Clipmarks | Mental.illness Clips

Antisocial Behavior May Be Caused By Low Stress Hormone Levels

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 00:27:58 GMT

clipped by: Kelika
clipper's remarks: "The differences between participants with severe antisocial behaviour and those without were most marked under stressful conditions. While the average adolescents showed large increases in the amount of cortisol during the frustrating situation, cortisol levels actually went down in those with severe antisocial behaviour.

These results suggest that antisocial behaviour may be more biologically-based than previously considered, just as some individuals are more vulnerable to depression or anxiety due to their biological make-up."

Clip Source: www.sciencedaily.com

Levels of cortisol in the body usually increase when people undergo a stressful experience, such as public speaking, sitting an exam, or having surgery. It enhances memory formation and is thought to make people behave more cautiously and to help them regulate their emotions, particularly their temper and violent impulses.

The new research, funded by the Wellcome Trust, shows that adolescents with severe antisocial behaviour do not exhibit the same increase in cortisol levels when under stress as those without antisocial behaviour. These findings suggest that antisocial behaviour, at least in some cases, may be seen as a form of mental illness that is linked to physiological symptoms (involving a chemical imbalance of cortisol in the brain and body).

Reduced levels of the 'stress hormone' cortisol has been linked to antisocial behaviour in male adolescents. (Credit: iStockphoto)

Tags: stress, mental health

Antisocial behaviour hormone link

Wed, 01 Oct 2008 18:33:25 GMT

clipped by: cakebelly

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

Antisocial behaviour hormone link

Low levels of the stress hormone cortisol have been linked to antisocial behaviour in adolescent boys.

Cortisol levels in the body usually surge in stressful situations, thought to help people regulate emotions.

But a Cambridge university study found this did not happen in boys with a history of severe antisocial behaviour.

The Biological Pyschiatry study suggests some bad behaviour may be a form of mental illness linked to a chemical imbalance in the brain.

An increase in cortisol levels is thought to make people behave more cautiously, and help them to regulate their emotions, particularly their temper and violent impulses.

If we can figure out precisely what underlies the inability to show a normal stress response, we may be able to design new treatments for severe behaviour problems.

Bringing up a severely disabled child

Thu, 25 Sep 2008 13:08:13 GMT

clipped by: Tri-City Psychology

Clip Source: women.timesonline.co.uk

As a mother is sentenced to prison for murdering her daughter, we look at the difficulties faced by parents when bringing up a severely disabled child

It's the little things that can tip you over the edge, says Asher Nardone, mother of two boys, one of whom is disabled

“Every day, I'm living in a fragile state, running on exhaustion,

On Tuesday, Joanne Hill was sentenced to a minimum of 15 years in jail for drowning her four-year-old daughter, Naomi, in the bath. Hill was embarrassed by her. Naomi suffered from cerebral palsy,

Hill, who had previously suffered puerperal depression, the most severe form of postnatal depression, denied murder on the grounds that she was suffering from a severe mental illness. But the jury took just 90 minutes to convict her of murder. Her husband later described her as evil.

While most parents love their disabled children unconditionally, they are also worn out by endless battles for the services they are entitled to.

Tags: disabled child

Mental Health Bill Moves Through Congress

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 14:48:20 GMT

clipped by: Andrew Gillies
clipper's remarks: Washington Post story notes that the bill is "the culmination of more than a decade of lobbying by mental health advocates and several members of Congress."

Clip Source: www.washingtonpost.com

Congress Approves Mental Health Bill

Private Insurers Would Provide More Benefits

By Lyndsey Layton

Congress approved legislation yesterday that would require private insurers to provide the same level of benefits for mental illness as they do for physical maladies, a change lauded by advocates as a great shift in the nation's understanding of mental health.

The measure has received strong bipartisan support in the House and Senate and has the backing of business, insurance companies, health advocates, the medical community and the White House. But its passage into law was not ensured last night.

"The Senate has devolved to the point where almost nothing is moving now," one senior Senate staff member said. "The issue is whether this gets caught up in the bigger inertia of the Senate."

Federal law now allows insurers to set higher co-payments or stricter limits on mental health benefits than they do for medical or surgical coverage.

Twelve Monkeys (1995)

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 07:51:08 GMT

clipped by: WIDEEYECINEMA

Clip Source: wideeyecinema.com

Twelve Monkeys (1995)

Terry Gilliam’s nightmarish low-tech/high-tech future vision takes place in 1997, after a deadly virus has killed 99% of the human population–forcing the survivors to flee beneath our planet’s surface. This leaves the (other) animals topside, to rule the Earth once again. The scientists select James Cole, an imprisoned sociopath, to return to the past and gather information useful in the defense against this contagion. Once back in time, he is to investigate the mysterious ‘Army of the Twelve Monkeys’ and report his findings. Scientific, social, and political themes like time travel (and its inherent paradoxes and nested loops), mental illness, the nature of reality, animal rights, and the Armageddon-potential of unchecked technological advances are artfully and cleverly explored.

Tags: movies

Has American Society Gone Insane?

