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We've all heard the horror stories about bullies , mostly from our kids.  But adults can be big bullies, too, and what do you do when there's one in your workplace? I was bullied by a manager for several miserable months when I spoke up to his boss and asked for more work because I was bored, and was afraid I wasn't doing enough.  The fragile ego came down hard on me, and from that point on, I was picked to get the donuts for meetings, never called on in those same meetings, and was not invited to department social events. I survived but I never forgot this man.  Bullies die hard in our lives. But unfortunately, they're everywhere. So, should you take advice from someone who has been bullied? Get over it.  Move on.  Don't get mad, get even.  Not very satisfying. Now a new study is saying, forget the advice.  It generally doesn't work, according to newswise.com. The reason is simple.  People looking for a rational response to what may be ...

I didn't listen much to my mother when I was growing up.  Nobody does. But now it's turning out that people in their 60s may actually benefit from giving advice.  Maybe that's why our moms did. A new study , however, also found that few people are willing to receive it. Bingo! The new study reveals that individuals in their 60s who give advice to a broad range of people tend to see their lives as especially meaningful, according to newswise.com. At the same time, this happens to be the age when opportunities for dispensing advice become increasingly scarce.  “This association between advice giving and life meaning is not evident for other age groups,” says Markus H. Schafer, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Toronto and the lead author of the study. “Overall, we interpret these findings to suggest that the developmental demands of late midlife—particularly the desire to contribute to others’ welfare and the fear of feeling ‘stagna...

And yet one more cross for overweight people to bear. Not only are they often shunned and made fun of but now a new study has found that those who blog may be found less credible for readers seeking food advice. I guess it stands to reason.  Would you take driving advice from someone with DUIs?    The Cornell study revealed that when a blogger is overweight, as shown in the blogger’s photo, readers are far more skeptical of the information that blogger provides when compared with a thin blogger’s recommendations, even when the content is exactly the same, according to newswise.com. The findings are increasingly important as more than half of smartphone users report that they use their device to look up health-related information, making the Internet one of the top places people get informed about health issues. "When we dramatically increased the fat and calorie content, it had just as much impact as when we said the food was posted by a heavy person,”say...

If you're anything like me, if a doctor says something that insults  or embarrasses you, you may never go back, a new study has found. I can remember when I was lugging around 30 post-partum pounds and a new internist I was planning to start seeing told me I really needed to lose weight.  I dropped the pounds (he was actually my incentive to join Weight Watchers) but I never went back. But not everyone gives up on a doctor who challenges them.  Some people lie the next time they see the doctor ("Oh yes, I cut 'way back on my calories"), while others decide to draw the wagons around and take the advice. Shame and guilt as a direct result of interacting with a doctor are quite common, says Christine Harris, professor of psychology in the UC San Diego Division of Social Sciences, as are both positive and negative reactions at newswise.com.  Gaining insight into patient reactions is important, the she and her co-authors write, because “more than one third of all...

Would you be more likely to go to a therapist if you could do it over the phone?  I'm not talking about dial-a-shrink, but an actual appointment you had every week for an hour, just not in person but over the phone? "Teletherapy's" been around for a while.  I remember writing about it last year when it came to prisons (and really helped), but it's taken a while to get into the mainstream.  (I also remember reporting on all the dot coms who thought therapy could be done online, with patients -- or "clients," as they're now called -- posting questions and a specific therapist answering.  We saw how well that worked out!) But teletherapy is gaining new ground, according to Audrey Quinn at smartplanet.com, and one therapist has even partnered with 50 other therapists in a variety of fields and she will soon bring that number up to 100 to do this very thing. TalkSession was recently chosen by GE Ventures and Startup Health Academy to participate i...

Really.  A new survey says there are two reasons patients are having difficulty understanding, or getting their  medical conditions right. One, they rely too much on the Internet (to which, I can personally attest, after being diagnosed with breast cancer), where the information is often, if not inaccurate, not always applicable to every person.  And two, the reading level of educational materials medical professionals have on hand are often confusing and too hard to understand for most anyone who's not a doctor. According to a story at Reuters Health, "The average reading level of the online materials by groups ranging from the American Society of Anesthesiologists to the American Psychiatric Association fell anywhere from ninth grade to the sophomore year of college." What's the level recommended by the American Medical Association?  Fourth to sixth grade.  While that sounds pretty low, keep in mind that we're talking about very technical terms and situa...