Suicide is a serious concern amongst young adults, and the isolation and loneliness of some college students’ experience appear to be some of the factors that may trigger the behavior. Suicide is the second leading cause of death amongst college-aged students.
Suicide is most commonly viewed as a symptom of severe depression. Depression of this nature often goes undiagnosed in a young adult, because they don’t know what it is, or have no energy or motivation to seek out help. But other risk factors can also be in play.
In a survey of 1,085 University of Maryland college students, 12 percent said they had contemplated suicide. Eight out of 10 students reported having had a depressed mother. Other risk factors the researchers identified included: exposure to domestic violence, feelings of being unloved, depression and prolonged separation from family and friends, triggering anxiety.
Having a depressed parent has long been associated with being at increased risk for depression in a child. Living or growing up with someone who is constantly suffering from depression seems to paint a bluer and generally more hopeless picture of the world around us. A child growing up in a household with a depressed parent may learn less positive coping skills for dealing with negative emotions. Our home environment can be a very powerful reinforcement for the kinds of behaviors we learn.
None of this suggests someone can’t learn to overcome these depressive tendencies. Just that — armed with this knowledge — one should be aware of the greater risk for depression and proactively seek to railroad depression before it begins its downward spiral.
But make no mistake about it — thinking about depression doesn’t mean someone is likely to attempt suicide. There’s a huge gulf, according to the research, between thoughts of suicide (which can often be fleeting), and the actual act of trying to commit suicide (which requires a lot more planning and fortitude).
The findings also showed that it is problematic for researchers to assume there is a correlation between an individual’s tendency to have suicidal thoughts and the act of attempting suicide. Research showed that students who thought about suicide frequently are no more likely to attempt it than others.
Administrators at universities and colleges can go a long way in helping students who are at greater risk for suicidal thoughts by screening for these risk factors upon arrival to campus for first time freshmen. I believe a little proactive screening can go a long way to helping identify depression in students long before it becomes a more serious problem — or behavior — that can’t be undone.
Read the full article: Study traces reasons why students feel suicidal
Imagine this: you’re allergic to cats. You’ve just been exposed to cat dander and your eyes are a soggy, drippy red mess. You sneeze uncontrollably multiple times in a row. Your skin becomes itchy, red, and full of welts. You’re feeling pretty miserable.
A friend walks up to you.
“Hey, no worries,” he exclaims casually, “there’s nothing to be allergic to!”
Uh, what?
“Sure there is — I’m allergic to cats,” you’d probably say.
“Nah,” says your friend, “just stop sneezing. You’ll be okay.”
“What?! I can’t just STOP sneezing on a dime,” you retort.
“Sure you can. There’s nothing wrong with you,” he insists.
“Uhm, care to explain these welts, then? And the red eyes? And the sneezing?!”
Sounds frustrating, doesn’t it? If you suffer from allergies, you know that a reaction to an allergen can produce a truly miserable day. And while panic disorder is no allergy, it produces its own unique brand of misery, too.
And that misery can be compounded by how others react to a panic attack. Hopefully, no one would ever tell an allergy sufferer to “just stop sneezing” or to “make those welts go away.” It would be ineffective and frustrating advice.
However, as a panic sufferer myself, I’ve received a lot of ineffective and frustrating advice over the past few years. Most of it is delivered sincerely, with the absolute best of intentions, from people whom I care about. So, it often hurts to let these people know that their advice isn’t helping (and perhaps is even making the panic attack worse!). It’s not easy. If you haven’t yet developed a thick enough skin to ignore the below advice (I sure haven’t!), please share the below tips with family and friends who care about you.
This post was inspired by this list of things you shouldn’t say to someone who is depressed.
You say: “Just calm down.”
We want to say: “Okay, HOW!?”
Let’s pick this one apart piece by piece. “Just” implies that the act of calming down is a simple one. It’s not. For someone in the midst of panic, calming down can be an extraordinarily difficult task. For you, it might be effortless; for those of us with panic disorder, it might involve medication, breathing exercises, distraction, rituals, positive self-talk and reassurance, and/or time.
The “calm down” part is also problematic in and of itself. If you don’t have any tools, you can’t build a house, right? Unless you can construct some tools from thin air, you’re out of luck. Likewise, if we don’t have any tools or techniques (like the breathing exercises mentioned above) that can help us to become calmer, we can’t “build” anything. We can’t construct a ladder that will allow us to climb our way out of a panic attack. And, the added stress of being unable to comply with a “calm down” request might compound our anxiety.
Better response: Can I help you calm down? Is there anything I can do?
You say: “Why can’t you just relax?”
We want to say: “It’s a bit more complicated than you think!”
During a panic attack, the following physiological changes can occur:
* increased heart rate
* adrenaline rushes
* shortness of breath
* lightheadedness
* heart palpitations
* nausea
* trembling/shaking
* numbing or tingling in hands/feet
It’s like trying to relax while you’re being chased by a wild animal. Or while you’re frantically trying to find your way out of a burning building. Put simply, our panic-filled bodies aren’t capable of turning off the fight-or-flight impulse on cue. We’re not equipped with a switch. Even a steadfast resolve to relax will probably only incite further frustration over the fact that our body is going haywire.
True story: during my very first biofeedback session, the practitioner hooked me up to a computer that measures anxiety via skin conductance (read: sweat), hand temperature, heart rate, and breathing rate. As soon as she said, “Okay, now try to relax!”, my anxiety level (as measured objectively by a computer) surged upward. This is common!
