Edge of Sanity

I enjoyed listening to people describe what goes on in their head from their mental illness. Their stories were very interesting. Their illnesses truly do affect their daily lives thought their thoughts and behavior. The distinctions between mental health and mental illness can be very different, but also unclear. Each meaning can be different for each person. For example, one might consider self-esteem and the ability to care about others to be a description of mental health. Mentally healthy people can understand that they are not perfect and can’t do everything. These people experience all types of emotions, such as sadness, love, anger, frustration, love and many more. They typically can handle life’s challenges and know when to reach out for help. Mental illness usually is correlated with a psychiatric disorder. Our book and this radio blog discuss many of the different kinds, and just like any illness the severity can vary. Mental illnesses are often disorders of the brain that disrupt a person’s thinking, feeling, mood, and ability to relate to others. However, mentally ill people can also possess the same qualities as a mentally healthy person.
The distinction between mental health and mental illness are not strict categories. Different disorders have worse effects for different people. Also tons of behaviors can fall into both categories. The first story describes a romance that began in a mental hospital. This story demonstrates how the line between crazy and not crazy can be blurry and how certain behaviors could mean either. The guy was diagnosed as manic-depressive and she was diagnosed as depressive. They seemed to correlate perfectly for each other. He always was trying to make her laugh, flopping like a chicken and all types of things. Once they moved in together she stated how she realized how different he was. He was a stand up comedian all the time and couldn’t turn it off. It would take him forever to buy an item at the grocery store. She considered him as crazy, while he considered her to be crazy, even though they both were diagnosed with a disorder. Susanna Kaysen read from her account of living at McLean psychiatric hospital for about two years, when she was eighteen. She discussed several patients and their behaviors. One patient could have all normal behaviors one day, but then the next day her “job” was to talk 50 aspirin. A girl name Polly was nice and caring, but one day she set herself on fire because the voices told her to. Each patient she described had both qualities that characterize a mentally healthy person, and also a mentally ill person.
Dr. Patricia Deegan talks about how people can fluctuate in their mental health status. She was diagnosed with schizophrenia and hears voices in her head. These voices were nice when she was little, and as she grew older they became more and more mean. Now she is a psychologist trying to also help other patients who hear voices. One trick she describes to help with the voices, and fluctuate their mental health, was to use earplugs. Sometimes only plugging one ear can interrupt these voices and make them go away for a while. David Sedaris tells a story from his childhood about when a voice inside his head would command him to lick every light switch and tap his forehead with his heel. This behavior was mandatory for him and he couldn’t help it. For David, rocking was his hobby. He stated how touching objects satisfied a mental itch. His behavior was affected by these voices up until college. In college he was introduced to alcohol and cigarettes. He described how cigarettes helped his weird urges and if he knew there was a cigarette near, everything would be okay. “It was like I was born to smoke”, he stated. The last story told by Joel Lovell also talks about how patient’s mental illness can fluctuate. Joel works at a mental institution, usually days, but sometimes nights. One night a patient named Carroll was able to have a normal conversation with Joel. However, the very next morning she went back to her disordered state. I never realized how much someone with a disorder needed to be monitored. One minute they could be fine, but the next they could be doing something completely crazy and dangerous. These behaviors could be for no reason, or be due to voices inside their head telling them to.

Psychological Terms: mental health, mental illness, emotions, psychiatric disorders, manic-depressive, depressive, schizophrenia, behavior

Edge of Sanity blog response

11/18/14

In this show, it talks a lot about the symptoms we see in those who are mentally ill. I think that we learn the distinction between mentally healthy and mentally ill just through the experiences and situations that were talked about. For example, they gave the example of the man and the women who lived together for a while who were both diagnosed to be mentally ill. Just because they were both diagnosed with that does not mean that they have the same illness, the same severity, or that all of their mental state is unhealthy. She was depressive, so maybe parts of her self-esteem and self-schema were abnormal, and that is what got her diagnosed with being a mentally ill person. Now that being said, her condition may vary in severity compared to others who have this same illness. Also this doesn’t mean that she is insane, certain areas of her mind are working fully functionally. With that being said I would say that the best way to make a distinction between a person who is mentally ill to a person who is mentally healthy would be to see how much that illness is affecting them and how much it interferes with their lives. For instance, the man who was manic depressive, act abnormally in a significant way; he had to look at every aspect of the product before he could buy it, this greatly affected his life, because it made it harder for him to have regular relationships, and it took him a very long time to do a simple task.

I don’t really think that there is a clear cut line between being healthy and having an illness in the mental state. In some situations it is more obvious, such as when people have delusions and hallucinations. Clearly the women who started herself on fire because the voices inside her head told her to has a mental illness. The person who has extreme OCD and has to count everything a certain number of times or tap himself or herself with a shoe repeatedly has a mental illness. But there are many grey areas. It is hard to tell whether a person having a bad day, or a bad year is going through depression or they are just having a slump. For some people they could show signs of illness due to abnormalities of mental health yet it doesn’t affect their day-to-day lives so they don’t really have a mental illness. In summary if a person has a significant abnormality in mental health, or their mental health causes issues daily within their lives, it is most likely an illness.

I think people definitely fluctuate in their mental health status. If someone is going through a rough time such as a grandparent dying or your parents getting divorced I think it can definitely have an effect on your mental health. Those will illness also experience this fluctuation, everybody has moods and emotions and those can affect your mental state even if it not over a huge period of time. For instance if your boyfriend breaks up with you, your mental health may get down for a month or two, but that is not abnormal.

I enjoyed the audio of what the voices in people’s heads sound like to them and the insight we got from a women who knows what it’s like first hand to experience these voices. After hearing them, it is easy to see why people get so upset and have a hard time not following what their voices ask them to do.

Terms: Mentally Ill, Mentally Healthy, Self-Esteem, Self Schema, Delusions, Hallucinations, OCD,

Although the terms are often used interchangeably, mental health and mental illness is not the same thing; but they are also not mutually exclusive. A fundamental difference between mental health and mental illness is that everyone has some level of mental health all of the time, just like physical health, whereas it is possible to be without mental illness.Despite poor mental health not defined as an illness, having poor mental health is associated with emotional distress and psychosocial impairment comparable to that of a major depressive episode. The effects of poor mental health are both severe and prevalent, with poor mental health being more common than depression. Mental health is a state of well-being in which the individual realizes his or her own abilities, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully and is able to make a contribution to his or her community. Mental illness is a recognized, medically diagnosable illness that results in the significant impairment of an individual’s cognitive, affective or relational abilities. Mental disorders result from biological, developmental and/or psychosocial factors and can be managed using approaches comparable to those applied to physical disease.

I personally don’t think there are stricts categories between the two. Some of the factors that influence mental health include: levels of personal and workplace stress; lifestyle and health behaviours; exposure to trauma; and genetics. When the demands placed on any individual exceed their resources and coping abilities, their mental health will be negatively affected. For example, a person are working long hours under difficult circumstances for a long time. Mental illness is much like diabetes, heart disease and a broken leg, one can live with it and recover from it. Recovery is not an end state; it does not mean that the individual no longer has depression, schizophrenia or another mental illness.So there is a blur line between mental health and mental illness. They are every different, but they could be also unclear. For example from the episode, patient are hearing several voices in their head, and more than often, they are saying about negative things.

Dr. Patricia Deegan talks about how people can fluctuate in their mental health status. Sh was diagnosed with schizophrenia and hearing voices in her head on daily basic. Now that she is a psychologists helping her patients overcoming the voice distress, she can understand how her patients feel every single day. Addition to Dr. Deegan, in act three, Davis Sedaris told his childhood story. He talked about the voice in his head told him to lick everything he saw and to tap his feet against his head. Sometimes, he understood that he shouldn’t have lick things, but he couldn’t help it. His dad always threaten him to not press his nose, lick things, or tap his head against things. But the voice in his head always encourages him to do it. Later, it also encourages him to hurt himself like punching himself. He was normal, but at another second he could go back to the disorder state. It is just part of his life, he can’t help it which makes mental health fluctuating at all times.

terms: mental health, mental illness, impairment, emotional distress, coping ability, trauma, depression, schizophrenia.

This was a pretty interesting episode. I actually feel like I benefited a lot from listening to this, especially about schizophrenia. Getting to hear what it was like for patients with it, and hearing that voice overlapping the talking was crazy and very insightful. I never really thought deep enough into mental health versus mental illness but after studying about them I can now distinguish between the two. Mental health is neither negative nor positive, but instead it is just how healthy or unhealthy ones mental status is. So if one has a bad mental health, then they likely have a mental illness. Mental illness is a more negative term and consists of a legitimate, diagnosed illness. Going a step farther, once the mental illness is identified, medication or treatment plans can typically be arranged in the hope to cure or lesson the mental illness.
Mental health and mental illness definitely do not have strict categories. They both vary drastically person to person. Mental illness has identified many defined, diagnosable disorders. But these disorders are never the same in two people. They have a spectrum to them used to determine how severe or moderate a disease is which leads to correctly medicating them. Mental illness includes example such as schizophrenia, multiple personality disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, and more, mental health is much broader and contains illnesses like depression, anxiety, or ADHD. These are much more common in today’s society. In the episode, the book I read for my book report, Girl Interrupted, was discussed and read aloud from. Lisa (the original Lisa) would fall under having a mental illness. Behaviors like staying up all night and burning yourself with a cigarette are not common whatsoever. She was correctly placed in McLean Hospital. But the narrator, Susanna, was not so bad. Although she admitted to attempting suicide, I would label her just as depressed. I think some medication and weekly therapy could have easily been the cure for her, institutionalization was not necessary because she was not severely depressed like other of her friends she made at McLean.
People can indeed fluctuate in their mental health status. Many stress provoking life events would cause fluctuations in their mental health. Stress even causes issues in my own personal mental health status. But people with disorders probably act more strongly upon these fluctuations and also likely feel them for longer periods of time. For example, if a family loses a child it is likely that the already depressed mother will go into a much deeper depression for some period of time. This can result in either a change in medication from the doctor or sometimes, if you are seen as a threat to your own life, you will get admitted into the psychiatric ward where you get monitored and evaluated nonstop.
Terms: schizophrenia, mental health, mental illness, diagnosable, disorders, spectrum, multiple personality disorder, OCD, depression, anxiety, ADHD, institutionalization, stress, fluctuations.

I learned that the two could coexist in a way. The two states of being are very different, but it is hard to sometimes make a distinct between the two. Certainly one can be mentally healthy in every way. On the other hand there are people with certain psychiatric disease that are insane by most standards and are on hundred percent mentally ill. Then there is the grey area. A person can be both mentally health at times and also show clear symptoms of mental illness. Some diseases are triggered by environmental factors that temporarily set them off. So most of the time that person could a normal functioning member of society and the other little bit is a certain kind of crazy. The illness is diagnosed by a disorder. Someone could go their whole life not knowing that they are mentally ill and have to deal with that without medication or professional help. At the same time someone can be falsely diagnosed and given medication that is not need.
I think the biggest distinction between mental health and illness is the effect on daily life. If someone with OCD can’t go more than a couple of seconds without worrying about germs or some other obsession then they are mentally ill. People can also have a disorder that rarely affects their daily routine and I would consider them mentally healthy. A good example of this is phobias. If someone has a fear of trophies and if they don’t think about trophies that much than it probably won’t be a huge problem in the grand scheme of things. So to answer the question no there is no clear line or distinction between mental health and mental illness. It is a continuum of the two. I think rarely in life are things completely black and white. There is almost always some gray area.

For sure people fluctuate in status of mental health. I think onset of age is one of the larger causes of mental illness. As we get older we gain more stress. The book talks about how stress and a genetic predisposition play key roles in the onset of a metal disorder. Alzheimer’s disease is a good example of the role age plays

I really enjoyed listening to these stories; it was interesting to learn about what happens inside the mental hospital. Mental health and mental illness are different, but can be difficult to distinguish. Mental health can make them feel like something is wrong with them, but there is nothing wrong with the brain. With mental illness there is something wrong with their brain. Mental illness is an outcome in biological or psychosocial problems. They are diagnosed mental disease. People with a mental illness have an impairment in cognitive abilities.
I don’t believe there is a strict distinguished line between being healthy and having a mental illness. The man with extreme OCD had to count everything, touch his nose to everything, or tap himself with a shoe a certain number of time has a mental illness. The lady that had the voices inside her head tell her to light herself on fire has a mental illness. But how can you tell if someone is just having a stressful, bad week or if they’re depressed? It’s harder to distinguish between the two.
I strongly believe people can fluctuate in their mental health status. Stress is definitely a big indicator. As we get older the more stressed out we get, we get more depressed, and don’t really care to do what we use to. You can also be having a bad month and depressed, but the next month can be great and you can be ecstatic about everything in life.
Terms: mental health, mental illness, biological, psychosocial, mental disease, cognitive abilities, OCD, depressed

After listening to the This American Life; Edge of Sanity episode, I learned that there are distinctions between people’s mental health and mental illnesses. If a person is mentally healthy, they can cope with stress and make their own choices. Mental health affects how we think, act, and feel about certain situations or conditions. It is a natural part of human development and is very important for every stage of life. If a person is mentally unhealthy, they may be diagnosed with a mental illness. A mental illness affects a person’s way of life. It disrupts a person’s thinking, feelings, actions, and ways a person copes with different life experiences. A mentally ill individual develops an impairment to their cognitive abilities as well. An example of a mentally ill person explained in this episode was Lisa, from the book Girl, Interrupted. She became depressive, once her old friend Lisa Cody was diagnosed with the same illness. Lisa’s self-esteem and self-schema began declining, causing severe mental states of insanity. She would go missing for a short period of time, hide things from needy nurses, and become brutal. This, landing her with a diagnosis of a personality disorder, a sociopath.

