and when “joy of the season” only seems to mock the unhappiness of major life challenges. But nonetheless, the popular belief is wrong: in reality, the greatest…
Around half a million people in the U.S. keep service dogs trained to help with physical or emotional disabilities. Some 200,000 people have registered emotional support animals that provide a calming presence to help manage mental illness. And often, the…
A salute to November as National Epilepsy Awareness Month. There’s more to epilepsy than the infamous grand mal seizure. In fact, for many people with epilepsy, such a “big bad” seizure is a one-time event or never occurs at all.…
Circumstances don’t make us unhappy: they only make existing attitudes more obvious. There are people overflowing with joy in hospitals and prisons; there are also people who have never seen a hardship, yet complain nonstop about their dissatisfaction with life.…
For the disability-affected person who seeks companionship along with practical assistance, the service dog is far superior to any inanimate tool. But though it’s a hard fact to face with any companion animal, a service dog is also likely to…
Mental and emotional disorders present challenges on two fronts: dealing with the disorder itself, and dealing with stigma attached to the disorder. Public understanding has come a long way in recent decades, but it’s still easy to find people who…
“The problems of deafness are deeper and more complex … than those of blindness. Deafness … means the loss of the most vital stimulus—the sound of the voice that brings language, sets thoughts astir and keeps us in [human] intellectual…
Do “disability” and “healthy” sound mutually exclusive? They shouldn’t be. An impairment to one physical or mental function doesn’t render the whole body useless: if anything, other functions become more effective as they’re exercised to compensate. Still, if the person…
