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Software To Provide Astronaut Counseling
Currently, whenever an astronaut needs to talk to someone, a counselor is only a radio call away. Unfortunately, for voyages further out, this contact time starts to increase quite a bit, so researchers have started to look for alternative methods of counseling. I just hope the new counseling software has the Dr. Sbaitso voice. "Instead of asking astronauts to reflect on their feelings, Mark Hegel of Dartmouth Medical School has them create lists of concrete things that are bothering them and brainstorm about practical ways to solve them. At the end of the exercise, users fill out a form used to diagnose depression. Clinical tests of this approach, which has never been tried in a multimedia self-help format, will start in a few months, using subjects recruited from the biomedical and engineering community in Boston."
And shortly after inserted into the dreaded 'just friends' category.
Ahah! Hit back with a hint at problems (deep, deep, mysterious problems) of your own, and refuse to discuss them, because you're too damn self-sufficient.
/.er, but I have shown to friends over and over how it works. Not a failure yet.
Then (and this should be your mantra) show no interest at all in wooing.
You are then one or two steps (either a shared interest, a cool quip, or a chiseled jawline) away from happiness.
Don't get me wrong- I am as runtish as your average
"Be light, stinging, insolent and melancholy"
Hours of fun we had with that. Remember that weird parrot with the lightspeed-moving beak?
"If for any reason you're not satisfied with our service, I hate you."
You kidding me? No one has referenced the Voyager Doctor yet?
Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars.
It's a hundred thousand light years side to side.
It bulges in the middle, sixteen thousand light years thick,
But out by us, it's just three thousand light years wide.
We're thirty thousand light years from galactic central point.
We go 'round every two hundred million years,
And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions
In this amazing and expanding universe.
[...]
So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure,
How amazingly unlikely is your birth,
And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space,
'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth.
-- "Galaxy Song", Monty Python's The Meaning of Life
Can we have your liver, then?
Just going by what I've learned ABC. I'm sure it isn't universal, but you're perhaps not entirely typical?
Massive guessing, but if you post here, you're possibly one of the delicious subset of women who think... y'know... a bit more like a man?
If so, I can understand how a man's problem solving approach might be pointless for you. This also explains their next move (you'd be a rare and precious thing, in this scenario!)....
But you must have female friends- When they unload on you, do you find your brainstorming approach helpful, or do they get frustrated?
IMHO, the latter is more likely.
"Be light, stinging, insolent and melancholy"
So what you can't just drop an e-mail to a NASA counsellor and wait for the damn answer? If you're on Mars you'd have to wait in worst cases 40 minutes (neglected the time it would take for the person at the other end to type their reply). I mean come on, in real life you don't get replies to your e-mails that fast, and if you're depressed you can still wait a few minutes to get replies to your e-mails.
You just got troll'd!
"Clinical tests of this approach, which has never been tried in a multimedia self-help format"
This is from a standalone DOS program released at least 10 years ago:
"WELCOME TO OUR MOOD DISORDER DIAGNOSTIC PROGRAM
The ®MDBO Internet Mental Health Mood Disorder Diagnostic Program allows either
a patient, informant, or therapist to diagnose the following mood disorders:
* Major Depression * Dysthymia
* Bipolar Disorder * Cyclothymia
* Organic Mood Disorder
Each disorder is diagnosed in accordance with the diagnostic criteria
specified by the American Psychiatric Association."