I believe that the categories between mental health and mental illnesses are not strict because people’s definitions or opinions of both could be different. For example, if the illness is affecting an individual's life in many ways, I would consider this person to be mentally unstable. But, others may find him or her as a struggling person having a rough day. Having delusions, hallucinations, or voices in your head can lead to the cause of a mental illness. It can be hard to distinguish if a person is mentally healthy because they can show similar symptoms as to a person who has a mental illness. The only difference would be that these symptoms of a mentally healthy person do not affect him or her from their day-to-day life. With a mentally ill individual, the illness can cause many traits, leading to a sporadic or steady incline of insanity. From the episode, the boy would lick the light switches, touch his nose to the fridge and windshield, and nudge the corners of desks and tables. After, doing each of these things, the boy felt accomplished and the voices in his head would stop yelling at him. I believe the strictness of these distinctions depends on the person and how they feel of mental states. I also think that people fluctuate in their mental health status making it difficult to make distinctions between mental states. Both mentally ill and healthy people experience life struggles, affecting a person’s mental state differently and could last at different periods or amounts of time. To a schizophrenic person, they may experience positive or negative symptoms and the symptoms of a healthy person may be totally different.

Overall, after listening to this episode I became even more interested in psychopathology and healthy mental states. The stories of each person were surprising and captivating to me because the voices in their heads were telling them what to do even if that person didn’t want to. Yes, there are some things you can do to stop or slow down the voices, like earplugs. But, how would you feel being told what to do, not by your teacher, mother, or father, but by the uncontrollable voices in your mind?

Terms: Mental Health, Mental Illness, Stress, Human Development, Self-Esteem, Self-Schema, Sociopath, Cognitive Abilities, Delusions, Hallucinations, Schizophrenia, Positive Symptoms, Negative Symptoms, Psychopathology

Terms: mental health, mental illness, schizophrenia, personality disorder,

After listening to this talk show and from I know from the book there are many differences from mental health to mental illness, although it is a very fine line. From the talk show we see that many people can live a normal life just make a few mistakes. If someone is mentally ill they tend not to have a stable personality and they tend not to manage their emotions as well. If someone is mentally healthy they can control their emotions and have clearer thoughts. If someone is schizophrenia they are mentally ill because they have hallucinations and tend to hear voices in their head. They can not control those thoughts and usually listen to what those voices have to say. Therefore people who have mental illnesses have a difficult controlling their stress because of the distress of the voices in their head.
People tend to fluctuate with mental health because of their age. Some diagnosis do not come about until the patients are older or if they have come through a traumatic event. PTSD for example is not developed until after a traumatic event has happened to an individual. Also, I think people’s mental illness may fluctuate. At first people may show signs of improving but then take another step back going back to how they were before. Another example would be when Doctor Patricia Deegan has a hard time controlling her voices until she finds that using ear plugs tends to help the voices disappear for a while causing her stress to go away, fluctuating her mood.
Key words: mental health, mental illness, PTSD, schizophrenia, stress, emotion, hallucinations,

I really enjoyed this episode and listening to the stories that each of the people go through when dealing with their problems when in the institute. With the differences in mental illness and mental health in a person it shows that we all have a somewhat set of ideals when it comes to how we notice that someone has a mental illness that they are living with and how we label them because of it. After listening to the broadcast it seems that there is a difference between the mental health of someone and wither or not someone has a mental illness that affects their lives. Our mental health is important because it is what makes sure that we are able to go through our day to day lives and handle any type of stress and problems that we go through in our day to day lives and those with mental illnesses have problems with their day to day lives. Their main problems deal with their cognitive abilities and how they react to the problems with their life when dealing with their different mental illnesses.
I personally believe that there is a small difference and some areas where it is similar between mental health and the psychological problems that are associated with mental illness because of the cognitive areas of the mind and how it incorporates into every day parts of our lives. With how important it is for us to have an understanding between our thoughts and actions in our everyday encounters it becomes more and more important for our mental health to be high when it comes to handling everything that life tries to throw at us and make us trip up or snap. The difference comes in with how some people will handle the stress that is thrown upon them and how they will react towards all of the new problems. Those with higher mental health will have a better time coping with all of the changes that can happen in a day and will use different defense mechanisms so that they can continue what they are doing.
Overall I really enjoyed listening to the episode of This American Life and how it talked about how some are able to understand their own problems when it comes to their mental problems. What I really found interesting and somewhat unnerving was the recording played to simulate the effects that someone can hear when they have more than one voice going on in their head. All of the over lapping voices that could be going through my head would cause a mental toll on anyone who would have that problem and I think that those who have to deal with that kind of problem for most of their life are stronger than many other people who have smaller day to day problems.

This episode was very interesting to me because all the stories had something that made me want to keep listening to them, as in they didn't bore me. The first story was about an eighteen year old girl who was sent to this psychiatric hospital where people diagnosed with mental illnesses were put. This girl had a personality disorder which was a disorder where you basically couldn't control your personality at times and how you function socially. She was in that hospital for 2 years. She talked about her experience in there. Talked about all the other patients that were in there with her as well and the kind of disorders they had. The second story was about this psychologist that has this problem where she hears voices in her head. This story was pretty interesting because knowing she’s a psychologist and also having patients with the same thing she has is something she and her patients have in common, which is pretty fascinating. The next story was about David and his childhood, and during his childhood he had this voice in his head that commanded him to do a weird thing. I thought this was also interesting because I honestly had not heard of this happen before. I mean it sounds scary but the fact that I hadn't heard it before just made me intrigued by it. There was one last story which was about this guy that worked at a mental institution, which sounds crazy because that’s something I would never want to do. So by the end of watching all of these stories it showed me the differences between mental health and mental illnesses by explaining basically first off that mental health is where the person realizes and knows his or her own abilities to which then they can live about with their social life and what not. I understood that mental illness though is basically recognized because he or she is diagnosed with some sort of illness which really then affects the person in a way. Therefore for mental illness you would have to be hospitalized or rehabilitated. So in a way I think that mental health can be fluctuating most the times. I think this especially since of the emotional statuses you may be going through which I think affects this more. You go through difficult times as well and aren't yourself so emotionally it really does affect you and fluctuate with the mental health issues.

Terms: Mental health, mental illnesses, fluctuating, disorder, personality disorders, psychologist.

I really enjoyed listening to this episode, it was intersecting to know what goes on in life of people who are suffering with mental illness and know what goes in the mental hospital. I really like the way that they described what goes on inside the mental hospital. Mental health and mental illness can mean different things depending on people. It's the person's ability to maintain a good physical health. Mental health for some people can mean it's ability to care about other people or self-esteem. They know that they are not perfect. Like they said in the episode where this one girl who tried to set her self on fire, she knew that she is no perfect and how people commented about her smile. Mental illness can comprehends many psychiatric disorders. People with mental illness may not look like that they are ill or something is wrong with them. If a person has mental illness their ability to match up to everyday life demands is not easy, a person's thinking, feelings, and moods get disrupts by the brain. There is not set age it can happen at any age; they are treatable. Some of the examples of mental disorders are depression, anxiety disorders, schizophrenia, eating disorders and addictive behaviors.

Mental health and mental illness are not strict categories. They are different, but at times they can be unclear. People can classify into both categories. Just by looking at people you cannot tell that they have some sort of mental illness, unless they go to a psychologist and get diagnose. It is a brain disease. The scale that some people have is also different. Some people do have mental illness and they can still function normally in our society, due to the scale they have it on. It is really low. They can still cope with their daily life. Some people has it on higher scale where they can not perform in society and they need to go to mental hospital and some people has is it on middle scale. Some can have extreme schizophrenia and some can not.

A lot of people fluctuate in their mental health status. People do not know that they have mental health problems or mental illness until later in life. As a young kid a lot of parents may think that if their kid is acting a in a way that is not "normal" then they may think that it is just a phase that they are going through. Then that mental illness or mental health then grows and gets worse. If you start treating, the second they know about it then there is more possibility to get better faster. As we get older we get stresses out more because we have so much work to do and has a lot going on, which then can bring us down.

Psychological Terms- Mental heal, mental illness, self-esteem, psychiatric disorders, anxiety disorder,
schizophrenia, eating disorders

This week’s episode on This American Life was very interesting to me because there were so many personal stories that were told. The stories told by Dr. Patricia Deegan, Davis Sedaris, and Joel Lovell helped me understand that mental health and mental illness aren’t just black and white topics but that they do come in various shapes, colors, and sizes.
Out of all of the speakers on the show this week I found the first speaker, Dr. Patricia Deegan, the most interesting. She discusses how not only how she herself has a mental illness and can hear voices in her head as do her patients. She brought up a good point which was the only way that doctors could even begin to understand their patients they needed to hear the voices that the patients were here on a daily basis. What she ended up doing was recording one of her mentally ill patients saying what the voices of another patient would say. The reason for not using the patient who was recording own voices was due to the fact that it could be too dangerous for them. Having to listen to what these patients here on a regular basis was creepy but very helpful in understanding what exactly they go through. Another finding that Dr. Deegan discovered through her own trial and error was how to silence the voices in her head. She found that if she put ear plugs in a certain ear or both she could get the voices to stop for a certain amount of time. Even some of her patients found this to help them also and even putting the ear plugs in for a certain amount of time and then taking them out would also silence the voices. I found that very interesting that she had found a way to somewhat control her mental illness. This was just one example showing that people indeed can fluctuate in their mental health status.
Terms: mental health, mental illness

Cassandra Rutledge
Edge of Sanity
11/19/2014

Mental health and mental illness are very similar to each other. Just because someone is not diagnosed with a mental illness does not mean that they are mentally healthy. Even when one is diagnosed with a mental illness they just want to be back in the real world, and not be cooped up in a mental hospital. When trying to get rid of the mental illness people can go through so many scenerios of how to commit suicide.
The categories are strict because they can be so similar. The similarities between the two are that one can seem to be mentally healthy, but they could really have a mental illness. The only way to fully understand that you have a mental illness is if you get checked out by a psycho-therapist. The only way a mental health worker can diagnose someone or even help someone is if they hear the voices too. Schizophrenia is the mental illness that causes the patient to hear voices in their head. These voices are saying degrading this about the patient, and are deafening to one with the illness.
Throughout life everybody will have some type of mental illness. This time period does not have to be perminent, it could be for a short period of time. This time of mental illness can be during a time of stress or extreme heart brake.
Terms: mental health, mental illness, diagnosed, hospital, psycho-therapist, stress, hearing voices, schizophrenia.

In the Edge of Sanity episode of This American Life it depicts people with mental illnesses. It gives examples of people with mental illnesses and also experiences of people who worked at mental health facilities. These are very intriguing things. The first segment was a story about a person in a mental hospital. She would observe people and wrote a book about it. She told stories about two girls both named Lisa. One Lisa was a psychopath and the other was undiagnosed. This surprised me on why she was undiagnosed and sent to a mental hospital. She had to have gotten in trouble or someone couldn’t take care of her. I wondered if she had changed all of a sudden or that a family member had not been able to take care of her anymore. The second Lisa had really been influenced by the first and when diagnosed she was diagnosed psychopathic. She did things that the first Lisa had shown were signs and changed her behavior. She originally wasn’t and even the first Lisa knew she wasn’t psychopathic. This shows that mental health can change throughout life.
The next segment was about schizophrenia and how people live with voices in their head. There was a girl who lives in a city and not in a mental health facility with voices in her head. She hears them every day, but at one point in her life couldn’t control them. She now has them controlled to the best of her ability and lives a fairly normal life. It also showed how people with schizophrenia live with voices. They sent researchers out with Walkman and they would try to talk to strangers and do tasks. This would obviously be harder and was very interesting for me.
The following segment was about a kid who toughed things. He compulsively touched everything and had strict orders of objects. This was crazy. He even knew how many steps it was to his school. He was looked at badly and did not have much of a social life because of it. His compulsions eventually stopped when he started smoking. This was interesting to me. It was a strange thing to do instead, but it kept him occupied. His mental health changed throughout his life as well through this change of habits.
Overall I learned that there is a difference in mental health and a mental illness. Everybody has a state of mental health. This changes frequently. You can be sad, happy, or just ok. Mental illnesses however are not for everybody. Select people have mental illnesses. These range widely from OCD to depression. There are many illnesses and many people have them. However I do not think there are fine lines between them. As seen earlier just by behaving a certain way Lisa got a diagnosis she wanted. This is what she actually had, but there was no way to be sure. Doctors can only do a few things to categorize illnesses and there are not clear lines between the, to make an accurate reading. Then there is always the chance they could be lying on some key information that you need. It is a hazy field and it should be researched more, which it probably is, and found better ways of diagnosis.

As I was listening to this audio recording, I was thinking about each of the stories that were told. One of the stories that really stuck in my mind was the stories of the people that had multiple voices going on inside their head. I was thinking to myself how would these people be able to function with so much stuff going on inside their head. The recording would play snippets of people that had many voices going on inside their head and it was hard to follow. The commentator then asked the person that he was interviewing if she had multiple voices that went on inside her head. She said that she had a process for trying to be able to get the voices out of her head. She would put something in her ear for about fifteen minutes to see if she could mute one of the voices in her head and I think that she was able to mute the voice. There are distinctions between mental health and mental illness. When someone is characterized with a mental health issue, they will have personalities that stay consistent and never changed. Then there are people that have a mental illness. These people have personality that will change randomly with whatever they are doing. When we talk about the two categories that categorize these people, they are two distinct categories, but not very strict. Someone doesn’t just have changing personalities and one day decides to stick with one personality. When talking about fluctuating health status, I believe it can be hard for doctors to tell if people are getting better or not. When people are diagnosed with a mental health status, I don’t know if people can ever get cleared from being diagnosed with a mental health status. Once people are diagnosed with a mental health status, I believe that there can be some fluctuating in if they get better or not. There can be that group of people that keeps getting worse and worse and, then there is that group that can become the person they were before they were diagnosed.

