Many of the articles we all enjoy on Psych Central are reports on the latest psychological research. Chuck and I spend many hours keeping up to date daily by belonging to a comprehensive listserve run by fellow psychologist Ken Pope. He sends out news and opinions from a wide variety of sources. One article that he sent out last week from the June issues of Science was quite fascinating.

The article brought up a concern that many of us are vaguely aware of but don’t really spend too much time thinking about. The problem is simply who are the people being studied in all of those psychological research studies? How do the studies recruit and retain people to participate in the research? And are the conclusions that the studies make generalizable to the rest of the world?

The economy continues to crank out bad news. Today’s statistics about home sales were dismal. Housing sales last month were the lowest since 1963. That’s pretty bad. Experts are starting to speculate that the poor housing market could push the economy into a double dip recession which, if it occurs, would mean that many more people could easily lose their jobs.

Don’t get us wrong; there’s not currently a consensus about this bleak outlook, but it is gaining credibility among some analysts. Furthermore, I am no economist and have no real idea what is going to happen to the economy in the coming months and years!

Our colleague, Ken Pope passes along articles of interest to a large list of professionals. One of the articles he recently sent was titled “Psychological intervention provides enduring health benefits for women with breast cancer.”

The article was quite interesting and contained findings, that if replicated, could be extremely important and promising to women diagnosed with breast cancer. The authors indicated that women receiving psychological intervention for stress reduction reported reduced stress and improvements in emotional distress as compared to those who did not receive the intervention.

Chuck and I have been having lots of fun recently doing talk radio shows across the country. A second edition of Overcoming Anxiety For Dummies was released last month and people are pretty interested in the topic of anxiety. We especially love radio interviews because we can stay home; work in our sweats, and we enjoy talking about anxiety.

We’ve had lots of experience working with anxious people, writing about anxiety, and having experienced a reasonable share of anxiety ourselves.

However, our preparation for these radio interviews is pretty intense.

Most people who have problems with anxiety delay doing anything about it for a long time. That might seem odd to those without such problems since it’s obvious that no one likes feeling tense, worried, and anxious. Anxiety erodes the quality of one’s life. Why in the world would someone not want to do something about it?

It turns out that there are lots of reasons for struggling to get the show on the road. In writing Overcoming Anxiety For Dummies (2nd Edition) we took a page from David Letterman, late-night-talk-show host, and listed the top ten reasons (read that “excuses”) people have for procrastinating rather than moving ahead with their anxiety problems:

What if on the same day you read that a massive sink hole swallows a three story building, stocks decline as the euro hits a new low, pirates shoot at innocent people fishing on a lake, countries across the sea threaten war with potential nuclear consequences, another explosive fight goes on in the middle east, and vast amounts of oil spew out into the Gulf of Mexico threatening the lives and livelihoods of residents, becoming the worst environmental disaster of our time?

That’s just a spattering of world news today. Anyone would be anxious. It’s no wonder people are worried, there’s a lot to be worried about. And for good reason.

Is that why anxiety disorders among children and adults continue to soar?