Better response: I’m here for you. What can I do to help you relax?
You say: “There’s nothing wrong with you.”
We want to say: “Oh yeah? Then why does it feel like I’m going to have a (insert-severe medical-condition-here)?”
Classic line, often delivered by well-intentioned close friends, family, and significant others. Sometimes, this sentiment could be helpful — but only if we’re fretting over the “Is this just panic, or is it a heart attack or a stroke!?” question. Otherwise, it’s usually an unhelpful phrase that makes us want to yell, “Yes! There IS something wrong with me at the moment! I’m panicking, and it’s terrifyingly uncomfortable! THAT is what’s wrong!”
Better response: This must be uncomfortable. Can I do anything to make it better?
You say: “Sit down.”
We want to say: “But sitting down makes me more anxious!”
Usually, sitting down is a relaxing activity. We sit down to eat, to watch television, and to read a good book — and all of those events are generally agreeable and soothing. However, merely assuming a seated position isn’t going to act as a panacea.
The panic response sends a rush of adrenaline into our bloodstream that compels us to either fight or flee. It makes us feel like we need to be hypervigilant in order to ensure our survival. If you were really being chased by a wild animal, for example, sitting down would do you no good. That’s why the impulse to stand upright and stay alert is so strong. Leave this one up to the panicker: if we feel more comfortable sitting down, help us to find a safe spot. If we need to pace or go for a walk in order to calm down, let us.
You say: “You’re overreacting!”
We want to say: “Thanks, Captain Obvious.”
While it may be true that our body and mind are in overdrive, we often feel like we cannot control these reactions. In the midst of a rapid heartbeat, a cascading series of negative thoughts, and an intense urge to escape, having someone inform us that we’re overreacting is not helpful. We’re often aware that our body and mind are overreacting, but we may not yet possess the skills to disengage our frantic nervous system.
Better response: If you want, I’ll wait here with you until this passes.
Even though the above statements aren’t helpful to hear during a panic attack, some might be more appropriate after the threat of imminent panic has passed. If you know someone with panic disorder and want to be a great support person for them, check out this guide.
If you’ve ever had a panic attack, what’s the most unhelpful thing you’ve heard from someone who is trying to help? Share your thoughts in the comments or find me on Twitter @summerberetsky.
Stay tuned for the second half of this list — based on your comments — later in the week.
I remain astounded that psychiatrists and pediatricians think it’s occasionally appropriate to prescribe adult atypical antipsychotic medications — like Risperdal — to children younger than age 5.
Last week, The New York Times covered the story of Kyle Warren, a boy who began risperidone (Risperdal) treatment at age 2. Yes, you read the right — age 2.
He was rescued from this unbelievable prescription by Dr. Mary Margaret Gleason through a treatment effort called the Early Childhood Supporters and Services program in Louisiana. Dr. Gleason helped wean young Kyle off of the medications from ages 3 to 5, and helped understand that Kyle’s tantrums came from his stressful and upsetting family situation — not a brain disorder, bipolar disorder, or autism.
Imagine that — a child responding to a family situation that is stressful and involves his two primary role models — his parents.
After carefully reviewing the limited amount of research in this area, Psych Central recommends that parents should never accept an atypical antipsychotic medication prescription for a child age 5 or younger. If your doctor makes such a prescription, you should (a) look for another doctor and (b) consider filing a complaint with your state’s medical board against the doctor.
There is an astonishing lack of empirical or clinical data that suggest prescribing these kinds of medications to such young children — age 5 or younger — results in any significant change in mood or behavior. Lacking such data, it our opinion that it is simply irresponsible and inappropriate for medical professionals to prescribe such medications to young children.
There have been virtually no longitudinal studies conducted on children younger than 13 on these medications. We have no idea what the long-term effects of prescribing risperdal to a 2-year-old has on their long term cognitive and personality development. What few studies have been conducted and use the term “longitudinal” measure results and side effects at time periods like 6 months or 12 months (the maximum time of study we could find in a literature search). Yet few children are prescribed these kinds of medications for only 6 or 12 months. There’s continues to be a serious disconnect between how medications are prescribed in practice, and how they are researched.
The amount and number of tiny studies done on young children — those younger than 13 — for most of these medications is equally heart-stopping. They are few and far between, with typically small sample sizes (often in the 20 to 30 person range).
What brought this on was a recent article in The New York Times about a 3-year-old who was on an atypical antipsychotic. He was eventually diagnosed as simply having attention deficit disorder later on, but who knows what damage was done by the medication to his young, developing brain in the meantime.
It’s time to put a stop to this out-of-control prescription of atypical antipsychotics off-label. The American Academic of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry apparently agrees:
Dr. Lawrence L. Greenhill, president of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, concerned about the lack of research, has recommended a national registry to track preschoolers on antipsychotic drugs for the next 10 years. “Psychotherapy is the key to the treatment of preschool children with severe mental disorders, and antipsychotics are adjunctive therapy — not the other way around,” he said.
So why do doctors continue to prescribe clearly inappropriate medications to younger and younger children? Costs and time. Medication is cheaper than psychotherapy in most cases. And psychotherapeutic interventions require a time and commitment on the family’s part to embrace change. Changing the family dynamics, changing the nature and quality of the parenting relationships, and changing how a parent copes with stress and the behavior of their child. Many parents fear a therapist will also be more judgmental — telling them that their parenting styles may have led to the child’s current problematic behavior. Some parents just aren’t able to hear that (even if therapists are usually far more tactful than looking to place blame — therapy is about helping produce beneficial changes, not blame).