Terms: mental health, mental illness, personality

I did learn a little about the differences between mental health and mental illness. They are two different things, but they can also be shown in a person at the same time. Mental health is involved with things like depression, self-esteem and other things related to how your mood is and how you think about yourself. Mental illness is a disorder that you are diagnosed with that affects your mental cognition. This effects your everyday life much greater than mental health. Mental illnesses are much more serious and are often times much more visible by an outside person. These two can definitely work together to cause problems though. Your emotions will definitely effect your mental illness and the severity of it. It talks about the schizophrenic girl that when she hears voices saying negative thoughts she convinces herself that those are true to alter her emotions to try to make the voices stop. There are certain qualities of mental issues that can be in both spectrums.
I don’t think that there are distinct categories that these two fall into. There are many different things that could fall into both sections. I also believe that someone could be mentally ill, but could also be mentally healthy. The boy who seems to have OCD obviously has a mental illness that is very clear to anyone who listens to this story even though the people around him didn’t realize it. I also think that he was mentally healthy though because he was very happy with his life and always was in a good mood. He also could function quite normally as soon as he was able to find a way to stop these tics from happening.
Key terms: mental health, illness, depression, self-esteem, cognition, schizophrenia, emotions, OCD

The episode Edge Of Sanity was a very interesting episode to listen to. I really enjoyed getting the insight of real people with real disorders. I learned in this episode that the difference between mental health and mental illness can be very similar and different at the same time. Mental health can refer to the state of your minds health. This can mean you experience all emotions, can think ahead, are socially “normal,” etc. A mental illness isn't whether your mind is healthy or not, it is what is wrong or different inside your brain.
Someone who is in good mental health can still have a mental illness. Just like in Act 2 when the group of people was talking about the voices they can hear in their heads. They know they are hearing voices and they are in a good enough state to know the voices are real. On the other hand, there are some people who believe the voices. They believe there is a significance to the voice and they must do what it says in order to have a feeling of self fulfillment and completeness. The people that must listen to the voice are in a not so good state of mental health. The people who know the voice is just there are in a good mental health. This is a good example of you can be in good or bad health and still be mentally ill at the same time.
These are not in strict categories at all. Another good reason of why they are not in strict categories is because of how the terms can be two different things. Mental health is something that can be affected. Mental health can be something such as depression or anxiety. Just because you go through a time where you experience signs of depression or are maybe emotionally stressed doesn't mean you are mentally I’ll. Mental illnesses are thought to be uncontrollable. If they could be controlled people would not be able to plead insanity in our court systems (I don’t think they should be able to anyway). This is why mental health and mental illness are not in strict categories.
People fluctuate in their mental health status all the time. Some days or even weeks you may feel great and then one day you might be sad for no reason. Even if you are not someone with a disorder or depression you can still experience change. This could simply be related to emotions, stress, or just hard times in life. We all experience different things than others do daily and we all have a different way of dealing with our problems. As an end result, we all have different problems. Just because we are not all the same or someone is different from a group doesn’t mean they are mentally ill. They could be in a different state of mental health, or they could have a mental illness, but it doesn't mean they do for sure.
I think mental health and mental illness are great topics to learn about. They are very interesting and new things are always arising as there are so many different people and so many different ways to think. I really enjoyed the episode of This American Life entitled Edge of Sanity.

Terms Used: Mental Health, Mental Illness, Emotion, Stress, Depression, Anxiety, Disorder, Self-Fulfillment

After listening to this episode I realize how many of the daily citizens are affected by mental illness. It is a growing problem in today’s society because it seems that if someone does something wrong, like kills someone, they plead insanity and sometimes get away with murder. Having a mental illness can also be as basic as something everyone faces, death. By either a family member or friend death has been part and affected every one’s life in some way, shape, or form. There are some treatments for mental illness such as going to see a counselor or being put on medication, but some of the time this doesn’t work. A real life relation I have to mental illness is my uncle. He was schizophrenic and spent most of his adult life in a treatment facility until he later past. Schizophrenia is basically hearing voices in your head that tell you do to something that isn’t always right. I never got to meet my uncle but through hearing stories of him through my mom and other relatives it impacted their lives as well. Mental illnesses don’t just impact the main target of the person who has them, but can also have a major impact on those around them.
Another thing I learned and can relate to that was discussed in this episode is OCD. For me personally I have a little OCD. Some examples of this are I have to check everything I have in my room before leaving or going to bed to make sure it is all there, and in the correct spot I had it in. Checking stuff before bed isn’t the worst thing in the world because at least I always know at the end of the day that all my valuables are with me. OCD impacts me more when going on a trip. Packing a suitcase takes hours for me because I have to check in numerous times before loading the car or plane. On the upside of doing so I haven’t forgot anything on a trip yet, so there are upsides to having OCD.
Terms: mental illness, schizophrenia, OCD, counselor, medication

This episode was about how people with psychological disorders interact with the world and others around them. After listening to the four stories from Kaysen, Deegan, Sedaris, and Lovell, I learned that though there are differences between a mental health and mental illness, the line can become blurred and people can go back and forth, on the borderline of what people deem insane. In Kaysen’s case, she was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, a mental illness described as a disturbance in identity, mood, and impulse control. Though labeled as insane and shipped off the McLean Hospital for two years after attempting to commit suicide, Kaysen seems pretty normal. Her tendencies and self-harm were not brought out by enjoyment, but by external pain and feeling worthless. After reading the book Girl, Interrupted, I learned a lot about her disorder and have come to realize that it is not strictly a disorder; it’s a label for peoples whose lifestyles bother others. Patients like her and her friends, Lisa and Polly, seem normal in most settings. They just had a moment where they snapped. The setting of the hospital does their healing process no favors either. Just as Lovell explains in his story, they are cooped up inside for months at a time, given hopeless results, painful therapy, and are consistently monitored. Lovell thinks under such conditions that anyone would go, or stay, crazy, and at some points he felt crazy himself. But he would gage his own sanity by comparing his behavior to that of his insane brother and patients like Carol. But one night he fell asleep while working the nightshift and Carol woke him up. Normally she was super crazy and would mumble nonsense to herself, unwilling to interact with others, but that night she was different. She joked with him and noticed he felt sad. He told her about his brother and nodded in understanding, promising him that “he’d get be okay. They’d all be okay.” The next day Lovell tried to thank her for the talk, but she was back to her old self and ignored him. Such events prove that insanity is not a permanent state; it fluctuates. That means the lines between the sane and insane are not strict, and “normal” people may cross that border more than they realize.

Another disorder featured in the show was obsessive impulse disorder (OCD), the frequent, intrusive thoughts that create anxiety and compulsive actions that temporarily reduce anxiety. For Sedaris, he recounts his boyhood when he became obsessed with doing what the voices commanded, mostly touching and licking objects. If he did not listen to them they would taunt him throughout the day until he obeyed. He said he took his frustration out on the objects, but really he was just frustrated and hated his own mind. Eventually this daily routine developed into a different kind of a tick: self-harm. He says he loved the feeling of pain, of his nose being smashed, his brain vibrating inside his skull, and his vocal chords straining as he screeched. He said it was neurotic and gave him a sense of relief. Everyone thought he was just going through a faze, but really he was suffering from OCD. He eventually learned to manage it and has become a famous comedian, but it was still a serious disorder that plagued his life. Similar to OCD is schizophrenia, however the voices in these patients heads tell them depressing, horrible things, bringing to life their deepest fear. It is a disorder characterized by the split between though and emotion where a person has difficulty distinguishing whether altered thoughts, perceptions, and conscious experiences are real versus imagined. Deegan, a psychologist who has the disorder herself, described it as the emodiement of negative feelings: if you feel bad about yourself, the voices will say you suck and that no one likes you. She does not believe such a disorder, similar to Sedaris’s OCD, can be simply overcome by medication. It needs to be mentally combatted. She has learned to fight the voices by plugging her ears to outside sounds do not prompt them to start and telling herself the sounds she does hear are not real. She counts the minutes and makes it through the day. Deegan and Sedaris’s triumphs over their disorder shed hope on the idea that mental illnesses can be overcome, especially when they go through fluctuations. A person should never be fully described as sane or insane because of this reason. Proven by these true stories, everyone’s mentality fluctuates so no one is truly crazy or normal.

psychological disorders, borderline personality disorder, mental illness, sane, insane, schizophrenia, neurotic, obsessive impulse disorder

After listening to Edge of Sanity it really made you think about all the disorders that people have and how their lives are affected. I have learned that mental health is when someone has a disorder that they can cope with it and still function regularly. While on the other hand a mental illness is something that needs diagnosis from a professional and requires help to be able to manage the disorder. Listening to the people talk about hearing voices and how stressful that could be is something that I would never want to experience. The ways people coped with the problem was remarkable in the sense they could still get through the day and be able to function. Like one lady said she used an ear plug to help from the voices she heard. Some people this worked with but not everyone could use it the same way. She said that it only worked if it was in one ear. If she had earplugs in both ears she said it would make it worse.
Act three was one of the things that stuck out to me was the fact that he felt like he couldn’t tell the voice “no”. He was coping with the disorder by listening to the voice in his head and he thought that was the only way he could get through it. He was wondering why he couldn’t do the things that helped him cope with the disorder when it wasn’t hurting anyone. Other kids could do things that helped them cope with stress but he couldn’t do things that helped him and didn’t hurt anyone.
Helping these people with disorders could be very stressful. Not knowing what could happen or what they would do if they were told no would be terrifying. The guy talking about working there said that he would try to work days because of the atmosphere there was better than at night. They would joke about how the night workers were just as crazy as the patients. He said during the night shifts he worked it was some-how peaceful when he would make the rounds to check on the patients to see them sleeping so peacefully when he knew they were in so much pain and agony.
Key Terms: mental health, mental illness

While listening to this episode I thought it was very interesting that the woman, Paulie, was described as such a kind, happy person. They said she would help whomever, she always wanted to make others happy, and she was a happy person. That does not sound like someone who should be in a psychiatric ward. This got me thinking about the differences between mental health and mental illness, there are definitely grey areas. It was interesting to listen to all of these women’s stories. They all had different illnesses, but somehow they all clicked in this ward, and became friends. I learned in act two that when someone hears voices that it isn’t really in their head, like sometimes we have songs in our head, it’s outside. They might even think someone is talking to them in the room, and it could become startling to them. And that even just putting an earplug in your ears can minimize or eliminate the voices, in some cases. I was surprised by this fact. Hearing voices or having a different mental illness effects every single of one these people in a different way, but it plays a toll in each one of their lives. It can make their moods change, it can make them unhappy with themselves, it can be something more positive, etc. Mental health is a persons condition with regard to their psychological and emotional well being. While mental illness is a medical condition that disrupts a persons thinking, feeling, mood, ability to relate to others, and daily functions. This episode talked about many of these mental illnesses. I do not think these are strict categories because many things can fall into both categories, and maybe two people have the same diagnosis. The way they act and feel could still be completely different. For example the two Lisa’s in act 1 who were both diagnosed with the same illness. Although I do not think there are strict categories for mental illness and mental health it is obvious that mental illness is more serious. Mental health became much more clear to me through this episode; I learned that mental health can either be good or bad, while mental illness is just bad. You have a mental health by just feeling emotions in general, we all have a mental health, some is just better than others. So if someone is really stable and can handle their emotions well they are pretty mentally healthy. It just depends on the person. Mental illness is diagnosed and once it is diagnosed precautions and procedures need to be taken. The mental illness that was the most interesting to me was schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is when you hear voices, it made it much more understandable for me to actually hear what people with schizophrenia would hear. It is a scary disorder, and often frightens the victim. It was surprising for me to hear all of the different types of disorders in the hospital the women were at. Some sounded much more serious than others did.

Everyone most definitely fluctuates with their mental health. We have many different emotions, some of us are more emotional than others, but we all experience many different emotions throughout our lifetimes. I think a common emotion that fluctuates our mental health is stress. Whether it is a major life stressor or an every day one they both effect our every day life and emotional status. Stress can also lead to depression and other more extreme illnesses. Then when we overcome our stress we are fluctuating back to happiness or stableness. Our life is full of different emotions.

Words I used: Major life stressor, stress, emotion, mental health, mental illness, schizophrenia

This episode was very intriguing. Throughout it my mind kept going in circles thinking about these people and how hard it must be for them to go through this and start. What really shocked me was when they talked about the people that had multiple voices going on inside of their head as well as different personalities with those voices indie their head. Schizophrenia really opened my eyes to how bad mental illness can really be and how hard it is to get rid of it after having it for so long. Mental health and mental illness are not strict categories. It weird but people can be in both categories. Mental health things are things like anxiety, depression, and mental illness is things like hearing voices or having different personalities that cannot be controlled. Mental health can be medically helped but people controlling them. I very strongly believe that people can fluctuate in the mental health status. Stress can be seen a big part that can fluctuate mental health status. There are also many things that can fluctuate mental health like death and even change like new house, city and school or workplace. Overall I believe that this episode gave me so much insight on mental health and illness. This kind of showed me that I have been in contact with certain circumstance and I have had some of the mental health problem that were shown in the book but maybe not as bad or not to the point in which I couldn’t help myself or ask a peer or family for help. We all go through things in our life that can change things but we all need to know that we are very fortunate to not have to go through the things that some of these people in the episode and chapter had to go through.

