In cases of extreme grief, the American Psychiatric Association is putting forth a recommendation that would, for the first time, give guidelines for a diagnosis of bereavement-related depression. The change would appear in the DSM-5 — the APA’s diagnostic manual — which is set to come out in 2013. Journalist Jerry Adler wrote about this subject in connection with the death of his son for New York Magazine. Jerome C. Wakefield, is a professor in the School of Social Work at New York University.

"Whites and Blacks Confer as Equals"—that was a headline on page 2 of The New York Times on June 1, 1909, about "a conference to consider the uplifting of the negro."

It wasn't even called the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People yet; the first appearance of the phrase in the Times didn't come until the following year, in a one-paragraph article noting that "Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois, the well-known negro man of letters," had been appointed the new organization's director of research and publicity. (With almost certainly unintended irony, the paragraph was tacked on at the end of a three-column review of a book in praise of Confederate General Robert E. Lee.) The idea for the conference had been hatched that January in New York, at a private meeting in which a dwindling remnant of upper-caste abolitionists joined forces with progressive journalists and social workers. The announcement of the conference went out on February 12 over the name of William English Walling, a Kentucky-born journalist and social activist. It was the hundredth anniversary of the birth of another son of Kentucky, Abraham Lincoln. ... (continue reading)