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After-birth Depression Blamed for1 Woman"s Suicide
A new mother apparently suffering from postpartum mental illness fell to her death from a narrow 12th-floor ledge of a Chicagohotel, eluding the lunging grasp of firemen called to help.
The Chicago Tribune2 reported Tuesday that the mother of a 3-month-old daughter, Melanie Stokes，41，was said to be suffering from+ a severe form of after-birth depression called postpartum psychosis，an extremely rare biological response to rapidly changing hormonal levels that can result in4 hallucinations, delusions, severe insomnia and a drastic departure from reality.
"That was a monster in my daughter"s brain,” said Stokes’ mother, Carol Blocker. “The medicine took no effect at all, while her grief was so strong that nothing could make up for it.5 I"m just glad she didn"t take her daughter with her. ”
Virtually all new mothers get postpartum .blues, also called the "baby blues6"，which are brief episodes of irritability, moodiness and weepiness. About 20 per cent of birthing women experience postpartum depression, which can be triggered by hormonal changes, sleeplessness and the pressures of being a new mother. It is often temporary and highly treatable.
But The Tribune said what scientists suspect Stokes was battling, postpartum psychosis, is even more extreme and is considered a psychiatric emergency.7 During postpartum psychosis — a very real disorder that affects less than 1 percent of women, according to the National Institute of Mental Health8一 a mother might hear voices, have visions, feel extremely agitated and be at risk of harming the child or herself.
Often the consequences are tragic. In 1987，Sheryl Masip of California told a judge that postpartum psychosis made her drive a Volvo over her 6-week-old son. Latrena Pixley of Washington, D. C.9，said the disorder was why she smothered her 6-week-old daughter in 1992. And last year,Judy Kirby，a 31-year-old Indianapolis10 mother allegedly suffering from postpartum psychosis，sped into oncoming traffic11 and plowed into12 a minivan，killing seven youngsters， including three of her own.
词汇：
postpartum/ ˌpəʊst"pɑ:təm/adj. 产后的
grief / gri:f/n.不幸，灾难
ledge/ ledʒ/n. （自墙壁突出的）壁架；架状突出物
blues / blu:z/n.忧郁，沮丧
elude/ ɪ"lu:d/vt.（巧妙地）躲避，逃脱；困惑，难倒
irritability / ˌɪrɪtə"bɪlətɪ/n.急躁，易怒；兴奋性；过敏
moodiness / "mu:dɪnəs/n.喜怒无常，易怒；忧郁
weepiness 好哭，欲哭
lunge / lʌndʒ/vi.冲刺，猛向前冲
depression/ dɪ"preʃn/n. 抑郁症
psychosis 精神病
agitated/ saɪ"kəʊsɪs/adj. 焦虑不安的，激动的
hormonal/ hɔ:"məʊnl/adj. 激素的
smother / ˈsmʌðə(r)/v.使窒息，使憋死
hallucination / həˌlu:sɪˈneɪʃn/n.幻觉
allegedly/ ə"ledʒɪdlɪ/adv. 根据（人们）宣称
delusion / dɪˈlu:ʒn/n.妄想
insomnia / ɪnˈsɒmniə/n.失眠症
drastic/ ˈdræstɪk/adj. 激烈的；极端的
plow / plaʊ/n.犁，刨；破浪前进
minivan/ ˈmɪnivæn/n. 微型货车
注释：
It was considered fortunate by Stokes’ mother in the miserable event____
A:that Stokes had died in a Chicago hotel B:that firemen had been called to help Stokes C:that Stokes had been taking the prescribed medicines D:that Stokes had not taken her daughter with her
Joy William’s quirky fourth novel The Quick and the Dead follows three 16-year-old misfits in an abnormal Charlie’s Angels set in the American south-west. Driven unclearly to defend animal rights, the girls accomplish little beyond curse: they rescue a wounded ox and hurl stones at stuffed elephants. In what is structurally a road novel that ends up where it began, the threesome stumbles upon both cruelty to animals and unlikely romance. A mournful dog is killed by an angry neighbor, a taxidermist falls in love with an 8-year-old direct-action firebrand determined that he pays. for his sins. A careen across the barely tamed Arizona prairie, this peculiar book aims less for a traditional storyline than a sequence of noisy (often hilarious) conversations, ridiculous circumstances, and absurdist scene. The consequent long-walk-to-nowhere is both the book’s limitation and its charm.
