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    Why Wasn’t Anyone Traumatized in the ‘White Lotus’ Finale?

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    After a violent climax to the third season of the hit HBO show, everyone seems A-OK. Was it a Hollywood ending, or a natural trauma response?This article contains spoilers for the finale of the third season of “The White Lotus.” Unless you’re an employee or a guest at a White Lotus resort, in which case it appears that it is impossible for your day to be truly spoiled.“The White Lotus” is a show about vacation. It deals with the dos and don’ts of vacationing: Do go out to party! (Do not engage in incestuous relations while partying.) Do sample the local cuisine! (Unless the fruit is poisonous, in which case please do not give it to your family.)And it is a show about murders.And apparently, based on Sunday’s season finale, no one is traumatized by them. Hours after a mass shooting takes place at the pristine White Lotus resort in Thailand, characters who have just witnessed intense tragedy hop on a boat and seem to sail happily into the sunset, or simply show up for work as if nothing happened.“Only in Hollywood,” Tracey Musarra Marchese, a professor at Syracuse University who specializes in trauma, said with a chuckle.But some of the characters’ reactions, which raised questions about their plausibility and prompted admiration for one character’s athletic sprint, might be completely normal in the face of trauma, experts say.“Sometimes what happens is in the moment because your system — physically, mentally, emotionally — you’ve been so overwhelmed that you might dissociate,” Marchese said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      5 Books on Healing From Trauma

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      Neuroscientists, psychologists and other experts share the titles they recommend most.When Gabor Maté was in his 40s and a successful doctor in Vancouver, Canada, he struggled with depression and strained relationships. Picking up “The Drama of the Gifted Child,” by Alice Miller, was the first step to understanding the root of his problems.“A good book gives you a map to yourself,” said Dr. Maté, now a trauma researcher and author of “The Myth of Normal.”While reading Dr. Miller’s book, his experiences started to make sense. “My depression, my self-loathing,” he explained, were a result of early childhood trauma.Trauma is a deeply distressing experience that leaves lasting effects on a person’s thoughts, emotions and behavior. It rewires both the body and mind and shapes overall health. Research shows, however, that the right tools can help us regulate our emotions and rebuild a sense of safety.Many people are hungry for books that explore trauma: Dr. Bessel van der Kolk’s “The Body Keeps the Score” has sold more than three million copies globally and spent more than six years total on the New York Times best-seller list. But there are other works that can help us make sense of negative experiences.The five titles below were recommended by neuroscientists, psychologists and trauma specialists as sources to help you understand and process trauma.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Teenagers Say Girls Are Equal to Boys in School, or Are Ahead

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      Reflecting a generational change, two Pew surveys show boys tend to feel discouraged in the classroom, and are less likely than girls to pursue college.In the 1980s and 1990s, boys still dominated American classrooms. They outscored girls in math and science, they raised their hands more often and they got more attention from teachers, data showed.That’s not the reality for today’s students. More than half of teenagers say that boys and girls are now mostly equal in school. And significant shares say that girls have advantages over boys — that they get better grades, have more leadership roles and speak up more in class, according to a Pew Research Center survey of teens nationwide published Thursday.Boys are more likely to be disruptive, get into fights or have problems with drugs or alcohol, the teenagers said. And strikingly, boys said they’re much less likely to be college-bound: 46 percent of boys said they planned to attend a four-year college, compared with 60 percent of girls.“What happens to a society when there’s such disparity between men and women in educational outcomes?” a researcher said. Kendrick Brinson for The New York TimesTeenagers aren’t often surveyed by high-quality pollsters. Their responses in the Pew survey reflect other data on educational outcomes. Boys today have more challenges than girls in school as early as kindergarten. Girls have narrowed gaps with boys in math (though they have widened since pandemic school closures), and girls outperform boys in reading. Boys graduate from high school and attend college at lower rates.Boys’ struggles in school could have long-term consequences, researchers say. The share of men working has declined. Nearly half of Republican men say American society has negative views of men, beginning with their experiences as boys in school. Young men’s feelings of disconnection played a role in the election — this group swung toward President Trump, perhaps in part because he promised to restore their status in American society.

