If youre feeling generous and want to save some lives

The auction is OVER! Thanks to you and your bids, we raised several hundred dollars for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.

We have one more giveaway still open until MIDNIGHT tonight (10/6, 11:59pm EST, to be precise)

You get one entry for every one dollar you donate.

The prizes are kind of neat.

I know my first book hasn't come out yet, but I do have 7 under contract, so if you win, that's what you'll get from me. My Guards of the Shadowlands series from Amazon Children's Publishing, Scan and Burn from Putnam/Penguin, and Factory Ghost (plus another book) from McElderry/Simon & Schuster.

Also, I won't be able to offer full manuscript critiques once my book is published, so if you're interested in getting a thorough crit from a soon-to-be-multi-published author who has a doctorate in psychology, this is your chance. :)

I can also tell you that Justine is a pretty good critiquer herself--she's read all of my manuscripts and always makes them better.

OH, AND EVERY DOLLAR YOU DONATE WILL FUND SUICIDE PREVENTION.

If you want to donate, enter here ... and send your email receipt to dell(dot)justine(at)gmail(dot)com:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Financial crash got you anxious Youre not alone

A recent NYT article discusses anxiety in the face of financial peril. Anecdotally:

Anne Hubbard has not lost her job, house or savings, and she and her husband have always been conservative with money.

But a few months ago, Ms. Hubbard, a graphic designer in Cambridge, Mass., began having panic attacks over the economy, struggling to breathe and seeing vivid visions of "losing everything," she said.

She "could not stop reading every single economic report," was so "sick to my stomach I lost 12 pounds" and "was unable to function," said Ms. Hubbard, 52, who began, for the first time, taking psychiatric medication and getting therapy.

In Miami, Victoria Villalba, 44, routinely slept eight hours a night until stories of desperate clients flooding the employment service she runs began jolting her awake at 2 a.m. No longer sleepy, she first began to respond to e-mail, but that caused sleeping colleagues' BlackBerrys to wake them, so now she studies business books and meticulously organizes her closets...

...Elizabeth Dewey-Vogt, 25, a paralegal whose bills and shrinking overtime made her move in with her parents in Alexandria, Va., said she began "constantly worrying about finances," and having panic attacks, "rapid heart beat, choking sensation, chills or sweating, numbness and tingling in my fingers," and feeling "almost removed from my body."

Ms. Dewey-Vogt said that she now took anxiety medication, and that a therapist advised her to pull over or "concentrate on the license plate ahead" if she began panicking while driving and to grip on the handles of her chair when panicking at work.

And statistically:

In an American Psychological Association poll in September, 80 percent reported the economy's causing significant stress, up from 66 percent last April. The National Sleep Foundation said 27 percent of people surveyed last fall had sleeplessness because of economic anxiety.

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline calls jumped to 50,158 in January 2009 from 39,465 a month in January 2008, and economic stress more frequently "played a central role," said Richard McKeon, the group's federal project officer...

And while a New York Times/CBS News poll found fewer people saying the economy had worsened, most did not think it was improving. People overwhelmingly thought the recession would last another year or more, and 70 percent were concerned that a household member would be jobless.

Of course, shame is an essential part of what the newly anxious are experiencing:

"I'm embarrassed," [Villalba] said. "Normal people aren't doing this."

...Ms. Hubbard, knowing "financially we were fine," said she believed "I shouldn't feel like this, I'm lucky." She cried visiting her primary doctor, who recommended therapy and medication, hard to accept, she said, because her Depression-era parents believed "you pull yourself up."

"I felt like a neurotic middle-class, middle-aged woman too weak to deal with life on my own," she said. "I should be stronger, it was simply money, and why do I have to take pills to not worry about money."

Guess what, lady? Maybe you are neurotic and unable to deal with life on your own. If so, so what? It's a big club you're joining.