This episode helped me learn about mental health and mental illness, and how they are slightly different. Mental health is defined as one’s condition as far as their psychological and emotional well-being. Mental illness is defined as a wide range of mental health conditions. They are disorders affecting mood, thinking, and behavior. Therefore, a mental illness is a part of one’s overall mental health. As the reporter said early on in this episode, there is a very blurry line when it comes to the “line” separating sanity from insanity. Therefore, the terms “mental health” and “mental illness” are both distinct terms, yet they are not completely different. These terms are connected and related to each other. Therefore, I feel like they are not very strict categories. There is a very wide range of mental illness, and they can range from minor to very serious issues. With mental illness comes many different forms and categories, and this is where they get specific. However, this episode proved that no matter what, mental illnesses can be very closely related.
This episode made me think of the movie that came out a few years ago, Silver Linings Playbook. It is a story about a man dealing with his bipolar issue as he fights to win back his wife. In the process, of proving he is worthy of his wife again, he meets a friend along the way, who is also mentally disturbed. Together, these two find a friendship and learn to lean on each other for support. They both learn from each other that everybody has a past and a story. In a way, they both learn to live in a world where they feel they belong. This episode reminded me of this movie because it interviewed so many people who appeared to be “normal” citizens in society, yet they were diagnosed with some form of a mental illness. I feel that this is a reflection of many people in today’s world. There are so many people suffering from some type of mental issue, yet they appear to be perfectly normal. So in a way, anybody could be considered “crazy”. I believe that people definitely can fluctuate in their mental health status. The brain can change cognitively, therefore fluctuating one’s mental being. While this can be rare, it does happen. This episode proved that mental health is a complex part of human’s, and there is a huge range of mental illnesses. However, mentally ill people are not all completely different from each other, or even very different from “normal” people in society.
Terms: Behavior, mood, thinking, psychological, emotional, mental health, mental illness, bipolar disorder.

This episode was really interesting to me because it was intriguing and kept me willing to keep listening to them. Usually the other ones bore me, but that wasn’t the case for this one. The first story was about an 18 year old girl was sent to a psychiatric hospital where people that were diagnosed with mental disorders or illnesses were put. The girl had a personality disorder where she couldn’t really control her personality and her social functioning ability. For two years, she was in that hospital. In this episode, she talked about her experience being in the hospital and the other patients that were forcefully put in there, as well as the disorders they had. The second story was about a psychologist who could hear voices inside her head. This story was pretty interesting, too. It fascinated me because of the fact that even though she’s a psychologist, she still experienced things that patients had as well. The third story was about a guy named David and his childhood. During his childhood, he heard a voice in his head that told him to do weird things. This sounded really scary, and the fact that I hadn’t heard of anything like this intrigued me, too. The last story was about a man who worked at a mental institution, which I would never even think of having that as my occupation in the first place. To sum all the stories up, it showed the differences between mental illnesses and mental health by explaining that mental health is where the person realizes and knows his/her own abilities, while still living a normal social life. Mental illness is a mental or bodily condition marked primarily by sufficient disorganization of personality, mind, and emotions to seriously impair the normal functioning of the individual. Quite simply, if you have a mental illness, then you have to probably be hospitalized or go through rehabilitation.

This episode was really interesting to listen to because a lot of the time, you don’t get to hear from the patient themselves. It was really difficult to grasp the difference between the two— mental health and mental illness. I ended up researching it online because I couldn’t figure it out throughout the episode. Mental health is the “normal” or healthy state and mental illness is nearly the exact opposite. In a mental illness, it is categorized as an illness that causes impairment of one’s abilities. In the episode, during act 2, I thought it was really interesting that Dr. Patricia Deegan was a psychologist and she is a schizophrenic. I’ve honestly never heard of a psychologist who has a psychological disorder. I really liked her idea of only being able to help people when the helper has been through it themselves. I think that is really true because a lot of times when I seek help or advice, people don’t know what I’m talking about or don’t know how to help. It helps a lot for me to talk to people that have been through the same things that I have been through, so I completely agree with Dr. Deegan. I do think that the two (mental health and mental illness) are different, yet they are the same. So to answer the question, no, they are not strict categories. I do believe, though, that they are somewhat the same. One could start off with good mental health and end up having a mental illness, or have a mental illness is some parts, but be fully mentally capable of many other things besides the illness. The line between the two are considered “blurry”. I thought Dara’s story was really interesting, too, because she didn’t really seem too psycho, but the man she was seeing, she thought he was “wacked”. I’m sure some of the things that she did, though, were crazy to him as well. She did explain that she didn’t think it worked out between the two of them because of the way that she thought he was so crazy and he thought she was the crazy one and it seemed to go back and forth between the two. I thought it was interesting when she would explain his manic problems. Such as the grocery store story when she said how he would take forever. We didn’t get to hear his side of the story, so maybe he thought that she was crazy because she went to fast. I think people definitely fluctuate in their mental health problems. Dr. Deegan said how the voices in her head were good until she went to get help and then they turned evil all of a sudden. It fluctuated from bad to extremely bad in a short period of time. I’m sure people all go through stages of their mental illness where it isn’t as bad as it has been before to where it’s so bad that they don’t think that they could live with it anymore to it being almost invisible.

There is not a big difference between mental health and mental illness. They are kind of the same thing. If you knew someone who had a mental illness you could say that they have a mental health illness or they have a mental illness. This is how they are kind of the same thing. These are not different categories. You could use either one and people would know what you are talking about. They are not different categories because they are almost the same.

People can change in their mental health state. The show talked about how there was a person who was doing things like licking things. Then he did something else he would roll his eyes. Then he would shake his head. Then he started hurting himself. He said that he liked the pain. This is kind of like antisocial personality disorder. This person also could have had disorganized behavior. They could have had autism spectrum disorder. Then they went college and did not do that anymore but smoked and drank. This person changed a lot. They changed what they did. The person said that they had a feeling like they did not need to do the things they use to do when they were in college. I think they said that the smoking and drinking helped. There was also another person who was in an insane asylum. There was someone working and they fell asleep. The person at the insane asylum got out and talked to the person who was sleeping. Then the person from the insane asylum went back to there room and went to bed. In the morning the person who had the conversation with her went to go talk to her and she was not the same. I think that she did not say anything to them. This person changed. They were talking to someone to not talking to them. I do not know why this happened. Something that could have happened is that she had dissociative amnesia. It is kind of strange that they went from talking to them to not talking to them. It was not that long either. I think it was in some hours that this happened. This person changed fast. The person that went to college and smoke and drank did not change as fast. These people still changed.

Antisocial personality disorder, dissociative amnesia, autism spectrum disorder

This show was very interesting for me. I never realized how oblivious I was to how severe some of the mental illnesses can get. I’m not really sure if there was a clear distinction between mental health and mental illness. The only way I can think to relate them is similar to the distinction between physical health and illness. Such as saying, being healthy is more than being without illness. It is also about how well the body is able to handle daily life tasks. I think the same can be said for mental health. Being mentally healthy is more than not having a mental illness. It also involves the ability to withstand daily stressors. However, I don’t think that the categories are very strict. I think at any point, somebody always has the possibility to suffer from a mental illness. Even though some mental illnesses can be genetic, many can emerge as a defense to a stressful environment, such as multiple personality disorder. The This American Life Episode showed example of severe mental illnesses. When some of the people in the episode are compared to a person suffering from mild depression, the person with depression may appear to be mentally healthy. I think it all depends on who and how you are comparing people.
One of the most interesting stories I heard in this episode was the problems between the two Lisas. I do wonder what happened to Lisa Cody. I believe a huge part in her disappearance was due to Lisa. When Lisa Cody found out she was a sociopath like Lisa, she was happy. Maybe it was because she was like her friend, or maybe because she didn’t feel so alone. However, Lisa was upset that there was another sociopath in the ward. She was proud to be the only one, and she wanted to prove that she was. I think that this affected Lisa Cody greatly. Instead of getting the support she needed to get better, she was told that she wasn’t good enough. Lisa was almost an anti-treatment. She made Lisa Cody want to get worse, not better.
I think that shows how people can fluctuate in their mental health status. I know from my personal life, I fluctuate a lot from my anxiety, when I’m not on my medication. There are days when I’ll be doing fine, and I won’t notice that I forgot to take it. However, there are days when I suffer from panic attacks and feel miserable and scared. I think the medication does even out the fluctuations for the better. I also think another way people manage their mental illness is to understand it better, like Dr. Deegan did. When she understood her schizophrenia and how to handle it she was able to predict an onset of the voices and prevent them from happening. I don’t know if there is anyway someone is ever “cured” of a mental illness. I think it is just sometime people have to learn to manage on their own, or with support. Even though medication can make it easier to manage, there is still some psychological understanding that needs to take place.

Terms: Schizophrenia, mental health, mental illness, anxiety, panic attack, sociopath,

After listening to this This American Life episode about mental health and mental illness, I learned that mental health is a person’s wellbeing within their state of mind. Many people can be fine on their outer shells but can lack the self-esteem or confidence on the inside. Mental health is up to interpretation because we are all different. Some may say that they are in good mental health because they smiled at someone today and some may say they are in good mental health today because they took a basket of goodies to a charity, they wrote soldiers letters, and they helped feed the homeless. Both are good and also significant in their own ways to the individual’s perception of their mental health that day because the one may naturally be more reserved and distant so that smile would be a big step mentally for them. On the other hand, the other might think this is a big accomplishment because they are naturally giving and outgoing so they amped up their normal kindness and they may feel like they are in a good place mentally that day. As you can see, there are many levels to mental health and many personalities that determine how good or how poor their mental health is at that time. Mental health is very individually classified. Furthermore, mental illness was also a factor talked about on the episode and they made it quite clear that not all mental illness is the same and that they are very unique. Sometimes it’s hard to determine the severity and the depth of the case. Mental illness can be described as a difference in mentality that goes against the ‘norms’. Many times we look at someone fooling around or acting strangely and say they’re crazy when in reality they are just mentally ill. I know, crazy is a word most people use for mentally ill patients but this doesn’t even look into the fact that they have an illness but that they just act funny to get attention. Some may do this but for many they just can’t help it. For instance, an example of that is the story of the two women named Lisa. The new Lisa in the institute clung to the dominant Lisa’s identity and friendship and ultimately wanted to be just like her. The dominant Lisa was a diagnosed Sociopath and soon after the new Lisa came to the institute, she was diagnosed with the exact same illness. Instead of believing her, the dominant Lisa challenged her to prove that she wasn’t just a copycat and that she truly was a Sociopath. She did not believe that she could do what she did on a daily basis so she challenged her to burn her arms with cigarettes, break tons of glass light bulbs with her bare arms, and many more horrifying acts. She was convinced that she was lying to get attention. Maybe she was right maybe she was wrong; we just don’t know. These categories are not strict in fact they are far from it. The categories are just as puzzling as the mental illnesses themselves. We run very fine lines when dealing with mental illness and human consciousness. Also, People can most definitely fluctuate between mental illness and not. I mean, like I said earlier, there is a fine line between mentally ill and eccentric. Some behaviors can classify you as mentally ill but then in turn have all other arrows pointing to a sane mentality. Overall, anything to do with the human psyche can be difficult to classify, especially since there is a vast amount of knowledge we have yet to discover about the brain and behaviors. The mystery continues and so does the research. The psychological terms I used were mental health, mental illness, wellbeing, self-esteem, perception, personalities, severity, institute, diagnosed, sociopath, categories, human consciousness, eccentric, sane mentality, knowledge, brain, behaviors, psyche, and research.

I’ve always been interesting in knowing what goes on in people’s brains that declare them as mentally ill. I’ve always wanted to know what was going on up there, without actually having to experience it firsthand. An interesting fact that I learned in this episode was that the “voices” that some people hear in their heads sound like another voice in the room, it is not just a blur in their voice, but a clear and distinct voice within the mental illnesses. I continue to question how these voices are conducted and why they go on in some people’s minds, and not others. I also am curious as to why mentally ill people actually listen to the voices in their head. Like the young boy that kept being told to lick the light switches, why did he do it? Didn’t he have the common sense that licking light switches are gross and that’s not a normal thing to do? That makes me even more curious and I want to know more.
The distinction between mental health and mental illness are not strict categories. Just like physical health, everyone has a mental health of some degree at all times of their lives. In example: some people may experience a life changing moment that leaves them down for a while, meaning they have low mental health, but not necessarily a mental illness. If this life changing event affected this person for an excessively long period of time, it could be considered a mental illness to a degree.
People most definitely fluctuate in their mental health status. At certain times, some mental illnesses may be more obvious than other times. They may seem as if they are even not there, even though they are. I think it is normal for mental health to fluctuate also. Everyone shows an increase or decrease of mental health. Someone in your family dies leads to a decrease in mental health. You get married or fall in love, your mental health increases. I feel as if mental health is somewhat associated with emotion. For example, when you are happy or excited, your mental health status increases, but when you are upset because you failed your psych test, or you lost your psych text book, your mental health may decrease a bit because something negative happens to you.
All in all, this kind of stuff interests me. It makes me question what goes on in mentally ill people’s brains, and why do they let the things in their heads affect them. Why do they listen to the voices in their heads? I want to know more about these mentally ill situations. I pray that I never have to deal with a mental illness in my immediate family. I have dealt with “friends” with mental illnesses and I do not like the outcomes of what happens to them, so I hope that does not happen to my family, yet I am still interested in the affects it has on people. I just choose to not associate or be close to them, as heartless as that sounds. I feel as if lots of stress comes as a package deal with mental illnesses, from what I have previously experienced.

