Those without mental health issues equate their feelings of sadness to those of someone with depression, when in reality this is like comparing a small paper cut to a broken arm. This characterization is entirely misguided however, as mental health issues are not a "First World Problem" but instead a problem which has the potential to affect all humans regardless of class, race, gender, or ethnicity.

Tim Knight writes the regular media column, Watching the Watchdog, for HuffPost Canada. Two hundred and thirty-seven years ago the people of the Unit...

I planned to write about Christmas today. Specifically, what I want for Christmas. But it doesn't seem right when that's not at all what caught my attention this week. What's in my head and my heart, on my Facebook feed and Twitter stream, in my inbox and in so many conversations I have had is the horrors and devastation from the Newtown, Connecticut shootings of last Friday.

Nancy Lanza -- mother of Connecticut shooter Adam Lanza -- is dead. And it's not the time and place to criticize her as an anomaly, some sort of freakish survivalist, when in fact she was a participant in a broader gun culture that should be getting our serious attention. When such shootings happen, however, it is far easier to blame one individual woman for being a "bad mother" who created a "monster" than to acknowledge that some aspects of society in general might be bad and in need of changing. Where does the real instability lie?

Being a US citizen, I can't help feeling smug about choosing to live in Canada where the gun culture is not so alive and well, along with a sense of despair about how deeply entrenched it is in the US. But then, being an observer of brands and myths and icons, I wonder why this event had such a powerful impact on me, and on the rest of the world. Of course, it's a lot of people, and mainly children. But why is the killing of "innocent" children so much worse than the killing of thousands of people caught in the violence in Syria? Or young urban males shooting each other every day all over the US? It can only be that we feel those other victims are somehow partly to blame for getting killed.

In the small rural Harrold Independent School District in northwest Texas, some teachers are allowed to be armed with guns — a controversial policy ...

We live in a world much like the world that Christopher Nolan built. Only without Batman. There are Bruce Waynes all around us. And anyone can be that symbol. While we don't have a silent guardian watching over us, we do have heroes like Victoria Soto. While nothing can right this horrible wrong that has been done to our collective humanity, we should be comforted by the fact that a 27-year-old teacher was willing to lay down her life to save the lives of her students.

I have two boys. They like to turn their fingers into guns, their toast into bayonets and the household firewood into rifles. For a while I was worried that banning guns in the home made them more desirable, like our North American drinking restrictions. But now I think it's simply part of that Y chromosome. So it's up to me as a parent to teach responsibility and empathy.

Just now we are getting to know the people behind the numbers. Twenty-six dead, but who are they? The stories of immense courage are coming out, teachers running toward the sound of gunshots, some shielding children with their bodies. I don't know if anything can make this worse, but that this happened at a time of year that fills that age of innocence with such excitement and wonder just adds another level of heartbreak.

The events in Newtown sparked a lot of discussion on gun control and the media's representation of children following violent events. However, as is the case with most well-covered human tragedies, mental health discourse was decidedly missing from the reporting. "Evil visited this community today," the Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy said following the shooting. Such words are not uncommon following acts of violence, but their prominence still made me cringe. I have to ask, whose "evil" are we talking about when we classify this tragedy as such?

Shock, disbelief and tears have flooded us, after the Newtown, Connecticut slaying of 20 primary school children aged 5-10 years old. Although it's easy to be blindsided by the heinous crime that took place, let's ask ourselves if the same could happen at our child's school -- and what steps can be taken to prevent a similar tragedy?

Relatives of a 6-year-old girl who was among the 20 children killed in a shooting massacre at a Connecticut elementary school on Friday say her family...

NEWTOWN, Conn. -- Investigators tried to figure out what led a bright but awkward 20-year-old to slaughter 26 children and adults at a Connecticut ele...

What exactly is so "unthinkable" about Friday's school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, when it almost seems to happen on a regular basis? There is public outpouring of "sentiment" across all forms of social media and then...Nothing. It's time for the supposedly sentimental to drop the notion that this is not the moment for discussion, but rather the time for emotion and prayer. President Obama should not be crying, the flag should not be lowered; they ought to do away with temporary sentimentality, and finally take action regarding gun control. After all, with so many of these types of tragedies under their belt, shouldn't the Americans be rather immune to this sort of thing?