For a painfully honest take on how a special needs child affects other members of the family, listen to this excellent report from National Public Radio, Coping With an Autistic Brother: A Teenager’s Take.

The piece focuses on 15-year-old Marissa Skillings, whose 11-year-old brother Andrew has Asperger’s syndrome, a form of autism. Marissa talks about the challenges of living with a brother on the autism spectrum.

He talks nonstop; talking and talking and talking. He’ll tell anybody information about any animal whether they want to hear it or not. People can tell Andrew has a disability….When he gets nervous he moves his hands back and forth.

Having a brother with autism takes a toll on Marissa’s relationship with her parents. Her brother often interrupts and makes it difficult for her to receive attention. Sometimes she stays out as late as her curfew allows so she can avoid time at home.

I come home and deal with it when I have to, and when I don’t have to deal with it, I make sure I don’t.

She and her brother tell the story of the time a neighborhood boy picked on Andrew. She chased the bully down the street, cornered the boy and slapped him.

I don’t hate my brother. I’d kill for him. But I could kill him too.

Click here to listen to the full NPR story and to see a slide show of Andrew and Marissa.

Carrie Fisher has written a memoir about mental health. Katherine Heigl plays a character struggling with brain problems. Britney Spears fell victim to hospital workers’ snooping about her mental health. (Axel Koester, J. Emilio Flores and Christopher Smith for The New York Times)

Celebrity shenanigans make headlines. But do we need a blog devoted to their mental health issues?

One of my favorite mental health Web sites, PsychCentral, thinks we do. The site has launched a new blog devoted to mental health issues surrounding celebrities called Celebrity Psychings. Writes PsychCentral founder John M. Grohol:

Celebrities have the ability to reach an audience who ordinarily might not even think about (or recognize the legitimacy of) mental health concerns. While we’re not into celebrity worship here, we believe that people can use their popularity for good when they talk about mental health issues out loud and in public. The more people get talking about mental health, the more it reduces the stigmatization and misinformation about these issues.

One of the latest posts focuses on the actress Carrie Fisher, who has bipolar disorder and is promoting a new memoir, “Wishful Drinking” (Simon & Schuster). Other items look at how mental health issues are being portrayed in the media, including shows like “Boston Legal,” where William Shatner’s character, Denny Crane, has been coping with the onset of Alzheimer’s. Read more…

Did swimmer Michael Phelps succeed at the Olympics in spite of having attention deficit hyperactivity disorder — or partly because of it?

Olympic champion Michael Phelps. (Doug Mills/The New York Times)

That question is at the center of a debate among doctors, parents and educators in the A.D.H.D. community. Mr. Phelps obviously has physical talents that propelled him to become a world-class athlete. But A.D.H.D. success stories like Mr. Phelps are behind a push for a new view of A.D.H.D. that focuses not just on the limits of the disorder, but its potential.

“What we need is for children to know with the right help and right work, not only can they be just as good as others, they can excel,” says Dr. Edward M. Hallowell, a pediatrician and co-author of the new book, “Superparenting for ADD: An Innovative Approach to Raising Your Distracted Child.”

Mr. Phelps’s mother, Deborah Phelps, is a school principal in Baltimore who also says that children with A.D.H.D. have great potential if parents are willing to help them with structure and scheduling, behavior modification and accentuating their positive traits.

“Look at the things that are going right with your child,” she said.

To learn more, go to the New York University Child Study Center Web site, www.aboutourkids.org.

For more on the new view of A.D.H.D., read my latest Well column in Science Times, “A New Face for A.D.H.D, and a Debate,” and then post your comments below.

What goes on inside the brain of a bully?

Researchers from the University of Chicago used brain scan technology to find out. They wanted to learn whether the brain of an aggressive youth responds differently to violence than the brain of someone who is not a bully. In a chilling finding, the researchers found aggressive youths appear to enjoy inflicting pain on others.

In the study, the researchers compared eight 16- to 18-year-old boys who were unusually aggressive to a control group of adolescent boys with no unusual signs of aggression. The aggressive boys had been given a diagnosis of aggressive conduct disorder and had been in trouble for starting fights, using a weapon and stealing from their victims.

