Seasonal depression hits for me, like clockwork, the day after Halloween.

According to a psychiatric assessment done in the course of his South African trial, Oscar Pistorius was not mentally ill when he shot and killed his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp last year. Pistorius's trial was put on hold in May so that he could undergo the assessment.

A woman in Pennsylvania was imprisoned for failing to pay a debt to the state. And then she died in her cell.

I've never dispatched a wrathful bird to destroy a pig. Sometime around 2010, I blocked FarmVille et al. from my Facebook News Feed and never looked back. But last week I stayed up an hour past my bedtime because I thought I had the Dots "hot hand."

Everybody hurts sometimes — even Gwyneth Paltrow.

For its December 5 issue, Time Magazine is running a cover story in the U.S. titled "Why Anxiety Is Good for You." They thought you should know that your frazzled, overworked or underemployed, recession-tempered emotional state will eventually produce personal benefits. You just have to be patient.

Depressed college kids! Depressed video game kids! Depressed adults! Depressed B12! Depressed tooth decay! Depressed ginger! Depressed surgeons! Depressed ladies! It's your Tuesday Health Watch, where we watch your health—quite happily, thank you!

A group of psychologists believe that emotional insecurity may actually be a survival advantage. So now you can blame evolution for the fact that you've never had a relationship last longer than six months. Thanks, Charles Darwin!

Arise from your stupor, Americans: it's a list of the Top 25 Psychiatric Meds of 2009! Are you feeling depressed, anxious, and panicked? Join the club. You're probably snoozy and suffering certain sexual side effects, too.

We've already debated the merits of various benzos and prescription amphetamines, and now Crain's is reporting that anti-anxiety prescriptions are up because of "uncertainties brought on by the financial crisis." Sure, honey.

"The year was punctuated by anxiety over the decline of many newspaper book review sections and worry that publishing, with its old-fashioned way of printing books on paper and shipping them to stores or to online services, can't keep up with a fragmented, increasingly distracted and digital world," according to the LA Times, which was one of many newspapers that cut back or altered its book review coverage in 2007. Another problem was that there just weren't that many exciting books this year, according to Times Book Review editor Dwight Garner: "There was a lot of excitement about books by major writers... But all of them were mild disappointments." But wait, there's hope!