Topical Blog Week #14 (Due Thursday)

The news article that I found interesting and applicable to the current chapter we’re focusing on was entitled, “Talae Thomas Allegedly Killed Baby Son, Chase Harrelson, Because 'He Was The Devil.” This article tells the story of a Floridian movie that killed her baby because she believed that he was the devil. She had said that her real baby died in the hospital, and the one she had taken home was the devil. I had related this news story to Carl Rogers’ client-centered therapy, and put this story into the context of how he would treat this woman as a patient.
Realistically, this woman is more than likely suffering from a psychological disorder because of the accusations she had made. If a psychologist practicing client centered therapy were to have her as a client, they would need to establish a good therapeutic environment so she would be able to take control and responsibility of her life. She is not taking responsibility for her actions, and instead blaming it on the devil. This is a very important component to Rogers’ therapy. There is a good chance, because of her family commenting on her motherly personality and her genuinely wanting a child, she would be sent away to an inpatient therapeutic center after pleading insanity. However, without getting her to take responsibility for drowning her child instead of using other justification techniques for her crime, she won’t be able to be successfully reintegrate back into society and function normally.
A good therapeutic relationship has three fundamental components, according to Rogers. In order for a therapist to establish a good relationship with this woman he would need to first be genuine and honest. This would be able to give her a “role model” type figure and motivation to strive to be like them. They would also need to be accepting of her as a person, even if they can’t accept the fact that she killed her five month old son. They need to be able to look past that huge obstacle and avoid labeling her as a “psychopathic child killer.” Lastly, the therapist would need to show empathy for the client. As the book says, “ a reality is the reality as is perceived and experienced by the person.” She genuinely thought her baby was the devil, and had no choice to but get rid of it or raise Lucifer herself. The therapist would need to keep that in mind in order to be able to portray empathy for her as their client.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/26/tale-thomas-killed-baby-son-devil_n_2192310.html?utm_hp_ref=crime

The topic for this blog came from Tuesday's readings. I was thinking about the role and modernizing of clinical psychology right after WWII, and the care they needed to give to returning soldiers. So I looked into PTSD on npr, because I felt that it was a topic that was just as relevant then as it is now. The article I found, "Military Looks to Redefine PTSD, without Stigma", caught my attention because it's refreshing to know that psychology is always redefining something to better fit and treat a client. While it isn’t necessarily the field of psychology that is adjusting the definition of PTSD, it is the military. The current definition identifies that the person suffering responds to their trauma with “fear and helplessness”, which isn’t the case with many armed forces personnel that are struggling with it. According to Elspeth Cameron Ritche, a former Army psychiatrist, normal people react with fear and helplessness, but most people in the armed forces are trained to react in an opposite manner. This meaning that instead of cowering in the corner, they carry on with the mentally agonizing work they do (in and out of the line of fire). While this may create an even greater need for assistance, there may not be support for a huge influx of people. By doing this, hopefully a stigma of weakness will disintegrate and lead to more people to seek help.

http://www.npr.org/2012/05/14/152680944/military-looks-to-redefine-ptsd-without-stigma