But it is cheaper to medicate children than to pay for family counseling, a fact highlighted by a Rutgers University study last year that found children from low-income families, like Kyle, were four times as likely as the privately insured to receive antipsychotic medicines.
Texas Medicaid data obtained by The New York Times showed a record $96 million was spent last year on antipsychotic drugs for teenagers and children — including three unidentified infants who were given the drugs before their first birthdays.
In addition, foster care children seem to be medicated more often, prompting a Senate panel in June to ask the Government Accountability Office to investigate such practices.
In the last few years, doctors’ concerns have led some states, like Florida and California, to put in place restrictions on doctors who want to prescribe antipsychotics for young children, requiring a second opinion or prior approval, especially for those on Medicaid. Some states now report that prescriptions are declining as a result.
A study released in July by 16 state Medicaid medical directors, which once had the working title “Too Many, Too Much, Too Young,” recommended that more states require second opinions, outside consultation or other methods to assure proper prescriptions.
In a followup to the main article, Dr. Gleason responds to some readers’ questions, in an article entitled A Child Psychiatrist Responds. She confirms our reading of the research:
There is no scientific support for the use of psychiatric medications in infants and toddlers and limited support in preschoolers. However, parents know better than anyone else that there few available resources for families worried about their young child’s emotional or behavioral well being.
While the latter may be true, that’s little excuse for what’s happening with these kinds of crazy young prescriptions. Doctors, of course, should know better. But parents too have a responsibility to read up and become educated about the treatments a doctor is recommending for their toddler or preschooler.
The program Dr. Gleason is associated with sounds ideal — I wish we could replicate it across the country:
In our program, we also do consider the role of medication as part of the treatment plan in older preschoolers whose severe symptoms persist after therapy and who have a diagnosis that has been shown to respond to medications. We try to use all available research to guide these considerations. It is important in psychiatry — just like in other medical specialties — that we make treatment recommendations based on careful assessment and understanding of the child’s symptoms, relationships and life stressors. We also need to track how treatment is working and stop medications that are not improving a child’s functioning or are causing side effects that interfere with the child’s optimal functioning. Our goal is to help children and families enjoy each other, function at the highest level they can, and maintain physical health.
In my mind, a treatment approach that uses comprehensive assessment, and considers biological, psychological, and social factors in the patient’s life and uses treatments supported by the strongest evidence is far from anti-psychiatry. It is the best kind of psychiatry we can offer.
I understand the problems parents face when dealing with an out-of-control 2 year old. But the answer is not an atypical antipsychotic medication. The answer lies in gaining better parenting skills, and getting the child into a child psychologist or other early intervention child care program that understands the value of examining a family’s dynamics to get the whole story.
Because a 2 or 3-year-old should never be prescribed an atypical antipsychotic psychiatric medication.
Read the original article about Kyle and his family’s ordeal: Child’s Ordeal Shows Dangers of Antipsychotic Drugs
Ahh… We work all year and get a whole day off to celebrate our working achievements. Yay!
I don’t think Labor Day means all that much to most Americans, other than the official mark of the “end” of summertime and the beginning of 8 months of uninterrupted work (well, unless you count all the Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Year’s and etc. holidays!). For me, it means a chance to take the day off (I usually end up working most weekends, one of the drawbacks of owning your own business). So we’re going over to Plum Island for a nice bike ride on this gorgeous, perfect summer’s day.
Enjoy your Labor Day!
And if you need a smile today, I leave you with these two cartoons from our own Chato B. Stewart…
5 Labor Day Weekend Tips To Avoid the Psychiatric Ward
Part of my anxiety when I was job searching had to do with therapy. How will I pull it off when I have to work a 9 to 5 office job? Which then led me to the thought: Is it time to take a break? How would I know when that time comes? Other people around me are clearly crazy and they aren’t spending their lunch hour in therapy.
Alas, I decided my graduation day is off in the far distance because I still always leave my therapist’s office feeling about 10 pounds lighter and equipped with an arsenal of power tools with which to treat my negative intrusive thoughts.
In my life, and maybe in yours, it always tempting to end therapy exactly when you need as part of your recovery plan, especially during a huge transition, like going to work for someone after 15 years of calling your own shots.
Thus, I thought I’d reprint this helpful passage from a Johns Hopkins Health Alert I just received. Published by the doctors of the John Hopkins Mood Disorders Clinic, they contain, at least in my estimation, the best advice you are going to get on the internet. If you want to subscribe, you can find out more information here.
Most people think of psychotherapy simply as counseling. In fact, the term psychotherapy is used to describe a variety of different talk therapies that treat emotional, behavioral, personality, and psychiatric disorders. Psychotherapy involves a commitment to a series of appointments with a licensed mental health professional, enabling a relationship to form between the therapist and the individual.
If you’ve been in psychotherapy for some time, how do you know when your treatment is completed and you no longer need to see your therapist?
This is something that you and your therapist should decide together. Some types of therapy, such as cognitive-behavioral or interpersonal therapy, are meant to be time limited; you and your therapist will set goals that can be achieved over a few months. When you’ve reached these goals and are generally feeling better, it’s probably time to stop therapy sessions.
