The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle users, you can also get them as a Readlist.
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A disorder triggered by the common strep virus may be causing psychiatric symptoms in children, or it might not exist. Inside the controversial “Pandas” diagnosis:
Candi went into full-tilt research mode. The sensory stuff clicked, but from there she wound up on a site that may just as well have been tailor-made for Reagan. Every symptom matched. On these forums, it was as if every kid was Reagan and every scared and helpless mom was Candi. Some of the symptoms even went beyond Reagan’s, including anorexia, depression, age regression, violent rage.

Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle users, you can also get them as a Readlist.
Sign up to receive this list free every Friday in your inbox.
* * *

Here’s a reading list exploring Disney’s more than 80-year grip on popular culture—the animation, the music, the princesses, and the parents killed off in the First Act. Read more…
A look at new findings on postpartum depression and maternal mental illness:
In New York, State Senator Liz Krueger has introduced a bill to encourage screening and treatment, a proposal that will most likely pass and be approved by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, who vetoed a 2013 bill on technical grounds but encouraged the revised legislation.
Jeanne Marie Johnson, in Oregon, may have benefited from state laws encouraging awareness of postpartum mental illness. At her daughter, Pearl’s, two-week pediatric checkup, Ms. Johnson received a questionnaire. Her answers raised red flags and were forwarded to her midwife and a social worker. Ms. Johnson also called a number for a hotline the hospital gave her after a panic attack.
She saw a social worker, but resisted taking medication for months. Afraid to be alone with Pearl, she would insist her mother come over when her husband was out. “I called the doctor hotline constantly,” with nonexistent concerns, “because if I was talking on the phone I wouldn’t do anything harmful.”
Part Two: A Case Study
A new generation of entitled politicians may not have struggled much. So they’re stealing from their elders.
Candidates have been spinning Horatio Alger stories since the days of Horatio himself, or probably even the days of Great-Great-Grandpa Alger, who for all we know worked his nails to the nub scrubbing the decks of the Mayflower. But politicians of the 20th century were far more likely to have actually struggled than today’s crop — they might have fought wars, grown up during the Depression or at least worked in a family store or on a farm. They were also less likely to have attended college or, if they did, were more likely to have helped pay for it themselves. Harry Truman, who graduated from only high school and fought in World War I, rode a compelling “story” of an Everyman “give ’em hell Harry” who transcended a run of failed business ventures. John Kennedy’s war-hero status mitigated his privileged family background.
An exploration of the way other cultures treat depression:
And I said, “Oh! What an interesting idea. Well, um, yes, sure. Yeah, absolutely, yes, let’s do that. I’ll have an ndeup.”
“Oh, well, that’s great,” she said. And she gave us some fairly basic instructions, and then we left.
And my translator, the aforementioned then-girlfriend, now ex-wife of my friend, turned to me, and she said, “Are you completely crazy? Do you have any idea what you’re getting yourself into? You’re crazy. You’re totally crazy, but I’ll help you if you want.”

In a piece for Psychology Today, a man with hypochondria attempts to understand his disorder.
Painting: Court of Death via Wikimedia Commons

For four years now, the Longreads community has celebrated the best storytelling on the web. Thanks for all of your contributions, and special thanks to Longreads Members for supporting this service. We couldn’t keep going without your funding, so join us today.
Earlier this week we posted every No. 1 story from our weekly email this year, in addition to all of the outstanding picks from our Best of 2013 series. Here are 10 stories that we couldn’t stop thinking about.
See you in 2014. Read more…
From Charlie Chaplin to the pantomime clown Joseph Grimaldi, a look at the link between depression and comedy:
Chaplin had hoped to cultivate the mind of his young wife, which he found “cluttered with pink-ribboned foolishness.” According to Harris, this meant he read long, boring books out loud and rehearsed the tragic roles he harbored secret ambitions to play. Mildred once mistook something he said for a joke and began to laugh, but soon realized her error as he flew into a fury and called her names. When they divorced in 1920, on grounds of mental cruelty, she received $200,000. “It has been said that a comedian is only funny in public,” she complained to the Washington Times. “I believe it. In fact, I know it. Charlie Chaplin, who has made millions laugh, only caused me tears.”
An incredible story about the system failing our children—through the eyes of one of New York’s 22,000 homeless children:
Dasani’s own neighborhood, Fort Greene, is now one of gentrification’s gems. Her family lives in the Auburn Family Residence, a decrepit city-run shelter for the homeless. It is a place where mold creeps up walls and roaches swarm, where feces and vomit plug communal toilets, where sexual predators have roamed and small children stand guard for their single mothers outside filthy showers.
It is no place for children. Yet Dasani is among 280 children at the shelter. Beyond its walls, she belongs to a vast and invisible tribe of more than 22,000 homeless children in New York, the highest number since the Great Depression, in the most unequal metropolis in America.
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