Depression and Related Affective Disorders Association (DRADA) was founded in 1986 by a group of doctors, nurses, and lay persons to provide another form of support to individuals struggling with depression and bipolar illness. In the beginning, this support was provided by mutual help support groups alone. DRADA has grown significantly since then and now offers many programs including support groups, accurate information for our community and educational services.

DRADA works in cooperation with the Psychiatry Department at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine to ensure that the educational programs and materials produced by the organization reflect accurate and up-to-date information. DRADA receives no funding from Johns Hopkins. Membership dues, program fees, the sales of educational materials, individual gifts, corporate donations, and foundation grants provide funding.

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We have all been through it. Going shopping, seeing something we like, and putting down a down payment. And just like Dan, sometimes there is a problem with the deposit.

Dan left for buy a couch from a shop in Detroit. After " shopping ", a sales agent approached him and showed him or her a display model available. When some thinking, and taking a few photos with his mobile, Dan sought after the couch to become put on hold.

'Our policy is always to take a deposit for all layaway's". The sales broker says.

"$50 ought to it. Let me obtain the paperwork".

Looks reasonable. Dan hands over cash for the deposit, and signs some little bit of paper, that he thinks is a receipt.

Dan gets home and illustrates his wife the photos. She hates the colors, and the style of the pillows. She mumbles something about their style being more of an baroque, rather then neoclassic, or something like that.

Dan goes back to the store, tracks down the telemarketer, and explains he just received a lecture on design styles. The couch is not really suitable. He asks with regard to his deposit back.

That's when everything falls apart.

The solutions explains to Dan that the deposit is non-refundable, however it can be used towards another chair. The agent points to a small bit of writing at the bottom of the receipt. Seems like Dan got hooked into signing something he do not intend or understand.

Dan is a pickle and must have help.

Some of the ways Dan should go concerning getting his best term deposit rates back.

Make some notes with what happened when you went in the store. Get specific. That which was asked, answered and claimed. It is important you've got your facts straight. Highly detailed and clear.

Contact the general Manager of the store, and show him/her that had the telemarketer properly informed you it was a non-refundable deposit, you would not have placed it. You must establish a "but for". Show the cause and affect, and show that the affect would have been different with a different cause.

The important thing here is to show that the sales agent made this error, together with without the error you would probably not have made the deposit. If the store was not clear in their deposit policy, and the staff knew you do not understand the policy, you have entitlement to it being returned.

In the event the manager is being uncooperative, next contact the store headquarters. Ask for the regional manager and explain the challenge. If the store is locally owned, and not part of a national chain, then require the owners. Should people still get no response, put your issue in writing, and mail it to the store's address, attention managers. Keep your letter limited, and get for a deadline to own money returned. At this point it is probably well worth your while to file a complaint with the Attorney Generals Office.

In the U. S. the tastes States' Attorney General Office, has a Consumer Grumbles Division. They will take formal complaints from citizens who feel they are wronged. Google your condition, with the words Lawyer General. Go to an individual section. You should see outcomes file a complaint.

SCOTT AND ZELDA FITZGERALD a report on a persentation 1 by Kay Redfield Jamison, Ph.D., 2 Smooth Sailing, SUMMER 1996

Dr. Kay Redfield Jamison, coauthor of Manic-Depressive Illness, and author of both Touched With Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament and the recently published An Unquiet Mind, presented a lively discussion of some of the lesser-known writings of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald.

In 1936, Scott Fitzgerald published in Esquire magazine a series of three essays dealing directly with depression, which he was experiencing. The first, The Crack-Up, was published in February; the second, Handle with Care, in March; and the third, Putting It Together, in April. Dr. Jamison described these essays as "dark, dreadful, and utterly desolate," with an enormous "sense of bleakness." They vividly express the feelings Scott Fitzgerald experienced during an intense depression. Because he wrote them during it, not afterward, they have great clarity and impact. He wrote "from the bone." He "hated the night and hated the day," and referred to himself as "a cracked plate." Anyone who has endured a severe depression can identify with those descriptions.

On the whole, these essays were poorly received in the literary world. Scott Fitzgerald's friend Ernest Hemingway criticized him for exposing his personal life to the public. On the other hand, many in the public who read the articles delighted that someone could understand and describe their own mental breakdowns so clearly. Scott Fitzgerald died that same year of 1936, and on his gravestone was written "So we beat on boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

Regarding Zelda Fitzgerald, Dr. Jamison made it clear that her illness was probably manic depression, not schizophrenia, as has often been claimed. She was a talented writer in her own right and kept journals from the time she was in the fourth grade. Unfortunately, during an episode of illness, she burned them all.

During the question period, a member of the audience asked about the impact of Dr. Jamison's book An Unquiet Mind on her professional career. (Recently published, An Unquiet Mind is the candid narrative of Dr. Jamison's many years of dealing with her own manic-depressive illness, keeping it hidden from her colleagues and patients.) According to Dr. Jamison, her colleagues at Johns Hopkins have been extremely supportive. In response to another question, Dr. Jamison said that three-quarters of the persons who are treated with lithium feel as productive when taking it as they do when not taking it, but noted that lithium does have a profound effect on the central nervous system. Yet another question prompted her to state her impression that people with a personal and/or family history of mental illness often drift into the psychotherapy professions; and the prevalence of affective disorders and suicide is higher in physicians than in the general population.

Parallels can be drawn between the Fitzgerald depression essays and An Unquiet Mind. Both Scott Fitzgerald and Dr. Jamison wrote about their personal experiences with mental illness openly and very courageously. The risks they took, both personally and professionally, were enormous. We owe them a debt of gratitude. They give those struggling with a mental illness hope for recovery; they show that persons with a mental illness can still be productive and functional much of the time; they help, through their writing, to ameliorate feelings of isolation that most persons with mental illness often feel; and they enrich immeasurably our under-standing of the personal experience of mental illness. By Lynne A. Farbman, L.C.S.W.C.

1 Presented at the DRADA/Johns Hopkins symposium, Baltimore, Maryland, April 1996