All three girls are motherless. Fiercely political Alice discovers that her parents are her grandparents, who thereupon shrivel: "Lie had kept them young whereas the truth had accelerated them practically into oldness." Both parents of the sorrowful Corvus drowned while driving on a flooded interstate off-ramp. The mother of the more conventional Annabel ("one of those people who would say, We’ll get in touch soonest’ when they never wanted to see you again") slammed her car drunkenly into a fish restaurant. Later, Annabel’s father observes to his wife’s ghost. "You didn’t want to order what I ordered, darling." The sharp-tongued ghost snaps back: "That’s because you always ordered badly and wanted me to experience your miserable mistake."
Against a roundly apocalyptic world view. the great pleasures of this book are line-by-line. Ms. Williams can break setting and character alike in a few slashes: "it was one of those rugged American places, a remote, sad-ass, but courageous downwind town whose citizens were flawed and brave." Alice’s acerbity spits little wisdoms: putting lost teeth under a pillow for money is "a classic capitalistic consumer trick, designed to wean you away at an early age from healthy horror’ and sensible dismay to greedy, deluded, sunny expectancy."
Whether or not the novel, like Alice. expressly advocates animal rights, an animal motif crops up in every scene, as flesh-and-blood "critters" (usually dead) or plain decoration on crockery. If Ms. Williams does not intend to induce human horror at a pending cruel Armageddon, she at least invokes a future of earthly loneliness, where animals appear only as ceramic-hen butter dishes and extinct-species Elastoplasts. One caution: when flimsy narrative superstructure begins to sag, anarchic wackiness can grow wearing. While The Quick and the Dead is sharp from its first page, the trouble with starting at the edge is there is nowhere to go. Nevertheless. Ms. Williams is original, energetic and viscously funny: Carl Hiaasen with a conscience.
The second paragraph tells us ______.
A:the miserable life of the girls B:the girls’ parents are growing old C:social contradiction and circumstances the girls live in D:the backgrounds of the story and the heroines
Sometimes it’s just hard to choose. You’re in a restaurant and the waiter has his pen at the ready. As you hesitate, he gradually begins to take a close interest in the ceiling, his fingernails, then in your dining partner. Each dish on the menu becomes a blur as you roll your eyes up and down in a growing panic. Finally, you desperately opt for something that turns out to be what you hate.
It seems that we need devices to protect us from our hopelessness at deciding between 57 barely differentiated varieties of stuff-be they TV channels, gourmet coffee, downloadable ring tones, or perhaps, ultimately even interchangeable lovers. This thought is opposed to our government’s philosophy, which suggests that greater choice over railways, electricity suppliers and education will make us happy. In my experience, they do anything but.
Perhaps the happiest people are those who do not have much choice and aren’t confronted by the misery of endless choice. True, that misery may not be obvious to people who don’t have a variety of luxuries. If you live in Madagascar, say, where average life expectancy is below 40 and they don’t have digital TV or Starbucks, you might not be impressed by the anxiety and perpetual stress our decision-making paralysis causes.
Choice wasn’t supposed to make people miserable. It was supposed to be the hallmark of self-determination that we so cherish in modem society. But it obviously isn’t: ever more choice increases the feeling of missed opportunities, and this leads to self-blame when choices fail to meet expectations. What is to be done A new book by an American social scientist, Barry Schwartz, called The Paradox of Choice, suggests that reducing choices can limit anxiety.
Schwartz offers a self-help guide to good decision-making that helps us to limit our choices to a manageable number, and ultimately derive greater satisfaction from the choices we make.
But once you realize that your Schwartzian filters are depriving you of something you might have found enjoyable, you will experience the same anxiety as before, worrying that you made the wrong decision in drawing up your choice-limiting filters. Arguably, we will always be doomed to buyers’ remorse and the misery it entails. The problem of choice is perhaps more difficult than Schwartz allows.
We can infer that the author’s attitude towards choice is that______.
