POOR COUNTRIES NEGLECT MENTALLY ILL: WHO

WHO TARGETS POOR COUNTRIES
FOR TREATMENT OF MENTAL ILLNESS

www.voanews.com - The World Health Organization is launching new guidelines to simplify the treatment of mental and neurological disorders. The number of people suffering from mental health disorders is huge and an overwhelming majority does not receive the care they need. The World Health Organization estimates worldwide, more than 150 million people suffer from depression. About 125 million are affected by alcohol-use disorders and millions more suffer from diseases such as epilepsy, Alzheimer’s and other dementias.
The World Health Organization says more than 75 percent of people with mental, neurological and substance use disorders living in developing countries do not receive any treatment or care. WHO Director-General Margaret Chan says people in poor countries miss out on care because it is generally believed that sophisticated and expensive technologies are essential in improving mental health. The WHO says people with mental neurological and substance use disorders are often stigmatized and subject to neglect and abuse. In the majority of countries, it says less than 2 % of health funds are spent on mental health. The program will help nurses recognize people suffering with depression in their day-to-day work and provide psychosocial assistance.

Dr. Chan says the new guidelines provide a simple technical tool for detecting, diagnosing, and managing the most common mental health problems anywhere. With this guide, she says busy doctors, nurses and medical assistants will be able to provide needed care despite lack of money and sophisticated facilities. The World Health Organization has begun implementing the guidelines in Ethiopia, Nigeria, Panama, Sierra Leone and Solomon Islands.



Patients with mental or neurological disorders or substance abuse are often stigmatized, neglected and abused. In most countries they only spent on mental health less than 2% of the funds available for health, said the WHO. Mental health services do not require sophisticated and expensive technologies, it is only necessary to understand which is the real insanity and try to solve the real problems: birth, aging, sickness and death. True insanity is spend your life just talking all kinds of nonsense and do not solve these four problems that cause suffering to humanity.

WHAT DO THE VEDIC TEACHINGS TELL US?

People are being misguided. They are being kept in darkness. Let us start to give them some ligh. ... Physical well-being automatically follows spiritual well-being. ... Suppose you have a car. So, naturally, you take care of the car as well as yourself. But you don’t identify yourself as the car. You don’t say, “I am this car.” That is nonsense. But this is what people are doing. They are taking too much care of the bodily “car,” thinking that the car is the self. They forget that they are different from the car, that they are a spirit soul and have a different business. Just as no one can drink petrol and be satisfied, no one can be satisfied with bodily activities. One must find out the proper food for the soul. If a man thinks, “I am a car, and I must drink this petrol,” he is considered insane. Similarly, one who thinks that he is this body, and who tries to become happy with bodily pleasures, is also insane.

Śrīla A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda :
“The Science of Self Realization”
Chapter I - “Learning the Science of the Self”
“Reincarnation and Beyond”

CYBER-BULLYING LINKED TO RISE IN DEPRESSION

STUDY FINDS CYBER-BULLYING CAUSES
MORE DEPRESSION THAN PHYSICAL BEATINGS

www.dailyrosetta.com - Students who are victims of cyber bullying at school are more likely to suffer depression than their tormentors, according to US researchers. They reported Tuesday that cyber-bullying, which occurs online or by cell phone, may be even harder on the victims than physical beatings or name-calling. Unlike traditional bullying, the kind that occurs in the school building or face-to-face, cyber-bullying victims is different as they are more likely to suffer from depression than their tormentors are. “Traditional bullying is more face-to-face. The type of bullying we’re looking at peaks in middle school,” said principal investigator for the study, Ronald J. Iannotti. He also added that students targeted by cyber-bullies, who may not always identify themselves, “may be more likely to feel isolated, dehumanized or helpless at the time of the attack.”

The study is based at survey results on bullying behaviors and signs of depression of more than 7,000 American schoolchildren in grades six through 10. The study, published online in the Journal of Adolescent Health, also reported that levels of depression rose as bullying became more frequent but researchers also say that traditional bullying and cyber-bullying are not necessarily distinct events and that one often flows into the other. Bullying can be a policy issue, as it harms learning and is linked to lower levels of academic achievement, well-being and social development. “Involvement of schools and parents is really important. It’s really got to be a community effort – working with teachers, administrators, parents, and working with kids to improve their social skills so these kinds of things don’t happen”, ended Iannotti.


