DOING SOME GOOD?

LiveReal, on the one hand, is about good times, good conversations, good hard thinking, good clean fun, good dirty fun on occasion . . . and things like that.

On the other hand, LiveReal is also pretty serious about trying to help some folks.

While there's the "Great Faith" - all the cool and stellar stuff in the world - there's also the "Great Doubt" - for example . . .

From child abuse to violence and war to obesity, drug and alcohol addiction, stress, suicide, depression and anxiety (which are pretty significant factors in poverty and homelessness) to divorce, environmental destruction, domestic violence, rape, and just the common, day-to-day misery of many folks in the world . . .

Well, it just seems like there's a lot of work that needs to be done.

So here at LiveReal, we're working, in our own way, to help find real solutions to these problems.

How?

Basically, one individual at a time. Meaning, we're starting with ourselves.

We figure, if we can start out with such flawed, imperfect, neurotic, eccentric raw material as ourselves . . . and work to make ourselves a little more sane, a little more clear, more cool, more healthy, more caring than before . . . and maybe do whatever we can for others to do the same . . . then overall, hopefully, we'll all be a little better off.

We're tempted to try to explain why we think the approach we're taking is a good approach, and one that has some strong advantages where many other approaches fall short. But we'll save that for another time and place.

Until then, we'll just keep on working . . .

NUMBERS

We've got our work cut out for us . . .

· Almost 900,000 U.S. children were neglected or abused in 2002, and 1,400 died as a result (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services)

The U.S. spent $75 billion to treat obesity in 2003 (Center of Disease Control and Prevention)

· “Mental Illness: A Rising Workplace Cost.‘ One form, depression, takes a $70 billion toll annually... yet most employers don’t have a clue.” (Wall Street Journal June 13th, 2001)

· "We estimate (that stress) costs American industry $300 billion a year in terms of diminished productivity, employee turnover and insurance . . ." (Dr. Paul Rosch, President, The American Institute of Stress), and “60-90% of physician visits are related to stress...” (Tracy Gaudet, M.D., Duke University Center for Integrative Medicine)

· The economic cost of alcohol and drug abuse is estimated at $246 billion in the United States alone. (National Institute of Health)

· The economic costs of anxiety disorders are over $65 billion per year (Dorothy P. Rice, Ph.D., and Leonard S. Miler, Ph.D., Update of the Costs of Mental Illness in the United States, 1997)

- and the situation, at least in terms of psychology, doesn't seem to be improving:

· “U.N. Sees Rise in Mental Health Disorders in Coming Decades: Mental and neurological disorders . . . strike 400 million people globally and are set to surge in the next two decades, the World Health Organization said..." (Reuters, January 11th, 2001)

"The time has long passed for yet another piecemeal approach to mental health reform," said commission Chairman Michael F. Hogan, director of the Ohio Department of Mental Health. "The commission recommends fundamentally transforming how mental health care is delivered in America," said the final report of the President's New Freedom Commission on Mental Health.

At any rate, this is our mission,
so we're just going to keep working.

So stay tuned . . .