Why do so many victims of cyber fraud remain silent, and what support do they need?

It's a common and unfortunate reality that many victims of cyber fraud remain silent.
This silence creates a significant challenge for law enforcement, perpetuates the stigma, and leaves victims isolated.

The reasons are primarily psychological and societal:

Why Victims Remain Silent:
Shame and Embarrassment: This is by far the biggest factor. Victims often feel incredibly foolish, stupid, or naïve for having "fallen for" a scam, especially when it involves significant financial loss or emotional manipulation (like in romance scams). They fear judgment from family, friends, and society, leading them to hide their experience. Phrases like "You should have known better" only exacerbate these feelings.

Self-Blame and Guilt: Many victims internalize the blame, believing it was their fault for being "too trusting" or "not smart enough" to spot the scam. This self-blame is often compounded in investment scams, where victims might feel they were "greedy" for wanting quick returns.

Fear of Judgment and Stigma: There's a societal stigma attached to being a fraud victim that isn't always present for victims of other crimes (like physical assault or robbery). People tend to associate fraud victims with gullibility, which is a harsh and unfair stereotype.

Emotional Distress and Trauma: The psychological impact of cyber fraud can be immense, leading to severe anxiety, depression, PTSD, isolation, and even suicidal thoughts. This emotional toll can make it incredibly difficult for victims to speak out or even process what happened.

Perceived Futility of Reporting:
Lack of Recovery: Many victims believe that reporting won't lead to the recovery of their lost money, especially with international scams and cryptocurrency.

Lack of Faith in Law Enforcement: Some may feel that law enforcement won't have the resources or expertise to investigate complex cyber fraud cases, or that their case is too small to matter.

Complicated Reporting Processes: The process of reporting can sometimes be perceived as complicated or overwhelming, especially when navigating multiple agencies (e.g., police, bank, platform).

Desire to Forget and Move On: The experience can be so painful and humiliating that victims simply want to put it behind them and avoid reliving the trauma by discussing it.

Fear of Further Victimization: Some victims worry that reporting will make them a target for more scams or expose them to public scrutiny.

Lack of Awareness of Support Systems: Victims may not know who to report to or what support services are available to them.

What Support Do They Need?
Victims of cyber fraud need a holistic approach that addresses not just the financial impact but also the profound emotional and psychological distress.

Empathy and Non-Judgmental Listening:
Crucial First Step: When a victim confides, the most important response is empathy and reassurance that it's not their fault. Avoid any language that implies blame or criticism.

Validation: Acknowledge their pain, shame, and anger. Help them understand that professional scammers are highly skilled manipulators who can deceive anyone.

Accessible and Streamlined Reporting Mechanisms:
Clear Pathways: Provide a central, easy-to-understand point of contact for reporting (e.g., Taiwan's 165 Anti-Fraud Hotline).

User-Friendly Process: Make the reporting process as simple and supportive as possible, minimizing bureaucratic hurdles.

Timely Response: Victims need to feel that their report is being taken seriously and acted upon promptly.

Psychological and Emotional Support:
Counseling and Therapy: Provide access to mental health professionals (psychologists, therapists) specializing in trauma and victim support. Fraud can lead to PTSD-like symptoms, anxiety, depression, and distrust.

Peer Support Groups: Connecting victims with others who have experienced similar fraud can be incredibly validating and therapeutic, reducing feelings of isolation and shame. Organizations like the FINRA Investor Education Foundation offer such groups.

Crisis Hotlines: Accessible hotlines for immediate emotional support.

Financial and Practical Assistance:
Guidance on Fund Recovery: Clear, realistic advice on whether and how lost funds might be recovered (e.g., chargebacks, contacting banks, asset forfeiture in criminal cases).

Identity Theft Resolution: Help with credit freezes, monitoring credit reports, and resolving any identity theft issues that arise from compromised data.

Legal Advice: Guidance on their legal rights and options, including potential civil lawsuits.

Practical Steps: Assistance with changing passwords, securing accounts, and removing malicious software.

Increased Public Awareness and Education:
De-stigmatization Campaigns: Public campaigns that highlight the sophistication of scams and emphasize that anyone can be a victim, thereby reducing shame and encouraging reporting.

Educational Resources: Easily digestible information about new scam tactics and prevention methods. This needs to be continuously updated and disseminated through various channels.

Focus on Emotional Impact: Educate the public on the psychological toll of fraud, not just the financial loss, to foster greater understanding and empathy.

By focusing on compassion, practical support, and systemic change, societies can help victims of cyber fraud break their silence, heal from their trauma, and contribute to a more effective fight against these pervasive crimes.

Is India’s infantry adequately equipped for next-generation battlefield challenges, from drones to cyberwarfare?
India's infantry is undergoing a significant transformation to meet the challenges of modern warfare, but its readiness is a mix of promising advancements and persistent gaps.
The military recognizes that the traditional "foot soldier" must evolve into a "technology-empowered warfighter" to be effective on a modern battlefield dominated by drones, cyber threats, and network-centric operations.