Sat, 13 Sep 2008 17:31:58 GMT

clipped by: Spiritualmonkey
clipper's remarks: Diabetes, obesity, heart disease, physical weakness, osteoporosis, asthma, bodily misalignment and chronic pain... I'm fully in favor of adding depression and mental illness to the list of ways our society makes us unhealthy.

The very nature of how we live is unhealthy.

Clip Source: www.alternet.org

Is American society a healthy one, and are those having difficulties adjusting to it mentally ill? Or is American society an unhealthy one, and are many Americans with emotional difficulties simply alienated rather than ill?

Those comfortably atop societal hierarchies have difficulty recognizing that many American institutions promote helplessness, passivity, boredom, fear, isolation, alienation and dehumanization for those not at the top. One-size-fits-all schools, the corporate workplace, government bureaucracies and other giant, impersonal institutions routinely promote manipulative relationships rather than respectful ones, machine efficiency rather than human pride, authoritarian hierarchies rather than participatory democracy, disconnectedness rather than community, and helplessness rather than empowerment.

In The Sane Society, Fromm warned, "Today the function of psychiatry, psychology and psychoanalysis threatens to become the tool in the manipulation of man.

Tags: health, disease, mental health, lifestyle diseases, class, corporations, education, work

Top 5 Mad Geniuses

Thu, 11 Sep 2008 12:58:58 GMT

clipped by: Catshade

Clip Source: people.howstuffworks.com

Is insanity the secret companion to genius? Though we can't very well perform psychological examinations on those who are long dead, that hasn't stopped historians from speculating about the mental conditions of deceased geniuses by interpreting their personal letters, their works and others' accounts. It turns out some of the world's greatest geniuses were quite mad. In fact, some scientists claim that a far greater percentage of creative types (poets, painters, musicians and the like) have been afflicted with bipolar disorder than the general population. Some of the world's most renowned creative minds, including writers Mary Shelley, Virginia Woolf, and Ernest Hemingway; composers Irving Berlin and Sergey Rachmaninoff; and painters Paul Gauguin and Jackson Pollock are all believed to have suffered from the illness [source: Patient Health International].

Let's take a look at these mad geniuses -- the famous thinkers and artists who may have experienced mental illness.

Tags: genius, mad, schizophrenia, bipolar, disorder, abnormal, psychology

Who Stigmatizes Mental Illness the Most?

Wed, 10 Sep 2008 20:29:31 GMT

clipped by: dmegivern

Clip Source: psychcentral.com

Who Stigmatizes Mental Illness Most?

Clip Source: psychcentral.com

The people with the biggest mistrust of the mental health care system and the least likely to seek help from it? White males.

The findings suggest that non-Latino white males, compared to all women and men of other ethnicities, were most likely to mistrust the mental health care system and were also likely to perceive mental illness as a stigma and therefore avoid formal mental health care. Regardless of race and gender, those respondents with low income and low education were least likely to report negative attitudes towards care.

Tags: mental illness, stigma

The Mental Health Candidate=Obama

Wed, 10 Sep 2008 19:59:02 GMT

clipped by: dmegivern
clipper's remarks: Psych central goes through the issues and decides Obama is a better choice for people concerned about mental health and mental illness.

Clip Source: psychcentral.com

McCain vs. Obama on Mental Health & Psychology Issues

Clip Source: psychcentral.com

Earlier in the year, an important amendment reached the Senate that would halt the cut of certain Medicaid programs that were designed to help low-income families get themselves out of poverty, including case management services and rehabilitation services. These services were targeted at people with mental illness to help them manage their medications and live a healthy life within their communities instead of being imprisoned or hospitalized. McCain, busy again on the campaign trail, did not vote. Obama voted Yes.

Clip Source: psychcentral.com

The Congressional Budget for 2008, which passed 52 to 47, included increases in the budgets of the National Institutes of Health (2.1%) and the National Science Foundation (2.5%). McCain voted No on this resolution and Obama voted Yes.

Clip Source: psychcentral.com

Based upon our findings, we’d have to say the stronger mental health and psychology candidate is Obama.

Tags: mental health, mental illness

teenagers

Tue, 09 Sep 2008 20:23:53 GMT

clipped by: DW29JW
clipper's remarks: this is why we need to talk to our kids, and why we need to talk about mental illness and educate everyone from 10 years and up. Weird behavior, withdrawal, needing constant reassurance of love, anxiety, need good medical care, understanding, and not stigma.

Clip Source: health.usnews.com

If I could just tell young people, if you feel insecure and scared, that's ok. It's a burden, but nothing that you ever look for outside of yourself is ever, ever, ever going to fill that hole.

David: It's a cliché at this point that a lot of people who use drugs are self-medicating for depression and bipolar disorder, attention deficit disorder, and this and that. But 70 to 80 percent of people who wind up in rehab also have a mental illness.

Nic: I've been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and depression. I am on medication for that. It helps. It's like there are all these little pieces of the puzzle, and this might just be one little piece that's helping me out. I'm going to keep doing it, for sure.

Kids born to older dads more likely to be bipolar

Sun, 07 Sep 2008 19:38:03 GMT

clipped by: A53GG4

Clip Source: www.usatoday.com

Kids born to older dads more likely to be bipolar

CHICAGO (AP) — Children born to older fathers face a greater chance of developing bipolar disorder, according to one of the largest studies linking mental illness with advanced paternal age.