The news article I found from the LATimes is titled Military’s Dogs of War Also Suffer Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. I chose this article, because chapter 13 talked about how soldiers were commonly coming back from the wars with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), so there was a high demand for clinical psychologists. The article sheds a different light on PTSD in that it talks about military dogs coming home from deployment developing PTSD.
Just like human soldiers, canines in the military face the same dangers and worries on a daily basis when deployed overseas. The article talks about a once carefree military dog named Cora. Cora earned a reputation for sniffing out the enemy’s buried bombs that could potentially kill or injure U.S. troops. Cora could roam a hundred yards or more off her leash, detect an explosive and then lie down gently to signal danger. She was a very independent dog, but after months of being in a high stress environment, Cora changed. She became easily startled by sharp sounds, rarely left her handler’s side, and growled and picked fights with the other military canines. Back in the United States, she was diagnosed with a mild case of Canine PTSD. It is unknown why Cora's behavior changed, but one possibility is that she sensed the apprehension of her handler or other troop members around her. A military dog has been trained to understand and anticipate their handler's needs and moods. They say that the handler’s emotions go down the leash.
What is difficult about canine PTSD is that you can’t ask them what is wrong or how they are feeling, and it won’t get better without treatment. To treat these dogs, instructors recondition and rebuild them by finding out what the dog’s fear is and then overpowering that fear with something else. For example if the dog is afraid of darkness, exercises would include decreasing the amount of light. The dog is given treats as positive reinforcement each time it successfully enters a dimly lighted space. The same approach process can be adapted to different situations as needed. Cora has undergone therapy and she no longer snarls at other dogs. Although she has come a long way, she still doesn't anticipate her handler's orders or quivers with excitement at the idea of sniffing out hidden explosives.

This isn't from any of the suggested links but I felt like it was appropriate for an in the news. I watched a documentary today about the power of dreams and why we have dreams in the first place.
I've always found dreams to be a really interesting topic, I think it is for almost everyone that you talk to. We learned about earlier in class about how Freud was really one of the very first to tackle the subject of dreams and try to understand their meaning and interpret them. A lot of Freud's dream analysis in no longer in use but it was the beginning of the human fascination with dreams and this documentary tells about how far the research in dreams has come since Freud.
One of the most interesting theories that I found about the use of dreams seems plausible in my mind. It is known that dreams are only made up of things that we know, you cannot create anything completely unique in a dream. They are based off of events that have already happened and people you have already met, they are often about recent events or recent thoughts. One of the psychologists interviewed claimed that there was a theory out there that there are two types of dreams (non-rem and rem) and therefore two different purposes. Non-rem sleep is thinking through possible circumstances and possible solutions to problems or scenerios. Since dream world is one that only exists in our head there are no limitations and therefore we are allowed to conjure up any situation and any possible solution without limits. They then hypothesize that Rem sleep is for the actual practice of theses scenerios. This is possible only by the fact that during Rem sleep we are essentially paralysized by our own body and our muscles are completely and totally relaxed. This is thought now to be because if we didn't we would all be acting out our dreams with little to no awareness of the world outside our dreams. The story then goes on to explain about people who do have this problem, called REM sleep disorder and it entails that you do not have that paralysis during sleep, causing you to act out your dreams during REM stages. This causes a lot of problems and sometimes injuries to these individuals but has provided scientists with the information about where dreams come from.
The final thing mentioned in the documentary is the purpose of nightmeres. They put on a Finnish professor who talked about how nightmeres are actually very helpful to humans if not a necessity. They teach us how to prepare for stressful situations and what may be the best way to handle those. They mentioned that at first children have very simple fears of what they know, such as pets or the dark and as we grow older our fears in dreams become more and more complex and show, in a sense that we are maturing and coming under more responsibilities.
I thought that this documentary was really interesting not only because it's a really interesting subject, but also that it relates to what we have learned about Freud and the history of psychology and it expanded how far we have come.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i539ynXmh-c