Modernization Efforts and Strengths
The Indian Army's Futuristic Infantry Soldier as a System (F-INSAS) program is at the heart of this modernization drive.
It's a comprehensive initiative that aims to upgrade every aspect of the soldier's gear, from firepower to survivability and digital integration.

Upgraded Firepower: The Indian Army has been phasing out its long-standing INSAS rifles, which were known for their reliability issues, in favor of modern assault rifles like the Sig Sauer 716 and the AK-203.
This is a significant step towards improving the soldier's primary weapon. Additionally, the infantry is being equipped with advanced anti-tank guided missiles, precision-guided munitions, and modern grenade launchers to enhance their ability to engage enemy fortifications and armored threats.

Enhanced Survivability: The push for indigenous Level 6 body armor, which provides enhanced ballistic protection without excessive weight, is a crucial step towards better protecting soldiers.
The Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) is also exploring the use of exoskeletons to increase endurance and reduce the physical burden on soldiers in difficult terrains.

Counter-Drone Capabilities: India is actively developing and deploying counter-drone systems to protect its infantry from the growing threat of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and loitering munitions. The "Bhargavastra" system, developed by a private Indian company, is a notable example. It is a multi-layered, low-cost system designed to detect and neutralize drone swarms with micro-missiles and rockets.
Furthermore, every infantry battalion is being equipped with a dedicated drone platoon to enhance reconnaissance, target acquisition, and situational awareness.

Cyber and Network-Centric Warfare: India has established new doctrines for cyberspace and amphibious operations.
The Battlefield Management System (BMS), currently in development, aims to create a real-time digital network that allows commanders to make precise, informed decisions based on live intelligence. This is a critical step in a future where information superiority is a key determinant of success.

Remaining Challenges
Despite these advances, several challenges remain that prevent the infantry from being fully prepared for next-generation combat.

Procurement Delays: The Indian defense procurement process has historically been slow and bureaucratic. This often leads to significant delays in the acquisition and deployment of new equipment, creating critical gaps in capabilities.

Technological Gaps: While India is pushing for indigenization, it still faces technological gaps in high-end defense systems and components. The country's defense budget, while large, allocates a limited portion to research and development, which hinders innovation.

Infrastructure and Training: Modernizing a military of 1.4 million personnel is a monumental task. Ensuring that all infantry units, especially those in remote and high-altitude areas, have access to the latest equipment, and are adequately trained in its use, remains a significant logistical and training challenge.

Fragmented Approach: While the F-INSAS program is comprehensive, its implementation has been fragmented. Critics have pointed out that the Army is still in the initial phases of this modernization, and bureaucratic inefficiencies have hampered its swift execution.

In conclusion, the Indian Army is well aware of the challenges posed by next-generation warfare and is taking decisive steps to equip its infantry for a multi-domain battlespace.
The F-INSAS program and the focus on indigenous technology are positive developments. However, to truly be ready for the threats of drones and cyber warfare, India needs to overcome its persistent challenges in procurement, budget allocation, and the full-scale integration of its modernization efforts.

A Jersey City sex crime law firm specializes in defending individuals accused of sex-related offenses, such as assault, exploitation, or abuse. These firms provide legal representation, offering expertise in criminal defense strategies and ensuring clients' rights are protected. Their goal is to achieve the best possible outcomes in cases involving serious charges and sensitive circumstances.
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TRUST-
After a Breach of Trust Don’t Make It Worse.
Let's avoid the common pitfalls.

KEY POINTS-
Communication is key, especially when trust has been broken.
Defensiveness is common and damaging.
A guideline for constructive discussions about trust violations include staying focused on the issue at hand.

A trust may begin as a leap of faith, but ultimately, it is not a gift. It must be earned. Communicating is always very important, but this is especially critical when a violation occurs.

Specific conversations must occur to mend a broken trust. Through unmistakable effort, the offending partner must demonstrate that they are committed and that it is emotionally safe to be intimate with them.

Defensiveness Is Common and Damaging
Talking productively in an emotional crisis is not easy but essential. Moreover, the emotional fallout from a broken trust is not usually limited to the offended partner. The offender may also feel bad. Feeling distressed, they may react openly and validate the offended partner’s feelings, clearing the way for the breach to be repaired. This is an admirable response but, unfortunately, not common. More often, the partner who has violated trust reacts defensively, adding insult to injury.

Now, the offended partner not only feels hurt and anger, but the sense of betrayal is heightened by denial, distortion, or minimizing.

Rather than heal the wound of betrayal, the lack of openness by the offender will almost surely erode the trust base further. The couple will inevitably move toward increased and unproductive conflict, either over the areas directly involved in the source of mistrust—lying or an extramarital involvement, for example—or over a wide range of lesser issues. In either case, the relationship unravels.

Talking It Out Sensitively
The point is that there are two main ways for the offender (and the offended) to make things worse when confronted with a trust violation: One is to continue lying and underplay the breach. The other is to erupt, to emote without restraint.

When a man or woman has too many internal conversations, playing out the issues in their mind, they probably do not have enough trust with their partner. If they are screaming, hurling insults, and looking to vent without concern for the impact, not briefly, but mostly, the relationship is guaranteed to deteriorate.

