Cases of swine flu, or H1N1, are climbing and spreading to more states.  At least 141 people in the U.S. have been infected, and one Mexican boy visiting Texas has died.  Many more cases will be diagnosed—likely many thousands—before the spread of the illness ebbs.  Public health officials and journalists warn of a pandemic, an epidemic of infectious disease that sweeps across a large geographic area, such as a continent, or around the whole world.
 
The toll of this new flu may turn out to be disastrous, but there’s no current evidence that a calamity is brewing.  Thus far, every American who has contracted the illness has survived.  Even if there turns out to be 250,000 cases this year, the number will still be dwarfed by the toll of diseases like cancer, heart disease, diabetes, asthma, depression and alcoholism on our population.
 
What the 141 cases of H1N1 flu have already proven, however, is how vulnerable we are to panic.  Americans are on edge, uncertain about the economy and uncertain about the direction our President is leading us.  Ultimately, for all but those with the steadiest of nerves and most solid sense of self, we are a nation collectively experiencing a sense of impending doom—one of the hallmarks of panic disorder.  H1N1 may or may not cause serious physical suffering for our population, but its emergence will cause serious psychological suffering for a nation already traumatized by deep doubts about whether the solutions to our collective problems reside in bailouts, embracing dictators and apologizing for our national shortcomings.
 
 Some might say that connecting our reaction to H1N1 flu to the economic crisis and cultural crisis at hand is too great a leap, that we are as steady on our feet emotionally as a population as ever.  I don’t think so.  I’ve been at my work 16 years, seeing adults and adolescents facing every imaginable twist and turn of fate.  Never before I have seen as many individuals who feel disempowered, unable to mount any resistance (words intentionally chosen) to the stressors impacting them.
 
Our psychological resistance to trauma of any kind is down right now.  That’s one reason that Air Force One flying low near Ground Zero was such a grand faux pax:  It re-traumatized thousands of people who don’t have emotional bandwidth to spare.  It’s even possible that our psychological stress could reduce our resistance to physical illnesses, including H1N1.
 
 It’s time for a real public health initiative, rolled out through private health care providers and, perhaps, community health educators, that targets two certain epidemics already sweeping the nation:  anxiety and depression.  They may not be spread by coughing and sneezing, but they have the capacity to paralyze us emotionally and cost our nation dearly.

Dr. Keith Ablow is a psychiatry correspondent for FOX News Channel and a New York Times bestselling author. His newest book, “Living the Truth: Transform Your Life through the Power of Insight and Honesty” has launched a new self-help movement. Check out Dr. Ablow’s website at livingthetruth.com.

Barack Obama’s historic election as president caps an unprecedented campaign that broke through racial and socioeconomic barriers and has changed America forever.  His victory will fuel the self-esteem and hopes of many millions — not only minorities, but all those who yearn for the kind of interconnectedness that can only be achieved when each of us is judged for his or her inherent potential, not prejudged by prejudice of any kind. 
Obama’s victory also comes at a time when truth and reality are under assault on many fronts.  Americans are suffering the fallout of economic fictions that took hold of the mortgage and banking and financial management industries, much as they once distorted the valuations of Internet companies.  The Internet itself and other technologies—like instant messaging—are cleaving us from the human nuances of face-to-face and even voice-to-voice communication.  We are using prescribed medications at ever-increasing rates to quiet our unwieldy anxiety and mood swings and insomnia and distractibility.  Illicit drug use is up, transporting increasing numbers of young people away from the facts of their lives, toward illusion.  We are trading off insight for more and more potent doses of entertainment—obsessively tracking the chaotic (and often staged) lives of celebrities—rather than dealing with the real complications of our own lives.  And we are editing our life stories into made-for-the-Web “profiles” that require that we become editors and broadcasters of who we are. 

Many times over the past two years, I worried that the presidential election, too, had been captured by a desire to escape our pressing realities and entertain ourselves.  The protracted length of the campaign, the vast amounts of money spent on advertising and even the convergence on the world stage of high drama candidates—including (but not limited to) a former president’s wife (and U.S. Senator), a black man born to parents from Kansas and Kenya and a little-known, plainspoken female governor from Alaska—made the election feel like the kind of battle a television producer or screenwriter would contrive. 

Barack Obama’s eloquence moved people—for real.  But his good looks and youth and facility with language also created a kind of dream state of devotion in listeners, the way a movie star can.  He captivated a large percentage of American voters not only with his ideas, but with his delivery of those ideas.  The message and the messenger and the media through which both flowed became one very potent force. 

