Counseling

Poor Jeff Zaslow. In high school, some bully stole his favorite sneakers and wouldn't give them back. In college, his dream date confessed that there were only three guys she'd ever been interested in--and he wasn't one of them. He's painfully insecure. "All my life I've wanted to be liked," he confessed. "I'm not Willy Loman but I've always wanted people to think I'm a nice guy." This guy needs some advice. This guy needs Ann Landers. No, wait a minute, this guy is Ann Landers.

The newly formed SAG-AFTRA board of directors has confirmed David White as the merged union's sole national executive director. The national board of SAG-AFTRA voted overwhelmingly Sunday to select White for the job, approving a new three-year contract. White, the former Screen Actors Guild executive director, was expected to assume the new position as the chief administrative officer for the union of about 160,000 members. He had been serving as co-national executive director with former American Federation of Television and Radio Artists leader Kim Roberts Hedgpeth, who announced last month that she was resigning.

Deep in the Sequoia National Forest stood a collection of unlikely campers. The boys, most no older than 14, wore basketball sneakers, baggy shorts, faded T-shirts and unmistakable chips on their slender shoulders. There was 12-year-old Joshua of Oxnard, who smiles politely at adults but had his first fistfight only a few hours after arriving at camp. His brother Jack, 14, was willing to give the forest thing a try.

Twenty years ago, they came to Dr. Man Chul Cho suffering from symptoms of hwa-byung, the "anger sickness" of Korean folklore: They couldn't sleep, felt anxious and depressed, had muscle aches and stomach pains. They had survived the riots, but couldn't forget. Some were considered fierce defenders -- they'd battled looters in public shootouts. Others had been all but invisible, pleading vainly for help from police while their shops burned. They were so angry, bewildered and frightened that they were willing to buck custom and culture and trust a stranger for therapy.

Twenty years ago, they came to Dr. Man Chul Cho suffering from symptoms of hwa-byung, the "anger sickness" of Korean folklore: They couldn't sleep, felt anxious and depressed, had muscle aches and stomach pains. They had survived the riots, but couldn't forget. Some were considered fierce defenders -- they'd battled looters in public shootouts. Others had been all but invisible, pleading vainly for help from police while their shops burned. They were so angry, bewildered and frightened that they were willing to buck custom and culture and trust a stranger for therapy.

The last time you saw your doctor, were you conseled about diet and exercise? If not, it could be because he or she didn't think they had sufficient training to do so. In a study published online in the journal Preventive Cardiology , trainee physicians and more experienced attending physicians were asked about their lifestyle habits and also whether they thought they had received adequate training in counseling patients about diet and exercise....

Weight-loss programs offering support via telephone and the Web work about as well as in-person counseling to help obese people lose weight, a study has found. Two intervention programs were compared with a control group in the two-year study released today in the New England Journal of Medicine , in which 415 obese men and women participated. They were randomly placed in a weight-loss program that offered support remotely, via the Web, telephone and email; in a two-year program that included in-person support in addition to the remote support; or in a control group that encouraged independent weight loss.

A new community counseling center that will serve as "an emergency room for troubled youth and families" in the Burbank area opened Tuesday to the applause of officials who said the services will be an important community addition. The Burbank Outreach Center, 348 E. Orange Grove Ave., will be operated by a team that includes a Burbank police detective, a Los Angeles County probation officer and two Burbank Unified School District child welfare and attendance specialists.

Ventura County officials want to expand a program to help employees deal with feelings of loss and anger in the face of up to 400 layoffs by county government. On Tuesday, Personnel Director Ronald Komers will ask county supervisors to beef up the county's counseling services, a move that will cost $20,000 to $30,000. So far, he said, 100 county employees have been notified or targeted for layoff. Another 204 Fire Department employees have been told they could lose their jobs.

Increasing free small business counseling services in the San Fernando Valley is the goal of the newly appointed president of the Small Business Development Center of North Los Angeles County. Lance Stevenson, who took over as president last month, said Tuesday that he will seek more funding to increase outreach services by the organization, which is funded by the state and U. S. Small Business Administration.