Guidelines for Constructive Discussions
Stay focused. No fair dredging up mistakes made twenty years ago or complaining about how much the in-laws are hated. A fight is not an opportunity to rehash old grievances. Stick to the issue, or the discussion will surely sink from the weight of the problems.

Define issues. Be clear and specific about the problem. This will help you stay on track.

Listen and listen. Don’t just pause until it’s your turn to speak again, with your mind formulating the next sentences while your partner talks. Being defensive is a sure path to alienation.
Agreement is not essential. You don’t have to agree, but if you validate a hurt partner’s feelings sincerely, your partner will likely feel that you get it. In other words, be agreeable. To do otherwise is to risk prolonging the potential healing process. Lie? That would be stupid.

Don’t interrupt. You can be angry without being rude or bullying.
Don’t personalize. Stay with the issue rather than attack the person. Contending that your partner betrayed you in some manner is legitimate. Calling your partner names, belittling them, or verbally assaulting them is not constructive.

Recognize “his” and “her” conflict styles. Men and women have different conflict styles as well as intimacy styles. Respect the differences. A man may, for example, feel emotionally flooded and need a time-out, while a woman may view that as withdrawal. If the man reassures her that he is simply taking a few minutes to “regroup,” his partner will likely abide.

Bear in mind: A critical action on the trust-breaker’s part, to reassure their efforts to restore trust are sincere, is the willingness to delve into him or herself, confront the personal issues that lead to trust breaches, and acknowledge them openly and responsibly. And, of course, going forward with integrity is essential.

Armenia: Cast Adrift in a Tough Neighborhood.
On the day Azerbaijan’s military sliced through the defenses of an ethnic Armenian redoubt last week, American soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division had just finished a training mission in nearby Armenia, a longtime ally of Russia that has been trying to reduce its nearly total dependence on Moscow for its security.

The Americans unfurled a banner made up of the flags of the United States and Armenia, posed for photographs — and then left the country. At the same time, nearly 2,000 Russian “peacekeepers” were dealing with the mayhem unleashed by their earlier failure to keep the peace in the contested area, Nagorno-Karabakh, recognized internationally as being part of Azerbaijan.

The timing of the U.S. soldiers’ rapid exit at the end of their training work — carried out under the intimidating name Eagle Partner but involving only 85 soldiers — had been scheduled for months.

Yet, coinciding as it did with the host country’s greatest moment of need, it highlighted an inescapable reality for Armenia: While it might want to reduce its reliance on an untrustworthy Russian ally that, preoccupied by the war in Ukraine, did nothing to prevent last week’s debacle, the West offers no plausible alternative.

On Thursday, the defeated ethnic Armenian government of Nagorno-Karabakh formally dissolved itself and told residents they had no choice but to leave or to live under Azerbaijani rule, acknowledging a new reality enabled by Russian passivity and unhindered by Washington.

The Biden administration rushed out two senior officials over the weekend to the Armenian capital, Yerevan, to offer comfort to Armenia’s embattled prime minister, Nikol Pashinyan. But it has so far resisted placing sanctions on Azerbaijan for a military assault that the State Department previously said it would not countenance.

“We feel very alone and abandoned,” said Zohrab Mnatsakanyan, Pashinyan’s former foreign minister.

That is not a good position to be in for a country in the South Caucasus, a volatile region of the former Soviet Union where the destiny of small nations has for centuries been determined by the interests and ambitions of outside powers.

“Mentally, we live in Europe, but geographically, we live in a very different place,” said Alexander Iskandaryan, director of the Caucasus Institute, a research group in Yerevan. “Our neighbors are not Switzerland and Luxembourg, but Turkey, Iran and Azerbaijan.”

This tough and predominantly Muslim neighborhood has meant that Armenia, intensely proud of its history as one of the world’s oldest Christian civilizations, has traditionally looked to Russia for protection, particularly since the 1915 Armenian genocide by the Ottoman Empire, a perennial enemy of the Russian Empire.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Armenia in 1992 joined a Russian-led military alliance offering “collective security” and expanded close economic ties with Russia forged during the Soviet era. There are, by some estimates, more Armenians living in Russia than in their home country, which gets two-thirds of its energy from Russia.

These intimate bonds, however, have now frayed so badly that some supporters of Pashinyan fear that Russia wants to capitalize on public anger and daily protests in Yerevan over the loss of Nagorno-Karabakh to try to topple the Armenian leader for having let U.S. troops in to help train his army.

The training mission was small and lasted just a few days, but that, along with other outreach to the West by Pashinyan — including a push to ratify a treaty that would make Russian President Vladimir Putin liable for arrest on suspicion of war crimes under a warrant issued by the International Criminal Court should he visit Armenia — infuriated Moscow.

“They blew it out of all proportion,” said Mnatsakanyan, because “in their view, you are either their stooge or an American stooge.” Armenia, he said, never had any intention of “jumping to America.”

“That is childish,” he added. “Playing simplistic geopolitical games, allowing ourselves to be the small change in global competition, is going to be at our cost.”

