The Connecticut Forum

Andrew Solomon talks Adam Lanza, Violence and Mental Illness

Fri, 14 Mar 2014 15:37:00 -0400

We were lucky to have Andrew Solomon as a panelist at Friday’s Honest Look at Mental Illness Forum. Leading up to the event, we told anyone who would listen that he was going to be a phenomenal panelist. He’s scary smart and has an uncanny ability to speak in fully formed, thesis-like paragraphs. Many in the audience discovered him that evening and told us how struck they were by his intelligence, compassion and articulate thoughts and stories.

In our latest Forum video (linked below) Solomon speaks about how and why we feel the need to classify violent people and acts as “crazy,” giving a short preview of the insights he gathered in profiling Peter Lanza, Newtown shooter Adam Lanza’s Father, for The New Yorker.

Watch the recent Forum video clip.

In the days after The Forum, The New Yorker released Solomon’s latest article, an exclusive feature on Peter Lanza. Solomon’s piece is a result of many conversations with Lanza; he is the only reporter to have had such extensive access and this article is the first we’ve heard from Lanza’s father.

Click to read the article.

This past week Solomon has been, it seems, just about everywhere. He’s appeared on The Today Show, Katie with Katie Couric, BBC America, NPR Fresh Air and so much more.

Click to see Andrew Solomon on Katie.

Click to hear Anrew Solomon on NPR’s Fresh Air.

Click to see Andrew Solomon on The Today Show.

"Consider: • Physical injuries such as concussions and knee injuries draw routine and widespread..."

Thu, 06 Feb 2014 13:17:12 -0500

“

Consider:

• Physical injuries such as concussions and knee injuries draw routine and widespread study by doctors and researchers, yet a dearth of information about athletes and mental illnesses exists.

• Though more than 450,000 students competed in college sports in 2011-12, no hard data are being collected on how many athletes are coping with psychological concerns.

• Athletic departments handle psychological concerns in very different ways, and at many schools, mental health resources are downright sparse when compared to those dedicated to the physical health of the athletes. Many athletic programs have medical staffs of more than a dozen people, yet fewer than 25 Division I athletic departments have a full-time licensed mental health practitioner on staff.

”

- An exploration of mental health issues in college athletics.

Read the entire article, here.

A powerful “Grantland” documentary chronicling the...

Thu, 06 Feb 2014 11:36:24 -0500

A powerful “Grantland” documentary chronicling the day of the 2012 NBA draft through the eyes of a potential draft pick, Royce White, who talks openly about his generalized anxiety disorder.

Royce will be a panelist at the March 7 Forum, An Honest Look at Mental Illness.

"My assortment of neuroses may be idiosyncratic, but my general condition is hardly unique. Anxiety..."

Mon, 03 Feb 2014 13:03:56 -0500

“My assortment of neuroses may be idiosyncratic, but my general condition is hardly unique. Anxiety and its associated disorders represent the most common form of officially classified mental illness in the United States today, more common even than depression and other mood disorders. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, some 40 million American adults, about one in six, are suffering from some kind of anxiety disorder at any given time; based on the most recent data from the Department of Health and Human Services, their treatment accounts for more than a quarter of all spending on mental-health care. Recent epidemiological data suggest that one in four of us can expect to be stricken by debilitating anxiety at some point in our lifetime. And it is debilitating: studies have compared the psychic and physical impairment tied to living with an anxiety disorder with the impairment tied to living with diabetes—both conditions are usually manageable, sometimes fatal, and always a pain to deal with.”

- From the Atlantic’s compelling December cover story on anxiety by Scott Stossel.

Read the entire piece here.

Do you think 6 hours, or even 24 hours, is enough time to...

Tue, 28 Jan 2014 14:21:00 -0500

Do you think 6 hours, or even 24 hours, is enough time to diagnose and/or treat mental illness?

Do you think that you should have to sign your child over to DCF to extend their stay in a psychiatric hospital for more than 3 days?

These are questions that shouldn’t have to be asked, but point to a system totally and frighteningly unprepared for treating mental illness.

Some things are NOT better left unspoken.

We will talk about these issues raised in the compelling 60 Minutes piece - and so much more - at An Honest Look at Mental Illness on March 7.

Let's solve homelessness instead of treating it. Malcolm Gladwell's "Million Dollar Murray"

Wed, 06 Nov 2013 14:50:00 -0500

Let's solve homelessness instead of treating it. Malcolm Gladwell's "Million Dollar Murray" :

Why problems like homelessness may be easier to solve than to manage.