Knowing when to say goodbye is tougher with more open-ended types of therapy such as psychodynamic therapy, which delves more deeply into how your past is affecting your present. This treatment doesn’t have a timetable for completion, and measuring goals is more subjective. But it seems logical to stop once you feel better, have resolved your major issues, and feel like your life and relationships have improved.
As with antidepressant medications, it’s not a good idea to quit therapy abruptly or without discussing it with your therapist. Some therapists find it best to taper off slowly, perhaps decreasing sessions from weekly to biweekly, then to monthly, and finally to telephone check-ins as needed. Of course, if you haven’t seen any improvement after six months, it’s probably time to consider a different type of therapy or medication or a change in therapist.
Late last week, I received this notice that may be of interest to readers who are interested in the topic of schizophrenia and peer-reviewed journal articles:
The Special Issue of Current Directions in Psychological Science on Schizophrenia has been getting so much attention that, in special arrangement with our publisher SAGE, we have just made the issue completely Open Access.
Open Access means that all the articles are open to anyone to read and download — it’s free! It’s rare to see a journal publisher agree to make an entire issue of their journal open and free to the public to read. So enjoy this little gift from the Association for Psychological Science and SAGE.
While schizophrenia is likely to affect less than 1% of the general population, it’s impact on families and social services is much greater than that. You can learn more about schizophrenia here.
This special journal issue on schizophrenia offers a broad overview of research into schizophrenia, including review articles looking at prenatal, functional and structural brain abnormalities, social and genetic factors that contribute to schizophrenia. It’s a great issue, especially if you wanted to know what our current understanding about this serious mental illness is.
Get it now: Table of Contents — August 2010, 19 4 — Current Directions in Psychological Science
Improving your memory is easier than it sounds. Most of think of our memory as something static and unchanging. But it’s not — you can improve your memory just as you can improve your math or foreign language skills, simply by practicing a few tried and true memory building exercises.
There are two kinds of memory — short-term and long-term. Short-term memory is the kind of memory our brain uses to store small pieces of information needed right away, like someone’s name when you meet for the first time. Research has demonstrated that short-term memory’s capacity is about seven pieces of information. After that, something has to go.
Long-term memory is for things you don’t need to remember this instant. When you study for a test or exam, that’s long-term memory at work. A memorably moment in your life, events with family or friends, and other similar kinds of situations also get stored in long-term memory.
So how do you go about improving your memory? Read on to find out.
Your Memory is in Your Brain
Although it may seem obvious, memory is formed within your brain. So anything that generally improves your brain health may also have a positive impact on your memory. Physical exercise and engaging in novel brain-stimulating activities — such as the crossword puzzle or Sudoku — are two proven methods for helping keep your brain healthy.
Remember, a healthy body is a healthy brain. Eating right and keeping stress at bay helps not only your mind focus on new information, but also is good for your body too. Getting a good night’s sleep every night is important as well. Vitamin supplements and herbal extracts aren’t the same thing as getting vitamins and omega-3 fatty acids naturally, through the food you eat.
Improve Your Memory
So you want to improve your memory? You need to focus on what you’re doing and the information you’re looking to encode more strongly in your brain. These tips will help you do just that:
- Focus on it. So many people get caught up in multi-tasking, that we often fail to do the one thing that will almost always improve your memory — paying attention to the task at hand. This is important, because your brain needs time to encode the information properly. If it never makes it into your memory, you won’t be able to recall it later. If you need to memorize something, quit multitasking.
- Smell, touch, taste, hear and see it. The more senses you involve when you need to encode memory, usually the more strong a memory it becomes. That’s why the smell of mom’s home-baked cookies can still be recalled as fresh as though she were downstairs making them just now. Need to remember someone’s name you met for the first time? It may help to look them in the eye when you repeat their name, and offer a handshake. By doing so, you’ve engaged 4 out of your 5 senses.
- Repeat it. One reason people who want to memorize something repeat it over and over again is because repetition (what psychologists sometimes refer to as “over learning”) seems to work for most people. It helps not to cram, though. Instead, repeat the information spaced out over a longer period of time.
- Chunk it. Americans remember their long 10-digit telephone numbers despite being able to hold only 7 pieces of information in their brain at one time. They do because we’ve taught ourselves to chunk the information. Instead of seeing 10 separate pieces of information, we see 3 pieces of information — a 3 digit area code, a 3 digit prefix, and a 4 digit number. Because we’ve been taught since birth to “chunk” the telephone number in this way, most people don’t have a problem remembering a telephone number. This technique works for virtually any piece of information. Divide the large amount of information into smaller chunks, and then focus on memorizing those chunks as individual pieces.
- Organize it. Our brains like organization of information. That’s why books have chapters, and outlines are recommended as a studying method in school. By carefully organizing what it is you have to memorize, you’re helping your brain better encode the information in the first place.
- Use mnemonic devices. There are a lot of these, but they all share one thing in common — they help us remember more complicated pieces of information through imagery, acronyms, rhyme or song. For instance, in medical school, students will often turn memorization of the bones in the body or symptoms of specific illnesses into sentences, where the first letter of each word corresponds with a specific bone or symptom. Learn about more mnemonic devices and memory here.