But the cost for Armenia, whatever its intentions, has already been high and could get much higher if, as many fear, Azerbaijan, with support from Turkey and a wink and a nod from a distracted Russia, expands its ambitions and tries to snatch a chunk of Armenian territory to open up a land corridor to Nakhchivan, a patch of Azerbaijani territory inside Armenia’s borders.

Benyamin Poghosyan, the former head of the Armenian Ministry of Defense’s research unit, said Azerbaijan’s conquest last week after more than three decades of on-off war in Nagorno-Karabakh “is not the end; it is just the start of another never-ending story.”

Pashinyan has so far weathered noisy, daily protests outside his office that show little sign of gaining momentum — to the frustration of pro-Russia activists like Mika Badalyan, a journalist and agitator, who warned Wednesday that “we have very little time.”

“All the talk about constitutional methods and impeachments,” he told his followers on the Telegram messaging app, “must be forgotten; Nikola will only be demolished by the street.”

Russian state media has frothed with bile against the prime minister, routinely described as a traitor to his people and to Russia, and against the United States for feasting, in Moscow’s view, on Russia’s travails in Ukraine to lure away its friends. “American jackals,” screamed Sergei Karnaukhov, a commentator on state television.

Tatul Hakobyan, an Armenian journalist who has known the prime minister for decades and meets with him regularly, said Russian state media and senior officials like former President Dmitry Medvedev were “openly supporting people in Armenia who want to topple Pashinyan.” But Putin, he added, has yet to show his hand.

Many Armenians blame Russian inaction for the loss of Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijan, accusing Moscow of abandoning its small ally in pursuit of bigger economic and diplomatic opportunities offered by Turkey and Azerbaijan.

That Russia would realign its priorities in favor of a former Soviet satrap like Azerbaijan or Turkey, which it has long viewed as an impertinent interloper into former Soviet lands, is a sign of how much the war in Ukraine has rearranged and shrunk Russia’s horizons.

“Azerbaijan and Turkey suddenly became a lot more important to Russia than we are because of the war in Ukraine,” Poghosyan said. “Russia is busy in Ukraine, and it doesn’t have a lot of interest in us.”

In a bitter speech last weekend to mark Armenia’s independence day, Pashinyan said responsibility for the suffering of tens of thousands of terrified ethnic Armenians fleeing their conquered enclave lies “entirely” with Azerbaijan and “on the peacekeeping troops of the Russian Federation in Nagorno-Karabakh.”

Armenia, he added, “has never betrayed its allies,” but “the security systems and allies we have relied on for many years have set a task to demonstrate our vulnerabilities and justify the impossibility of the Armenian people to have an independent state.”

For some of the more than 75,000 ethnic Armenians who had fled Nagorno-Karabakh by Thursday, the explanation for their plight is simple: Unlike Azerbaijan, Armenia has neither large reserves of oil and gas nor control of vital transport routes to Iran, an important source of weapons and other support for Russia in Ukraine.

“They succeed because they have oil and they buy everyone,” said Naver Grigoryan, a Nagorno-Karabakh musician who joined a cavalcade of cars and trucks carrying refugees into Armenia. “We have nothing. We can only talk.”

Azerbaijan’s energy resources have also made it a vital partner for the European Union, whose hunger for energy as it tries to wean itself off deliveries from Russia make autocratic Azerbaijan a “reliable, trustworthy partner,” as a high-ranking EU official said last year.

The EU has condemned Azerbaijan’s attack on Nagorno-Karabakh but has taken no concrete action.

The Biden administration has stressed in the past that the use of force in Nagorno-Karabakh was “unacceptable.” Nevertheless, in a meeting with Pashinyan in Armenia this week, Samantha Power, the head of the U.S. Agency for International Development, said only that the United States expressed support for his leadership and “reformist government.”

Ashot Manutiyan, a retired mining engineer taking part in the protests against Pashinyan, said he was encouraged by the U.S.’ statements of support for Armenia’s government because they might suggest it was doomed.

“Look what happened to Saakashvili,” he said, referring to the zealously pro-Western former president of neighboring Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvili. “Where is he now? He is sick and in jail.”

He cursed Russia for not intervening to stop Azerbaijan’s attack on Nagorno-Karabakh but said “small countries like Armenia” in Russia’s backyard can’t afford to “poke the bear, especially when it is sick” because of its war in Ukraine.

When Sexual Assault Victims Are More Likely to Be Blamed.
Research examines why some sexual assault victims are blamed for their own victimization.
Reviewed by Tyler Woods

KEY POINTS-
Victim-blaming means ignoring the offender’s role and instead holding the victim responsible for the harm they have suffered.
In a recent study, participants blamed females dressed in red for being sexually assaulted more than those wearing green.
Women with strong just-world beliefs are more likely to blame a victim of assault dressed in red and to believe she deserved the mistreatment.

Whenever something goes wrong, we look for someone to hold responsible, someone to blame, whether others or ourselves.

Sometimes this results in victim-blaming, which means holding a victim at least partially responsible for their mistreatment—based on the assumption that he or she somehow caused the event or deserved the harm.