A compelling read.

We call this one either “The Gang Plans Martina...

Fri, 01 Nov 2013 13:58:32 -0400

We call this one either “The Gang Plans Martina Navratilova’s Wedding,” or “Dan Savage and Martina Navratilova on the Importance of Marriage Rights,” or “Dan Savage Says Marriage Can Be Any Damn Thing You Want it to Be.” No matter what you call it, it’s worth watching. Take a look!

(In fact, Upworthy thought this clip was worth watching too, and endorsed it here.)

Celebrated gay advocates Dan Savage, Martina Navratilova, Bishop...

Fri, 11 Oct 2013 09:57:48 -0400

Celebrated gay advocates Dan Savage, Martina Navratilova, Bishop Gene Robinson and Jonathan Capehart answer the question “Is ‘Gaydar’ a real thing?” The consensus: it’s real, 70% accurate, but thrown off by Europeans and “dickful thinking.”

Savage, Navratilova and Robinson participated in a panel discussion about “Being Gay” at The Connecticut Forum on Saturday, October 5, 2013. Capehart moderated the discussion.

Dan Savage, outspoken activist and founder of the “It Gets...

Tue, 24 Sep 2013 09:33:00 -0400

Dan Savage, outspoken activist and founder of the “It Gets Better” Project will be a panelist at the “Being Gay” Forum on October 5. He will join Martina Navratilova, Bishop Gene Robinson and Jonathan Capehart.

Tickets here.

Pope Says Church Is 'Obsessed' With Gays, Abortion and Birth Control

Tue, 24 Sep 2013 09:15:00 -0400

Pope Says Church Is 'Obsessed' With Gays, Abortion and Birth Control:

Saying that the Roman Catholic Church should seek a new balance, Pope Francis articulated his vision of an inclusive church, evoking gratitude and hope from liberal Catholics who had felt left out in the cold.

Looking forward to hearing Bishop Gene Robinson and the other panelists talk about this shift at the upcoming “Being Gay” Forum.

"Your gender identity is who you are. Sexual identity is who you bounce that off of."

Fri, 13 Sep 2013 09:14:04 -0400

“Your gender identity is who you are. Sexual identity is who you bounce that off of.”

- Andrew Solomon

Via http://onpoint.wbur.org/2013/08/28/transgender

Congrats to Forum alum Diana Nyad, who completed a...

Tue, 03 Sep 2013 09:01:50 -0400

Congrats to Forum alum Diana Nyad, who completed a record-breaking swim from Cuba to Florida over the weekend!

Nyad moderated the “Explorers & Adventurers” Forum in 2000. The entire Forum is available to watch for free, here.

A first look at the cover of Malcolm Gladwell’s highly...

Wed, 07 Aug 2013 16:01:50 -0400

A first look at the cover of Malcolm Gladwell’s highly anticipated book, David and Goliath, due out October 1.

Some thoughts on the cover, here. What do you think?

Reza Aslan, whose awkward interview with a Fox News reporter...

Tue, 30 Jul 2013 09:43:23 -0400

Reza Aslan, whose awkward interview with a Fox News reporter went viral over the weekend, has seen sales for his book skyrocket since the interview. By Sunday, it had hit #1 on the Amazon.com sales list.

Here’s a clip from the archives, when Aslan was a panelist at The Forum in 2007 at The Great Global Debate with Richard Holbrooke, Richard Armitage and Sheryl WuDunn.

"I’ll be perfectly honest — I’m thrilled at the response that people have had to the interview. You..."

Tue, 30 Jul 2013 09:31:51 -0400

“I’ll be perfectly honest — I’m thrilled at the response that people have had to the interview. You can’t buy this kind of publicity.”

- Author and scholar Reza Aslan • Discussing the success his mind-boggling interview with Fox News has had in expanding the audience for his book, “Zealot.“ Aslan admitted that he knew what he was in for before the interview, having read a piece by Fox News columnist John S. Dickerson published earlier in the week, which had the side effect of surfacing some negative reaction. The result? Aslan was ready for his clueless interviewer, though he probably didn’t know the clip would reach as many people as it did. (Side note: Slate totally called that.)