Bullying has moved beyond the schoolyard and on to Facebook pages, online chat groups and cellphone text messages. Specially children are so vulnerable when they are struggling with issues of self-definition. As more of teens’ social lives happen digitally, “the good comes with the bad”, so so amid all the dangers of this world of maya, we - as parents and teachers - need to pay attention and provide treatment for victims of cyber bullying.

WHAT DO THE VEDIC TEACHINGS TELL US?

When adults say that for our children to understand maya we must expose them to it, they often mean they want to expose children to the illusions of illusion. They suggest taking children to amusement parks, or showing them television, or engaging them in much of the frivolities of childhood. But children who get a taste for such illusions generally become - illusioned. Their higher knowledge and taste for Krishna become covered. The child asks for further and further indulgence in illusion, because, as Krishna tells us, material desires can never be satisfied. ... Conditioned souls can safely deal with matter in a changed form - by using it in Krishna’s service. So children can listen to music glorifying Krishna, eat food offered to Krishna, watch plays and movies about Krishna, use their talents to serve Krishna, and possibly later marry and raise a family in Krishna’s service. ... When Maya is used in Krishna’s service under the direction of a guru, it ceases to work as a force of illusion. Rather, it acts spiritually to purify material desires.

Śrīmati Urmila devi dasi :
“Is Experience the Best Teacher?”
http://urmila.me.uk/
http://www.vaisnavafamilyresources.org/content/experience-best-teacher

‘ONE YEAR’ TO CLEAN TOXIC SPILL IN HUNGARY

HUNGARY TOXIC SLUDGE SPILL AN
‘ECOLOGICAL CATASTROPHE’ SAYS GOVERNMENT

www.bbc.co.uk - Yesterday, Hungary declared a state of emergency in three western counties after a dam holding back a vast reservoir of toxic red sludge, from an alumina plant, burst, killing four people and injuring 120 others. Six more are missing in what officials said was an “ecological catastrophe”. Emergency workers are trying to stop the spill, from an alumina plant, from flowing into major waterways, including the River Danube. At least seven villages and towns are affected including Devecser, where the torrent was 2m (6.5ft) deep. The flood swept cars from roads and damaged bridges and houses, forcing the evacuation of hundreds of residents. The sludge - a mixture of water and mining waste containing heavy metals - is considered hazardous, according to Hungary’s National Directorate General for Disaster Management (NDGDM). Bauxite, the raw material from which aluminium is processed, contains a mix of minerals, including aluminium, iron oxides and titanium dioxides.

The waste, known as red mud, is a mix of solid impurities, heavy metals such as cadmium, cobalt and lead, and the processing chemicals. The caustic mixture can burn skin on prolonged contact and is an environmental liability, difficult to store. While the cause of the deaths has not yet been officially established, the victims are thought to have drowned. Some 600,000-700,000 cubic metres (21m-24m cubic feet) of sludge escaped from the plant, 160km (100 miles) from the capital, Budapest, affecting an area of 40 sq km (15.4 sq miles). Environment Minister Zoltan Illes told the BBC the clean-up would take at least one year and probably require technical and financial assistance from the European Union.


Hungary says it will cost tens of millions of dollars and take at least a year to clean up the damage caused by this spill of industrial toxic red sludge, which damaged bridges and houses, swept cars from roads and it is considered “ecological catastrophe”. We need to live in harmony to nature and fully respect God's creation, otherwise we will suffer the consequences.

WHAT DO THE VEDIC TEACHINGS TELL US?

All the great spiritual and religious traditions of the world warn us that we are answerable to God for all our actions. ... The Vedic texts therefore contain prescriptions and proscriptions to guide us in our actions. ... According to the International Society for Disaster Reduction (ISDR), there were three times as many great natural disasters in the 1990s as in the 1960s, while disaster costs increased more than nine-fold in the same period. The deaths from natural disasters have increased from 53,000 in 1990 to 83,000 in 2003. Therefore for the intelligent, the reality of karma is not difficult to see. We can never break the law; we can only break ourselves against the law. A stubborn fool who jumps from the top of a hundred-story building can imagine that there is no law of gravity ? but only till he hits the ground. Similarly we can go on with our godless sinful ways, imagining that there are no karmic laws ? but only till the karmic reactions hit us as tsunamis or terrorism or wars or ecological disasters or in some other way.

