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Sue Scheff recently interviewed the great Jaylen Arnold for examiner.com. Their conversation was so engaging (and so important) that we are reprinting it here in its entirety.
Enjoy!
Back in July, we introduced you to a very, very amazing young man named Jaylen Arnold—who has had Tourette’s Syndrome for most of his nine years. Jaylen’s on a mission to educate the whole world about bullying. (And he’s off to a fantastic start: even Leonardo DiCaprio is a fan!)
Watch this phenomenal video segment that aired last night on the CBS Evening News:
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For more, visit…
jaylenschallenge.org
twitter.com/Jayschallenge
youtube.com/user/jaylenschallenge
Then…
Read Irked posts tagged “bullying”
Read Irked posts tagged “self-esteem”
Watch more Irked videos
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Ladyhawke—aka Pip Brown (whose debut album “Ladyhawke,” produced by Modular Recordings, is out now)—sat down with pedestrian.tv recently and opened up about many things, including her Asperger’s, allergies, anxiety, awkwardness, adrenaline, audiences, and…erysipeloid.
Here are the highlights:
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“I have this thing called Asperger’s syndrome. When I found out, it explained my whole childhood. I told my mum and she said: ‘That’s why you used to sit on the floor doing puzzles for hours.’ It was the reason I was so solitary. I’d say completely inappropriate things. The other kids thought I was a weirdo.”
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“I’m allergic to everything. I was lactose intolerant from the minute I was born; I couldn’t be breast-fed. On planes, if I order a non-dairy meal, they always give you a vegan eggplant thing – and I’m allergic to aubergine. When I was 10, I got this weird random disease [erysipeloid] that no-one had seen in New Zealand for 20 years. It’s common in seagulls, but is rarely transmitted to humans. Somewhere in New Zealand there’s a photo of my face in a medical journal. It crept up to my brain. They caught it hours before I was about to slip into a coma. So they put me on penicillin and I had an allergic reaction to that! I nearly died.”
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“I wish I didn’t have such bad anxiety and wasn’t so shy. I’ve always been a nervous person, very awkward. I can’t walk without looking awkward – it’s my middle name. I find live performances hard. I can’t look anyone in the eye. I’m so conscious of everyone staring at me. I start to think I’m terrible or I’m singing out of tune. I sometimes get sickly-nervous before I play. I throw up and start shaking and sweating. The second I get on stage it disappears and the adrenaline kicks in. But I try not to look at anyone in the audience or it will freak me out.”
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Then…
Read Irked posts tagged “music”
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Arcadio Morales, one of six residence deans at Stanford University, has lived in an apartment in the campus dorms for 15 years, often fielding late-night phone calls from students about everything from Frisbee injuries to mid-term anxiety to alcohol poisoning. He says some arriving freshmen have always packed emotional baggage along with their laptops and books. But the mix of problems he’s called to weigh in on has become more serious in recent years.
“Early on,” he says, “most of the issues that surfaced were roommate issues, compatibility issues.” He still gets that sort of thing, along with the calls from “very involved” parents who want him, for example, to go down the hall and wake up their son or daughter. But these days, Morales is getting more calls about students in need of substantial psychiatric support.
“We’re getting students that wouldn’t have been here 10 years ago,” Morales says, “because they’re on antidepressants or antipsychotic medication, and they’re functioning fairly well.” But it can be a big challenge for colleges when these students have crises, he says.
National epidemiological studies confirm that what Morales is seeing is happening on campuses nationwide, irrespective of the type of college or its size …
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Continue reading this very important NPR report
Listen to the corresponding NPR audio segment
Then…
Read Irked posts tagged “mental illness”
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Quoting trentu.ca:
The Trent University Award for Youth Leadership recognizes individuals under the age of 25 who play a leading role in their community. Lewis Schofield educates youth and adults globally about Autism, Asperger’s Syndrome and Myasthenia Gravis, a rare and complex neuromuscular autoimmune disease for which there is no cure. Mr. Schofield raises money for Autism organizations in Canada and the United States while promoting awareness, tolerance and acceptance of difference through his artwork, writings and videos in the classroom, in the community and on the internet. Mr. Schofield is 14 years old and has Asperger Syndrome and Myasthenia Gravis. To accelerate the establishment of the student bursaries in honour of the Community Leaders Award winners, donors can take advantage of the Ontario Trust for Student Support Program (OTSS). Established by the Government of Ontario in 2005, OTSS matches endowed donations on a dollar-for-dollar basis to provide bursaries and awards to Ontario students. On October 26 2009, Trent University will host a gala event to pay tribute to the 2009 winners.