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      Santa Fe’s Secret to Happiness: The Annual Burning of Zozobra

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      For most of the millions of travelers who make the trek each year, there is no reason to go to Santa Fe except to go to Santa Fe. Just about everything that needs doing can and should be done somewhere else, someplace easier to get to than this tiny city 7,000 feet in the air, whose airport terminal is a fraction of the size of a typical American grocery store. But this town of 90,000 residents strives to ensure that its singularity is reason enough.Which makes it remarkable that Santa Fe’s most distinctive motif is left inscrutable to outsiders. A towering ghoul points down from a mural on one of the city’s busiest streets with no context. At a local confectionery, a scowling white figure in a cummerbund is rendered in chocolate — why? Even if you clock that the big-eared goblin tattooed on the biceps of a local electrician is the same creature depicted (being consumed by flames) on the cab of a municipal fire truck, you will encounter nowhere an explanation of who or what this monster is — unless you happen to be in Santa Fe on the one evening a year when locals construct a building-size version of this thing and set it on fire.The explanation is a touch nonsensical: This is Zozobra, a beast who lives in the mountains nearby. The people of Santa Fe invite him into town every year on the pretext of a party in his honor. He arrives at the party dressed in formal attire, thrusts the town into darkness and takes away “the hopes and dreams of Santa Fe’s children,” whom he also kidnaps. The townspeople try and fail to subdue him with torches. But then the Fire Spirit, summoned by an atmosphere of cooperation among the town’s citizens, appears and, flying high off the good vibes, battles Zozobra until he is consumed by fire.Zozobra sightings around Santa Fe.Thomas Prior for The New York TimesIf you are fortunate enough to be around on the exactly right night in late summer — the Friday before Labor Day — you may find yourself surrounded by, and even join in with, the screaming citizens of Santa Fe as they string up this enormous, writhing pale-faced humanoid on a pole on a hill overlooking their homes and burn him while he moans until dead.“Burn him!” demand the children onstage. “BUUUURN HIIIIIM!” roar the adults from the crowd, a portion of whom are inebriated. Unseen, a local judge howls into a microphone, providing the voice of a gargantuan puppet being cooked alive. It is possible that, one century ago, the forebears of the current population discovered the violent secret to happiness in their high, dry town — and that it is annual, ritualized killing by flames. Just in case that’s right — in fact, proceeding on an assumption that it is — the local citizenry have recommitted the monstrous puppet’s murder every year for 100 years straight, so far. The aim is to incinerate their gloom.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Elite School Will Offer a Day Off for Students Distressed by Election

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      Attendance on Wednesday, or whatever day the results are announced, is optional for high school students at the Ethical Culture Fieldston School in New York City, families were told.One of New York City’s elite private schools told families on Thursday that “students who feel too emotionally distressed” the day after Election Day will be excused from classes, and that psychologists will be available during the week to provide counseling.In a section of an email to members of the school’s community headed “Election Day support,” Stacey Bobo, principal of the upper school at the institution, the Ethical Culture Fieldston School, said that it “acknowledges that this may be a high-stakes and emotional time for our community.”“No matter the election outcome,” she wrote, the school “will create space to provide students with the support they may need.”No homework will be assigned on Election Day, the email said, and no student assessments will take place on Wednesday. Excused absences will be allowed on Wednesday or whatever day the election results are announced for students who feel unable to “fully engage in classes.” Gwen Rocco, a spokeswoman for the school, declined to comment on the email.Fieldston’s upper school, in Riverdale, a leafy section of the Bronx, includes grades nine through 12. The school also has two elementary schools, one of which is in Manhattan, and a middle school on the Riverdale campus. About 1,700 students attend the schools, and tuition for all grades is $65,540 a year.The school, which was founded in the late 19th century on principles of social justice, was divided by infighting over pro-Palestinian student activism in the spring, leading to Joe Algrant’s resignation as head of the school in August. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How Caregivers for Dementia Patients Manage Mood and Personality Changes