I think it was interesting to listen about how individuals with mental illnesses think about it. The mental illness and mental health effects everyone differently and daily. Somebody with mental health is someone who realized it, can cope with stress, and diagnosed mental disease. A person with mental illness has biological and psychosocial problems. With mental health is can make a person feel like something is wrong with them but nothing is really wrong with their brain. With mental illness there is something wrong with the brain.
I don’t think that there are strict categories between mental health and mental illness. The effect on the daily like is a major distinction that the two have. I love the OCD example because i can personally relate to it because i am one with OCD. If an individual with OCD can not go more than a couple second or minutes without worrying about germs, counting, ect. they would then be considered as a mentally ill person. Another reason why i think that the categories are not strict for mental health and illness is because people will constantly have different definitions or opinions on what they think about them. I think that people will illnesses are more mentally unstable on the day to day bases. They can help control that by seeing a doctor to get medication or see a consular to learn how to help suppress things. I really like focusing on the mental illness part because OCD and my personal relationship to it. Like many other people with OCD I am considered a counter/ balancer. I like to keep everything in check. People like me like everything to be even that they do. Whether it is flipping a light switch so many times, touching everything in a scrap book, or stepping on the lines of the side walk with the same part of each foot. This is a constant battle that I and other people have to fight every single day. We can take medication to help suppress the urge or feeling but it never truly goes away. It is something that is always there in the back of your mind. Like a presence that never goes away and it getting hard to cope with.
In the podcast we heard from Dr. Patricia Deegen about how people can fluctuate in their mental health status. She has been diagnosed with schizophrenia, which means she hears voices in her head. I learned that as a child the voices that she heard were nice. As she grew older the contented to get mean and meaner. Today she is a psychologist that focuses on helping other individuals with the same problem as her, hearing voices in her head. She talked about how she would use earplugs. Sometimes she would only plug one ear and that would interrupt these voices and make they temporarily go away. People can have some control to fluctuate what they are hearing. It takes practice and time and help.
Everyone needs to be looked out for because you never know what is going on with them.
TERMS: mental health, mental illness, schizophrenia, OCD, mental psychologist

From listening to the talk show edge of sanity I could determine that mental health and mental illness are opposites from one another. I found many of their stories rather fascinating and exciting because you’re put in the mind and head of those with a mental disorder, something we don’t really think about on a day to day basis. We in our minds can cope and understand our mental health and fix the psychological problem. One way we can fix our physiological problems is going to psychotherapy. There are sets of techniques that interact the psychologist you are seeing ad your self. The interactions between each other are critical in helping the client with a mental ill ness understand there symptoms and problems to help them work and admit what problems that are being aroused. Once the person with the illness can understand their problems they can then work on it to justify them selves. Where your mental health can be fixed your mental illness cannot be justified. People with a mental illness are under a state of cognitive, emotional, behavioral, and perceptual stress. They can not control there feelings and this makes them somewhat of an out cast to others that view them in public just like the girl who had a mentally ill boyfriend she was living with and every time she took him out to go to the grocery store he would take forever viewing labels and understanding the size of the produces in distinct detail to the point where in wasn’t healthy. I believe people do fluctuate between mental health coming from a kid who has been fluctuating between my own. I have been through some rough situations in my life where I have not been my self and in which the situations have made dramatic changes on my life. Depressions arouse and grew fonder I became sick and couldn’t eat, hair would be falling out from my head, I’d sit in my room by my self all day just staring at the wall but when you start realizing the stuff that’s happening to your self you make your self bounce back in to reality and start surrounding your self with friends and family. From there you start healing your own emotional state. Yeah these things aren’t easy to do but that’s what everyone goes through. It really determines if you can fluctuate from going to get help to helping your self out in the end.

Terms: psychotherapy, mental disorder, mental health, psychologist, mental illness, cognitive, emotion, depression, feelings.

The line between mental health and mental illness is very blurry. There is no definite line between these two categories. These categories are not strict at all either. There are very extreme circumstances where there is a clear example of craziness, when the girl slit her throat. Psychopathology is a very interesting part of psychology because there are so many things to analyze about a patient, and sometimes there is no clear cut answer for the reason why they are insane. Schizophrenia is one of the most intriguing mental diseases in my eyes because having multiple personalities inside you would almost be like changing characters in video games. One day you feel like this person, then the next minute you are an entire different person. I don't know if many have seen the movie Me, Myself and Irene. That movie is actually a very funny movie that also deals with a father who develops another personality. Having multiple voices inside of my head would be a very scary feeling to have. I don't know how I would exactly handle being schizophrenic. I would look like a total psychopath talking to myself and would definitely struggle living in our society. The voices within the minds of schizophrenic patients is usually very bad and hateful thoughts. I wonder if that these voices are actually a reflection of low self-esteem and from very bad past experiences. When the woman talked about her problem coping with the voices in her head, the thing she mentioned was that she accepted that she had voices in her head. She accepted her feelings that she was having at moments, and would often tell herself how she was feeling so that her voices didn't have the chance to speak. It is just so odd listening to these stories about people with mental health issues because I haven't met many people with these problems. The story about the man who had a severe case of OCD was such an odd story. I thought I had a case of OCD, but this man literally did things over and over until is was just perfect. It took him an hour to get to school and he would have ritual every time, if he messed it up he would start over and go back to the beginning. People fluctuate a lot with their mental health status because the mind is so unpredictable when a person is labeled with some brain issues. As the podcast continued, it made me realize so many things that I am thankful for because I have a healthy mind. The peoples' stories told throughout the podcast made it seem as if the people were prisoners of their own mind and they either had to take medication or end up in mental institutions. It is a frightening thought to think about, ending up in an asylum filled with a bunch of other people who have been given up on because their doctors had given up on their case. I know I have a lot of problems, but dear God I know I could be a lot worse off.

terms: psychopathology, OCD, Schizophrenia, mental health, mental illness

Honestly, I think that the concept of mental acuity is just so nebulous that it's difficult to ascertain whether or not there are clear distinctions between being mentally sound or having a mental disorder, or if it's just a sliding scale upon which we all weigh in at some point of mental clarity or another. Who knows, perhaps there isn't a defining line between insanity and lucidity and it turns out we're ALL just at different levels of illnesses like Schizophrenia and Dissociative Identity Disorder. I mean, we all experience these illnesses at some level. We all suffer from depression at some point in out lives, and honestly personality disorders (if you think about it) are just personalities that are really REALLY played up. It's only made into a disorder when it interferes with your daily life, and I think that's important to know. The word 'disorder' even implies that something is violating the established order of how something is supposed to function. To me, what this means is that something becomes a disorder only when it serves as a major inconvenience to you. Think about it. If people were able to function completely unhindered by their hallucinations, would they even care to call Schizophrenia a disorder?

As for whether or not someone's mental health can fluctuate, I think if that were actually a question that still needed answering, we wouldn't have all these clinics and institutions trying to help these people who are afflicted. It's perfectly plausible that a person of sound mental health can take a headlong dip into clinical madness, while people who are deeply affected by their illness can experience moments of mental lucidity, much like the woman the end of act 4. Something I found to be interesting was the discussion of recording featuring what's like to be Schizophrenic, what with the constant noises, and antagonizing insults. I enjoy any attempt to dive into the mind of the mentally ill.

The keywords are: acuity, mental disorder, insanity, lucidity, Schizophrenia, Dissociative Identity Disorder, depression, hallucination, and mental health.

It's interesting to think that the distinction between mental health and mental illness while different but also can be blurred together and are often unclear.
being able to display emotion, having a decent self-esteem for some people would mark being mentally healthy. Being mentally healthy to most people is just living a average life they deal with emotions as they come, Happy, sadness, anger, love, frustration, etc. These people can handle these emotions relatively well and can ask for help from others. Mental Illness is generally associated with people who are diagnosed with any psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia, hearing voices, people with mental illness can not function well in their daily lives and are often hospitalized. However someone who is mentally healthy can still be depressed or have anxiety and because of this these two categories mental health and mental illness are not completely strict. Someone with mental illness can not control their emotions, they generally end up getting worse and worse as time progresses and its rare for them to
get better. People's mental health status can and does fluctuate sometimes someone can improve their anxiety and have less of it while other times someone who suffers from depression can actually get worse.

Terms: Mental health, Mental illness, emotions, psychiatric disorders depression, anxiety,

I think this was an interesting episode. I feel like I learned a lot about the different types of mental illness. The distinctions between mental health and mental illness is still a little blurry to me. The definition of mental health is a person’s condition with regard to their psychological and emotional well-being. While the definition of mental illness refers to a wide range of mental health conditions —disorders that affect your mood, thinking and behavior. Examples of mental illness include depression, anxiety disorders, schizophrenia, eating disorders and addictive behaviors. So to me mental health is the well-being of the brain and the mental illness is the type of disorder with the brain. There are many different things that can trigger ones mental health to change. The death of a family member, peer pressure from friends to do things you’ve never done such as smoking, moving to a new place and having OCD and not being able to control it, or even having a child with ADD or ADHD. My little brother was diagnosed with ADHD as a young child and has been dealing with it for years. He does have times where he can just be out of control and want to be everywhere and do everything. It became a problem in school and they then limited him on where he can be. It been a rough thing to deal with but you would think it was just something all kids did. Kids are always hyper and curious. I personally dont think that it is okay to diagnose children for such mental illness, at least wait until they are a little older to distinguish it all.

I however did not choose Girl Interrupted for my book report although it does seem like a good book and movie. During this episode it read a passage from the book to gain a little better understanding of how people are dealing with different types of mental illness, Two of the girls were psychopaths, and they gave a pretty good explanation as to how they are dealing with it in a mental institution.

I found Act two very interesting but a little freaky at the same time. It is about Dr Patricia Deegan who hears voices in her head. She's a psychologist and she believes that the only way mental health workers can really understand what their patients go through is if they hear voices themselves. There is also a couple of different people who explain what it is like to experience voices in their head. I am glad that they did this recording it because people can’t just say that they think they hear voices in their head, I look at it as something you know right away if you hear voices or not. This act has helped me realize that you can still be successful with a mental illness. Dr Patricia is a prime example that you can channel these voices and live a good life and help others. I dont like when people are diagnosed with a mental illness and then are portrayed as a worthless person and can’t do anything with the rest of their lives. I dont think that is fair and we as a society should try to make them feel a little more comfortable about their situation. I think that it is extremely interesting to hear the voices that others hear in their head, I have never personally met someone who hears voices. Of course people fluctuate in their mental status, people are always constantly changing.

Terms used: Mental health, mental status, mental illness, psychologist, psychopaths, institution, ADD, ADHD, OCD,depression, anxiety disorders, schizophrenia, eating disorders and addictive behaviors.

Listening to some experiences from people that have directly been in a mental facility and worked in a mental facility was interesting and I actually enjoyed it. I thought it was interesting to hear about the different stories that they had about being in the facility and how they got in there. Listening to some readings from the book Girl, Interrupted was interesting because I have never read a book like this before. Listening to this made me want to read more of the book.
These mentally ill people hear voices in their heads which is also interesting. I thought it was nice that the people that worked there made a tape to know how it feels for the mentally ill people to hear voices in their head. What I also heard was different ways that they made the voices go away. One technique was to put an ear plug in their ears so they would go away. I thought this was weird because I wonder how that makes the voices go away. Another type of noise that was described in this tape was white noise. Dr. Patricia Deegan talked about white noise as not being actual voices but the noise she heard was just loud do to certain things. Her being a doctor I thought it was kind of weird that she hears voices in her head like the people that she is trying to treat. It seems to me as she hears voices in her head due to working at the facility. I think someone even just working there could turn out to become mentally ill in some sense. Hearing voices in your head obviously is not normal.
Listening to the boy that licked light switches was kind of scary to listen to. This compulsive disorder is an interesting disorder that I wonder about all the time. What I do think is cool about people that have these mentally ill problems been about how smart they are. I could not imagine how it would be to have all these things on my mind at once. I am not sure how these ill people manage to get through one day. Listening to David Sedaris tell his story actually saddened me. As I as listening to this story I realized that he will never live a normal life do to this illness. He can’t help what he does and that was the problem. One thing that I did realize is that his mother and his family didn’t really see anything wrong with it. They did see something wrong with it but it didn’t seem to bother them or they didn’t want to get him help like someone in these days would. Even his father was not on his side and trying to help him. Instead of helping him in a positive way he made it even worse by threatening him. I think if his parents or teacher got him the proper help that he would have gotten these days he would have a chance at having a normal life. It got worse as the years came. First it started with him touching things, licking things and hitting his self with his shoe. Then came him shaking his head and pushing his eyes back into his eye sockets. Then came him making noises and hearing voices in his head.
From listening to this video I learned that there actually is a difference between mental health and mental illness. I never thought of the difference before listening to this video. Mental health seems to be temporary to me and the individual can help their mental state and soon snap out of it. I feel like there is a reason for people to be mentally unhealthy. Like having a death in the family or coping with stress. Mental illness seems to be forever. I feel like if you are mentally ill then that is something that you will have to deal with forever and if not helped then it will only get worse and lead to death. Mentally ill people have to live in a facility where they are monitored at all time. These mentally ill people cannot live a normal life like mentally unhealthy people. I think people fluctuate in their mental health status all the time. Like I said earlier in this paragraph, something as easy as dealing with stress can change your mental health status.

This was an extremely interesting radio show because of how well it showed and explains mental illnesses. The distinction between mental health and mental illnesses is extremely hard to see but mental health would be more how an individual thinks and acts. It would also be individual’s normal abilities to adapt to stressors, how they think and feel about themselves and function in society. An example of mental health would be self-esteem or how a person views themselves. Mental illness on the other hand is a biological disruption in the brain, which can be recognized and diagnosed. A mental illness affects normal thought and behavior process. An example of this would be a person having uncontrollable actions because the voices in their head tell them to do so.

