A long shot.

That is what it's like for Sylvia Harris trying to live life on her terms.

It's a long shot because she has struggled with manic depression for most of her adult life. Her distempered days were filled with the hallmark symptoms of the sometimes crippling disease -- extreme highs and spiraling lows -- making it impossible for her to deal with life's daily challenges.

Frequently, she found herself trying to quiet the voices in her head with alcohol, Lithium and Buddhist chanting. But that was until Harris found relief through work as a horse groomer, then as one of few African American female jockeys. She became the second black female in the U.S. to win a major thoroughbred horse race.

She recounts her story in the newly released heart-wrenching memoir Long Shot: My Bipolar Life and the Horses Who Saved Me.

The mother of three who lives in Wilmington, Del., told BlackVoices.com that she decided to tell her story because she wants readers to know they do not have to be a slave to life's predicaments.

"I wanted people to see that, regardless of the obstacles, you can still succeed,'' she says. "I especially wanted people who suffer from mental illness to know that they don't have to give in to it. They may not be able to cure it, but you can live with it. Never give up, no matter who tells you no, you can't do it.''

Breast Cancer.

Pam Melton-Owens was just 39 when the doctor first uttered those words to her. How could it be? She did not fit the profile. She exercised regularly, had a small build and ate a healthy diet.

But she quickly learned that breast cancer knows no bounds. The diagnosis, however, marked the start of a 10-year-journey that began when her husband Aaron discovered a lump in her left breast. Melton-Owens, 50, said it is important to tell her story during Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

"The next day I called my gynecologist and she immediately did a clinical exam,'' said Melton-Owens, a mother of two who lives in Charlotte, N.C. "We did a mammogram and the doctor determined it needed to be reviewed. That next week, I went to a surgeon who performed a biopsy.

"That's when I got the report that it was cancerous,'' she continued. "That's also when the Lord whispered to me that it wasn't about me. It was about the journey. Since then, it's been an amazing journey and I have become a better person. It's amazing how it changes your life. It changed mine for the better. I look for more ways I can help other people. I've taken the focus off myself.''

Las Vegas Police recently announced that murder-suicides are on the rise because of "a bad economy."

Last month, a 29-year-old unemployed South Carolina mother, sent shockwaves across the nation when she confessed to committing filicide when she killed her two sons because she had no means of taking care of them.

And the mayor of an affluent Dallas suburb reportedly killed her 19-year-old daughter before turning the gun on herself in the face of financial distress, including almost losing her home to foreclosure.

Indeed, these are tough economic times. And mental health professionals report that people are growing increasingly desperate and calling hotlines for help.

Terrie M. Williams, author of 'Black Pain: Real Talk For When There's Nowhere to Go But Up' and a licensed clinical social worker, told Black Voices that today's economic environment is when people vulnerable to depression or those who are depressed need to take the extra steps to seek mental health treatment.

Anyone who has seen Louis Gossett Jr. on the big screen knows him to be a strong character actor, from his award-winning role as the unflinching Marine Gunnery Sergeant in 'An Officer And a Gentleman' to the example of a longtime happily married man in 'Why Did I Get Married, Too.'

So it is unfathomable to think that nearly two years ago, doctors told him he had only six months to live. Gossett suffered from deadly toxic mold poisoning from his home. Later, he discovered he had prostate and kidney cancer through routine screening. The actor writes about triumphing over death in his newly released life-affirming memoir, 'An Actor and A Gentleman.'

In an effort to fight the AIDS epidemic, President Barack Obama this week unveiled a new national strategy to help reduce the number of newly infected people and improve access to health care for those living with the disease and the HIV-virus.

"The United States will become a place where new HIV infections are rare and when they do occur, every person, regardless of age, gender, race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, or socio-economic circumstance, will have unfettered access to high quality, life-extending care, free from stigma and discrimination,'' reads a portion of the introduction of the report, "National HIV/AIDS Strategy: Federal Implementation Plan,'' released following more than 10 months of input from people around the nation.