As I was looking on NPR for an article to write about, I came across one about a Rubik’s Cube titled “The Rubik’s Cube That Isn’t”. I clicked on it because I was bored, not thinking it would be relevant to anything I was searching for. I read the short article and watched the clip, which is all about illusions. It occurred to me that this was actually relevant, and I was definitely interested in this. This article was about a man who calls himself Brusspup who does exercises in anamorphosis. Brusspup creates these drawn illusions that are only effectively at one specific angle. When turned or looking from a different angle, the 3-D image goes away and you see that it is simply a drawing. There is a link to another blog post from the same author who wrote about the chalk drawings of street artists and posted more videos of these types of drawings to better explain this, and it helped me understand what these illusions were all about and how they worked. The sidewalk drawings were almost neater to me than the drawings in the video because it is such a large area of space that someone just drew on with chalk, but to our brains it looks real; even when we know it is not! This video and the chalk drawings really messed with my brain (which is the goal, of course), and I related this to a lot of what we have learned in the history of psychology. First, I thought about functional fixedness, and how sometimes we can only focus on one part of a situation or object, and not see the whole picture or other ways to view it. When looking at these illusions, I thought that these objects were the real deal, until the artist moves them and you see it is only a drawing (until he puts it back at the right angle!). Even when I figured out that it was simply an illusion, my brain could not see it as just a drawing because I really still did see it as the real thing. I think this is so very interesting how our brains work like this, and I wonder if there is any way to overcome this? I mean, functional fixedness can be overcome in many ways for a variety of different situations, but are there certain things that our brains just cannot overcome? Or does it vary from person to person? Aside from functional fixedness, I thought about how people with different types of mental disorders would view these illusions. Would certain extreme illnesses affect the way that these illusions are processed in the brain? Throughout the development of clinical psych, or the field of psych in general, I wondered if there were any tests that involved illusions to see if people reacted differently based on if they had a mental illness or not. A person without a mental illness could potentially see these things different than the next person, too. We do not all view things the same way, which is a good thing I suppose, because how boring would that be if we did! This post was very interesting to me and although there wasn’t much information besides the explanation of the illusions and how the work, this actually helped me think more on my own, rather than just writing about facts I came across. I thought about the different ways that these concepts of tricking our brain could have or are used in the field of psychology. For once, I can say I am glad I was bored and stumbled upon this article. Very neat!
http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2012/11/29/166150671/the-rubiks-cube-that-isnt The original article, “The Rubik’s Cube That Isn’t”
http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2012/07/09/156495126/woman-on-street-attacked-by-giant-snail-it-seems The link from the original – about the street artists

I chose the article titled “Talae Thomas Allegedly Killed Baby Son, Chase Harrelson, Because “He Was The Devil”. I chose this because I was very interested in Rogers Client Centered therapy and wanted to find an article that would fit with that. This article is about a woman who drowned her son in a bath tub because she honestly believed he was the devil. Thomas reported to have been having hallucination and experienced a breakdown four weeks prior. Relatives stated that Thomas was excited for the birth and in fact was a good mother. It is quite obvious this woman was suffering from some type of psychological disease and was not given the proper help she needed to live a normal life. She also probably never sought help either. She needed to seek out some type of therapy to get her hallucinations under control, which is why I thought about client centered therapy. Client centered therapy is a non-directive approach to therapy, directive meaning any therapist behavior that deliberately steers the client in some way. Directive behaviors include asking questions, offering treatments, and making interpretations and diagnoses. Almost all forms of therapy practiced in the US are directive. Rogers believed it was essential for the therapist to be accepting of the client as a person, meaning “a warm regard as a person of unconditional worth—of value no matter the condition, behavior, or feeling.” Rogers recognized that a complete understanding of another person was impossible, but it was the effort that counted. It meant taking something said by the client and rephrasing it in a way that leads the client to think “this therapist understands what I’m saying.” This is something I feel Thomas needed, and if she would have seen a therapist and got on the right medication her son may still be alive.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/26/tale-thomas-killed-baby-son-devil_n_2192310.html?utm_hp_ref=crime

I read "A Scientist's 20-Year Quest To Defeat Dungue Fever" on the NPR Website. The article describes the quest by the scientist Scott O'Neill as he tries to find a way to reduce the possiblity of contracting Dungue Fever. The disease is a horrible disease that infects millions and kills thousands of people each year. It causes sever flu-like symptoms and can be deadly. Dungue Fever is similar to Malaria in that it is carried and transmitted by mosquitos. However there is a quirk that can make it so that mosquitos are not able to carry the disease. When a mosguito is infectied with Wolbachia they are no longer susceptible to carrying the disease. So the scientist had the idea of artificially infecting mesquitos with Wolbachia and then trying to get them to reproduce in the wild and reduce the ability of the transimition of Dungue Fever. This of course is easier said than done as Wolbachia must be administered into the small egg of a mesquito that is about the size of a poppy seed. Then on the off chance that the egg is actually infected the animal must be able to mate and survive in the wild to spread the Wolbachia or no effect takes place. After 20 years of work the scientist was able to release a set of mesquitos into a small section of Northern Autralia and results have not been comfirmed of the effects.