Śrīpad Caitanya Caran das (BE E&TC) :
“When Nature Boomerangs”
“The Spiritual Scientist” - Vol. 3 Issue 13.
Bhaktivedanta Academy for Culture and Education (BACE), Pune
http://thespiritualscientist.com/

ARGENTINE ELECTED MAYOR OF RIO HONDO, DIED

ARGENTINE POLITICIAN SUFFERED A MASSIVE
HEART ATTACK DURING A MEETING. HE WAS 39

www.lagaceta.com - Missing just 29 days to assume, the elected mayor of Las Termas de Rio Hondo, Santiago del Estero, Argentina, Miguel Mukdise (h), died last night of a massive heart attack product. Sudden and unexpected was the death of this politician (39), last night due to cardiac arrest, police said. Mukdise was in a workshop in a family-owned hotel in the city. About 22.30, he suffered a decompensation and had to be transferred to the Sanatorium Argentino. According to testimony, Mr Mukdise was taken to a hospital where doctors tried to revive him. However, the authorities explained that he had experienced a sudden death and could do nothing. At 22.40, the medical report indicated that, at age 39, Miguel Mukdise (h) had died. His remains were veiled in a funeral home, but then had to be taken to the General San Martín Cultural Centre, where residents marched, businessmen, hoteliers and politicians to dismiss. A shock generated in this city due to the surprising death of the politician who has been elected for mayor of the town, this attracted about 800 people at the Sanatorium Argentino where he was taken.

The governor of Santiago del Estero, Gerardo Zamora, also moved to Las Termas to dismiss the man he had chosen from the Civic Front for leading the city. Visibly moved, he was accompanied by Interior Minister, Emilio Neder. Mukdise was the twelfth mayor elected by popular vote and would have been the youngest to enter the office.
The City Charter provides that in case of death, the President of the Deliberative Body should take office and hold elections within 15 calendar days for a period not exceeding one month will result in the election.


This shocking death caused dismay and surprise among the relatives of the politician, as well as a great shock to the community and this politician was only 39 years. In this world rely on technology and scientific materialism, in Darwinism, Reductionism and Empiricism. However, these “isms” can not explain us which is the purpose of this birth and why someone should die despite he or she still has many plans without making and many unfulfilled desires.

WHAT DO THE VEDIC TEACHINGS TELL US?

We all want to know about the reality and purpose behind birth and death. “Why are we born?”, “why do we die?” are questions that almost everyone asks. Scientists in the field of biology try to investigate various aspects of life forms, their origins and the functions of different parts of the machinery of living bodies, etc. ... According to the Bhagavadgita (13.15), the Supersoul is the original source of all the senses, sarvendriya-gunabhasam. All living entities, as pure spirit souls have spiritual senses, spiritual mind and spiritual intelligence which in the conditioned state are covered by their perverted material equivalents and the sense activites are exhibited through matter. Thus, following the words of the sacred scriptures and spiritual authorities as well as by purifying the senses by practicing bhaktiyoga and using the spiritual intelligence, an individual can have a spiritual rational in deciding what is right and what is wrong. This is what I mean by spiritual rationalism.

Śrīla Bhaktisvarupa Damodara Mahārāja (T.D. Singh, Ph.D.) :
“Science and Religion. Present and Future” - “Introduction”
Bhaktivedanta Institute
The Hare Krishna Views On Science
http://www.krishnascience.com

PIONEER OF IN VITRO FERTILIZATION WINS NOBEL PRIZE

IVF PIONEER ROBERT EDWARDS
WINS NOBEL PRIZE FOR MEDICINE

http://www.nytimes.com/ - The Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine has been awarded this year to Robert G. Edwards, an English biologist who, with a physician colleague, Patrick Steptoe, developed the in vitro fertilization procedure for treating human infertility. Since the birth of the first test tube baby, Louise Brown, on July 25, 1978, some four million babies worldwide have been conceived by mixing eggs and sperm outside the body and returning the embryo to the womb to resume development. The procedure overcomes many previously untreatable causes of infertility. Dr. Edwards, a physiologist who spent more than 20 years solving a series of problems in getting eggs and sperm to mature and successfully unite outside the body. His colleague, Dr. Steptoe, was a gynecologist and pioneer of laparoscopic surgery, the method used to extract eggs from the prospective mother. Dr. Steptoe, who presumably would otherwise have shared the prize, died in 1988. Dr. Edwards, who born in 1925, has now retired as head of research from the Bourn Hall Clinic in Cambridge, which he and Dr. Steptoe founded as the world’s first center for in vitro fertilization.