Mental health and mental illness really don’t have strict categories because a person and have mental health and still be mentally ill. There are such a wide variety of mental illnesses with various impacts on an individual’s life. People with OCD, panic disorder, agoraphobia, and anxiety disorders can be termed mentally ill because this affects their behavior and action but they are still able to live a relatively normal life. Those that are not termed mentally healthy would be more like schizophrenia, dissociative identity disorder and borderline personality disorder because these illnesses affect a person’s ability to behave and think rationally within society safely.

At the end of the radio show it discussed when Joel Lovell had fallen asleep at the orderly station and woke up to Carol sitting there telling him that she could take over. This would have been okay if Carol normally made sense and acted as sane as she was at that moment. This clearly shows that individuals can fluctuate their mental health status from time to time. This fluctuation however seems to be uncontrollable and can be very noticeable. This somewhat made me think of dissociative identity disorder because the individual can fluctuate between various personalities to deal with certain situations or issues. It is fascinating how the biology in our brains work to protect us but yet can change our life by making us unsociable and changing our behavior drastically when there is a disruption within the brain.

Terms Used: mental illnesses, mental health, stressors, self-esteem, OCD, panic disorder, agoraphobia, anxiety disorders, schizophrenia, dissociative identity disorder, borderline personality disorder

The distinctions between mental health and mental illness can be very different, but also unclear. Each meaning can be different for each person. Someone might consider self-esteem and the ability to care about others to be a description of mental health. Mentally healthy people can understand that they are not perfect and can’t do everything. These people experience all types of emotions, such as sadness, love, anger, frustration and others. Mental illness usually is correlated with a psychiatric disorder. Our book and this radio blog discuss many of the different kinds, and just like any illness, the severity of it can vary. Mental illnesses are often disorders of the brain that disrupt a person’s thinking, feeling, mood, and ability to relate to others. Although, mentally ill people can also possess the same qualities as a mentally healthy person.
The distinction between mental health and mental illness are not strict categories at all. Different disorders have worse effects for different people. A ton of behaviors can fall into both categories. The first story describes a romance that began in a mental hospital. This story demonstrates how the line between crazy and not crazy can be blurry and how certain behaviors could mean either. The guy was diagnosed as manic-depressive and she was diagnosed as depressive. They seemed to connect perfectly with each other. He always tried to make her laugh, flopping like a chicken and all types of things. Once they moved in together she stated how she realized how different he was. It was like he was a standup comedian all the time and couldn’t turn it off. It would take him forever to buy the simplest thing at the grocery store. She considered him as crazy, while he considered her to be crazy, even though they both were diagnosed with a disorder. Susanna Kaysen read from her account of living at McLean psychiatric hospital for about two years, when she was eighteen. She discussed several patients and their behaviors. One patient could have all normal behaviors one day, but then the next day her “job” was to take 50 aspirin. A girl name Polly was nice and caring, but one day she set herself on fire because the voices told her to. Each patient she described had both qualities that characterize a mentally healthy person, and also a mentally ill person.
Dr. Patricia Deegan talks about how people can fluctuate in their mental health status. She was diagnosed with schizophrenia and hears voices in her head. These voices were nice when she was little, and as she grew older they became more and meaner. Now she is a psychologist trying to also help other patients who hear voices. One trick she describes to help with the voices, and fluctuate their mental health, was to use earplugs. Sometimes only plugging one ear can interrupt these voices and make them go away for a while. David Sedaris tells a story from his childhood about when a voice inside his head would command him to lick every light switch and tap his forehead with his heel. This behavior was mandatory for him and he couldn’t help it. For David, rocking was his hobby. He stated how touching objects satisfied a mental itch. His behavior was affected by these voices up until college. In college he was introduced to alcohol and cigarettes. He described how cigarettes helped his weird urges and if he knew there was a cigarette near, everything would be okay. “It was like I was born to smoke”, he stated. The last story told by Joel Lovell also talks about how a patient mental illness can fluctuate. Joel works at a mental institution, usually days, but sometimes nights. One night a patient named Carroll was able to have a normal conversation with Joel. However, the very next morning she went back to her disordered state. One minute they could be fine, but the next they could be doing something completely crazy and dangerous. These behaviors could be for no reason, or be due to voices inside their head telling them to. Mentally healthy people fluctuate in their mental health status all the time too. Some days or even weeks you may feel great and then one day you might be sad for no reason. Even if you are not someone with a disorder or depression you can still experience change. This could simply be related to emotions, stress, or just hard times in life. We all experience different things than others do daily and we all have a different way of dealing with our problems. As an end result, we all have different problems. Just because we are not all the same or someone is different from a group doesn’t mean they are mentally ill. They could be in a different state of mental health, or they could have a mental illness, but it doesn't mean they do for sure.

Key Terms: Mental health, Mental illness, Emotions, Psychiatric disorders, Manic-Depressive, Depressive, Schizophrenia, Behavior

In this episode, there were a couple stories from people who have some sort of mental illness. Whether it be schizophrenia or a child having a “plague of tics” as he described it. I really can’t ascertain if the show taught me any distinctions between mental health.Mental health by definition is the psychological well-being and satisfactory adjustment to society and to the ordinary demands of life. Mental health by definition is any of the various forms of psychosis or severe neurosis. The distinction between the two is very clear without listening to the radio show. Mental health is having a healthy psychological mind and being able to function normally in a society like ithers. Mental illness is when you have any sort of psychosis that impedes on your ability to function normally and thus you have to train yourself to function normally. The terms are strict categories, in my belief, but there is a definite amount of fluctuation between the two. I’ll take depression for example. When you are suffering from depression, you start lacking the ability to function normally in society. However, you can regain your mental health from this psychological disorder, So, for a time you had a mental illness but you were able to regain the health of a normal functioning human being. Some disorders such as personality disorder and delusional disorder cannot be given treatment in order to become a normal functioning human being. Instead, the patients have to be given treatment and cognitive therapy in order for them to be able to function in society with relative normality, but the disorders are always there waiting to come out. Some disorders aren’t considered “mental illness” by many people because of the fact that patients can function normally. Disorders like this include bipolar disorder and OCD. Technically, they are illnesses of the mind and thus mental illness but they don’t affect the patients in a way that absolutely labels them as dysfunctional in society. Playing with the definitions of words and what constitutes as health and illness is very hard and no one will ever agree on everything. The major point is that those who have psychological disorders need and want help. We shouldn’t have to play with terms in order to constitute someone as healthy or not. If someone needs help, they should be allowed to get help without having to be labelled a certain way.

Terms: mental illness, mental health, schizophrenia, psychosis, psychological, mind, personality disorder, delusional disorder, bipolar disorder, ocd, depression, cognitive therapy

For my book report in this class, I read the book Girl Interrupted, which kind of based off this entire episode. It was about an eighteen year old girl who was admitted into a psychiatric hospital, because her psychiatrist just “thought” that she had a disorder. When in reality, she was just depressed. Usually people that are in the psychiatric ward need help and need to be under close watch 24/7. My grandma was admitted into a psych ward a few years back, and when I went to visit her, it was the exact same way that this explained it. People were mentally insane and would yell and insult people for no reason, they would have moments where they just completely lose it and have to be medicated because they would not calm down. There is a difference between mental health and mental illness. I think that everybody goes through mental health problems at sometime in their lives. Whether it was being depressed from a loved ones death, or a relationship ending with someone. Everyone is sad at sometime in their life, but that does not mean that they have a mental illness. It is just a momentary action, it is not a disease of a lifetime. Mental illnesses are something that someone is actually diagnosed with. The boy named David who would lick all of the light switches and have mental problems like that is considered mentally ill. People that have altered personalities and when their mind acts in different ways is also considered mentally ill, like people with schizophrenia, for example.
I do not think that these categories are very strict. Mental illness is where you are literally diagnosed by a doctor and have to provide treatment for it. Mental health is when you are going through a tough time in life, but eventually it will be over and you will get over it. It happens to everyone, but it does not mean that they are mentally ill whatsoever.
I do think that people fluctuate in their mental health status. Because most of the time, people cannot be happy 24/7. Everyone hits a rough patch sometimes which makes their moods fluctuate and can cause them to become sad or depressed, but eventually, they do get over it. I think that if you were happy all the time and didn’t have any down moments, then you would not be normal anyways. Everyone has rough patches, whether they like it or not!

This was probably my favorite episode of This American Life so far. In the episode it went through different perspectives of mental illnesses and what it’s like to actually have a mental illness. It was like you got to hear a small slice of what those people go through on a daily basis. After listening to this show, I had learned that there is a distinction between mental health and mental illness. With mental health it is like your current state of emotion, what’s going on inside your head, and how you are doing or feeling. But, with mental illness there is something “wrong” in the brain. I but wrong in quotes because wrong doesn’t really capture the entire meaning of mental illness, it’s just that that person’s brain was set up differently or responds differently than the normal person. Sometimes it’s due to genetics, and sometimes it has an external factor such as drugs or alcohol. With mental illness, there is a variety of thing that could be wrong within the brain. Certain mental illnesses are depression, anxiety, bipolar, or schizophrenia. With all of these there could be imbalances in the brain or there could be damage to the brain as well. But there are instances where mental illness and mental health overlap and are not strictly one or the other. Take depression for example. Depression is a mental illness but it can affect your mental health. That person’s mental health may be low so they could be tired, detached, or there could be a lack of interest on day to day things. Depression takes a toll on mental health because there is no positive thinking that motivates you to keep on pushing forward, to keep on living. The same is true for the opposite as well. Your mental health could possible worsen your mental illness if you have one. Take anxiety for example. If you have anxiety, your mental health could worse because all you think about is your anxiety. You wonder when will your next panic attack will strike or when the next time you are too anxious to even go out in public. You constantly worry that your anxiety is getting worse and eventually not only does it take an emotional toll but a mental toll as well.
I think that people do fluctuate in their mental health. Take college for example. Before coming to college, I never stressed about school or friends and money. I have always been the type of person that brushes stress off to the side because I think that it’s too much of a hassle to deal with so I just never get stressed about things. I always think that eventually everything will work itself out so what’s the point in worry about it? But, when I came to college it was a whole new story. At first I was homesick and missing my friends and family that were two and a half hours away. Also, the fact that I was in an entirely new place with people I didn’t know started taking a toll on me. I thought I was going to love college and it was going to be the best four years of my life, but then I got here and realized how much I hated not only school but where I was living as well. The only thing that kept me sane through the first few months of school was because my roommate and I got along really well. But all of those things started to affect my mental health. I was constantly worrying if I wasn’t experiencing college like I should, if I should transfer at semester, or if I made the wrong decision about where to go to college. I wasn’t sleeping as well and for the first time in I don’t know how long I was starting to stress about things. After a few months I got in to the swing of things and started to return to my normal care-free self. So yes, I do think that a person’s mental health can fluctuate because there is always something that could set a person off that they aren’t used to, especially in new situations that didn’t go as they had originally planned.
Terms: mental illness, mental health, schizophrenia, anxiety, depression, bipolar

In this episode of This American Life The stories help in differing mental health and mental illness from each other. The first Act that involved the both Lisas it is clear that one the "original" Lisa truly had a mental illness, while the other seemed to have some mental health problems. Some examples that Susanna, the writer of the book Girl, Interrupted, describes help in separating the two Lisas. Lisa was a diagnosed sociopath, and a soon after getting to know the original Lisa, Lisa Cody was also diagnosed with being a sociopath as well. Likely on purpose because she wanted to be just like Lisa. To prove that Lisa Cody wasn't really a sociopath and didn't really have a mental illness Lisa would do things that she knew Lisa Cody would try and not be able to handle, like burning herself with a cigarette. Lisa Cody tried it after her and had to go run it under water for a while in order to deal with the pain, showing that she was just trying to look and do just what Lisa did, but couldn't actually do it because she wasn't actually a sociopath. So mental illnesses are clearly more severe because people with them can pretty much handle anything they do to themselves, where as people with mental health problems may not harm themselves, but the health problems could evolve into a mental illness if left unchecked.
The categories of mental illness and mental health are not very strict, because the severity of problems within each person can vary and could be considered one or the other depending how a person is able to cope with the stress and emotion that is brought on by the problems.
People do fluctuate in their mental states, because of the therapy that a lot of them go through in order to get the problems under control. Another way that can cause a persons mental state to fluctuate are the drugs that they are being given to help with the problem.
Psych Terms: Mental illness, mental health, stress, emotion, sociopath

This episode was very interesting to me. I didn’t realize that someone with voices in their head could really live a normal life, let alone teach others to as well. I learned that the difference between mental health and mental illness is a little blurry and can sometimes be mistaken for the other. For example I feel Suzanna Kase was just depressed, not mentally ill. I’m not saying being depressed is not a big deal but it’s something that is easily treated with medicine and therapy. Some of the others where mentally ill, like the woman who can hear voices. She will never stop hearing voices, she just learns to cope with them and help others cope with them as well. She has tactics to help with this that she has learned through experience. But, it is hard to tell the difference between the two when it is a case like David Sedaris. He had a sort of compulsive disorder that he could not help, and didn’t really understand that he was different until later when he was older. He had to touch everything a certain amount of times, count his steps and even lick things. If he forgot something or thought he had forgotten something he would have to turn around and do it again. He later began to punch himself, but changed to rolling his eyes to feel pain. After that he would violently shake his head. He then began to make weird noises from the back of his throat. After David went to college he took up smoking, and everything else stopped as long as he had a cigarette in his near future. This is hard to tell if it is a disorder or something to do with his health. Many people do fluctuate in their mental health status. For example you may not be born with depression but eventually have that chemical imbalance. Or when Joell was working the night shift at the mental hospital, he had a patient come and talk to him after he had fallen asleep on accident. She seemed like there was nothing wrong with her, but in the morning she acted like she usually did.