One example is claiming that a woman’s rape allegations are false. Or to say a rape victim was asking for it because of her revealing dress or flirtatious behavior.

Indeed, research shows that women who have a long history of sexual activity, wear sexy and provocative clothes, or drink heavily are often viewed as more culpable for the assault.

But might blame attribution also be affected by the color of a woman’s clothing?

An answer is provided by Brown and collaborators, whose research was published in the April 2023 issue of the Scandinavian Journal of Psychology.

Their investigation explored the link between victim-blaming and the color of the victim’s clothing (green versus red).

Investigating Victim-Blaming and the Color of Clothing
Sample: Two hundred twenty-one undergraduate students (155 women) from the Northeastern U.S.; the average age of 20; 45 percent Caucasian.

Methods and Measures
Target attire: Participants were instructed to read a vignette describing a woman who “experienced an attempted sexual assault from a man she met at a party after ‘flirting passionately’ with him and leaving the party together.”

They were also presented with the individual’s picture, which showed a young Caucasian female with her face blurred (purportedly to protect her identity).

About half the sample saw her wearing a red shirt; the other half saw her wearing green.

Target evaluation: The pictured woman was evaluated regarding her interest in sex (i.e., sexual receptivity) and blameworthiness for being sexually assaulted.

To assess just world beliefs, the Belief in a Just World Scale was used (e.g., “I feel that people get what they deserve”).

Blaming the Rape Victim Dressed in Red
Blame attribution, the results showed, “was higher when the target wore red.” Interestingly, this was true “only among female perceivers.” Why?

One explanation involves competition and intrasexual rivalry.

Namely, other women may perceive the choice of red clothing as a show of sexual intent. Therefore, they see the woman in red as a potential competitor or threat to their own intimate relationships and behave with hostility toward her.

This hostility can take many forms, such as trying to damage the woman in red's reputation or, if she experiences assault, engaging in victim-blaming.

The data also suggested victim-blaming attributions were “most apparent among women with heightened just-world beliefs.”

Just-world beliefs may “serve to maintain women’s sense of control in group living based on the implicit assumption that sociosexually unrestricted women are more likely to be victimized.”

Note: Unrestricted sociosexual orientation refers to having a greater interest in casual sex.

Another finding was that men’s just-world beliefs did not influence their tendency to find the woman in red at fault. Why?

Perhaps men are already more likely than women to blame a rape victim and believe she “was asking for it” or “should have expected it, dressed like that.”

Or maybe the extent of just-world beliefs plays a smaller role in victim-blaming than intrasexual competition.

From an evolutionary perspective, relationships with sexually assertive and promiscuous women may also threaten men's power and control. For instance, such a relationship increases paternity uncertainty (i.e., not knowing if a child born to their female partner is their own).

Takeaway
The color red tends to make women more attractive to men, but it appears to affect blame attribution in sexual victimization as well.

Specifically, the study by Brown et al. found:
Female victims dressed in red (rather than green) are more likely to be blamed for experiencing sexual assault.
Both men and women perceive female individuals who wear red clothing as signaling sexual receptivity.
Victim-blaming is most apparent among women who believe in a just and fair world.

One explanation of victim blaming is female intrasexual competition (e.g., mate attraction, mate guarding).
It is important to be aware of the effects of a woman’s attire on culpability judgments in cases of sexual assault and rape so that we can treat all victims with fairness, sensitivity, compassion, respect, and dignity. And not to excuse or justify criminal conduct.

ANGER-
Bitterness: What Is Its Function?
We focus on its effects but not its neural basis or its function.
Reviewed by Gary Drevitch

When I enter “bitterness” into Google or PubMed, I receive a long list of articles and research into the taste sensation not the emotional or psychological state. I have to specifically enter the not command for sweet and taste to find a few articles on the destructive state of bitterness. On PubMed, articles refer more to the basic science of aversive states on emotional memory than specifically on bitterness; for example, Likhtik and Johansen’s abstract in Nature Neuroscience:

“While the role of excitatory and inhibitory neural circuits mediating emotional learning and its control have been the focus of much research, we are only now beginning to understand the more diffuse role of neuromodulation in these processes. Recent experimental studies of the acetylcholine, noradrenaline and dopamine systems in fear learning and extinction of fear responding provide surprising answers to key questions in neuromodulation.”

Although researchers have not focused on brain injury anger — that specific type of anger that arises out of neurophysiological injury — they have studied the brain areas involved in anger, yet without differentiating between its many forms. I suspect that each anger type would light up different pathways, one for the sense of outrage at injustice, another from one’s life being threatened, another at seeing a person being assaulted.

Clinicians who work with people who’ve suffered brain injury know that neurostimulation and/or neuromodulation release the person from brain injury anger and eradicate the constant irritation that’s like nails on chalkboard from any kind of sensory stimuli from a passing car to a person’s voice. When rebooting, repairing, and rewiring the brain through neurostimulation eliminates the type of anger that flashes on and flashes off and exists without any ability to control it, then you know it’s neurophysiologically based.