Though in vitro fertilization is now widely accepted, the birth of the first test tube baby was greeted with intense concern that the moral order was subverted by unnatural intervention in the mysterious process of creating a human being.

Dr. Edwards was well aware of the ethical issues raised by his research and took the lead in addressing them. He was able to respond to the continued criticism of in vitro fertilization and remained persistent in fulfilling his scientific vision, a member of the Nobel Prize committee writes.


This British scientist who pioneered IVF (in-vitro fertilisation), was responsible for the conception of Louise Brown, the world’s first test-tube baby. Now this procedure has helped in the conception and birth of 4 million people around the world. This science of cloning and test-tube baby was known to Indians of Mahabharata age (3000 BC), according to a scientist who said that the Kauravas (Kurus) “were products of a technology that modern science has not even developed yet”.

WHAT DO THE VEDIC TEACHINGS TELL US?

The epic Mahabharata describes Gandhari as a mother of 100 sons who were called Kauravas, the eldest of them being Dhuryodhana. “No woman can give birth to 100 children in her lifetime, that too all males and of the same age,” B G Matapurkar, a surgeon with the Maulana Azad Medical College in New Delhi told the conference organised by the southern chapter of the All India Biotech Association. Matapurkar, who holds a US patent on organ regeneration technique that he developed 10 years ago, said that he was thrilled when he stumbled on a verse in Mahabharata under the chapter Adiparva that actually describes how the Kauravas were created from a single embryo from Gandhari. He said that according to the description in Mahabharata, the Kauravas were created by splitting the single embryo into 100 parts and growing each part in a separate kund or container. “In other words,” Matapurkar said, “they not only knew about test-tube babies and embryo splitting but also had the technology to grow human foetuses outside the body of a woman, something that is not known to modern science,” he added.

Srila Vyasadeva / Ganapati - “The Mahabharata - Adi-parva” :
“Kauravas were cloned, says scientist”
“The Times of India - May 5, 2002” - “The Indian Express - May 4, 2002”
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/html/uncomp/articleshow?xml=0&art_id=8871649#ixzz11PGuNN7n
http://nitaaiveda.com/Soul_Science_God_Philosophy/Your_Best_Friend/Are_Vedas_Relevant_Today/Vedas_and_Modern_Science.htm
http://www.isantosh.com/1_4_Messege-to-Indians.html

DID DOCTORS JUMPSTART THE HIV PANDEMIC?

THE MOST IMPORTANT MODE OF HIV’S INFECTION
WAS THE INTRAVENOUS TREATMENT OF MALARIA?

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Perhaps it wasn’t sex workers and fast-growing cities that launched HIV onto its deadly global rampage, but well-meaning doctors using dirty needles in the first half of the 20th century. While it’s hard to know for sure today, more than 90 years after the virus emerged, two new studies hint that campaigns to eradicate tropical diseases in Africa might have helped HIV gain an early foothold among humans. The virus jumped from chimps to humans - morphing from simian immunodeficiency virus, or SIV, to human immunodeficiency virus - in central Africa in the early 1920s. Most likely, scientists speculate, a hunter got infected through a bite or a scratch as he prowled for bush meat and butchered it west of the Ubangi River in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo. What is still a matter of debate is how a blood-borne disease infecting one or a few individuals in a remote area could ever spread to the more than 33 million people who were infected by 2008, and kill two million of them.