In edge of sanity I was very interested in the different situations the people were in. Like, the boy who had to go around and licking thing, taping his head with a shoe, or having to touch a tree in the right spot or else he would feel uneasy and have to go back. I don’t know why I was so interested in his story but I thought it was really interesting to listen to, and I wondered why the mother didn’t take him to a doctor when he was acting like this. I learned that mental health people can realize what is wrong and get help. While mental illness people are diagnosed with a disease. For example, the man and women that were both living together. The women was depressed and could go on with daily livings and seemed normal. She got help for her mental health problem it seemed because the way she was talking in the show she didn’t seem depressed. Mental health is different than mental illness and are not in strict categories. Mental health are things like depression or anxiety while mental illness is more serious, not saying mental health can’t be serious. Mental illness is like the people in the show that were hearing voices. These people know they are hearing voices but the illness can get really bad to where they can’t be helped. I think people can fluctuate with this mental health because if something really stressful is going on in their life then they could become depressed until the stress is gone or handled. Terms used: Mental health, mental illness, depression, anxiety.

In this episode of This American Life, Ira talks about mental health and illnesses. There were four different accounts of people who had illnesses and how they acted. It was quite interesting to see that there may be a thin line between sanity and insanity for people with mental illnesses. He interviewed many people and gave us an insight on what it may be like to have mental illnesses.
The first account we see is in the prolog where we hear a short story of a romance that blossomed in a mental hospital. The girl was depressive and the man was manic depressive. We are told he was manic a lot. The girl said that he made her laugh and that she found him to be a lot of fun. Their relationship went on even after they left the hospital and she began to realize how different he really was. She said he was funny all of the time, but like it was something he couldn’t turn off. He had other quirks about him also like how he would take a long time just to buy one item from the grocery store. The girl said that she thought he was crazy, but at the same time, he thought she was crazy, too.
In the first act we listen to an excerpt from the book Girl Interrupted read by the author, Susanna Kaysen. Kaysen tells us her own personal accounts while she was instituted in in a woman’s psychiatric hospital. We hear of a story of two Lisas and how they battled with themselves and each other. They were both sociopaths, but it seemed like they only wanted one Lisa, trying to prove that one was more psychotic than the other. Kaysen also tells us another account of a girl names Polly. Kaysen describes Polly as a nice, caring, and polite girl. She would sympathise with people around her and comfort those in need. Before coming to the hospital Polly had set herself on fire. This may not have been a very appealing sight at first, but the girls realized that Polly cared for them and that she was understanding. She seemed like a normal nice girl, but then she started screaming and screaming. Kaysen says in her book that they all kind of realized that it was because they could all leave the hospital some day, but Polly could never get out of her body. This shows how easy it is to act like everything is fine but nothing is at the same time. People with these disorders walk on the tight rope between sanity and insanity. One day everything could seem fine, but then next instant everything can change.
We the are introduced to Dr. Patricia Deegan in the second act. When Deegan was young she started to hear voices in her head and was diagnosed with schizophrenia. This was not much of a problem until she started to grow up and the voices became much harsher. She became a psychologist to help others who have the same problem. In the broadcast, Deegan plays for us a recording that shows us an example of what it may be like to hear these voices. The recording is of a man and he’s generally saying negative things above a background of whispers. It was interesting to hear how down-putting he could be. I imagined myself what the struggles of constantly hearing these voices may be. It was quite depressing. Ira then brought up to Deegan that while he was preparing for the show, he kind of wondered if the voices from schizophrenia was an extension of other voices in our head (like our conscious or songs that play in our head). He was shocked, and I was a little also, that people auditorily hear the voices. It’s not just something they think in their head. It’s as if someone is right behind them saying these things into their ear. She said there were some remedies she has tried with patients to make these voices go away. One interesting technique was putting a plug in an ear for about 15 minutes. Deegan even stated that she doesn’t really know why this may make the voices go away, but it does sometimes work nonetheless. It’s funny the different tricks that people do to make there nervous itches go away.
Which brings me to the third act in the broadcast which goes through the childhood of David Sedaris. Sedaris had many different nervous ticks that could be solved by performing odd tasks. Most of these tasks included touching of some kind. He had to touch a desk in a certain way; his nose to the window a certain amount of times; touch his heel to his forehead; or touch just the right leaf or blade of grass. Sedaris licked light bulbs and light switches. He had to walk the same amount of steps from his school to his house. As a child, rocking back and forth seemed to help. He stated it wasn’t for any goal, it just cleared his mind. After being an outcast in high school for his nervous habits, he turned to cigarettes in college. He says that this really helped subside his urges and it was much more socially acceptable than the other ways he could hush his demons. We hear in his story his own thoughts, and they seemed like any other person’s would. He thought what he was doing may seem weird, but it was something he had to do. There was some kind of logic behind it, even if others couldn’t see it for themselves. We see his thought processes and how in his craziness that he thought just like everyone else, he just had problems that went along with it.
In the fourth act we listen to accounts of Joel Lovell. Lovell worked at a mental institution and often worked day shifts but sometimes had to take a night shift. People who often worked night shifts were considered by their co workers to be as crazy as their patients. One night when Lovell was working he encountered a patient named Carol. That night they had, to what seemed to Lovell, a normal conversation. But, the next morning, Carol went back into her disordered state. This shows how one minute someone can act fine and the other they could be off the walls. It shows me how much someone with a disorder needs to be watched carefully. In one second their state of being could be altered for either the better or worse, but with either one they need the attention and care of others, just like anyone else. This was an extremely interesting and eye opening broadcast that has shed some light on the mental stability and health of those with mental disorders.

Terms: mental health and illnesses, sanity, insanity, manic, depressive, institute, psychiatric, sociopath, psychotic, schizophrenia, psychologist, nervous (ticks, habits, urges), logic

Psychology Blog
November 20, 2014

In this weeks blog we listened to the This American life episode number 52 called edge of sanity. IN the segment of the blog they talked about what goes on in a person’s mind with a mental illness. As the show goes on there are three stories that stand out. IN each of these stories the people talked about their experience with a mental illness, what they went through everyday in a mental institute. I found this somewhat interesting because its cool to get some of an understanding on why they do the things they do, most don’t even know they are acting out in a certain way until after its over. These people cant help it. Their illness attacks they brain to the point where they have no control this is why they are put in places such as a mental facility. Most of the time people have absolutely no idea what their saying because the voices in their head was to strong and over powered their thoughts making them break out in random bursts of uncontrollable language. For example there was a story about an eighteen year old girl who lived in a hospital for a meant for people with a mental illness. She was in there for two years and talked about what she went though each and everyday while living in that place. She had stated that she and the other residents would yell at another just for entertainment. This same girl could not control the way she acted this is why she was put in the facility to begin with. She had friends who only she could see and she called them by her own name. This is because she suffered from a personality disorder.
Mental health and mental illness are different in many ways and most people don’t understand this. Mental health can make a person believe something is wrong with them but in reality there is nothing wrong with them at all. A mental illness is something that is wrong with their brain most of the time they people cant tell what Is wrong with them.
Terms: Mental health, mental illness

Mental health and illnesses are two similar things that are completely different. It is hard to explain, but they have similarities but are different as well. The two people may have had the same diagnosis, but they may be completely different. The girl who moved in with the guy found out that the guy was much different than she thought. She was said to be mentally ill because she was depressive. The guy would cheer her up by being silly, but this was part of his diagnosis as well. The girl got annoyed by how he was acting, and stated that it felt like she was living with a comedian all day every day. She wanted him to act normal for a while for a change, but he couldn't. Also interesting to me was the hearing voices section. The voices were not inside their head but sounded like they were coming from the outside world.
It was really interesting how they could keep the voices from showing up. A woman described that she would hear voices after she started to hear white noise. When she started to hear the white noise she would put in a earplug into her left ear (because that helped to stop the voices. It is different for others. It is her way of treating her problem).
There are not strict categories. Everything seems to blend together. It is hard to decide exactly which disease is the one that is affecting the person. There could be multiple ones showing small symptoms of each. Some symptoms may come and go, which would make it extremely tough to figure it out. It is not easy to categorize them in vague categories, so it almost seems impossible to put them into strict categories.
People can fluctuate in their mental health statuses. People can sometimes understand what is wrong with them and treat them through medications, processes like the lady who heard voices, or in other ways. They may be bad at some times, but they could also seem completely fine at other times.
I could not imagine going through something like this. Not knowing what is wrong with me and people always thinking I was crazy, or knowing what was wrong and not being able to do anything about it. Thinking about it now makes me a little sad. I could not imagine the struggle that these people go though.

This show was very different than the other shows we have listen too. I didn’t know if I liked it because it was interesting or didn’t like it because it was so sad that people have to suffer with that every day and they can’t control it. From this show I learned that the difference between mental illness and mental health is that mental illness is where the person’s brain is broken and the answer to help or stop it is medications. Mental health is controllable, it’s the well-being and satisfying adjustments to society and normal demands in life in the person brain. For example, you help your mom out with dishes for no reason, just because. Your mental health is good, and you can even hide your mental health by putting a smile on your face but really on the inside feel crappy. To me these are very strict different categories. Mental illness you can try with everything in your will power to make things change or stop, but you physically and mentally cannot. Mental health is just in our heads and we can change it if we really try. Mental illness is usually described as crazy or retarded. Some people even fake being mentally ill to get attention, just like the Lisas story. The real Lisa was truly diagnosed with schizophrenia but an then a new Lisa came to the mental hospital without a diagnosis’s yet, but then later diagnosed with schizophrenia too. The real (first) Lisa didn’t believe that the new Lisa really had schizophrenia and then tried to test her. You can defiantly fluctuate in mental health. Just like we change our mood every day or at any times, that’s our mental health changing each time. This show really makes me changes how I think of mental ill. They are the people that really need help to be able to maybe slightly live a normal life. I learned not to take for granted that we can’t actually live in a world to be able to do what we want and not have voices talking us down.
Terms: Schizophrenia, mentally ill

I think that this broadcast was extremely interesting and beneficial, the reason that I feel that way is because I think that the terms mental illness and mental health are often used interchangeably even though they are not the same, however they are not mutually exclusive either. The main difference between Mental illness and mental health is that everyone has some level of mental health all of the time, whereas it is possible to be without mental illness. Additionally people's mental health can be a factor of poor mental health illnesses, such a depression and anxiety for extended or limited amounts of time and yet these could not be considered a mental illness.

I think that this broadcast was very beneficial in showing how people's lives are impacted when they are diagnosed with a mental illness. Everything in their life is taken on in a different light and thing that we take for granted every day can end up being large road blocks in the way. In this broadcast it shows people that have anxiety to people suffering from depression to even OCD. It shows how difficult it is for these people to function when going out of their comfort zones when their illnesses can get the better of them. An example was the man who suffered from OCD, and for the millions of Americans who suffer from this illness need repetition and routine in order to stay in their comfort zone. And if they do not stay in their comfort zone they have feelings of anxiety and panic that overwhelm their entire self to the point where they are unable to function normally throughout the day.

I think that people can absolutely fluctuate in their mental health status, because I feel as though life does not stay the same and the different traumas and joys that we face in our life are always changing, and since these are such a contributor to our mental health status I think that it is not possible for out mental health state to always stay the same. I would say that I am an example of this, when I was young, there was a tragic loss in my family and after is when I suffered from anxiety head on to the point where it made simple tasks and things impossible to do because I was so crippled by the illness. since, I have sought therapy and because of the positive impact I am able to live with the illness and control it rather than it controlling me.

Psychological Terms: Anxiety, Depression, OCD, Mental Health, Mental Illness, suffer

I am actually reading Girl Interrupted for my book report. Listening to this show has helped me more clearly understand what’s going on. Mental heath and mental illness is not the same thing. Mental health is a state of well being in which the individual realizes his or her own abilities can cope with the normal stresses of life. Mental illness is a recognized medically diagnosable illness that result in individuals in the significant impairment of individual’s cognitive, affective, or reasonable abilities. Such as anorexia, anxiety disorders, schizophrenia, etc. Growing up I have been around a lot of people with mental heath, because my mom works with them. She works in a house with 3 adults, who have mental health issues. Most of the factors that influenced their mental health had to do with lifestyle, health behaviors, and exposure to trauma. Being around that it is a little easier for me to understand the concepts of both. Someone who has a disorder needs to be frequently monitored because one day they may seem okay but the next day they may be completely crazy. The behavior that they are creating can be for no reason or because they hear voices in their heads and they are being told to do things. Dr. Patricia Deegan talked about how people do fluctuate in their mental status. When she was a little girl the voices in her head were nice, and as she grew older they voices became mean. She was diagnosed with schizophrenia, and now after having help is a psychologist trying to help other individuals like her.
TERMS: Mental Health, Mental Illness, Schizophrenia, Stress, Anxiety, Anorexia, Cognitive, Behavior

This radio show, Edge of Sanity, was very fascinating to listen to. This show was mostly about the distinction between mental health and mental illness with the use of several different stories of people with psychological disorders or psychopathy. The show talks about how the line that distinguishes crazy from not crazy, or ill from healthy, is blurry and cannot be exactly understood. The main difference is that mental health deals with psychological well being, while mental illness disrupts this well being. A person’s thinking, emotions, mood, and motivation, among other things, can be totally changed and out of what is considered social norm. I think there are many factors that go into being mentally healthy rather than just being without a mental illness. It’s hard to put behaviors observed into separate categories of ill and healthy, because many of them can fall into the same category. I think the status of someone’s mental health can change due to extreme experiences such as child abuse, a family member dying, being raped, etc.