In The Brain's Way of Healing, Norman Doidge defined neuromodulation as an “internal method by which the brain contributes to its own healing. It quickly restores the balance between excitation and inhibition in the neural networks and quiets the noisy brain.”

Neurostimulation can trigger neuromodulation. Since neurostimulation includes using our sensory inputs, our environment and relationships are also a form of neurostimulation. And while Doidge talks about the healing effects, the brain’s same internal neuromodulating mechanism can also harm. Bruce Perry wrote in What Happened to You that, among “those three ‘components’ of trauma, the three E’s — the event, the experience, and the effects — PTSD is about the effects.”

We see trauma effects, including bitterness, even when we’ve missed seeing the precipitating event or the changes in the brain’s wiring. We see bitterness as an emotional state and attribute it to attitude or mental illness. UK-based Harley Therapy echoes other therapists on their blog: “the emotional reaction and mood of bitterness is referred to as ’embitterment’. It is an emotional state of feeling let down and unable to do anything about it.” They cite Michael Linden’s theory of it being a mental disorder, calling it "post-traumatic embitterment disorder," and stating “bitterness can lead to long term psychological distress.”

But isn’t bitterness inherently distressing? As Christopher Lane wrote, “bitterness strikes the person feeling it as a justified response to a social ill or personal wrong.”

Does bitterness emerge after damage to particular neurons or neural networks? Does the damaging event need to be physical, or is emotional or psychological trauma the kind of event that precipitates bitterness? Does it arise more easily in those with learned helplessness than in those whose brains have rewired to act in the face of seeming lack of control? Are there different forms of bitterness like there are of anger?

Most importantly, what is bitterness’s function?
Anger allows us to express ourself when facing injustice or oppression; it initiates action to protect another; it’s a safer way to express our distress than deep sadness or grief as the latter makes us feel vulnerable whereas anger feels protective.

Thinking about the latter, what does bitterness do for us? Perhaps it protects us from feeling the deep psychic pain from betrayal, abandonment, or intentional harm because to feel that pain would render us immobile and unable to eat, sleep, look after ourselves, engage with others.

I've written that “I became bitter when it finally penetrated my brain that doctors…who treat brain injury are simply not interested in thinking outside the box, in learning from non-MDs, in working alongside their patients.” In other words, the medical profession abandoned me to a catastrophic injury and I stopped believing I could escape that shock.

Maier and Seligman have updated their understanding of learned helplessness, as I wrote: “Prolonged exposure to trauma keeps [default neural] pathways, and thus passivity and fear or anxiety, active. For a person with brain injury, already overwhelmed by the injury and fatigue, this could add to or look like no motivation and continual anxiety…discovering one can escape shock creates the learned state.”

What happens, though, if a person has not learned, or has unlearned, that one can escape shock and experiences abandonment, betrayal, or trauma so profound that the psychic pain is unendurable? What if that person’s brain remains in the default passive state, which manifests as not believing one has any control while believing that another has full control over them and has abandoned them? Bitterness may function then as a protective mechanism against the resulting intense lacerating psychic pain.

These are the questions researchers have yet to delve into. While psychologist, pastors, and self-help experts impose guilt or labels for feeling bitter, researchers are barely studying the neural correlates of bitterness or its function. When we understand these, clinical researchers could develop effective therapies that combine neuromodulation with training the brain to learn it can escape shock and with talk therapy based on the principle of establishing a stable relationship between professional and client that counters abandonment. For ultimately, bitterness arises out of damage to one or many relationships.

Ready or Not, Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy Is Happening.
How do we make sure we don’t cause greater harm?
Reviewed by Kaja Perina

KEY POINTS-
There is still much ground to cover in ensuring proper regulation around psychedelic-assisted therapy.
Human trials for these new substances typically involve testing people who are already vulnerable; therefore, trauma-informed care is pivotal.
Identifying harms and focusing on new and safe solutions should be our goal, clearing a path for the true healing potential of psychedelics.
The world isn’t ready for psychedelic-assisted therapy.

Don’t get me wrong: If you know me, you’re aware my life has been devoted to finding and developing cures for undertreated health problems, focusing on innovations in cannabinoid and psychedelic compounds. The message of hope that psychedelics might be the healing the world has been waiting for is not lost on me: I’m a believer in it, and I’ve seen enough to keep the fire lit—in my own research as well as the studies and progress of my peers.

As a scientist, I can see a great horizon ahead, one of powerful solutions discovered, changed lives, and the potential eradication of certain diseases.

A Dark Side
But there is a well-reported dark side to the work of those advancing psychedelic research, and it is one that is very challenging to resolve. We are not only dealing with progress and possibility but also with human psychology, with the mind: the most unchartered territory left for humanity.

There is still so much we do not understand about trauma and mental illness, and—when it comes to psychedelic-assisted therapy—still too many cracks in the floorboards for abuses to slip by unnoticed and fester.

One can note the human trials for these new substances typically involve testing people who are already vulnerable: whether suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), sexual-assault victimization, or depression. They hope psychedelics can help them heal, and they’ve tried everything else. If retraumatization is to be avoided, there has to be as much attention paid to the regulation of therapies as there is to the development of the drugs themselves.