- Learn it the way that works for you. People often get caught up in thinking there’s a “one size fits all” learning style for memorizing new material. That’s simply not the case — different people prefer different methods for taking in new information. Use the style that works for you, even if it’s not the way most people study or try and learn new information. For instance, some people like to write things down when they’re learning something new. Others may benefit more from recording what they’re hearing, and going back to take more detailed notes later on at their own leisure.
- Connect the dots. When we learn, we often forget to try and make associations until later on. However, research has shown that memory can be stronger when you try and make the associations when you first take in the information. For instance, think about how two things are related, and the memory for both will be enhanced. Connect new information to existing information or experiences in your mind.
As we age, our memory sometimes seems to get worse. But it doesn’t have to. By following these eight tips, you can keep your memory sharp at any age, and improve it any time.
I have a confession to make. Sometimes late at night I’ll catch an infomercial or two. It’s a silly obsession I have. One that my husband can’t understand.
But it’s not the products themselves that make me intrigued. I’m drawn to what it does to the people who use them.
Wouldn’t it be great to make your life perfect with a blink of an eye, a swipe of a magic wand?
I think that’s what makes me glued to the screen. There’s something so attractive about the belief that the right food, exercise equipment or program will somehow drastically change your life for the better.
But then I turn the TV off. Because I know it’s Hollywood and I know that real life is filled with emotional storms, depression and difficulty. And that real lasting change comes from being committed to hard work on a daily basis.
How about you?
When it comes to life’s difficulties are you drawn into the fantasy? Or are you conscious about the importance of real change and your power to make that happen?
Well maybe these will help. We’re ending another week with a round of top posts that will get you prepared for emotional storms, give you the facts on college depression (something relevant to the current fall school year), bring lasting change to your life and more.
Hope you have a great weekend!
(The Therapist Within) – Remember those moments when everything feels like it’s going all right? The sun is out. Your relationships are fine. And then suddenly? A storm comes out of nowhere. Even if it’s something that’s been brewing for a time, it can still take you for surprise. The question is do you have the tools to deal with these emotional storms? Go here to get prepared for that next emotional storm.
Statistics About College Depression
(World of Psychology) – September means back to school. But did you know it also may mean depression? This top post reveals the alarming statistics of depression among college kids. It will surprise you!
What Percent of People With Bipolar Disorder Can Achieve Bipolar in Order
(Bipolar Advantage) – Maybe it’s not your beliefs that are skewed, maybe it’s those psychology studies and discussion groups. Bipolar Advantage takes a look at how the skewing of a particular audience impacts the way we perceive mental illness.
Why You May Need to Leave the Mind Behind for Real Change
(Mindfulness and Psychotherapy) – It may be tempting to believe in quick, fast, immediate change. But real change takes a lot of work. A post that’ll open you up to become aware of what you need to make real transformations in your life. Hint: You may need to leave your mind behind for this one.
Kabbalah’s Three Dimensional Smile (God in Therapy Series)
(Therapy Soup) – In this God in Therapy Series, Therapy Soup introduces us to Kabbalah and the importance of laughter and a smile. All affect our perceptions and reality and have implications for psychotherapy. Now doesn’t that make you want to smile?
Since it is going back-to-school season, I thought I’d educate you on some alarming statistics about depression among college students. Here are the facts, just the facts:
One out of every five young people and one out of ever four college students or adults suffers from some form of diagnosable mental illness.
About 19 precent of young people contemplate or attempt suicide each year.
Suicide is the third leading cause of death among people ages 15-24, and the second leading cause of death in college students ages 20-24.
Over 66 percent of young people with a substance use disorder have a co-occurring mental health problem.
Teens diagnosed with depression are five times more likely to attempt suicide than adults.
Over two-thirds of young people do not talk about or seek help for mental health problems.
44 percent of American college students reported feeling symptoms of depression.
From 1980 to 1986, the suicide rate for African-American males ages 15-19 increased more than 100 percent.
Four out of every five young people that contemplate or attempt suicide exhibit clear warning signs.
80-90 percent of people that seek the necessary form of mental health treatment can function the way they used to.
Stereotypes are one of the largest barriers preventing young people from seeking the help they need.
An estimated 5 million young females suffer from eating disorders each year, and eating disorders are the deadliest mental illness, claiming more lives than any other illness.
With another hurricane on the warpath up the East Coast of the U.S. this week, many people are scrambling for shelter and safety. Evacuations are taking place, and while everyone is rightfully focused on their physical safety, our emotional health is at risk during times of increased stress too. There are ways you can better cope emotionally with an impending hurricane — to brace yourself emotionally from the significant amounts of stress you’re about to endure.
One of the most important things to keep in mind is that a hurricane is a fairly short natural event. For most people, it means having to deal with a couple of days of moving out of the area and then moving back. While the effects of the hurricane may endure much longer — especially if your home was damaged or destroyed — the actual hurricane itself tends to move fairly quickly through each region.
The impact of having to deal with the significant damage of your home or even losing it altogether can be much greater than the stress of getting out of the hurricane’s path. People who lose part or all of their home go through a typical grief reactions — grieving the loss of all that they’ve accumulated or built.
The American Psychological Association offers this guide for how to prepare emotionally for a hurricane. Here are some tips from that guide on how to prepare for an impending hurricane or tropical storm:
- Get the facts. Gather information that will help you accurately determine your risk so that you can take reasonable actions. Find a credible source you can trust such as your governor’s office, local or state public health agencies or the National Weather Service. Limit your exposure to news reports that focus on damage and destruction.