When I first read this I wondered in there was any possible correlation to what we have been learning in class and I determined that it indeed did. O'neill saw a problem and has tried to come up with a solution to fix that problem. At this time it is hard to tell if he is headed in the right direction, but his intentions are good and hopfully he will make a difference and save the lives of countless people. I though of this in terms of Walter Freeman and the Lobotomy surgeries that he performed. Freeman saw a problem with overcrowding mental institutions and wanted to find a way to "fix" the patients rather that just house them forever, so he came up with the idea of the lobotomy and implimented it. It seemed like it worked and he continued to "help" people just as his intentions were from the beginning. It is easy to judge Freeman with the knowledge that we have today and say that he was crazy, but he was just trying to do what he thought was right with the knowledge he had just as O'Neill is doing today.

I think by judging people of the past for trying to make advances we are for one not taking into account the information that they had to go on. We also need to think about it in terms of resent example such as the Dungue Fever example. I would like to hope that if something was to go wrong with the Dungue Fever study we would recognize that O'Neill was just doing was he thought was right with the information he had just as Freeman did.

NPR
http://www.npr.org/2012/06/07/154322744/a-scientists-20-year-quest-to-defeat-dengue-fever

The last couple of chapters have discussed different things dealing with mentally ill patients in the past. I became very interested and looked for an article discussing mentally ill patients in today’s world. The article is titled, “Is Mental Illness a Bigger Threat to Kids than Physical Illness?” by Lisa Firestone. The article focuses on how parents focus too much time on little physical illnesses while ignoring symptoms of possible mental illnesses. For the first time in 30 years, the top five disabilities in U.S. children are mental illnesses, rather than physical illnesses. According to the APA, one out of every ten children or adolescents has a serious mental health problem. Another 10% of them have mild to moderate health problems. To go along with that, the National Institute of Mental Health reported that half of all lifetime cases of mental illness begin by the age of 14. Also, nearly 8% of children have an activity-limiting disability. One factor could be that children face an extreme amount of pressure to develop quickly. At a very young age, parents aim at preparing the children to enter a competitive world in school, work, and with their peers. Another factor in the increase in mental health concerns in children could be an increase in premature births. Also, the exposure to new or existing environmental toxins during pregnancy and early childhood could be another factor. For example, developmental disorders like ADHD have complex origins with multiple genetic and environmental factors. Researchers believe that catching mental illnesses in early childhood could heighten the likelihood of a better outcome in adulthood, which is important because mental illnesses in adults can be even more severe and taxing. They could get in the way of their success, relationships, job, and personal goals. All of this could lead to stress, which can cause physical health problems like heart disease. The increase in mental illnesses in children brought up another controversial issue. That issue is whether or not to use different medications for the different mental illnesses. Different people fear that using the medications to cure the mental illness would cause other health issues. Because of this issue, a website was launched to offer free resources and education to parents, families, couples, and individuals. The website helped raise awareness and teach people more about mental health to help identify symptoms in children as early as possible. This article was very interesting. Learning that the three highest illnesses among children were mental illnesses was somewhat shocking. There are always different things on TV stating that a certain disease has increased over a certain period of time. I think it’s great that a website was created to help parents and others to see early symptoms of mental illness in children. Hopefully with the help of this website and other things raising awareness for mental illnesses, the rate of mental illnesses in children will decrease. It seems like people are going the right way about it, and hopefully all of these people’s hard work will bring good results.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lisa-firestone/mental-illness_b_1901778.html