A team of government lawyers prosecuting Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska never fully reviewed evidence that could have bolstered his defense, was inadequately supervised, and withheld information that would have "seriously damaged the testimony and credibility of the government's key witness," a special counsel said in a report released Thursday. But Washington lawyer Henry F. Schuelke III stopped short of urging criminal misconduct charges against the prosecutors because, he said, the judge in the case never specifically ordered prosecutors to turn over material helpful to the defense.

The walls are bare and the bedroom is still missing a television, but Thomas Simmons couldn't be prouder of his new home. "It's all mine," the 35-year-old says, looking around. "My couch, my bed, my gas stove. It's finally mine. " For nearly a decade, the veteran of Afghanistan lived in homeless shelters and in his car, wandering from Georgia to Nevada to California, his clothes crammed in his trunk and his life in disarray. He was among the estimated 7,400 veterans who are homeless in Los Angeles County — battling post-traumatic stress, substance abuse, alcoholism and mental issues.

The Supreme Court, ruling unanimously in the case of a convicted Orange County murderer, said Monday that death row inmates did not have a right to a last-minute switch of lawyers after years of legal wrangling. But the court also left the door open for a change "in the interest of justice. " And the case of Kenneth Clair, the convicted murderer, may show the need for just such a change. In 1984, Clair was a homeless man in Santa Ana who had been charged with several burglaries.

In just over a year, more than 3,000 of Los Angeles County's most entrenched street dwellers and homeless veterans have moved into permanent homes, exceeding the targets of an ambitious plan launched by business and philanthropy leaders. But backers of the effort warn that more people are ending up on the streets as troops return from Iraq and Afghanistan and the region's economic difficulties persist. Surveys conducted early last year found that the number of homeless veterans in the county had increased from about 7,400 to more than 9,100 in two years.

Question: My homeowner association board hired attorneys to rewrite the bylaws, which as a result are now longer and more complex and incomprehensible than our CC&Rs. No homeowners voted on these changes. We didn't even know changes took place until a year later when the document was circulated. This year I noticed a section in the new bylaws: "Approval of IRS Resolution. The board may approve an IRS Resolution that any excess income for the current year shall be applied to the next fiscal year, as provided by IRS Revenue Ruling 70-604.

While Jesse Bravo was being treated for schizophrenia at White Memorial Medical Center last year, his wife, Laura, called the hospital daily and visited him several times. But when hospital officials decided to discharge him, Laura Bravo said, they didn't notify her and instead left him outside a rehabilitation center in South Los Angeles. She said her husband, who is not homeless, never went inside and spent days on the streets before being found. "Not knowing where he was was very scary," she said.

People upset by Sunday's fatal crash during the El Toro Air Show can attend any of several group counseling sessions being offered this week by the Orange County chapter of the American Red Cross. Red Cross spokeswoman Judy Iannacone said the agency received as many as a dozen calls per hour on Monday from people who had witnessed the crash or seen footage of the fire on television. "Anybody that's had anybody that they lost . . . in a plane crash, this brings that up again," she said.

The Emeritus College at Santa Monica College will offer a free program designed to help women deal with the death of their husbands. The Widow-to-Widow Support Group will meet from 1 to 3 p.m. for 16 Thursdays, starting Sept. 11, at the United Methodist Church, 1008 11th St. Phyllis Solow, a gerontologist, will direct the group. Registration information is available by calling (213) 452-9306.

Diabetics who receive regularly scheduled monthly care to learn how to improve their health have a more rapid recovery compared with similar patients who receive only sporadic healthcare visits, according to new research. The study, published Tuesday in the journal Diabetes Care , shows in stark contrast the difference between engaging patients in their own care and leaving them to their own devices. Researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston looked at data from more than 30,000 people with diabetes and who had high blood glucose, high blood pressure or high cholesterol.

Of all the hangovers from the George W. Bush years, the thorniest may be what to do about the U.S. military prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. There are still 171 detainees at Guantanamo and little consensus on what to do with them. Last spring, President Obama announced the resumption of military trials for some of those charged with participating in the 9/11 attacks. These trials, known as military commissions, have been stalled for years by legal challenges. Recently, the official in charge of the Guantanamo prison, Rear Adm. David Woods, issued a draft order that compounds these challenges.