Because the villagers who first caught HIV would be long dead today, Dr. Jacques Pepin, of the Universite de Sherbrooke in Montreal, Canada, decided to use the less-deadly hepatitis C virus as well as another blood-borne virus (human T cell lymphotropic virus 1, or HTLV-1) as models for how HIV could have been inadvertently transmitted by the French colonial doctors treating sleeping sickness. What they found was striking: if a person had been treated for the sleeping disease before 1951, the chances that he or she had been infected with hepatitis C tripled. And HTLV-1 showed a similar pattern. “What happened is that for a long time, the needles and syringes used to administer the intravenous drugs were not single-use,” Pepin told Reuters Health. “There were a lot of patients and not a lot of needles, so the sterilization of needles was not very efficient.”


“This is sort of an example of good intentions gone wrong,” said Dr. Thomas Strickland, an expert in infectious diseases at Baltimore’s University of Maryland. “They were saving lives. They just didn’t know that they were also setting up the pandemic of HIV.” Despite our good intentions, all of us - as conditioned souls - are liable to be contaminated with the fourfold defects of: error, prejudice, inadequacy of sense-organs and tendency to deceive.

WHAT DO THE VEDIC TEACHINGS TELL US?

Vaisnava philosophers have discovered that all the mistakes we are guilty of making originate from (1) error, (2) inebriation, (3) the shortcomings of our senses and (4) an inclination to deceive others, and by these our boldest and strongest thoughts are lost. (1) We mistake infamy for renown, and ruin for benefit. (2) We misunderstand something when the brightest rays of truth shine in vain upon our mind. (3) The senses we use for observation are always defective and incapable of giving us a perfect view of what we have observed. For instance, when our eyes look at a glass of water, we do not see any germs in the water unless and until a microscope is used. Nor do we see in darkness. (4) A general inclination for deception creeps into our heart when we take a one sided view and establish facts or theories with the greatest assurance. All people are subject to fall victim to these defects. The only exception is God Almighty and His associate counterparts, who remain within the Absolute Truth.

Śrīla Bhakti Saranga Mahārāj :
"God-realization" - "Omnipotent God Beyond Error"
A Lecture Published in English in Śrī Sajjana-tosanī Patrikā,
Vol. IV, No. 11 (June 1959) - Rays of The Harmonist No 13 Karttika 2003
Bhaktivedanta Memorial Library - http://bvml.org/SBRSM/

TEXTING, ‘TALKING’ WHILE DRIVING KILLS 16,000

TEXTING WHILE DRIVING CAUSED TOTAL
‘DISTRACTED DRIVING’ DEATHS TO RISE, STUDY

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A study released this week found that at least 16,000 deaths between 2001 and 2007 can be attributed to distracted driving, Reuters reports. The drivers were either texting or talking on cell phones when they caused these deaths. “Our results suggested that recent and rapid increases in texting volumes have resulted in thousands of additional road fatalities in the United States,” Fernando Wilson and Jim Stimpson of the University of North Texas Health Science Center wrote in the American Journal of Public Health. For their study, Wilson and Stimpson relied on state-by-state details on road deaths and cell phone ownership, as well as data on text message volume from the Federal Communications Commission and reports from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on deaths caused from distracted driving. For every 1 million new cell phone subscribers, however, Wilson and Stimpson estimate a 19-percent rise in deaths due to distracted driving.

“Since roughly 2001-2002, texting volumes have increased by several hundred percent,” Wilson said in a telephone interview with Reuters. “Since 2001 our model predicts that about 16,000 people have died since then that we attribute to the increase in texting volume in the United States.” In 2002, 1 million texts were sent every month; this rose to 110 million in 2008, according to Reuters. Despite this, traffic deaths are down in the U.S. and hit their lowest level since the 1950s in 2009 with 33,963 deaths. “In 2008, approximately 1 in 6 fatal vehicle collisions resulted from a driver being distracted while driving,” the report said. Wilson told that currently 30 states ban texting while driving. A new law banning texting while driving for all drivers and talking while driving has taken effect in Massachusetts.


Talking on cell phones can distract the driver and several studies have shown, even when using devices called "hands-free". More dangerous is texting and the use of so-called "smart phones" that provide Internet access and other applications, while you are driving a car. We are living a crazy life, running from side to side. We should stop and find a spiritual master who awakens inside us the desire to find harmony and peace in our lives.

WHAT DO THE VEDIC TEACHINGS TELL US?