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      Shifts in behavior can be challenging to manage. Experts have five strategies that can help.Susan Hirsch was visiting her father in the hospital where he was recuperating after a fall and was shocked to find him — long devoted to her mother — flirting with a nurse as if he were “17 and in the Navy again,” she said.Ms. Hirsch, a 67-year-old memory care educator from Palmyra, Pa., scolded her father. But the admonishment only enraged the 93-year-old man; she recalled him saying, “in not nice words,” to get out of his room as she scuttled away.More than 11 million adults in the United States are caring for people diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia. In addition to memory loss, most people with dementia will experience mood and behavior changes including aggression, apathy, disorientation, depression, wandering, impulsivity and delusions.Many caregivers describe mood and personality changes as the most upsetting symptoms. While antipsychotic and sedative medications are often used to manage dementia-related mood issues, they have limited efficacy.To get on top of — and feel less toppled by — mood changes, it’s helpful for caregivers to remember that those shifts are caused by changes in the brain, said Dr. Nathaniel Chin, a geriatrician and associate professor in the department of medicine at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.“They’re no one’s fault,” he said, and recognizing this can help you “feel less upset at your loved one.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Why Do Mental Health Conditions Lead to More Severe Covid?

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      People with psychiatric conditions are more likely to be hospitalized or die of the virus. Scientists have ideas about why that might be the case.It’s been clear since the early days of the pandemic: People with mental illness are more likely to have severe outcomes from Covid. Compared to the general population, they’re at higher risk of being hospitalized, developing long Covid or dying from an infection.That fact puts mental illness on the same list as better-known Covid risk factors like cardiovascular issues, chronic kidney disease and asthma.When it comes to Covid risk, mental illness “shouldn’t be treated differently than you treat diabetes or heart disease or cancer,” said Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly, the chief of research and development at the Veterans Affairs St. Louis Healthcare System.Scientists now have a better understanding of who is vulnerable. While research has linked a wide range of mental illnesses to worse Covid outcomes, experts generally believe that the risk is greatest for people with severe or unmanaged mental health conditions — suggesting that someone with schizophrenia, for example, is more likely to get sicker from Covid than someone receiving treatment for anxiety. They also have several hypotheses about why mental illness might make people more susceptible.The Strain of StressMany mental health conditions can lead to chronically high stress levels. And stress sabotages the immune system, flooding the body with hormones like cortisol and adrenaline. Those hormones make it harder to produce certain immune cells that are crucial for fighting off illnesses.“The whole system is not designed to be constantly activated,” said Andrea Lynne Roberts, a researcher at Harvard University who has studied the effects of mental health conditions on Covid outcomes. That’s why people with mental illness may be more vulnerable to viral infections in general, from the common cold to Covid.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Scared of the Dentist? Here’s How to Cope.

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      Don’t skip appointments and risk your oral health. Try these strategies instead.For Hope Alcocer, the diagnosis was grim: 11 cavities. Inflamed gums. A tooth in need of a root canal.As the list of problems grew, so did her feelings of shame and fear. Shame that she had waited more than a decade to seek care. And fear because she could no longer avoid the dentist.Her anxiety stemmed from an experience as a teenager, when her dentist brushed aside her concerns that she wasn’t numb enough before filling a cavity.The pain made her want to jump out of the chair. “My pain was an 11 out of 10,” she said. “That’s how much it hurt.”Dental anxiety is a common problem. Studies of U.S. adults generally find that around 20 percent of respondents have moderate to high fear of dental care. The severity ranges from mild uneasiness to severe phobia and can be rooted in earlier negative experiences or traumas.The more fearful someone is, the more they postpone care, and the more likely they are to develop painful problems that require expensive or complex treatment, experts say.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More