In this post I’m going to look at ideas for introducing mental disorders. The AQA specification states students need to know and understand behavioural, emotional and cognitive characteristics of phobias, depression and OCD before considering each of the named disorders from a specific perspective: behavioural approach (phobias explanation and treatment), cognitive approach (depression explanation and treatment) […]
Read moredepression
Heavy rain and storm surges have made 2014 pretty miserable for many of us (so far), and have been devastating for many of those affected by the widespread flooding in southern parts of the UK. What are the psychological impacts of flooding like this? The Health Protection Agency (HPA) published a document in 2012 […]
Read moreSome of you will be familiar with research that shows that emotional feelings can be triggered by the body, rather than the other way round. We are happy because we smile, rather than smiling because we are happy. For example, if people put a pencil between their teeth and are asked to rate a cartoon […]
Read more
A book published by Ben Goldacre this year has drawn attention to the fact that drug trials producing negative or nil results are simply not published, thereby making the drugs appear to be more successful than they really are. Goldacre is spearheading a movement to force drug companies into publishing all their results and ensuring […]
Read moreA team of Scottish researchers ( Perrin et al. , 2012) have produced evidence that ECT decreases connectivity in the brain of depressed patients, leading to a reduction in symptoms. They used fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) to scan the brains of nine patients, all of whom had severe clinical depression and had not responded to drug therapy. […]
Read more
A team led by Dr David Glahn ( Glahn et al., 2012 ) claims to have identified a gene RNF123 which may play a role in major depression (as distinct from bipolar disorder/depression). This gene has been shown to affect the hippocampus, which in turn is implicated in depression. Smaller hippocampal volumes are often found in people with recurrent […]
Read more
According to today’s Guardian “The use of antidepressants has risen by more than a quarter in England in just three years, amid fears that more people are suffering from depression due to the economic crisis. The number of prescriptions for antidepressants increased by 28% from 34m in 2007-08 to 43.4m in 2010-11, according to the NHS information centre”. But […]
Read more
“Misery Has More Company Than People Think,” a paper in the January issue of Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, draws on a series of studies examining how college students evaluate moods, both their own and those of their peers. Led by Alex Jordan, who at the time was a Ph.D. student in Stanford’s psychology department, the researchers […]
Read more
The American Psychiatric Association (APA) has been arguing in favour of ECT as a safe treatment for severe mental illness, according to a short piece in the current issue of the BPS magazine The Psychologist. The APA claims that ECT is effective 80% of the time and there is no evidence for any associated brain […]
Read more