We were standing in the barn and there were elders and children, cows and calves, there was a dog and a cat, and a mouse ran by. Everybody noticed the mouse. It ran right in front of Prabhupada. Suddenly Prabhupada turned and said with big eyes, “Did you see it? The adults and the children, the cows and calves, the cat and the dog, and the mouse, all living harmoniously - this is Vrindavana.” The next morning Prabhupada turned to me again and asked, “Did you see it?” “See what, Prabhupada?” I asked. He said, “There were the cows and the calves, the adults and the children, the cat, the dog, and the mouse - all living harmoniously. This is Vrindavana.” A few minutes later, as we were stepping onto the bus to go back to New York, Prabhupada turned to me a third time and said, “Did you see it?” This time I replied, “Yes, I saw it.” And I thought, “I’m seeing you, and this is Vrindavana. Wherever you are, that is Vrindavana.” This harmony that is realized in selfless love is Vrindavana.

Śrīla Bhakti Vedanta Tripurari Mahārāja :
“This Is Vrindavana”
Excerpted from a discussion on Brahma-vimohana-lila.
“Q & A with Swami B. V. Tripurari” - Vol. I, No. 22
http://swami.org/
Sri Caitanya Sanga - http://www.swami.org/pages/sanga/

QUEEN TRIED TO GET UK POVERTY FUND TO HEAT PALACE

REPORT: QUEEN ELIZABETH TRIED TO
USE PUBLIC AID FUND TO HEAT HER PALACE

LONDON (AP) - Even a monarch needs a little help from time to time - especially when the cost of heating those drafty old palaces spirals past $1.5 million a year. But a request for assistance from a government fund that provides subsidized heating to low-income Britons has caused a spot of bother for Queen Elizabeth II, long one of the world’s wealthiest women. Her Majesty’s application in 2004 was politely turned down by the government - in part because of fear of adverse publicity - and quietly forgotten until The Independent newspaper published the correspondence Friday after obtaining it via a Freedom of Information request. The documents quote an unidentified functionary as gently reminding the royal household that the program was meant for people in need, not the upper crust, and he noted the potential public relations disaster. “I also feel a bit uneasy about the probable adverse press coverage if the Palace were given a grant at the expense of, say, a hospital,” the official said.

Royal officials explored the possibility of getting money under the program as a way to reduce the monarchy’s cost to taxpayers by making the palace more energy efficient. The queen’s finances have been controversial in the past, with occasional debates about whether Britain’s head of state costs taxpayers too much. The 84-year-old monarch has royal residences across Britain, including Balmoral Castle in Scotland and Sandringham House in eastern England. Other residences, such as the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh and St. James’s Palace in London, are used as offices or for functions. She has many other assets, including an extensive art collection and a fleet of the world’s finest automobiles at her beck and call, although the royal yacht has been sold.


Buckingham Palace has been in royal hands since King George III bought it in 1761 and has been the official London residence of Britain's monarchs since 1837. Insulation is poor and the heating system needs replacement, as do many of the windows, which lack proper glazing. As we can see, in this material world everybody is strapped for cash and may not know how to pay their bills. Even the Queen of England!

WHAT DO THE VEDIC TEACHINGS TELL US?

According to Vedic philosophy, one should be satisfied with one’s allotted possessions and should not covet the property of others. Also, one is taught to live a simple life and to be as self-sufficient as possible, so that one can spend the remainder of his or her time lovingly serving God. For proper government, the Vedas tell us that a king should indeed treat his citizens as his dependents and is responsible for their happiness. However, during the Vedic times, kings were very pious and strictly adhering to the council of their royal priests, or brahmanas. The king’s main duty was to make sure that their citizens would reach the ultimate spiritual goal of life and break out of the cycle of birth and death. Contrast that with today’s style of democratic government, and you will see that today’s leaders aren’t versed in any type of spiritual understanding, nor do they look for advice from brahamanas. Though many are well intentioned, most politicians are living on the material platform of life, with the belief that sense gratification is the highest achievement.

Krishna’s Mercy - Jai Shri Krishna :
“Depend on Krishna” - Posted on Feb 18, 2009
http://www.krishnasmercy.org/dotnetnuke/
http://www.krishnasmercy.org/dotnetnuke/News/Blog/tabid/57/EntryId/12/Depend-on-Krishna.aspx