In testimony before a Congressional committee on Tuesday, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke warned lawmakers that the economic recovery U.S. "is close to faltering." Bernanke said the central bank was prepared to do more to bolster the economy, but that Congress needed to do more to encourage growth. In June, Bernanke had said, "growth seems likely to pick up in the second half of the year." Bernanke's grim assessment comes after the economy barely grew in the first half of the year, and there were no new jobs in August. Consumer confidence fell this summer to the lowest point since the recession.

For almost 40 years, conventional wisdom has been that mental illness is caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain. "Serotonin" is a household word, along with Prozac, Zyprexa, and Zoloft.  But recently, there's been a vigorous debate within the medical community over whether that line of thinking is accurate. This summer Marcia Angell, a physician, senior lecturer at Harvard, and former editor-in-chief of The New England Journal of Medicine, wrote in the New York Review of Books that the chemical-imbalance model of mental illness may be ineffective at best — and harmful, at worst.

In what is potentially a sign of good economic news, the number of American workers willing to describe themselves as dissatisfied with their jobs seems to be climbing. This comes from an admittedly unscientific online survey of over 1,400 people, each currently employed, by the management consulting firm “Right Management." 84 percent of respondents said that they plan to actively seek a new job this year. That's up from 60 percent in a similar poll conducted a year earlier. In the poll, only five percent said that they plan to remain in their current positions all year long.

Last week, the Journal of the American Medical Association published a study stating that approximately ten percent of new dads experience postpartum depression.

We speak with the author behind that study, Dr. James Paulson of the Eastern Virginia Medical School. He explains how postpartum depression in men differs from the same condition in women, whether hormonal fluctuations play a role in how it manifests itself, and what treatment options are available.

 

Last week, we were struck by the shocking story of a six-year-old girl in Oregon whose death has been labeled a suicide. We wondered: Is it really possible for a first-grader to suffer from suicidal tendencies? And to deliberately take her own life?

The World Health Organization said last week that within the next 20 years, depression will become the largest health burden on society. But treatment for mental health is often underfunded, despite the fact that it drastically affects productivity in many countries.  We talk to Professor Cary Cooper, who teaches psychology and health at Lancaster University in Britain. We also speak with Dr. Shekhar Saxena, program manager of the WHO's Department of mental health and substance abuse.

 

In the middle of this economic upheaval there are children across America learning new words like: "recession" and "foreclosure" and "layoff." While parents struggle to keep jobs, keep homes, and put food on the table, kids are learning to cope with the economic times, too. Helping kids handle the emotional upheaval of trying times is Denise Daniels. She is the co-founder of the National Childhood Grief Institute and she has turned her attentions on helping children through these trying economic times. She partnered with publisher Scholastic to create What Can I Do?. Also here to help us understand how the economic crisis is affecting children is our friend, Mrs. Janet Kunkel, a fifth grade teacher in Boiling Springs, Pennsylvania.

Here is Denise Daniels' video from "What Can I Do?":

Plus: Watch Femi Oke host a roundtable with middle school students in Brooklyn, New York, about how they're dealing with the recession: For high quality video, click the "HQ" button.