Saferepository. Mystery Suspect in the "Obesity Epidemic" | The Icarus Project. The Mystery Suspect in the American “Obesity Epidemic” Paula Caplan If you wanted to make someone feel helpless, hopeless, even crazy, one good way to do it would be this: Teach them that others will value them mostly for being thin and being nurturant, put them in situations where they are too agitated or sad to be cheerleaders and caretakers for family and friends, and when they ask for help in getting back to their duties, give them a pill that may calm them down or pep them up but will have a good chance of increasing their weight. This has been the fate of women in untold numbers but certainly in the millions, and women’s position in American society makes them more likely than men to feel ashamed for their part in what is being called this country’s obesity epidemic.
Undoubtedly, all these factors can play roles in weight gain. But there is a largely unnoticed suspect in this epidemic, and that is the skyrocketing use of psychotropic drugs that Americans ingest. Result for. Onitsuka Tiger. Slipping into psychosis: living in the prodrome (part 1) Hello there! If you enjoy the content on Neuroanthropology, consider subscribing for future posts via email or RSS feed. How might it feel to sense your own sanity eroding? Would you realize it? How might you sift the phantoms from physical reality, daydream from delusion, the irrefutable from the implausible?
Or, as author Rachel Aviv puts it, When does a strong idea take on a pathological flavor? Aviv wrote in the December issue of Harper’s Magazine: Which way madness lies: Can psychosis be prevented? The piece is a powerful, troubling, and thought-provoking read. It is impossible to predict the precise moment when a person has embarked on a path toward madness, since there is no quantifiable point at which healthy thoughts become insane. Patients and some clinicians alike have a vested interest in discrediting the content of delusions, dismissing the ideas as errant chemicals or glitches in brain function. Rachel Aviv’s work on prodrome Rachel tells Anna’s story.
Delusions, odd and common: Living in the prodrome, part 2. Hello there! If you enjoy the content on Neuroanthropology, consider subscribing for future posts via email or RSS feed. Author Rachel Aviv talked at length with a number of young people who had been identified as being ‘prodromal’ for schizophrenia, experiencing periodic delusions and at risk of converting to full-blown schizophrenia, following some of the at-risk individuals for a year. In December’s Harper’s, Aviv offered a sensitive, insightful account of their day-to-day struggles to maintain insight, recognizing which of their experiences are not real: Which way madness lies: Can psychosis be prevented?
(Freely accessible pdf available here.) Psychiatric Research by Ted Watson Aviv’s piece was really moving and inspired this post and an earlier one. This post is my more speculative offering, contemplating the relation of the content of delusions to the cultural context in which they occur. The cross-cultural variation in schizophrenia Delusions from different realities. MindFreedom International: Mental Health Rights and Alternative Mental Health — MFI Portal.
Inside the Battle to Define Mental Illness | Magazine. Every so often Al Frances says something that seems to surprise even him. Just now, for instance, in the predawn darkness of his comfortable, rambling home in Carmel, California, he has broken off his exercise routine to declare that “there is no definition of a mental disorder. It’s bullshit. I mean, you just can’t define it.” Then an odd, reflective look crosses his face, as if he’s taking in the strangeness of this scene: Allen Frances, lead editor of the fourth edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (universally known as the DSM-IV), the guy who wrote the book on mental illness, confessing that “these concepts are virtually impossible to define precisely with bright lines at the boundaries.” For the first time in two days, the conversation comes to an awkward halt. One influential advocate for diagnosing bipolar disorder in kids failed to disclose money he received from the makers of the bipolar drug Risperdal.
“No.” A Warning Sign on the Road to DSM-V: Beware of Its Unintended Consequences - Psychiatric Times.
Help. Carl Sagan - 'A Glorious Dawn' ft Stephen Hawking (Symphony of S. Symphony of Science. Alan Watts - The Real You. Bill hicks.