Far from The Tree: Parents, Children and the Search for Identity by Andrew Solomon

Mon, 29 Jul 2013 17:05:33 -0400

Far from The Tree: Parents, Children and the Search for Identity by Andrew Solomon:

This website, which pairs with Andrew Solomon’s monumental new book Far From the Tree, helps tell the stories of parents who not only learn to deal with their exceptional children but also find profound meaning in doing so.

His work is both meticulously researched and profoundly moving. You can browse the website as an introduction to his work or as a partner piece to the book.

Solomon will be a panelist at our March 7, 2014 Forum “An Honest Look at Mental Illness."

AISHA TYLER to join Adam Savage at "Nerd Fest" Forum next May!

Tue, 23 Jul 2013 13:49:00 -0400

AISHA TYLER to join Adam Savage at "Nerd Fest" Forum next May!:

Though she may not look the part, Aisha Tyler’s nerd credentials are impressive. Aside from being an actor, comedian, director, author and activist, she is an avid video game player. For the past two years she has fronted the Ubisoft press conference at the annual e3 expo, the only woman to ever do so, and she has lent her voice to several video games, including Halo:Reach and Gears of War. She is also a reigning Celebrity Jeopardy champ.

Tyler will be joining Adam Savage and other panelists TBA at The CT Forum’s Nerd Fest on Saturday, May 3, 2014 for a live, uncensored discussion about all things nerd!

Simpsons clip hits 1,000,000 views, Forum staffer waxes poetic

Fri, 12 Jul 2013 12:54:00 -0400

Our video clip of Simpsons voice-actors Harry Shearer (Mr. Burns, Principal Skinner, Ned Flanders, etc.) and Yeardley Smith (Lisa Simpson) reading a scene on stage is about to be the first Forum clip to reach 1,000,000 views (see the clip below)!

In honor of this feat, Forum staffer PJ gives his own overly sentimental reflection on The Simpsons’ legacy.

When I was about 10 or 11 years old, The Simpsons aired in two hour blocks every weekday night (one full hour from 5pm to 6pm on Fox, another full hour from 6pm to 7pm on what I think used to be UPN and is now something else. This whole bit is irrelevant). Though my tiny, undeveloped brain could hardly comprehend the myriad cultural references, in-jokes and subversion happening in those episodes, I was obsessed with the quick, clever writing and combination of – what was considered to be at the time – very dirty humor with a surprising level of sincerity.

I recorded each two hour block on a blank VHS tape. That’s kind of true. In most cases, I recorded the episodes over old movies and precious family memories. I kept my collection, messily labeled and categorized, in what eventually became two full boxes in my closet, and I revisited them so often that the film within the tapes began to wear.

I can name off the top of my head the episodes that I watched most often – the one where Bart sells his soul for a squishy dinosaur sponge ranks at the top (bonus: we learned that Alf is back… in pog form), followed closely by the episode featuring Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny from The X-Files (another favorite show of mine), and the episode where Bart and Lisa are taken by Child Welfare Services and brought next door to the Flanders’. Stupid sexy Flanders.

Needless to say, The Simpsons hold an almost mythical regard in my life. I suspect that this is true for millions of people around the world. The show, its characters, writers and voice actors have won too many awards and been on too many “most influential" and “greatest of all-time” lists to even mention, and many “Simpson-isms” have worked their ways into the lexicon of American language (though I’m still waiting for “it tastes like burning” to be a requisite response to questions about food quality).

So it is with much dismay that I say I work for The Connecticut Forum, where I have to face the knowledge on a daily basis that some of most important people involved in the show – voice actors Harry Shearer and Yeardley Smith, producer/writer Al Jean and executive producer Tim Long – visited the Forum stage to dish dirt, crack jokes and even read a scene live in front of a packed Bushnell Theater. And I wasn’t there to see it.

Oh well. If I’ve learned anything, it’s that life is just one crushing defeat after another until you just wish Flanders was dead.

Posted by PJ @ The Forum

Because you wanted more Neil deGrasse Tyson and Neil...

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 09:09:14 -0400

Because you wanted more Neil deGrasse Tyson and Neil Gaiman…

A new clip on religion, science and the “god of the gaps."

From the 2012 "Vision & Brilliance” Forum with Tyson, Gaiman, Neri Oxman and moderator John Dankosky.

Announcing our 2013-2014 season! Visit ctforum.org for panelist...

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 14:47:37 -0400

Announcing our 2013-2014 season!

Visit ctforum.org for panelist announcements and other updates.