The leading theory is that older men's sperm may be more likely to develop mutations. Even so, the odds of a person becoming bipolar are so low that the study's authors said it shouldn't dissuade older men from becoming fathers.

The risks started increasing around age 40 but were strongest among those 55 and older. Children born to these dads were 37% more likely to develop bipolar disorder than those born to men in their 20s.

The study, released Monday, appears in September's Archives of General Psychiatry.

Bipolar disorder causes dramatic mood swings, from deep depression to manic highs. It affects more than 5 million Americans.

Tags: health

The Psychology of Conservatism

Sun, 07 Sep 2008 09:47:41 GMT

clipped by: abailart
clipper's remarks: But of course, 'liberalism' is a mental illness.

Clip Source: blogs.psychologytoday.com

We are talking about someone full of fear, with a poor sense of self, and a lack of mental dexterity. I always tell my students that tolerance of ambiguity is one especially excellent mark of psychological maturity. It isn’t a black and white world. According to the research, conservatives possess precisely the opposite: an intolerance of ambiguity and an inability to deal with complexity.

A meta-analysis culled from 88 samples in 12 countries

revealed that “several psychological variables predicted political conservatism.”

Death anxiety, system instability, dogmatism/intolerance of ambiguity, closed-mindedness, low tolerance of uncertainty, high needs for order, structure, and closure, low integrative complexity, fear of threat and loss, and low self-esteem. The researchers conclude, a little chillingly, that “the core ideology of conservatism stresses resistance to change and a justification of inequality

Tags: humour

Bill Gate's syndrome

Sun, 31 Aug 2008 19:07:28 GMT

clipped by: dakotayii
clipper's remarks: With Internet delusion, patients typically incorporate the Internet into paranoid thoughts, including a fear that the Web is somehow monitoring or controlling their lives, or being used to transmit photographs or other personal information.

The delusions are fueling a chicken-and-egg debate in psychiatry: Are these merely modern examples of classic paranoia fed by the current cultural landscape, or is there something about media like reality television and the Internet that can push people over the sanity line?

“There is the old saying that just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean there’s not somebody after you,” said Dr. Jeffrey A. Lieberman.

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

PSYCHOSIS in the 21st century looks something like this: You think your every move is being filmed for a reality television show starring you, and that everyone in your life is an actor.

Or you think you are under intense surveillance by an army of spies, whom you refer to as the “www people,” as in the World Wide Web, and they wiretap your furniture and appliances.

Or else you refuse to drink water because you fear that another cup drawn from your faucet will, once and for all, deplete the world’s water supply.

Those thoughts are from three case studies of what psychiatrists interested in the intersection of mental illness, culture and society are calling, respectively, Truman Show delusion, Internet delusion and climate change delusion; all of them a window, through madness, into the modern world.

If you have delusions of grandeur in this century, you are probably not Napoleon, but you may be Bill Gates.

Tags: science

Look Closely, Doctor: See the Camera?

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 20:50:30 GMT

clipped by: einbar
clipper's remarks: Psychiatrists say that other movies whose characters are living in a unreal world or being watched by malevolent forces, including “The Matrix,” “Edtv” and even the film based on George Orwell’s “1984,” have come up in conversations with psychotic patients. But the premise of “The Truman Show” (“What if you were watched every moment of your life?” according to a promotional blurb) is strikingly similar to what patients describe as their own experiences.

Reinforcing their beliefs is the fact that in the movie, Truman is right about being watched and recorded at all times. Every other character is part of the conspiracy.

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

Look Closely, Doctor: See the Camera?

Psychiatrists say that some psychotic patients have identified with the main characters in “The Truman Show,” and “The Matrix.”

PSYCHOSIS in the 21st century looks something like this: You think your every move is being filmed for a reality television show starring you, and that everyone in your life is an actor.

Or you think you are under intense surveillance by an army of spies, whom you refer to as the “www people,” as in the World Wide Web, and they wiretap your furniture and appliances.

With Internet delusion, patients typically incorporate the Internet into paranoid thoughts, including a fear that the Web is somehow monitoring or controlling their lives

Schizophrenia and Sexual success

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 20:35:49 GMT

clipped by: DianeH
clipper's remarks: It's all done for Art's sake!

Clip Source: www.sciam.com

Psychologist Daniel Nettle of the University of Newcastle upon Tyne in England and his colleagues recruited 425 British men and women through advertisements in a small town newsletter and specialty lists for creative types. The researchers surveyed this group with questions designed to measure various schizophrenic behaviors, artistic output and sexual success, among other aspects of their personal history.

But the finding, published yesterday in the Proceedings of the Royal Society (B), offers some insights into why schizophrenia, which seems to be passed from generation to generation and affects roughly 1 percent of people, does not disappear from the general population. In the study, even non-creative types who revealed an urge to resist conformity had more sexual success. In short, some of the traits associated with the debilitating mental illness can actually increase a person�s desirability. And sometimes produce major works of art as well.