It is unfortunate that Sarah Palin looks so much like Tina Fey, if only because that contributed to the entertainment value of the election.  It is unfortunate that Barack Obama had nearly unlimited funds to script his message and ended with a closing volley of 30-minute television portraits that some criticized as “infomercials.”  It is unfortunate that Joe the Plumber was anointed a political force, when his moniker sounds more like one that would work for a spokesperson in an ad campaign for something to unclog your pipes.  And, going back further, it is troubling (but only as regards our confusion between fictional drama and our real lives) that Fred Thompson, a former U.S. Senator turned actor (he played a prosecutor on TV), was center stage in the Presidential race for a time.

There is indeed something about this moment in time that feels a little like watching a made-for-TV-movie or feature film of this moment.  And that sort of psychological confusion—if anything but very temporary—could spell trouble.  It does indeed invite (as vice president-elect Joe Biden noted) “tests” of character from those who question to what extent our leaders are genuine and courageous and grounded, and to what extent they are acting the part.

Dealing with Russia’s belligerence and Iran’s destabilizing agenda and the economic crisis are only some of the challenges that will move this American President from leading man, in the eyes of many, to proven international leader.  That journey is about to begin.  Success holds the promise of transporting the country and the world closer to the truth and justice and, ultimately, to greater strength and stability.  Failure could cost all of us dearly.

Dr. Keith Ablow is a psychiatry correspondent for FOX News Channel and a New York Times bestselling author. His newest book, “Living the Truth: Transform Your Life through the Power of Insight and Honesty” has launched a new self-help movement. Check out Dr. Ablow’s website at livingthetruth.com or e-mail him at info@keithablow.com.

According to the latest Gallup Poll, Barack Obama’s selection of Joe Biden as his pick for vice president hasn’t yielded the bounce most candidates enjoy after announcing their running mates.  In fact, the poll shows the opposite:  McCain has erased Obama’s lead and is now ahead, 46 percent to 44 percent. 

Psychologically, the drama of a candidate for president teaming up with another leader to do battle in the last months of the election should provide a burst of enthusiasm among voters, however short-lived.  The Democratic National Convention, playing like rock music in the background, should add plenty of fuel to carry more people into the next chapter of the Obama-Biden story.

Engagements and weddings and political conventions are times for unbridled optimism.  The audience, which includes the American public in this case, is predisposed to believe that human beings joining together can be much more than any single person could ever be alone, that the glistening start of a partnership predicts sure success. 

But something is wrong, and I think I know what it is.  The Barack Obama story itself is the stuff of big, big dreams.  We’ve watched a first-term U.S. Senator capture the imagination of the nation with eloquence unparalleled in recent times, harking back to the kind of excitement John F. Kennedy generated.  We’ve watched him defy the odds again and again, to stand at the zenith of the Democratic Party.  He has stood, in fact, somehow above and beyond traditional politics, a larger than life figure, a phenomenon.  Those who embrace him hope for—maybe even expect—miracles from him.

So it should come as no surprise that selecting a respected, tested running mate like Joe Biden would slow Obama’s momentum a bit.  While the choice may reassure voters that a steady hand with vast experience will be helping chart a course through increasingly stormy economic and political seas, it also reminds us that Obama is himself a politician facing momentous challenges.  Joining hands with a longtime U.S. Senator anchors Obama, and voters, to reality.  It brings Obama back down to earth.  It makes him seem human, where he once seemed superhuman.

Only one pick would have taken Obama further beyond the normal gravity of the political universe:  Hillary Clinton.  In inviting his former rival onto the ticket, in trying to help bring the first female vice president into the White House, he would have been reaffirming the notion that he cannot be defined or limited by tradition or expectation.  He would have been saying that he could achieve anything.

Hillary Clinton joining hands with Obama was the chapter that many Americans had already written into their collective imaginations, and those imaginary pages had much more energy than the real ones we’re reading about Obama and Biden.

As we wind our way toward November, Obama has come face-to-face with this reality:  America’s expectations of a phenomenon are quite different than its expectations of a candidate.  They are limitless.  And they require constant feeding. 

Dr. Keith Ablow is a psychiatry correspondent for FOX News Channel and a New York Times bestselling author. His newest book, “Living the Truth: Transform Your Life through the Power of Insight and Honesty” has launched a new self-help movement. Check out Dr. Ablow’s website at livingthetruth.com.