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Quoting a recent article about Lewis, also on trentu.ca:
[Lewis] raises money for autism organizations in Canada and the U.S. by selling his Art Cards online. He is also a junior moderator on FAM Family Autism Forum on Yahoo groups, providing parents with insight and understanding from a kid’s perspective on living with what he calls “an alphabet soup of diagnoses.” Lewis is also a “SouperIntendent” and regular contributor to Irked Magazine, where he has attracted readers globally since 2006 for his writings, interviews, information and currently a series of humourous videos, “Wisecrackin’ with Lewis Schofield.” “I guess I’m just not afraid to say what I’m thinking when it really matters to me,” he explains. In his interview with the International Best-Seller, Donna Williams, Lewis is asked about the “extras” that he has been diagnosed with. “I understand that you’re a kind of burger with the lot, that your AS includes added extras,” Williams asks. To this Lewis replies, “Boy oh boy–do I ever have extras and it’s ketchup for sure. I have Anxiety Disorder, Sensory Integration Disorder, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder, Oppositional Defiant Disorder, Learning Disabilities, Non-Verbal Learning Disabilities, Severe Allergies and Asthma. That’s a lot of things to have on a burger, don’t you think?” Lewis was diagnosed with Myasthenia Gravis in 2008, a rare autoimmune disorder and neuro-muscular disease usually found in seniors that causes extreme fatigue and muscle weakness, slack jaw, semi-closed eye lids, face droop and trouble breathing. He created a video called, “Tell Me What Time It Is,” on You Tube describing his experience with the diagnosis and explaining the procedure of Intravenous Hemo Globulin (IVIG) treatment. The video includes text with facts about the disease, narrated with original music composed by Lewis. “He exhibits a startling and rare ability to take his pain and play with it, to communicate it to others and have them learn from it,” writes Sacha Vais, Managing Editor of Irked Magazine . . . Lewis describes how being the way he is makes him strive harder to get things right: “It makes me want to change things in the world so kids and babies feel safe almost all the time. It’s not enough to want to make things better for people. You have to really make things better…You don’t have to do something really big to make a difference. You just have to do something. Otherwise, nothing changes or gets better.”
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Learn more >>
Article in The Peterborough Examiner
News segment on CHEX Television
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Quoting beavertonvalleytimes.com:
Some kids beg not to go to school. Beaverton mom Marjie Braun Knudsen knows this struggle all too well. Of her four children, two have dealt with issues related to social anxiety. That’s why she partnered with Dr. Jenne R. Henderson, a children’s psychologist, to write the book, “BRAVE: Be Ready and Victory’s Easy.” The book follows a fictional fifth-grader named Danny as he deals with his own trials of social anxiety and models coping strategies to make life seem a lot less overwhelming. Knudsen says she decided to write the book—which came out last year—because when her daughter was struggling with similar issues, she didn’t find any resources that met her needs . . . After realizing that she wanted to write the book, Knudsen starting talking with Henderson, her children’s doctor, about co-authoring the story. They spent several months going through the draft, switching off writing duties almost sentence by sentence (luckily, they have similar writing voices). After the book was completed, they shopped it around to various publishers, who told them to change aspects of the completed book. The authors decided to go a different route. “We realized that if we wanted it to stay how we wanted it, we’d have to publish it ourselves,” Knudsen says.
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Quoting UPI.com:
KANSAS CITY, Mo.—Two U.S. researchers say dogs appear to be helpful to soldiers and former soldiers suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Craig Love, a research psychologist, and Joan Esnayra, founder of the Psychiatric Service Dog Society, discussed their work Thursday during a conference on military health research in Kansas City, The Kansas City Star reported. They are about to begin a $300,000 study, funded by the Defense Department, at Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington. Love and Esnayra surveyed 39 people with PTSD who were given service dogs and found 82 percent reported a reduction in symptoms. There are now about 10,000 psychiatric service dogs in the United States. What they do depends partly on the symptoms experienced by the people with whom they are paired. In the case of people with PTSD, the dogs can be trained to nudge them when they show signs of panic attacks. They can also help calm PTSD patients down by reacting calmly or not reacting at all to something the person perceives as a threat.
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Quoting cbs6albany.com:
If you’ve got plane phobia, a new three-course series at Albany International Airport next month could help you overcome your fear of flying. The program will be led by anxiety and panic disorder specialist Shirley McMorris, Ph.D., of Guilderland, and will use cognitive behavioral techniques to help air travelers or potential air travelers “understand their fears and develop the self confidence they need to fly successfully,” according to a press release from the airport. The program consists of three classes on October 1st, October 8th, and October 10th. The final session will feature a round-trip “graduation flight” to Baltimore on board a Southwest Airlines 737 plane. The $400 fee includes round-trip airfare to Baltimore. For more information, call Shirley McMorris at 518-456-5056 or the Airport Authority at 518-242-2222.
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