I found an amazing Huffington post article about the differences between a self-actualizer and a social-actualizer. According to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, self-actualizing was made around the 1960’s for the “hippies to follow their bliss.” After the 60’s the self-actualizing model was misconstrued to be self-absorption. As our country continues to develop, how people are starting to become more social-actualized than self-actualized. Collaboration has become more of a phenomenon then individualism. There are many qualities that distinguish between a person wanting personal achievement and someone wanting social gains that causes a ripple effect on others. A self-actualizer might pursue their passion with the primary focus on how it makes THEM feel.


 The opposite side of the model pyramid of social actualizers would choose to support a cause or make a difference with an activity. I believe that if a person can achieve BOTH of these needs, one can be wholly satisfied. However, there is also the thought that a self-actualizer can be an idol to others that would want to reach their full potential. Both self actualizing and social actualizing are important factors in a person’s life.


 According to the article, people feel drawn to a higher calling when they help the group and not just feel good about their own achievements. Maslow’s pyramid ties in with Chapter 13, and how self-actualizing is a healthier psychology when one is satisfied with all their needs. I think it definitely depends on the person which “needs” are more satisfying and the personality of that person. Our society as a whole is becoming more socialized and expect people to be more social-actualizing. The humanistic approach to psychology is very appealing to me and I have always thought it was one of the top ways to psychotherapy.

The article really provides a good insight and feedback on how Maslow’s pyramid has altered in just 30-50 years!



Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chip-conley/is-socialactualization-re_b_2083797.html



I read this article a few weeks back and posted it on my Facebook because I found it interesting. I was looking forward to writing about it for this class. The article from NPR’s website is Mental Disorders and Evolution: What Would Darwin Say about Schizophrenia? by David Schultz. The article caught my eye because of its potential use for this class but also because I am interested in evolution and how behavior can be a trait selected for or against in the process of natural selection. The article got me thinking for sure. At first I just thought about the title, and wondered in terms of evolution “if schizophrenia is a heritable trait then why has it not been eradicated?” This got me to thinking this is a very complicated question. I remember from an abnormal psychology book I read for my abnormal psychology class that we do not really know where or why schizophrenia comes from. Is it a virus? Is it genetic or some other sort of environmentally caused disorder? Wikipedia says “The causes of schizophrenia have been the subject of much debate, with various factors proposed and discounted or modified. The language of schizophrenia research under the medical model is scientific. Such studies suggest that genetics, prenatal development, early environment, neurobiology and psychological and social processes are important contributory factors.”

This article seems to think it is surly genetic and heritable. The article starts by stating “It's been shown that people who suffer from schizophrenia, autism, anorexia and other disorders are less likely to have children. And yet, the genes that cause these disorders aren't going away. In fact, some of the disorders appear to be becoming more common. Evolutionary theory wouldn't predict that.” The article then goes on to say that scientists have some theories about how this could happen. One is that this is a new mutation and has not had time to be bred out of humans and the other is somewhat more complicated. It says that a genetic mutation causes the siblings of a person with this disorder to have more children. This then “In a situation like that, the mutation offers a net benefit to a person's family.”

At first and still after thinking about it and reading the whole article I do not like this theory. It seems very far-fetched. But there have been actual studies done on it by people much more educated, hardworking and possibly more intelligent than me. So I have to wonder, what am I missing?

The article interviews someone involved with one of the mentioned studies, Dr. Peter McGuffin, a professor at King's College London. He is quoted saying “Schizophrenia is estimated to have a heritability of around 80 percent. Same is true for autism. So if these disorders are very heavily influenced by genes, but the people who have the disorders are less likely to pass on their genes, why aren't the disorders becoming less common in the population?”

