Description: When I was in high school (back in the old days of the late 1960’s and early 1970’s) I had a good friend whose mother was a practitioner of Janov’s Primal Scream therapy. Part of the basement in their house was lined with mattresses and there were bins of stuffed animals, boxing gloves and… Read more »
Posts Categorized: Abnormal Psychology
Raise you thinking about brain function a level: Consider the hippocampus
Description: Typically when the specific areas of the brain are described and their role in general functioning discussed (at least at the introductory course level) we describe brain areas in what might be called “flat terms”. That’s is, we talk about the behaviours or body fictions that seem to be associated with that area of… Read more »
Refugee Distress and Mental Health: Trauma AND Other Factors
Description: Think about what sports of factors might be involved in how refugees cope with distress once they have arrived in a relatively safe place and are trying to get on with their lives. Certainly the potentially horrific stressful events they endured in their original homes and in their flight towards safety could be important… Read more »
Postpartum OCD: Beyond a “simple” hyper-vigilance of new parenthood
Description: You have likely heard that the baby-blues or post-partum depression is a very real issue and concern. This is true. Postpartum depression is very much a form of real depression that is triggered by the hormonal and circumstantial changes associated with giving birth. Recognizing its signs and symptoms and treating it as we would… Read more »
Treating Depression, What’s Best: Or Is That a Fair Question?
Description: Ok a pop-quiz! Name 5 treatment options for people diagnosed with clinical depression and then rank order them in terms of effectiveness. For a few extra points explain the mechanism by which your top three treatment actually effect symptoms of depression. Given the number of people who deal with depression and related issues each… Read more »
Cerebellum, Brain Timing and Schizophrenia?
Description: Quick pop-quiz! What does the cerebellum do? It is involved in producing smooth motor movement right (balance, equilibrium etc.)? Yes, right, but what else is it involved in? Well, how about schizophrenia? As our understanding of the neurological factors involved in psychological functions and dysfunctions expands we are increasingly realizing more clearly something neuroscientists… Read more »
Politics These Days: Tips from Clinicians Who Treat Psychotic People
Description: Decades ago, psychiatrists used the term Schizophrenogenic Mothers to describe the mothers of individuals with schizophrenia and to then go on to talk about how the patient’s mother’s emotional ambivalence and related paradoxical behavior contributed to and perhaps even cause their offspring’s schizophrenia. Reflecting gender biased and even misogynistic attitudes, such hypotheses could simply… Read more »
Rorschach Redux
Description: A little while back I posted on an article that was looking at new ways to use the Rorschach “Inkblot” Test. In that post and in the accompanying article the discussion was somewhat skeptical about whether or not the Rorschach “Inkblot” Test has any valid place in current clinical, psychiatric or forensic practice. I… Read more »
Depression and Anxiety: Comorbidity or ?
Description: You have probably heard the term comorbidity. It is defined as the extent to which two conditions or sets of symptoms appear together in the same person. Fear and anxiety, for example, often occur together, though we could say that may be because they are versions of the same thing. Personality disorders are also… Read more »
Heart Disease <=> Mental Illness?
Description: Look at the title of the article featured in the link below. Based only on the title, what do you think the article is about? Is it suggesting that heart disease also causes mental illness?… or is it that mental illness caused heart disease (perhaps through heightened stress pathways)?? Think about what hypothesis you…
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