‘Tis the season to be jolly … except no matter how hard you tried, you couldn’t seem to get cheerful. You made it through the holidays, but your depression hasn’t gone away. Better yet, you feel even more tired, lonely and hopeless.

Holiday music often sends this message that the season is full of happy times. But as a therapist, I see a different side of the holidays that the music doesn’t share. Holiday music doesn’t share how horribly painful it is for many people: It could be from relationships on the rocks to lonely nights, from deep sadness to money problems.

New blood donation regulations screening donors based on sexual history rather than sexual orientation have been implemented in Mexico, making it the first country in North America to end its ban on men who have sex with men donating blood.

The new regulations came into effect Dec. 25 and now means any HIV and Hepatitis negative gay or bisexual man who has a history of safe sex and is not a sex worker or injecting drug user may donate blood.

The rule was approved in August and then published in the Official Journal of the Mexican Federation on October 26.

We live in a truly golden age of medicine. Sure we have problems, and lots of room for improvement and advancement, but think about it. There is tremendous understanding about the cause of chronic disease, the influence of family history and genetics, and the ability to alter and reverse illness with medication.

We can scan a body with a machine and see the curves, shapes and density of every organ and vessel. It seems, though, that in this golden age, the population would be in a “golden state of health.” Unfortunately that is not quite the case.

A team of scientists at the Center for the AIDS Program of Research in South Africa (CAPRISA) found that two South African women infected with HIV were able to produce antibodies that neutralized and killed 88% of known strains of the virus.

Penny Moore, one of the lead scientists of the study published on Sunday in the journal Nature Medicine, said: ‘We're hoping we can use this information to develop a vaccine that prompts the body's immune system to make broadly neutralising antibodies’.