McGuffin goes on to talk about other genes that are not beneficial but are not being eliminated. He mentions sickle cell disease and how if you have the gene from both parents you likely die before having kids but if you only have it from one parent you live and possibly pass it on to your children and it protects you from malaria. He says “So there's a selective disadvantage to having the disease, but there's a selective advantage to having the trait.”

McGuffin explains his study “The hypothesis would be that the relatives of the people who have the disorder, who don't actually have the disorder themselves, are compensating by having more children. I mean, not deliberately compensating by going out and having more children, but there's just something about their makeup that makes them have more kids.” For me this is sort of vague and I know he had to be for the format but the siblings having “something about their makeup that makes them have more kids” does not seem like a strong theory. I think this article is was too short for such a complicated condition as schizophrenia in its relation to evolution. It ends sort of abruptly and with some not very important information about if you should consider not having kids if you have a sibling or relative with schizophrenia.

This article is a good example of how Darwin is still being used in the study of psychology. It is also an example of how the nature vs. nurture issue still exists. I feel this article focused too much on the nature side without any mention of how environmental factors are related to schizophrenia.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2012/11/16/165149933/mental-disorders-and-evolution-what-would-darwin-say-about-schizophrenia

Note the comments about the article at the bottom, very negative and not impressed with the article, I was sort of happy to wander on this after writing this and having formed the opinion that I did not agree with this article.

http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/schizophrenia/what-causes-schizophrenia.shtml
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_schizophrenia

This article seems to think it is surly genetic and heritable. The article starts by stating “It's been shown that people who suffer from schizophrenia, autism, anorexia and other disorders are less likely to have children. And yet, the genes that cause these disorders aren't going away. In fact, some of the disorders appear to be becoming more common. Evolutionary theory wouldn't predict that.” The article then goes on to say that scientists have some theories about how this could happen. One is that this is a new mutation and has not had time to be bred out of humans and the other is somewhat more complicated. It says that a genetic mutation causes the siblings of a person with this disorder to have more children. This then “In a situation like that, the mutation offers a net benefit to a person's family.”
At first and still after thinking about it and reading the whole article I do not like this theory. It seems very far-fetched. But there have been actual studies done on it by people much more educated, hardworking and possibly more intelligent than me. So I have to wonder, what am I missing?
The article interviews someone involved with one of the mentioned studies, Dr. Peter McGuffin, a professor at King's College London. He is quoted saying “Schizophrenia is estimated to have a heritability of around 80 percent. Same is true for autism. So if these disorders are very heavily influenced by genes, but the people who have the disorders are less likely to pass on their genes, why aren't the disorders becoming less common in the population?”
McGuffin goes on to talk about other genes that are not beneficial but are not being eliminated. He mentions sickle cell disease and how if you have the gene from both parents you likely die before having kids but if you only have it from one parent you live and possibly pass it on to your children and it protects you from malaria. He says “So there's a selective disadvantage to having the disease, but there's a selective advantage to having the trait.”
McGuffin explains his study “The hypothesis would be that the relatives of the people who have the disorder, who don't actually have the disorder themselves, are compensating by having more children. I mean, not deliberately compensating by going out and having more children, but there's just something about their makeup that makes them have more kids.” For me this is sort of vague and I know he had to be for the format but the siblings having “something about their makeup that makes them have more kids” does not seem like a strong theory. I think this article is was too short for such a complicated condition as schizophrenia in its relation to evolution. It ends sort of abruptly and with some not very important information about if you should consider not having kids if you have a sibling or relative with schizophrenia.
This article is a good example of how Darwin is still being used in the study of psychology. It is also an example of how the nature vs. nurture issue still exists. I feel this article focused too much on the nature side without any mention of how environmental factors are related to schizophrenia.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2012/11/16/165149933/mental-disorders-and-evolution-what-would-darwin-say-about-schizophrenia
Note the comments about the article at the bottom, very negative and not impressed with the article, I was sort of happy to wander on this after writing this and having formed the opinion that I did not agree with this article.
http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/schizophrenia/what-causes-schizophrenia.shtml
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_schizophrenia