- Make connections. Good relationships with close family members, friends and others are important. Even those separated from their families, can build connections among new acquaintances. Some of the most inspiring stories from 2005’s Hurricane Katrina spotlighted people evacuating from New Orleans accompanied by – and emotionally attached to – fellow evacuees they had just met. Coming together and helping one another can be positive for your emotional health.
- Stay healthy. A healthy lifestyle – including proper diet, exercise and rest – is your best defense against any threat. A healthy body can have a positive impact on your thoughts and emotions, enabling you to make better decisions and better deal with the hurricane’s uncertainties.
- Reach out to your children. Help children by restricting constant viewing of the news, giving them assurances that plans are in place to keep them safe and maintaining their routines as much as possible.
- Maintain a hopeful outlook. Remember that the federal government, your state government, and many non-governmental disaster services agencies have already mobilized to address the threat of the hurricane. Also, many improvements have been made to those response systems since the last large-scale hurricanes. Also, recall times when you’ve successfully managed challenging life circumstances. Draw upon those skills and experiences to help you through the current storm.
You can read more of these hurricane coping tips here.
And as an added bonus, here are some additional tips from the American Psychological Association to help you cope with a hurricane, even when you’re not directly affected by one.
- Take a news break. Watching endless replays of footage from the disasters can make your stress even greater. Although you’ll want to keep informed – especially if you have loved ones affected by the disasters – take a break from watching the news.
- Keep things in perspective. Although a disaster often is horrifying, you should focus as well on the things that are good in your life.
- Find a productive way to help if you can. Many organizations are set up to provide financial or other aid to victims of natural disasters. Contributing can be a way to gain some “control” over the event.
- Control what you can. There are routines in your life that you can continue and sometimes you need to do those and take a break from even thinking about the disasters.
After the hurricane has passed, you may need help managing the stress with dealing with the cleanup or returning to a home damaged or destroyed. After all, it’s not every day most of us have to deal with this kind of damage or devastation to our property and home.
If you’re in the path of this current hurricane, please seek safe shelter away from the hurricane’s path. And trust that if you prepare yourself as well as you can, you will make it through this storm unscathed — physically and emotionally.
Have you survived a hurricane?
What are some tips you can share that helped you emotionally make it through a hurricane or tropical storm?
“What you call people is how you treat them. What you call my sister is how you will treat her. If you believe she’s ‘retarded’ it invites taunting, stigma. It invites bullying and it also invites the slammed doors of being treated with respect and dignity.”
–14-year-old Nick Marcellino, Rosa’s brother, in testimony to the Maryland General Assembly
Say what you will about New Jersey. Yeah, we are called the Soprano state, and, yeah, everyone in Jersey is rumored to have an attitude. You got a problem with that? But I couldn’t be more proud of its recent legislation.
The U.S. Senate passed the bill known as Rosa’s Law in August 2010, and in September it goes before the House. Terms such as “mental retardation” and “mentally retarded” will be removed from federal education, health, and labor laws. Additionally, “a person with a disability” is preferred rather than a “disabled person.” New Jersey passed a similar law in June.
The federal government removed “feeble-minded” and replaced it with “mental retardation” over 40 years ago. It was time for a more positive change.
Senator Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., a co-sponsor of Rosa’s Law, describes its intention: “The bill is simple in nature but profound in what it will do when it is enacted. For far too long we have used hurtful words like ‘mental retardation’ or ‘MR’ in our federal statutes to refer to those living with intellectual disabilities. While the way people feel is important, the way people are treated is equally important.”
If the language you use to refer to an individual identifies them as less of a person, you have taken the first step toward what social psychologist Phil Zimbardo has described as the Lucifer Effect. When a dehumanizing term is used to represent a person or group of people, it is not simply a way of putting someone or some group down. It is the beginning of evil. This isn’t simply name-calling. We are talking about it leading to one of the darkest aspects of humanity.
Dehumanization and deindividuation is at the core of evil. It was imbedded in the Holocaust, the My Lai Massacre during the Vietnam War, the mass suicide of Jim Jones and the People’s Temple in Guyana in 1980, the torture of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. soldiers at Abu Ghraib, and Willowbrook, the infamous state school in Staten Island for people with intellectual disabilities. The atrocities were so egregious at Willowbrook that its closing inspired the Willowbrook Consent Decree, a major contributing factor to the passage of the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act of 1980.
Rosa’s Law is important for several reasons. It changes how we label people with intellectual disabilities. It creates a stopgap on the insidious process of dehumanization. It is essential because words matter. Once you use a term that diminishes human dignity, it allows for the emergence of other factors that lead to mistreatment and abuse. If society condones dehumanizing language, other components of the Lucifer Effect are ushered in. Not the least of these is an indifference to the conditions, well being and needs of the people being branded.
If you think that this is simply a matter of political correctness or an effort at censorship, you are missing the real shift this legislation is seeking. Here is a brief video of the New Jersey Self Advocacy Project by the ARC of New Jersey. The people featured in this video can speak from experience about why we need this law. I encourage you to watch it. More importantly I encourage you to examine your own feelings as you hear their responses.
But change is a long time coming. In this 1962 video President Kennedy asked for “a great national effort” to cope with mental illness and mental retardation — conditions he said “cause more individual and family suffering than any other conditions in American life.”