The main theme of the book talked about in the show, Girl, Interrupted, is the difference between mental health and mental illness. Susanna Kaysen is put into a mental ward after trying to kill herself with 50 Aspirin. She talks about how she is diagnosed with a personality disorder. She talks about the condition of the other patients and their mental health. She often questioned whether mental health is real or something made up. Who can be the judge of someone’s mental health status? I think that everyone can be a “target” for a mental disorder. I think anything that is extremely out of the norm could be seen as a mental disorder. Mental health is a very fuzzy topic and I think the thoughts that Kaysen have are very interesting.

I thought the most interesting aspect of the show was when we the woman with schizophrenia was talking about her condition. She and some others suffering from the same condition made a tape of what you could expect to hear if you were schizophrenic. I’ve often wondered what it sounded like to hear voices in your head. I assumed that it was like the voice that you hear in your head when you read to yourself. It’s not really a sound but something imagined being there, while what people with schizophrenia hear is actual sound. The voice sounds like is actually coming from someone in the room, when it’s really just in their head.

After reading Girl, Interrupted for my book report, the chapter on psychological disorders, and listening to The Edge of Sanity, I feel like I’m going insane. I’m not sure if my knowledge on mental health and mental illness is better or not. I feel more confused than ever and I think it’s because I’ve learned just how almost nonexistent the line between what is psycho and normal is. After learning about this topic this week, I am even more interested in learning about different metal disorders and the difference between mentally healthy and ill.

Terms: psychopathy, mental health, well being, behavior, thinking, emotion, mood, motivation, mood, social norm, schizophrenia

It seems to me that if mental health and illness are two opposite sides on a spectrum. One side is where all perceptions of the world can be proven and are mostly accurate. This is the healthy side. That is where a group of people can agree on the same logic (maybe not the same beliefs but definitely on the fact that it never rains flying monkeys). On that side people are able to conform to society in a way that is beneficial to both society and themselves. On the other side of the spectrum is illness. That is where made up voices are heard and impulses must be followed through no matter how ridiculous it might be. It almost seems like people with psychotic illnesses are lost within their own mind. With so much going on the inside it is no wonder why they may pay little to no attention at all to those who are on the outside. However, I do believe that there are different levels to both sanity and insanity. It seems that Susana Kaysen was in the mental illness zone but she wasn’t as far as the guy who had to lick things, tap his foot to his forehead, or count his steps; on the flip side I know that there are healthy people who struggle staying within the “sane” group. I do think that people can jump from one area to the other on the spectrum. It is easy when a person is seated right in the middle to teeter back and forth, but I think it would be harder for someone who is on either ends of the spectrum to jump to the other end. Something just doesn’t seem right if someone is completely and totally sane with logical ideas and then jump to a mental illness that makes the person do things the average person wouldn’t do or vice versa. Either the person was not very mentally healthy to start with or not very mentally ill.

I thought this talk show was very interesting, and had a lot of good information come out of it. I got a better understanding between mental health, and mental illness and how they both correlate and come together to help ones state of mind. It interested me that the talk show was inside the mental hospital letting us hear about different patients and doctors and how they are affected by mental health and mental illness.
Mental health is a state of successful performance of mental function. When it asks do people function in their mental state, the answer is yes. Mental health gives off emotions like sadness, love, anger, frustration. The mental function process is responsible for activities, fulfilling relationships. In the talk show it talks about the guy who said he was born to smoke, due to his mental health if he was in a place where he couldn’t he would have to use his mental health and be able to cope with the situation and its challenges. The mental heath state is essential to a person’s well-being. Like mental health, it is also a part of a person’s mental illness.
Mental illness are health conditions that are characterized by alterations, thinking, changes in mood and behavior. Mental illness is a psychiatric disorder. The brain interrupts a person’s thinking, feeling, and moods of the mental health and affects the person’s cognitive abilities. Mental health plays a role and can help turn the depression and anxiety of mental illness to physical problems letting people being able to go treatment, and get help. The best example in the talk show of how your mental health can affect your mental illness by correlating with the brain is Joel Lovell’s patient. Carrol was a patient and they could go and have conversations, and be able to talk, to the next morning she would be back in her disorder state. This shows how the brain interrupts a person mental health, and the mental illness is affecting the way they can think, act, and their moods.
After listening to the talk show I thought it was very interesting, and I got a better understanding of how mental health and illness work together, and how they both can have different affects on people. This was very interesting.
Terms: mental health, mental illness, psychiatric disorder, cognitive thinking, depression, anxiety

After listening to this episode of This American Life, my eyes were opened to a whole new perspective. Mental health is something that I feel many of us take for granted. Being able to think straight without having any disruptions in our thoughts is a reason why being healthy mentally is something those without any disorders should be thankful for. The name for mental illnesses is called psychopathology which is defined as a sickness or disorder of the mind. Although many people try to hide their mental illnesses, they should not be ashamed because psychological disorders account for the greatest amount of disability in developed countries. The first story was of two women, Lisa and Lisa Cody, who were both at an institution. At first, Lisa Cody was there for unknown reasons while the other Lisa was there because she had been diagnosed as a sociopath. Antisocial personality disorder, aka sociopath, is the diagnosis for individuals who behave in socially undesirable ways, such as breaking the law and being deceitful and irresponsible. Eventually, Lisa Cody was diagnosed as a sociopath and she described being treated terribly by Lisa, who was previously the only sociopath at the place. Lisa carried pride with her about being the only sociopath and when Lisa Cody was diagnosed she was no longer the only one. Lisa Cody’s symptoms of her illness were definitely shown as she began torturing Lisa for a very unjust reason. Another act talked about how Dr. Patricia Deegan was a psychologist who also hears voices in her head. The tapes they played were almost very creepy and made me realize how serious symptoms of an illness like this can be. Some of what she talked about can be linked to schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is a psychological disorder characterized by a split between thought and emotion where a person has difficulty distinguishing whether altered thoughts, perceptions, and conscious experiences are real versus what are imagined. Schizophrenia is a very powerful disorder that alters the mind very much. As well as hearing voices inside one’s head, a schizophrenic might experience delusions, hallucinations, disorganized speech, and disorganized behavior. This type of disorder is very rare and is very powerful. I believe that there is a fine line between mental health and mental disorders. Mental disorders are something very serious, something that changes a person’s life each day because of different obstacles and hardships they face because of something they might feel or hear in their own mind. People with perfectly good mental health often experience a wide variety of emotions as well, but that is completely normal. I would say that the distinctions between mental health and mental illness would be the symptoms that go along with a person’s thoughts and how impactful they are on an individual. This episode also featured David Sedaris, who talked about the impact his mental illness had on him as a child. David would have very strange urges to do random things, the first thing he talked about was how he had a constant urge to lick every light switch and tap his heel against his forehead. He said his mind controlled him and that if he didn’t do what his mind wanted of him, he would not be able to stop thinking about it. Other strange things he did were things such as shoving his nose against windshields, punching himself in the nose, and rolling his eyes in the back of his head. All of these strange this brought him pleasure. David would probably be categorized into the third group of disorders. The symptoms in this group are avoidant, dependent, and obsessive-compulsive. They are characterized by anxious or fearful behavior. Personality disorders in the third group also refer more to maladaptive ways of interacting with others and of responding to events. The term for this could be classified as borderline personality disorder which is characterized by disturbances in identity, in emotional states, and in impulse control. David had a hard time controlling impulses he received from his brain. This episode was extremely interesting and made me much more curious about mental illness and how it differs from mental health.
Terms: mental health, mental illness, psychopathology, antisocial personality disorder, schizophrenia, delusions, hallucinations, disorganized speech, disorganized behavior, obsessive-compulsive, borderline personality disorder

Edge of Sanity
I found this piece to be very interesting. I have always found the human mind very interesting, but learning about the human mind under an illness was even more interesting. There is a fairly distinct line between mental health and mental illness. I believe that everyone has a state of mental health, but not everyone is mentally ill. I found it interesting that some of the people within the show who had a mental illness, could for the most part identify what it was. They went through stages where they were actually mentally healthy. One could visit the mental health institute and believe that there is nothing wrong with some of the patients there, they seem mentally healthy. Then, they could go back the next day, like one of the examples in the show, meet that same person, and they are setting themselves on fire because a voice inside of their head told them to.
I think that there should be a very strict category for the mentally ill. I think that extreme cases like, schizophrenia, where someone is experiencing hallucinations and is delusional, there should be no question that they are mentally ill. On the other hand I think that Depression should be looked at more closely. I believe that sometimes people become marked as mentally ill when they are truly just in bad mental health. We can fall into a stoop sometimes due to situations we experience, but shouldn’t be labeled as mentally ill. Depression is still something that people need to get help for, but if it doesn’t interfere with how someone performs everyday tasks it shouldn’t be considered an illness. Bad mental health is something someone can recover from. Mental illness is not something that someone can just recover from.
Mental health status definitely fluctuates. Our mental health is based on emotions, and our emotions change from day to day. Situations throughout a day have a huge impact on our mental health. This does not mean that we can’t control our mental health though. It is all about how we handle or look at the situation, and people handle situations differently, some are better than others at handling their emotions.
Terms: mental health, mental illness, emotions, hallucinations, delusional, depression, schizophrenia

After listening to the show I think that there is a distinction between mental health and mental illness but it is a fluid line. The line can change person to person unless in extreme cases. What might be mentally healthy for one person could be a mental illness for another person. Mental health I imagine is being able to function and live life day to day without any mental dysfunctions. Mental illness is not being able to live life day to day without having some form of dysfunction. There is a distinction between the two but they but are interwebbed. Everybody had some form on mental health and dysfunction but when those dysfunctions interfere with daily life and impact it in a negative way that is when it becomes a mental illness.
Everybody had fluctuations in their mental health status. Depending on their stressors, the environment they are in, and what is happening in their life they may be very happy and have great mental health or they may fall into a depressive stage. There isn’t one way specific status that one person stays in their whole life. People fall into stages of depression and then are fine then fall back into those stages all through life. Even if a person who isn’t diagnosed with a mental illness has stages of mental health they go through just based on what is happening in their life. Mental health varies from person to person and isn’t clear cut for each person. People’s mental status varies through life’s’ events. Biology also plays a large part in a person mental health. With a normal functioning brain neurotransmitter and their receptors function within normal capacity, which causes less of a chance of mental illness. With an abnormal functioning brain neurotransmitter and their receptors don’t function like there are supposed to and this leads to a higher chance of a mental illness. The brain can go through stages of this and go back and forth between functioning normally and abnormally.

Edge of Sanity showed the differences between mental health and mental illness by a mental illness is identifiable by the interference of cognitive, emotional or social abilities that use a classification system. These mental illnesses include mood disorders like depression and anxiety or even psychotic disorders. In girl interrupted she has a psychotic disorder and is still able to cognitively function in day to day activities. I never really believed that people with severe disorders contributed to society all that much. I stereotyped it to be almost a burden and going to mental hospitals but that isn't always the case.
Mental health problems interferes with cognitive, emotional, or social as well but they usually occur with life stresses and are short term. Examples of mental health problems is sadness and despair along with grief and loss.

Mental health and mental illness are so closely knitted together that it is quite difficult to fathom a distinction between them. After listening to this episode, I’ve realized this. I’ve also learned that just because you have a mental illness does not mean you have terrible mental health and can never live a normal life. Obviously for some people with a severe case of a psychological disorder, life may be more challenging. But for someone who has learned to control their behaviors, emotions and attitudes, they can live a fairy normal life. For example, in the book Girl, Interrupted, Susanna Kaysen tells of her personal story while in McLean hospital. This was the book I read for my book report so I had already known quite a bit about Ms. Kaysen. She suffered from borderline personality disorder. But just because she had this disorder does not mean that she’s completely unstable and that her mental health is completely down the tube.
I don’t see mental health and mental illness to be in strict categories. They both flow together so much that it’s almost impossible to separate them. When a person has a mental illness, then their mental health is altered. For example, the story of the man who had to lick every light switch in his house. He suffered from obsessive compulsive disorder.

I don’t believe that these are strict categories for people do fluctuate in their mental health status. Medication helps with these mental health issues and help soften a person’s feelings and actions. An example could be depression. People aren’t usually born with depression. Instead, depression is brought on by people or events in a person’s life. So if a person for example was mentally depressed because of a bad relationship, their depression would be more high when they’re living with that person rather than if they moved out. Medication also allows people to fluctuate with their mental illnesses. When it comes to bipolar disorder, it can be slightly controlled with medication and therapy, so if a person who suffers from bipolar disorder were to take advantage of these options, then their illness could be tamed. One example that kept coming to my mind was the control of phobias. Many people have them, and depending on what they are, they can be controlled allowing a person to be more at ease. I personally have a phobia of clowns. I cannot stand them. They creep me out so much and the worst part is that my aunt collects them. Her house is stuffed with clowns. She has figurines, paintings, blankets, kitchenware.. you name it. I hate going into her house because of this. My phobia is fueled every time I walk through her door. But, if I wanted to control this phobia, all I would have to do is not go to her house as much as possible. Not seeing the countless number of clowns in her home would allow me to not think of them so often. People can do things to help calm their mental illness. That is not always the case though. Sometimes people cannot control their illness no matter how hard they try. People with post traumatic stress disorder sometimes have a more difficult time. A family friend suffers from PTSD. He’s a great guy, but sometimes he has flashbacks from the war which cause him to panic and become agitated. He can’t control this because his emotions flare up without his control. So it really depends on the person and the severity of their mental illness on whether they can control it or not. This is why mental illness fluctuates.

Terms: phobia, emotion, memory, motivation, panic disorder, post traumatic stress disorder, major depressive disorder, bipolar disorder, learning, borderline personality disorder, personality, mental health and mental illness.