A:the more choice we have, the more freedom we can enjoy B:endless choice has only made us more miserable C:it is easy for people to make a wrong decision with few choices D:before we make decisions, we want as many choices as possible
Joy William’s quirky fourth novel The Quick and the Dead follows three 16-year-old misfits in an abnormal Charlie’s Angels set in the American south-west. Driven unclearly to defend animal rights, the girls accomplish little beyond curse: they rescue a wounded ox and hurl stones at stuffed elephants. In what is structurally a road novel that ends up where it began, the threesome stumbles upon both cruelty to animals and unlikely romance. A mournful dog is killed by an angry neighbor, a taxidermist falls in love with an 8-year-old direct-action firebrand determined that he pays. for his sins. A careen across the barely tamed Arizona prairie, this peculiar book aims less for a traditional storyline than a sequence of noisy (often hilarious) conversations, ridiculous circumstances, and absurdist scene. The consequent long-walk-to-nowhere is both the book’s limitation and its charm.
All three girls are motherless. Fiercely political Alice discovers that her parents are her grandparents, who thereupon shrivel: "Lie had kept them young whereas the truth had accelerated them practically into oldness." Both parents of the sorrowful Corvus drowned while driving on a flooded interstate off-ramp. The mother of the more conventional Annabel ("one of those people who would say, We’ll get in touch soonest’ when they never wanted to see you again") slammed her car drunkenly into a fish restaurant. Later, Annabel’s father observes to his wife’s ghost. "You didn’t want to order what I ordered, darling." The sharp-tongued ghost snaps back: "That’s because you always ordered badly and wanted me to experience your miserable mistake."
Against a roundly apocalyptic world view. the great pleasures of this book are line-by-line. Ms. Williams can break setting and character alike in a few slashes: "it was one of those rugged American places, a remote, sad-ass, but courageous downwind town whose citizens were flawed and brave." Alice’s acerbity spits little wisdoms: putting lost teeth under a pillow for money is "a classic capitalistic consumer trick, designed to wean you away at an early age from healthy horror’ and sensible dismay to greedy, deluded, sunny expectancy."
Whether or not the novel, like Alice. expressly advocates animal rights, an animal motif crops up in every scene, as flesh-and-blood "critters" (usually dead) or plain decoration on crockery. If Ms. Williams does not intend to induce human horror at a pending cruel Armageddon, she at least invokes a future of earthly loneliness, where animals appear only as ceramic-hen butter dishes and extinct-species Elastoplasts. One caution: when flimsy narrative superstructure begins to sag, anarchic wackiness can grow wearing. While The Quick and the Dead is sharp from its first page, the trouble with starting at the edge is there is nowhere to go. Nevertheless. Ms. Williams is original, energetic and viscously funny: Carl Hiaasen with a conscience.
A:the miserable life of the girls B:the girls’ parents are growing old C:social contradiction and circumstances the girls live in D:the backgrounds of the story and the heroines
Many people catch a cold in the springtime and / or fall. It makes us wonder.., if scientists can send a man to the moon, why can’t they find a cure for the common cold. The answer is easy. There are literally hundreds of kinds of cold viruses out there. You never know which one you will get, so there isn’t a cure for each one.
When a virus attacks your body, your body works hard to get rid of it. Blood rushes to your nose and brings congestion with it. You feel terrible because you can’t breathe well, but your body is actually "eating" the virus. Your temperature rises and you get a fever, but the heat of your body is killing the virus. You also have a runny nose to stop the virus from getting to your cells. You may feel miserable, but actually your wonderful body is doing everything it can to kill the cold.
Different people have different remedies for colds. In the United States and some other countries, for example, people might eat chicken soup to feel better. Some people take hot baths and drink warm liquids. Other people take medicines to stop the fever, congestion, and runny nose.
There is one interesting thing to note--some scientists say taking medicines when you have a cold is actually bad for you. The virus stays in you longer because your body doesn’t have a way to fight it and kill it. Bodies can do an amazing job on their own. There is a joke, however, on taking medicine when you have a cold. It goes like this:
If takes about one week to get over a cold if you don’t take medicine, but only seven days to get over a cold if you take medicine.
When we catch cold, how does our body work hard
A:Our runny nose stops our breath. B:Our temperature rises to make us feel miserable. C:Our blood rushes into our cells. D:Our nose, fever, and blood work together to kill virus.
Section A
There is miserable news that very few people______ the earthquake
A:recover B:survived C:existed D:discovered
Good human relations can solve many problems, but poor human relations can make your life miserable.
良好的人际关系可以解决许多问题，而恶劣的人际关系则让你的生活一团糟。
A:their life is miserable B:they do not live in peace C:their goals are too low D:they are not rich enough by their own standards.
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