The statistics, nearly 50 years after Kennedy’s comments, are still sobering. In the United States, approximately 3 percent of the population has an intellectual disability. Compare this to schizophrenia, 1.1 percent, and post traumatic stress disorder, 3.5 percent.
Research has given us clear information on the causes for these two well-known disabilities, but it may surprise you to learn the dominant cause behind intellectual disability.
Poverty.
Poverty may be the most important predictor for becoming intellectually disabled here in one of the world’s richest countries. Financial neediness increases factors that affect intellectual development. Higher exposure to toxins, infections, accidents, poor parenting, inadequate schooling, preterm delivery and low birth weight all occur at significantly higher rates among people living in poverty. All of these contribute to higher likelihood of intellectual disability.
Furthermore, a 2007 study revealed that American families supporting a child with disabilities were:
- 79 percent more likely to worry over running out of food
- 94 percent more likely to have cut or skipped meals for financial reasons
- 73 percent more likely to have been unable to pay their rent in the past year
- 78 percent more likely to have had phone service disconnected in the past year
It’s a vicious circle: Poverty often creates a condition under which an intellectual disability is more likely, and having a child with a disability increases a family’s poverty level.
Money isn’t the root of all evil. Lack of money and dehumanizing those who suffer from that lack is.
Senator Barbara Mikulski, D – Md., who authored Rosa’s Law, explains the need and rationale: “This bill is driven by a passion for social justice and a compassion for the human condition. We’ve done a lot to come out of the dark ages of institutionalization and exclusion when it comes to people with intellectual disabilities.”
You can watch her dramatic introduction of the law on the Senate floor here.
Senator Mike Enzi explains: “Rosa’s Law will make a greatly needed change that should have been made well before today – and it will encourage us to treat people the way they would like to be treated.”
You got a problem with that?
Neither do I. In the words of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, “you wonder how it took so long for it to happen.”
For More Information
Senator Mikulski’s description of Rosa’s Law appears here.
Diagnostic Manual – Intellectual Disability (DM-ID)
“The National Association for the Dually Diagnosed (NADD), in association with the American Psychiatric Association (APA), developed a Manual that is designed to be an adaptation of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition—Text Revision (DSM-IV-TR).
Are two heads better than one? Maybe. Perhaps this doesn’t come as a surprise, because we all know on some level that even one “head” can be better than others in terms of memory. New research into “group memory,” or “social memory” sheds some light on how remembering together can be more or less effective. In part, it depends on the group’s “executive functioning”.
Memory research has come a long ways since the early research many of us learned in psychology classes. There is the famous Bell Laboratories research into short-term memory which resulted in the famous axiom of “7 plus or minus two” – which refers to how many “slots” we can utilize “in our head” in real-time, keeping it there to “process,” sequence, manipulate.
This is essentially considered “working memory” in the new parlance, but this early research is the basis for our (original) 7-digit telephone number. Beyond that (i.e., with the introduction of area codes) those whose limit is recalling 7 digits comfortably, learned to “chunk” the information so that 212 or 415 area codes were remembered as a unit, so as to take only slot. Essentially, this is human RAM, while other reasoning skills rely on this as part of our larger “processor.”
Now back to humans and human memory…
One of the presentations I attended at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association harkens back to basic research and focuses on a series of studies into “social memory”, looking at the extent to which memorizing and retrieving information may be impacted by the situation — specifically, if it is a group collaborative effort versus solitary memory.
The title of the presentation was particularly provocative, in this age of connectedness to devices, social networks, and smart phones:
Social Influences on Memory:
The Perils of Learning and Remembering with Others
I was prepared for some new findings about impact on attention span, or inferences about how the echo chamber of “fact” presentation among groups or in popular media might present a “peril.” Or the risks and benefits of remembering through discussion via tweeting or remembering a friend’s Facebook wall, etc. This was not the case, nor was it entirely perilous to have people learning or recalling in groups.
Suparna Rajaram, Ph.D presented a series of very rigorous studies which did find a number of situations when “social learning” was relatively ineffective compared to singular memory. One of the variables which emerged was “rehearsal,” or the repetition/re-exposure to a bit of memory which is generally seen as an important aid in initial memory, but which appears to be an important factor in retrieval as well.
These studies go beyond “state dependent learning” (which posits that it is easier to recall something when in the same frame as when the initial learning took place), and highlight how collective memory, just as individual memory skills, reflect things in groups as well as individuals, such as the level of ability to organize.
If you take 5 people and ask them to recall 5 items from a list, it is possible that they’ll each remember different things so that the cumulative result is better than any one individual. On the other hand, as though who play Boggle know well, you can also have a situation where the same few words are recalled by everyone, “canceling out” the result of a longer list.
A big factor appears to be how the task is presented, mediated, and organized, with effective groups able to harness the collective power, and disorganized groups doing worse on recall than single individuals. And so group memory, like individual memory, can be seen as one component of “executive functioning” with the effective use of “working memory” as well as the organizing and sequencing of the task a part of the overall task.
How good does our memory need to be, individually? How much can we rely on others to effectively help us recall learned materials?
I’m pleased today to introduce our newest blog, Epidemic of Addiction, with Dr. Jeffrey Junig. Addictions to substances — like alcohol, cocaine, opioids, prescription drugs and other kinds of drugs — remain a serious problem in modern society. It’s a telling sign that society pays little attention to drug addicts, believing that theirs is a self-made bed in which to lie upon.
