PBS’s Next Avenue columns are always worth reading, but the following article is particularly relevant.

Are you sure you have all the necessary documents in place regarding your incapacity? Your death?

Do you understand why is it wise to update certain documents?

Do you work with clients who could benefit from receiving this information?

The Biggest Estate Planning Mistake People Make

By Brad Wiewel, estate attorney

In the last weeks, clients have asked me, “What were people thinking when they voted for Trump? My answer has been some form of: “They weren’t thinking, they were feeling. If a person doesn’t feel safe, they are less likely to be able to think –  so they take a stab in the dark.”

They did and now we shall see.

The Mourning After the Election

Many agree with David Remnick, editor of the New Yorker, who said in his Nov. 13th online comment: “(Trump’s) level of egotism is rarely exhibited outside of the clinical environment.”

• Few voters are aware of recent research showing roughly 20% of CEO’s are psychopaths – the same rate found in the prison population.
• US Emory University researcher Scott Lilienfeld found that psychopaths are over-represented in the fields of politics, business, and high-risk sport. UK Oxford psychologist Kevin Dutton’s research showed that CEO’s, lawyers, TV/Radio media, salespeople and surgeons are the professions with the highest number of psychopaths.

How does a psychopath behave?

Sometimes a person writes of their experience of deep grief—from a place so outside of my own—that I post their entire article.

Today’s post is one of those times.

I am not black, and I can’t authentically write about the black experience. Nikole-Hannah-Jones is and she can.

Nikole’s article does not report an opinion; she invites you into her experience. Remember, trauma is not an event, it is an experience.

And so I thank Nikole, a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine and 2016 Peabody Award winner, for writing The Grief White American’s Can’t Share.

We have just experienced the largest mass shooting in the history of this country and are now exploring the back story of how the assassin came to be mentally unbalanced enough to commit a mass murder.

We crave the back story to make sense of it.

But everyone has a back story. And the back story of a mass murderer is always one of psychological imbalance.

OK, we need to focus on mental health, but we can’t ever control for violence if a person is willing to die to kill. What we can control is the type of weapon the mass murderer uses and how many are killed.

This isn’t rocket science, but every clarion call leads to Congress shooting down a ban on assault weapons.

Is Congress filled with cowards?

The back story of a typical congressional member is his/her need to raise incredible sums of money to get reelected. The NRA provides campaign funding. As a result many in Congress put their job security ahead of their constituent’s lives. To narrow it down a bit more: many in Congress sacrifice our lives for their livelihoods. To drill down even deeper: as a body, the US Congress arms criminals, terrorists and the mentally ill with assault weapons.

OK, we need to focus on election reform, but we can’t control for the intoxicating lure of special interest money. What we can control is who stays in Congress and who doesn’t.

This isn’t rocket science, but every clarion call to remove members who stand in the way of gun control dies because of voter apathy.

Who holds the real power over Congress?

You.

The Ohio Columbus Dispatch spent nine months examining the suicide crisis that has arisen in part by a broken mental healthcare system.  I was unaware that the incidence of every disease has declined in this country except for mental illness.

Suicide claims more people age 15-24 than you realize. 

The newspaper’s fifteen-minute video invites us to pay attention to the subject of depression.  We don’t want to hear about it—but we need to.

In a recent five-minute radio spot on NPR’s Here and Now program, Dr. Lisa Dixon, Professor of Psychiatry and Center for Innovations at Columbia University Medical Center, says there are more than 2 million schizophrenics in the US.  Her program (OnTrack NY) is showing success where others are failing. What is she doing differently? One thing: Her program allows the individual to take an active part in mapping out their medical/counseling protocol rather than simply being handed a prescription.

Mental illness seems to be a priority only when it affects our own family

But mental illness IS affecting your family. Young people aren’t just killing themselves—they are killing innocent people like you—as well. Maybe this fact, and the plain ol’ fear that comes with it, will drive funding for mental illness to match that of other diseases.

What can you do to help?

It is January 2016.

Yes.

Another year begins.

Yes.

The world didn’t end on Jan 1, 2000 as many predicted.

No.

That was 15 years ago and we now face a level of real risk few would ever have anticipated on Jan 1, 2000. Today our world is more complicated, the problems more convoluted. 

So how does one feel good about the new year? I suggest you click on the 1997 video below and hear Fred Rogers ask for 10 seconds of silence to honor those who loved you into being.

If you remember Fred Rogers, the people you honor have likely died. They may not have been your parents. But for most of us there was a person, maybe even a neighbor, who loved us into a being capable of acting on behalf of the greater good this coming year.

YouTube Video Link:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Upm9LnuCBUM