The article I chose was called, Mental Disorders and Evolution: What Would Darwin Say about Schizophrenia? I chose this article, because earlier in the book we talked about the evolutionary theory. The article told that people, who have some disorders like schizophrenia, anorexia, and autism, are less likely to have children, and the gene for this is not going away. The article also told how some of these disorders are actually becoming more common.
This article reminded me of our discussion in class about how organisms evolve with in time to correlate better to their surroundings. The evolution by natural selection would not go along with this article, because the steps of the natural selection are: variation, inheritance, high rate of population growth, and differential survival and reproduction. For variation, the evolutionary theory is true, because these characteristics of the mental disorders are more likely to be passed on through the genes of the parents, as well as for inheritance where they are inherited from their family. The thing that is actually declining is the rate of the population growth. According to this article, the population with mental disorders is less likely to have children, and the issue with the differential survival and reproduction level, is that if people with this disorder are less likely to have children, then their traits for struggle will not be there. If one of these traits does not happen, than it is not considered to be natural selection.
The evolutionary theory is very controversial, and a person’s beliefs, such as, religious, or non-religious beliefs can have an effect on whether or not this theory is true or not. I always finding talking about the evolutionary theory in classes to be interesting, because I like to listen to others’ views on this topic, being as it is such controversial. It reminded me about our discussion in class about some sort of rat that had a different physical feature from other rats, and it was thought that over time this rat had physically adapted to the new environment.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2012/11/16/165149933/mental-disorders-and-evolution-what-would-darwin-say-about-schizophrenia

My article is in response to the discussion we had on Thursday about how doctors are so quick to give pills to patients before trying alternative methods. In a positive note Dr. Alastair Dobbin and Sheila Ross are trying to do the opposite and help anxiety and depression patients without the use of medication. The idea for their intervention stems from how elite athletes are able to handle stress. Dr. Dobbin argues that these stress management techniques should be just as effective for the general public as it is for elite athletes. Success in this idea has actually been strong. Doctors who have used the new program have reported a 20% drop in antidepressant medications being prescribed.

The treatment comes in the way of a relaxation CD that clients can take with them and listen to whenever they start to get overwhelmed. One patient, Jacky Borthwick, is an example of one of the successful treatments. She was diagnosed with anxiety and depression and had a phobia of riding on buses. In 2006 she received the relaxation CD through therapy with Dr. Dobbin. Since then she has been off all medications and is able to ride the bus again. According to Jacky the reason the treatment is so effective is because of the calming effect. She reported that “It’s amazing how many of your problems disappear when you can relax.”

More studies on this type of treatment are currently underway and it is the hope of Dr. Dobbin and Ross that the new therapy will have a large effect on the treatment of anxious and depressed patients in the form of help without drugs. It is nice to see doctors working to find ways to help people without medication. It is unsure if the new treatment will be accepted on a large scale, but at least this is a step in the right direction.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-20549154

I believe that the article I found fits in very well with the material that we have been covering in class. I will try to touch base on my thoughts of the article historically as well. The article that I read was called “How's Your Mental Diet? The Dos and Don'ts”. This was an interesting article that metaphorically compared our thoughts as “food” in our minds. For example, just as food is our “physical diet”, our thoughts act as a “mental diet”. When we eat food, we are letting something physical into our bodies, and when we take in thoughts, we are letting this “mental food’ into our brains. The article argues that our mental diet is just as important as our physical diet.