The youths were tested with functional magnetic resonance imaging to see how their brains reacted while watching video clips. The clips showed people in pain as a result of accidents — such as when a heavy bowl dropped on their hands. They also showed intentional acts, like stepping on another person’s foot. Read more…

The presidential and vice presidential candidates have been the objects of a national obsession.(Doug Mills/The New York Times and Stephen Crowley/The New York Times)

For months, the presidential election has been a national obsession. News junkies have scoured political Web sites and woven political references into every conversation. Saturday nights have been devoted to Tina Fey, and even our dreams have been invaded by Gov. Sarah Palin. A friend of mine became so engrossed in political coverage that she once forgot to pick up her son at school.

But now what? The election is over, and the media has begun to weigh in on the post-election letdown that many Americans will no doubt experience in the next few days. Read more…

A scene right out of a nightmare. (George Ruhe for The New York Times)

Halloween is filled with the stuff of nightmares — costumed ghosts, vampires and slasher-movie monsters. But for some people, nightmares aren’t holiday fun. As many as 25 percent of adults have at least one nightmare a month. For a troubled 7 to 8 percent of the population, nightmares interrupt sleep at least once a week.

But many people don’t realize that having chronic nightmares is a medical problem that can be treated. Read more…

Older adults appear to be more affected by stress than younger people, a new study suggests.

The research, to be published in the journal Psychological Science, used laboratory studies of adult behavior to measure the effect stress can have on decision making. It involved 45 adults between the ages of 18 and 33, and 40 adults between the ages of 65 and 89.

The tests began by exposing some of the study subjects to the laboratory equivalent of a stressful event, which involved holding a hand in ice-cold water for three minutes. That test has been shown to raise levels of cortisol, a stress hormone. A control group was not subjected to the ice water.

After being subjected to the icy water, participants played a driving game in which they had to decide whether to drive through a yellow light. They won points for driving when the light was yellow but lost points if they drove through a red light.

Among those in the control group, who had not been subjected to the ice stress, the older adults were actually better drivers than the younger adults and scored higher on the game. But when subjected to the icy water stress, the older adults did far worse. They were more cautious but also became more nervous, braking and restarting almost three times as often as their calmer peers.

“People haven’t looked at how stress affects decision making, even though so many of our decisions are made under stress,” said Mara Mather of the University of Southern California, Davis School of Gerontology, lead author of the study, in a press release. “There’s very little information about this whole topic, and when you get to age differences, there’s even less.”

The initials of your name may influence where you choose to work, new research suggests.

While it sounds like a joke, a well-known psychological theory called the name-letter effect maintains that a person’s behavior may be influenced by his or her name.

As my colleague Stephanie Rosenbloom reported earlier this year, “people like the letters in their own names (particularly their initials) better than other letters of the alphabet.” Read more…

Douglas Prasher, who discovered the glowing jellyfish protein used in research that won a Nobel Prize, now drives a courtesy van for a car dealer in Huntsville, Ala. (Bryan Bacon/The Huntsville Times)

Anyone who has struggled with depression — either in themselves or a loved one — will be moved by the story of Douglas C. Prasher.

Dr. Prasher, who now drives a courtesy van for a car dealer, abandoned a life of scientific research years ago. Trained as a biochemist, Dr. Prasher has struggled over the years with bouts of depression.

His story wouldn’t be notable except for a startling fact: his early research led to a Nobel Prize-winning discovery about the inner workings of living cells. Read more…

(Erik Jacobs for The New York Times)

Many people search the Internet for health information. Now new research suggests that the simple act of Googling may be good for your brain health.

Scientists at the University of California, Los Angeles, have shown that searching the Internet triggers key centers in the brain that control decision-making and complex reasoning. The findings, to be published in the upcoming issue of The American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, suggest that searching the Web helps to stimulate and may even improve brain function. Read more…

E-mail has become one of the dominant forms of workplace communication, but new research suggests it also may be the most deceptive.

Researchers at Rutgers and DePaul Universities studied how e-mail influenced communication among 48 graduate students. In the study, they told students they had $89. Each student could then divide the money any way he or she liked and give a portion to another person whom they didn’t know.

The students used e-mail or pen and paper to divvy the pot. In describing the amount of money to be divided, students using e-mail lied more than 92 percent of the time. In comparison, about 64 percent of the students using pen and paper lied about the pot size.