And, I would add, here’s where we run into an unfortunate issue: We’re not there yet. The therapeutic component of psychedelic-assisted therapy is still in nascent form when it comes to testing and instituting proper regulations.

Let’s look at Oregon, for example. Just this year, the state became the pioneering first to legalize both the manufacture and administration of psilocybin, with the caveat that the drug must be administered under the supervision of a facilitator.

The Oregon Health Authority began accepting applications for Psilocybin Service Facilitator licenses on January 2, 2023, and the requirements were simple: You have to be an Oregon resident of 21 years of age or older with a high-school diploma or equivalent and a criminal background check, then you have to complete 160 hours of training and 40 hours of hands-on experience in their psilocybin facilitator training program, finalized by an exam that determines your eligibility. Once you pass, you’re in. No other mental health treatment experience or trauma-informed care is required.

Trauma-Informed Care
And there are plenty of reasons why trauma-informed care is pivotal. Whether it comes to inappropriate touch between therapist and client in the gray space of consent in drug-induced therapies, the variety of therapeutic approaches permitted but not necessarily tested, or insufficient care and follow-through after the trials themselves, there is still much ground to cover in ensuring proper regulation around psychedelic-assisted therapy.

And time is running out.


Come July of this year, Australia will recognize and allow the prescription of psilocybin and MDMA for the treatment of certain mental health conditions. The Multidisciplinary Association of Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) announced pending U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval for MDMA as a treatment for PTSD as early as 2024. Ready or not, psychedelic-assisted therapy will happen. And our actions now will determine whether it will be the force of healing it's anticipated to be or yet another avenue of harm.

Now, I wouldn’t be true to my roots as a scientist if I didn’t highlight one further possibility, and a question that has motivated my own research: Can we create a truly safe psychedelic medicine, not dependent on a therapeutic setting? I ask this because, among the many reports of ethical and sexual misconduct related to psychedelic-assisted therapy, the abuses hinge on the actual therapy rather than the psychedelic itself.

I first heard about the novel compound MEAI (5-methoxy-2-aminoindane) in 2020. At that point in time, the evidence from use of the drug was anecdotal but powerful. I heard stories of countless individuals and families who were drinking MEAI along with alcohol, and finding that, after taking MEAI, their desire for alcohol simply…stopped. There was no therapeutic component. There was no talking about it. They just didn’t want to drink anymore.

In preclinical trials, we tested the molecule on rodents that were addicted to alcohol and cocaine. Not only were the MEAI-treated mice able to stop their addictive behavior, but there was also evidence to suggest that the molecule did not trigger a strong sense of “reward,” which researchers use to determine whether a substance is addictive. Furthermore, the molecule showed no signs of organ damage or harm—quite the opposite: In obese rodents, metabolic function significantly improved, and we also saw changes in energy expenditure, fat storage, and glucose utilization to promote weight loss.

There are promising research initiatives going on in the field right now, working to take the high out of psychedelics in order to remove some of the potential obstacles keeping a lot of folks away from these drugs. Whether or not the “trip” is the true lynchpin of psychedelic healing experiences is being questioned, and new solutions discovered, tested, and regulated.

I got into the field of psychedelic research and development because I truly believe in the healing available here. But we can’t shy away from shining light into the dark corners of our industry. Identifying harm does not mean regression—rather, it’s a way of moving forward with open eyes, clearing a path for the true potential of this movement to bring safe and effective health solutions to the world.

RESILIENCE-
Covid Long Haulers Show Us How to Transform Healthcare.
The lived experience of disease is a power tool for developing effective care.
Reviewed by Hara Estroff Marano

KEY POINTS-
Covid long haulers built a thriving community in the midst of the pandemic.
Patient-led research could transform medical research across diseases.
Ordinary people facing a death-defying problem can leverage science and democracy to create a better society for all.
On a cold night in February 2021, I lay in the dark in my parents’ basement, worried that illness might be my permanent future.

It was months after Covid struck me and stayed with me. The disease felt like a phantom demon was clawing out my nervous system. Each night my 69-year-old mother gave me a massage. It felt like she was squeezing energy back into my dying muscles.

Just over a year earlier, I had written the story with the highest reader engagement of any story CNN published in 2019. And it came during a big year for the biggest online news outlet in the world. Buoyed by a string of chart-topping stories, I had plunged directly into covering the pandemic. It felt like the most exhilarating time in history to be a science writer.

Then, nine months in, the virus got to me. I still wasn’t better months after I had tested positive. Long Covid is often discussed as fatigue and brain fog. However, it’s better described as a total deadness of the body, in which one’s ability to create energy feels compromised, down to the cellular level. And I felt like it was impossible to form a coherent thought at all.

I was just 31 years old and used to commanding an audience of millions of readers. But I wondered whether I’d ever write again.

I was used to running four miles a day. Now, my 66-year-old father had to wait patiently by when I was out of breath walking five houses down the street.

My brain couldn’t handle the stimulation of looking at a computer screen. I sat still, cautiously scrawling words in a notebook, describing my days with just the slightest sliver of energy and focus, all that I could muster. They became a chapter of my book The Long Haul, the drive at the heart of the story, a story about the millions living with the long-term effects of Covid-19 and their potential for changing the healthcare system forever.