The strategy calls for an annual reduction of new HIV infections by 25 percent (from 56,300 to 42,225) by 2015. Also within the next five years, the administration plans to increase the proportion of newly diagnosed patients linked to clinical care within months of their HIV diagnosis from 65 percent to 85 percent (from 26,824 to 35,078 people). Additionally, officials aim to increase the proportion of blacks with undetectable viral load by 20 percent.

Lupus. Those five letters hurled Wendy Rodgers' life into a tailspin 10 years ago when she was first diagnosed with the chronic autoimmune inflammatory disease that causes the immune system to mistakenly attack the body's own healthy cells and tissue as if they were bacteria or viruses.

At 27, she lost her hair, suffered from painful and swollen joints, kidney problems and outsized fatigue, among other symptoms. She was so crippled by the disease that she quit work. Her husband left, unable to care for sick wife after just a year-and-a-half of marriage, she said. And Rodgers, who taught sixth-grade math and science, had lost her will to live.

But in an epiphanic moment, she embraced life like a newborn baby when she thought of her daughter whom she had at 16.

"I lost the ability to walk,'' she told Black Voices. "I even planned my funeral. I had doctors tell me that it was my last night on earth and I should just make myself as comfortable as possible. But when I thought about my daughter and realized I wanted to be here for her, I made it through. I found my strength through her. My teenage pregnancy turned out to be a blessing in disguise.''

Today, Rodgers tells her compelling story as the spokeswoman for the Lupus Awareness Campaign called "Could I have Lupus,?' a partnership with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service's Office on Women's Health and the Ad Council.

The residue of certain pesticides found on fresh produce in the United States and Canada increase the odds of children developing attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) by 35 percent, according to a recently released study.

About 4.5 million children, ages 5 to 17, have been diagnosed with ADHD, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and rates of diagnosis have risen by 3 percent a year between 1997 and 2006. The prevalence of medication treatment for ADHD is highest among children aged 9 to 12.

Exposure to the pesticides, organophosphates, has been linked to behavioral and cognitive problems in children in the past, but previous studies have focused on communities of farm workers and other high-risk populations, according to CNN.com.

Obese children in grades 3 to 6 are likely to be bullied because of their weight, even if they have good social skills, according to CNN Health, citing a new study.

Obese children were 65 percent more likely to be bullied than their peers of normal weight; overweight kids were 13 percent more likely to be bullied, although that finding was not statistically significant, according to the article, which quotes a study released last week in the journal Pediatrics.

Researchers from the University of Michigan in Ann Harbor, who conducted the study, followed over 800 children from 10 cities across the nation born in 1991.

"When we started this study, I really suspected that we might find that obesity or being overweight might not be the driving force,'' said Julie Lumeng, M.D. a professor of pediatrics and lead author of the study to CNN Health. "What we found is that it didn't matter. No matter how good your social skills, if you were overweight or obese you were more likely to be bullied.''

Pregnant women negotiating the rocky landscape of poverty tend to gain weight and endure more medical complications, particularly gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) than those who are better off financially, according to a recent study in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association.

Household food insecurity which is the inability to obtain nutritious and safe foods on a regular basis, is increasingly recognized as an independent risk factor for many poor women. Prior studies have demonstrated that paradoxically, women living in food insecure households report higher rates of being overweight and related health complications, the report says.

School breakfast, lunch, summer programs and subsidized meals for Women, Infants and Children (WIC) are vital to the health and well-being of the nation's children and adolescents, despite claims of links to obesity, according to an updated report.

Approximately one in six infants, children and adolescents live in homes that experience limited food supply, and half of all children participate in at least one nutrition assistance program during their first five years of life, according to the American Dietetic Association (ADA), which last week published an updated position paper on nutrition assistance for children to review the program's effectiveness.

"Without these programs, millions of infants, children and adolescents in the U.S. may not reach their full developmental potential," says the report, written by Jamie Stang, Ph.D., associate professor in the School of Public Health at the University of Minnesota and Cynthia Taft Bayerl, nutrition coordinator at the nutrition physical activity and obesity program, Massachusetts Department of Public Health.