I described my search for a new therapist in an earlier blog posting. I didn't talk about why I had gone back into therapy, because it would have probably hurt my biological father's feelings. However, Stephen died three weeks ago. It was not a surprise; he was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's Disease, or ALS, about three and a half years ago. I got to spend a lot of time with him in the last year, so while his passing is sad, I was able to achieve some measure of closure. But not complete closure, apparently.

First I need to clarify something. When I refer to Stephen as my "biological" father, I'm sure you're assuming I'm adopted. I am, but the actual adoption didn't take place until a few years ago (my stepfather, Larry, adopted my sister and I in an adult adoption a few years ago). Stephen and my mom got divorced when I was about two years old and my sister was about two weeks old. Two years later, my mom married Larry, who became my stepfather.

Growing up, I never thought that losing Stephen affected me. My stepfather was a wonderful father, so I never felt that anything was lacking. However, I was kidding myself in thinking that the dysfunctional nature of my relationship with Stephen had no impact on me. Among other things, in an unconscious attempt to fix the relationship, for years I had been dating men who were twice my age. My first year of therapy was focused primarily on identifying how I really felt about his lack of involvement in my childhood.

I had untreated clinical depression starting from a young age. When I was finally diagnosed at age 27, I started trying to figure out why this had happened to me.

Why would a child suffer from depression? What are the factors that can combine to create depression in a young child? In many cases, one of the usual suspects is a family history of mental illness. But there was no such history on either side of my family. So I started looking for other explanations.

What I found was very interesting to me, as a few of the risk factors had been present in my life before my depression.

Read on

Congress took steps Tuesday to reduce the high rate of suicides among former members of the armed forces, but only after a gun rights senator succeeded in removing a plan to track veterans treated for mental illnesses.

The suicide prevention bill, which was passed 417-0 and sent to President Bush for his signature, comes amid growing concerns over mental health issues borne by veterans who have seen combat in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"Unfortunately, suicide prevention has become a major part of our responsibility to both active duty and to our veterans," said Bob Filner, D-Calif., chairman of the Veterans' Affairs Committee. "It's a terrible statistic," he said: "As many Vietnam veterans have now committed suicide as died in the original war. That's over 58,000."

Confirming that figure is difficult, but the VA Inspector General, in a report last May, noted that Veterans Health Administration mental health officials estimate 1,000 suicides per year among veterans receiving care within VHA and as many as 5,000 per year among all living veterans.

"These are alarming statistics," said committee member Rep. John Boozman, R-Ark.

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Family breakups take a toll on adolescents, who have high rates of psychological and social problems, including substance abuse, behavioral disorders, anxiety and depression, according to a report in the journal Pediatrics.

In addition, the psychological and social distress shown by separated and divorcing parents can play a significant role in their adolescent children's respond to the family breakup, study findings suggest.

"What is the most deleterious for the children is the atmosphere in which the separation occurs and the deterioration of the family relational processes and not the separation in itself," Dr. Christelle Roustit, of the Research Group on the Social Determinants of Health and Healthcare, and Universite Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris, told Reuters Health.