“People don’t buy what you’re selling,” best-selling author Simon Sinek says in a famous TED Talk. “They buy why you’re selling it.”

I am selling a hope for science and democracy at a time when these ideas are being tested to the breaking point. I am selling it because I believe these ideas have helped save my own life. And I believe a patient revolution—like the one that brought attention to long Covid in the first place— ought to transform all of healthcare.

Start with Why
Thirteen years before the pandemic, a junior in high school, I was a student council president in a small town in middle Georgia. I came down with a mysterious post-viral disease.

More than a dozen doctors couldn’t even find a diagnosis, let alone a treatment. After six months the answer became myalgic encephalomyelitis, or chronic fatigue syndrome, often called ME/CFS.

During sleepless nights I scoured online forums, which told me that the disease was under-researched, there were no treatments, and I could expect to be disabled for decades. Reading those words established the plot of my young life.

I lay in bed reading the memoirs of a young senator from Illinois, Barack Obama. He was mounting a long-shot presidential campaign, speaking of the “audacity” of hope. He was a hero to root for when irrational hope against cynicism was the only thing that felt real in my own life, too.

In those quiet moments in the dark, I constructed a new self. To write is to build one’s own soul on the page.

The greatest accomplishment in my life is that I’ve since fully recovered from ME/CFS, thanks in large part to an incredible family, a brilliant doctor, relentless patience, and dogged adherence to a robust treatment protocol.

But now, tens of millions around the world are falling sick in exactly the same way from long Covid. And most don’t have the benefits I’ve had, or a community of fellow patients to build them up.

I wrote about my recovery, first in 2012 in an op-ed for USA Today, and then later barnstorming the country after college to produce a feature-length documentary about ME/CFS called Forgotten Plague. I landed a job at CNN. Sitting alone at a computer station after work in a TV control room in 2015, I dialed into a video call. I joined the first-ever board meeting of a new nonprofit called the ME Action Network.

I was intoxicated by the vision of my fellow innovative patients around the country. We were propelled by a community desperate for answers. The organization we founded was designed to “ignite a global revolution in ME care.” We were powered by digital tools pioneered by alumni of the Obama campaign and sought to bring a 21st century organizing sensibility to disrupting the most severe and prevalent disease you’ve never heard of.

We painstakingly built the organization over the next four years. Then a global pandemic broke out. The science showed that more than 10% of those infected with the novel coronavirus could develop debilitating effects for months or years after. And no one was talking about it.

At ME Action, we knew this global health emergency was a greatest opportunity to reimagine and transform care for a dozen post-infectious diseases, including ME/CFS and Lyme. Our advocacy movement would help educate new Covid long haulers on how to manage their condition early on so that they might avert the disablities plaguing those in the ME/CFS community.

When long Covid hit me, I started reliving the nightmare I thought I’d escaped. As I regained function, the words poured out of me.

The Power of Community
Hundreds of studies show significant disruptions across a dozen organ systems in Covid long haulers. But because the disease is “new” and hasn’t been covered in medical schools, clinicians don’t have a set algorithm or protocol to follow when treating patients. Often the symptoms are bewilderingly complex. Most patient experience some degree of gaslighting, with doctors telling them that symptoms were “all in the head.”

Public health leaders originally declared that Covid would be deadly for a select few but pass by in a couple weeks for everyone else. When their expected recoveries didn’t materialize, tens of thousands of patients piled into the online Body Politic support group. Peer support from a community of sufferers was exponentially better than anything else on offer.

The “body politic” is a term long used by political philosophers referring to the mass of citizens that comprises a state. It’s a has resonance for a bottom-up movement of patients pushing for innovation and care—a fusion of science and democracy. Sitting at the nexus of lived experience and scientific expertise, the patient revolution they have started is a model for thinking about problem-solving across society.

Experience has shown me that expertise is greatest in the community living with the issue. After my documentary film was released, I joined the Stanford Medicine X community as an ePatient Scholar. Whether the conditions was narcolepsy, diabetes, or glioblastoma, patients voiced a common refrain: “I am alive today because of a patient community.”

With 1 in 4 people in the world living with some kind of disability, there’s tremendous untapped opportunity for building alliances around shared need and forging new forms of power forcing science forward because lives hang in the balance.

Those with the lived experience of a disease end up being the most effective problem-solvers. And there’s a movement galvanizing around that powerful idea.

Believing in Hope
One of my heroes is patient-physician-scientist David Fajgenbaum, the author of Chasing My Cure: A Doctor’s Race to Turn Hope into Action. As a medical student, he nearly died five times from Castleman disease, a rare autoimmune condition in which the body wages an all-out assault on itself. But he experimented on himself and found that a widely available drug could save his own life. Now he’s applying that same vision and drive to repurposing drugs for other diseases and may have unlocked a methodology to save millions. Faigenbaum's story of turning hope into action is a powerful reminder that hope is the most important tool of science, the spark that gets the impossible done.