Among those students who lied about the size of the pot, the students using pen and paper were more generous. On average, students using e-mail claimed the pot was $56, and they offered the other person $29. Pen-and-paper students said they had $67 to share and offered the other person $34. Read more…

Phone-based therapy can be less hassle for patients. (Peter DaSilva for the New York Times)

Most therapists schedule face-to-face meetings with their patients. But new data suggest that therapy by phone may be a better option for some patients.

It has long been a concern among therapists that nearly half of their patients quit after only a few sessions. As a result, a number of health care providers and employee-assistance programs now offer therapy services by phone.

A new analysis of phone therapy research by Northwestern University shows that when patients receive psychotherapy for depression over the phone, more than 90 percent continue with it. The review of a dozen studies of phone therapy showed that the average attrition rate in the telephone therapy was only 7.6 percent, compared to nearly 50 percent in face-to-face therapy. The researchers also found that telephone therapy appeared to be just as effective at reducing depressive symptoms as face-to-face treatment. Read more…

Many workers are eager for more authority on the job. But new research shows that promotions and power at work also increase conflict with co-workers, particularly when the new boss is a younger man.

Researchers from the University of Toronto studied job authority and personal conflicts at work by gathering data from 1,785 U.S. adults in a national survey on work and stress. The investigators, whose report was published in the August edition of the journal Work and Occupations, asked participants how often during the past month they had experienced eight workplace conflict scenarios:

• Someone treating them unfairly
• Someone blaming or criticizing them for something that wasn’t their fault
• Someone failing to do the work that needed to be done, or doing it in a sloppy or incompetent way
• Someone getting annoyed or angry with them
• Someone gossiping or talking behind their backs
• Someone teasing or nagging them
• Someone providing unclear directions about work they needed to do
• Someone making too many demands

The research was designed to determine why some workers experience more interpersonal difficulties than others. Overall, the investigators found, people in supervisory positions reported the most workplace conflict. But conflict was highest among young workers, particularly if they were male. Men who held supervisory roles in their early 40s or younger were far more likely to report high levels of conflict than older men. Reports of conflict dropped markedly if the boss was in his 60s. Read more…

Want to know what’s really going on in your own head? The mental health Web site PsychCentral offers a list of the best online psychology tests. Some of these are used to collect data for research experiments, while others are skill tests or quizzes that offer personal insights. Here are a few of the best.

1. The Stroop Test. A fun test that measures how fast and flexible a thinker you are by using color-coded words.

2. The Worst Sounds. Grab your headset and take this online sound test to find out which sounds bother you the most. You’ll hear snoring, crying babies and nails on the chalkboard.

3. Personality Test. Check out the “I Just Get Myself” personality test. It comprises just 40 easy questions but delivers a surprisingly insightful (at least I thought so) assessment of your personality traits.

4. Memory Test. After a series of numbers appears on the screen, click on a keypad to test your memory.

5. Reaction to Faces. This test allows you to rate your preference for different facial characteristics. Another test, PerceptionLab, measures your reaction to different faces.

6. Personal Biases. Test your implicit biases about race and other issues.

And for even more insight, take PsychCentral’s own Sanity Score quiz, which is designed to assess aspects of your mental health, including your risk for depression, anxiety and other emotional disorders.

For additional tests and more information about online psychology assessments, read the full PsychCentral article by clicking here.

Years ago, my mother’s plane made an emergency landing after an engine caught fire during the flight. But as fire trucks surrounded the plane and flight attendants readied emergency exits and slides, something strange happened.

Instead of rushing out, many of the passengers began quietly gathering their belongings and taking items out of the overhead bins. My mother, the type to always read an airline safety card, left everything behind as she hustled to the exit, jumped on the slide and ran as fast as she could away from the plane. Years later, she talked with amazement about the odd reaction of her fellow passengers.

But their behavior was surprisingly typical. As journalist Amanda Ripley explains in her fascinating new book “The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes — And Why,” human behavior is remarkably consistent during emergency situations. Despite their immediate fears, people often are passive during emergencies, delaying evacuation and succumbing to a gathering instinct.

To learn more about behavior during a disaster — and how to improve your own odds — read my full Well column here.

And when you’re done, test your own personal disaster quotient. To take the “Unthinkable” quiz, click here.