This relates to psychology a great deal because psychology sometimes studies the way in which we process information and how that information effects who we are and how we behave. Take for example Aaron Beck’s cognitive theory about depression. We become depressed because of our thoughts. Negative thoughts can actually make us depressed. Thoughts such as “I’m not good enough” or “No one likes us” can lead us to believe these thoughts even more, whether the thoughts are true or not. According to Beck, depressed people focus on three negative Schemas that make them depressed: “1) I am defective or inadequate, 2) All of my experiences result in defeats or failures, and 3) The future is hopeless.”. I completely agree with Beck, as I’ve always taken a more cognitive approach to psychology, rather than a biological approach. I am the type of person that does not like to take medication unless it is absolutely necessary. After taking a Drugs and Behavior course, I’ve learned about all the drugs that people consume, and the negative effects of all of them. Even prescription drugs have their negative effects, and I believe that many disorders can be cured through therapy rather than through drugs. So back to the article, I think that if we can maintain a “healthy mental diet”, we can ensure that we are happy.

The article suggests that there are “Dos and Don’ts” for our mental diet. Some of the Do’s are having some time to yourself each day; having a “mentor”;fighting off the negative thoughts via your “inner lawyer”; having a strong social network; and having dreams to work towards, even if you believe that you have already reached your “life goal”. Some of the Don’ts include trying to get off the hook of a promise you’ve made or giving up on a goal; having negative thoughts such as “my kids will never behave” (Think Aaron Beck); following the news too closely because it can trigger negative thoughts; gossiping; having negative people in your life; and trying to change someone that will never change.

I found this article to be very interesting because of how true it is. One of my favorite parts was “trying to change someone who will never change”. I think this is a component to some relationships, where someone continually tries to change their partner.
When the person doesn’t change, the person feels like they have failed. This could lead to the negative thoughts that Aaron Beck theorized about. I feel like most people have encountered an individual that they think they can change, but it never seems to happen. I know from my personal life, that I’ve dated a girl who I really thought would change. She never kept promises and acted completely different when she was around her friends. I always felt like she cared way too much about what people think. Needless to say, she never changed and the relationship ended. Since I’ve realized that some people never change, I feel that I am less angry, happier in general, and better focused on doing productive things for my life. Basically, since the negative thoughts have stopped, I feel that I have better control over my life. This is exactly why I think that Aaron Beck’s Cognitive Theory of Depression is very influential.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/laurie-gerber/emotional-health_b_2200129.html

“That's So Random: The Evolution of an Odd Word”

The news article I chose to examine for this week’s topical blog was from npr.org. The title, “That’s So Random: The Evolution of an Odd Word” really summarizes the article quite well.

By now, most of society is acquainted with this word, “random”. What the article is talking about is how the word has evolved to mean other things. It was first used as slang by computer programmers back in the day, describing random mathematical data. The article tells about how a comedian is upset with people using this word all the time, because he believes they are using it out of context, not using the definition correctly, that is. The truth is a lot of words evolve their meanings over time. Random for instance, has done just that. We all use this word now and it is socially accepted in our culture. The examples the comedian displays as misuses of the word is just exactly how we would go about using the word. The, “Wow, that was random” or the “I just got this random text from someone” makes perfect sense to us. The article went on to clarify that the comedian was wrong and that the oxford English dictionary does indeed label the definition of the word as "peculiar, strange, nonsensical, unpredictable or inexplicable; unexpected." To finalize the debate, the article says that like life, language too evolves.

I can apply this article to a few things from our History and Systems text. First, it displays Associationism. Associationism comes from chapter two and states that the mind is a complex set of ideas related to each other by the force of the associations between them. It also goes on to say that things become associated in our minds by our sheer experiences that we have within the world by our experiences or in scientific terms, empiricism. So, in reality what we experience becomes fact. Our perceptions of things have the ability to change, so it’s only logical that our interpretations of words must change to accommodate modern/social standards and beliefs as well.

Secondly, I think Social Psychology can fit into this discussion as well. The “New Definition” of random was a group-process that has occurred within society. In chapter fourteen, it says that the group-processes (societies/groups) influence the outcome of certain views or solutions. Society has formed this new definition of random and it has become the solution to describe crazy, irregular happenings.

Source:
http://www.npr.org/2012/11/30/166240531/thats-so-random-the-evolution-of-an-odd-word