Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia can be diagnosed if the person has deterioration of everyday functioning for 6 months, this consist of taking care of your self, work, relationships, etc. to fall under this disorder according to the DSM-IV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual) you must show at least two symptoms of the following. 1. Delusions- Unjustifiable beliefs, like thinking you are controlled by aliens. 2. Hallucinations- False sensory experience, like hearing voices or seeing things when they are not really there. 3. Disorganized speech- rambling or talking incoherently. 4. Grossly disorganized behavior- doing things in a non-understandable manner. 5. Weak or absent signs of emotion, speech, and socialization. Schizophrenia has positive symptoms, which are behaviors shouldn’t be there but are like hallucinations, delusions, etc. and negative symptoms, which are behaviors that should be there but are not, like absent speech, emotion, and socialization. Schizophrenia has an early onset for men it usually occurs around their teen’s to early 20’s while for women it occurs on their mid to late 20’s.

In this article schizophrenia is explained in more detail here are some of the things provided. Symptoms like irritability or tense feeling, trouble concentrating; Causes and risk factors like having a family member that also have schizophrenia; Signs and test including how long symptoms have lasted or how has the ability to function in everyday life changed; Treatments that are provided by antipsychotics, but it does come with a price, side effects, dizziness, sleepiness, weight gain, and tremors; Complications which can be caused by drug abuse which can cause symptoms to worsen, etc. Here is a video that shows you the world through the eyes of a schizophrenic.

Are antidepressants being handed too easily

I find mood disorders very interesting, what I find more interesting is why doctors hand out antidepressants like it’s no problem, when they have so many side effects.

In my perspective psychotherapy is much better than drugs, but then again sometimes psychotherapy can’t do the job, and that’s when I believe that antidepressants should be administered, and even then I feel it should be as minimal as possible. Studies have shown that antidepressants are virtually ineffective when patients have multiple psychological disorders and/or suffered abuse or neglect during early childhood, while psychotherapy does work. Other benefits of psychotherapy over antidepressants are that drugs are usually used for long-term problems or life-long conditions of unhappiness. Psychotherapy also shows long term benefits, in reducing the likelihood of relapse over months or even years after the treatment has ended.

I believe that the over prescribing of antidepressants has become a problem, according to this article, many doctors who are not psychiatrist are prescribing antidepressants, in fact most of the prescriptions come from them. I feel like doctors are not trained well enough on the field of psychology to be prescribing antidepressants, I believe that they should refer the patients to either a psychologist or a psychiatrist, more so a psychologist and they can evaluated the patient and see it medication needs to be implemented into their lives; Other things to consider is the patients health, some people may not react well to the medication, specially to thoughts of suicide, and a patient’s health should come first. I leave you with this commercial of antidepressants, pay attention to all the side effects.

Aggression

Aggression, I believe aggression is a very interesting topic. There are many reasons to why we feel angry and sometimes are aggressive, it could be because a situation, at something, or someone. Anger helps us express how we feel, can you imagine a world in which people would have other emotions except for anger, what would that be like, but anger taken too far may lead to aggression.

Anger affects our bodies in many ways, according to this article, anger increases blood pressure, testosterone, while on the other hand cortisol decreases, and much more. Studies in similar fields like aggression, have shown with hamsters that if a hamster sniffs out an intruder (another hamster) it will eventually attack it, and if a second intruder shows up within the next 30 minutes or more the hamster will attack more vigorously and faster than before, when this happens the activity in the corticomedial area of the amygdala builds up. This study has been shown in humans too.

Of course violence and aggression are not only environmental, there is genetics involved in it. Studies with monozygotic twins (the same egg split in half, almost exact same genetics) have shown that when the twins are raised in different environments, one in a aggressive and the other in a nonaggressive environment, if they have the required genetics, then the one raised around aggression will most likely be aggressive. For now no specific gene has been found for aggression, which means it is something that can not be turned off, but counseling maybe one of the best ways to reduce it. Here is an interesting video on aggression, its about 7 minutes long.

Jet Lag

            I’ve always found jet lag to be an interesting word, which is the interruption of circadian rhythms caused by the changing of time zones. To understand things a bit further I will explain what is the circadian rhythm. The circadian rhythm is our biological clock, telling us when to go to sleep and wake up based on light, meals, temperatures and much more.

            When we change time zones, we either lose or gain sleep, which affects us, causing sleepiness during the day or sleeplessness during the night; it also may cause depression or impaired concentration. Time zone changes are not always hard, for example going to the west is a much easier change than going to the east, because when we go west gives us more time to stay awake and wake up late which is easier to adjust to, while going to the east means we are forced to go to sleep earlier and wake up earlier, because of the lost time. It is more difficult to go to sleep earlier than the body’s accustomed time.

            Getting used to time zone changes can be very difficult and place a lot of strain in our bodies, and the hormone cortisol is elevated which high levels of it can damage the hippocampus, the area important for memory, here is an article that shows the symptoms of jet lag. Studies have been made where flight attendants who worked for 5 years making lots of time zone changes, had their hippocampus looked at. As a result it was found that they have smaller hippocampus than average showing some memory impairments. Here is a video on how to avoid jet lag.

Choosing a Partner

            Finding a partner is not that simple. As humans we have a few needs the three most basic ones for survival are, eating, drinking, and the passing of our genes. When we look for romantic partners we tend to look at some things like physical attractiveness, health, intelligence, and honesty.

There are several factors that are looked at but women look at more of them rather than men, one big thing in picking, that’s mainly due to maternal leave in which the mother can not go out to get things and provide for her child while the man can, so women are most likely to chose a man that will stay around and has the income to support her and the child, she doesn’t want someone that will just show interest at the time and then leave her. Another factor looked at mostly by women is smell, if the men has a different smell then her brother or a family member she is most likely to go for them, because that shows that they both have different immune systems, and they’re offspring’s can benefit from it by having a more diverse immune system, as the opposite is true if your smells are very similar.

Some things are more important for men then are for women. For example, men look for younger women, because they are more fertile than older ones, and they mostly prefer looks, health, and intelligence, because men know that they that they will be the ones to provide, they don’t typically look at status on the business world.

Choosing a partner goes beyond just genetics, if not we would end up miserable because a person might have good genetics but may not suit us emotionally wise, so I leave you with this article on choosing a mate: what we really want, and a video on how we chose based on attractiveness levels.

Pheromones

I’ve always found pheromones to be an interesting topic, pheromones are chemicals released by an animal that affects the behaviors of a member in the same species, pheromones are picked up by vomeronasal organ (VNO) which is separate from the olfactory receptors but near them. VNO respond constantly to pheromones, while olfactory receptors get used to the smell after a while so you don’t seem to notice it. Compared to other species, we humans have very little VNO’s, because we hardly use them so we don’t need as many receptors as other species do.

Pheromones effects on behavior are at the unconscious level, in other words most people can’t smell pheromones but yet they react to it, pheromones even take a role in picking a partner, because the immune system affects our pheromones, people can find a more suited partner, genetically, that way the off springs have a better immune system hence higher chances of surviving according to this article.

Pheromones seem to affect more females than males, exposure of chemical from the opposite sex seemed to have some effects on the subjects, like the changing of skin temperature, other autonomic responses, and increased activity on the hypothalamus. Some studies have found that when females are near ovulation, it increases the release of testosterone on males near by and that the smell of a man causes a release in cortisol for women, other studies have shown that when women are near each other, example they live together, they get on the same menstruating cycle, if they are not on contraceptives.