But like any mental illness, addiction is not something a person ever asks for. Addiction often creeps up on a person as they’re living their everyday lives, starting out not so much as a problem at first. It can quickly snowball, though, and become a problem before a person ever realizes it.
As Dr. Junig says in his introduction, “This blog will explore the psychology of addictive disorders, with an emphasis on addiction to opioids. Addiction to heroin and to pain pills has become a significant problem, fueled by a confluence of factors including a sluggish economy, over-prescribing and inadequate control of high-potency pain medications, and an abundance of cheap heroin.”
I’m looking forward to reading this blog and learning more about our epidemic of addiction. You can learn more about the blog’s focus and Dr. Junig as well.
Please welcome Dr. Junig to Psych Central on the blog. Thanks!
Here is it. The last day of August. When you think back to the last three months of summer, how do you feel?
Did you get to do everything you wanted to do? Read every book you wanted to read? Spend a few days relaxing and doing nothing too?
Sometimes we get sucked into this “I need to accomplish everything and be perfect” hole. And when we’re there, we don’t know how we winded up where we are or why we wanted to be there in the first place.
There’s a theme in this week’s top posts that have to do with perfectionism and also truth. I think we all strive to seek truth, what’s true for us and how to accept ourselves and be comfortable with who we are. Yet, there’s this crazy sense of push and pull between who we are (what’s true) and who we think we’re supposed to be (perfection).
How do we find balance between trying to better ourselves and accept our flaws in the process?
Here’s hoping that these five posts might send you on the path to get you there.
Perfectionism Runs on Mindlessness
(360 Degrees of Mindful Living) – We try to make our homes spotless, our work and relationships perfect. But do we know why? This post addresses something we rarely question. What is the true purpose of perfection?
Texting and ADHD: A Major Problem Facing Youth and Adults
(ADHD in Focus) – Are you addicted to texting? You are definitely not the only one. Find out what texting may do to kids and also anyone with ADHD.
(Weightless) – An introspective look at body image and why your desire to be thin could be about more than just looks. Here is a list of questions that will inspire self-exploration and get you to explore how you feel about your body. An added bonus? It could improve your body image.
The Truth of Everyday Life: John O’Donohue
(Mindfulness & Psychotherapy) – What’s the truth of everyday life? That life is short. It’s a simple reality that can be life changing once you accept it. Read this and you’ll be moved to shift the way you perceive every moment of your life.
Opening the Window to Your Heart – and What You Might See Through It (Part 2)
(The Therapist Within) – Want to get closer to your own truth? Begin the journey towards self-reflection. This post takes a look at the Johari window and shows you how it may help you know yourself better.
It probably comes as little surprise to anyone, but a small exploratory study done on 100 college students from a single university suggests that students who score higher on a test of narcissism also spent more time checking and updating their Facebook profile.
Facebook is currently the world’s largest social network, with over 500 million users. More than 50% of Facebook’s active users log on to Facebook in any given day, while the average user has 130 social connections (what Facebook calls “friends”).
The researcher (Mehdizadeh, 2010) also examined the relationship between narcissism and self-esteem, as well as gender differences in how people use Facebook for self-promotion. “Self-promotion,” according to how it was used in this study, was defined as “any descriptive or visual information that appeared to attempt to persuade others about one’s own positive qualities. ”
Mehdizadeh looked at only five profile features in Facebook: (a) the About Me section, (b) the Main Photo, (c) the first 20 pictures on the View Photos of Me section, (d) the Notes section, and (e) the Status Updates section. The researcher, rating these items on her own, examined to the extent they were considered self-promoting according to the above definition.
What did the research find?
A statistically significant correlation between narcissistic students, and the number of times Facebook was checked per day as well as the time spent on Facebook per session.
However, the researcher did not find a significant correlation between scores on the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI-16) and the “About Me” section, the most obvious place a person might be expected to express themselves in a narcissistic manner. A significant correlation was found for self-promotion in the following areas: Main Photo, View Photos, Status Updates, and Notes.
Significant gender differences between men and women were also found (regardless of their NPI-16 score). “Males displayed more self-promotional information in the About Me and Notes sections than women,” noted the researcher. “Conversely, women displayed more self-promotional Main Photos.”
Some reports of this research suggest that the researcher (not “researchers”) found a significant relationship between more self-promotion linked to higher narcissism and lower self-esteem. However, this was found for only one of the five features that the researcher looked at — Main Photos. “In this case, Main Photos could have been selected or enhanced to cover up undesirable features by individuals with low self-esteem in order to enable the actualization of their hoped-for possible selves.” This actually suggests that this isn’t really a very robust finding or one that is very significant. In comparison, women — regardless of their narcissistic scoring — also demonstrated a significant correlation between self-promotion and Main Photos.
Limitations of the study are numerous but standard for this sort of exploratory study. Only students from a single university were studied. This means these results may not be generalizable to Facebook users in general. The researcher also failed to use a group of independent raters, standard fare in good research. Researchers doing their own ratings is generally a no-no, as they may introduce unintended bias into their ratings.
The upshot of this study is simple and expected — those who score more highly on a test of narcissism check Facebook more often and spend more time on Facebook per session. Surprise, surprise.
Reference
Mehdizadeh S (2010). Self-presentation 2.0: narcissism and self-esteem on Facebook. Cyberpsychology, behavior and social networking, 13 (4), 357-64 PMID: 20712493