What is mental illness?

What is mental illness?

Illness is like the street you've driven down your whole life. So familiar you've never bothered to look around. We've all experienced illness, either first-hand or via someone we know, but rarely do we stop to wonder what it really is.

You might say it's when something mental or physical isn't working as it should be. But then who is to say how things should be working? This is easier to answer in relation to physical health, but still tricky. Pain, a loss of ability, a shortening of life expectancy, perhaps? These criteria seem far from satisfactory. Pain is highly subjective and can be triggered by mundane ailments like toothaches or stubbed toes - are they really illnesses? Loss of ability seems more objective, but is surely only a necessary rather than sufficient criterion. After all, temporary fatigue and age both cause a loss of ability. Similarly, driving cars fast and other dangerous hobbies will likely shorten your life. These philosophical conundrums are magnified when it comes to mental illness. When does a hobbyist collector become a compulsive hoarder? How tightly do the shackles of shyness have to constrain a person before he or she is considered ill? What if the solitude of the social phobic allows them to pen great poetry or novels - is that adaptive or maladaptive?

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Harsh discipline makes aggressive children worse

Harsh discipline makes aggressive children worse

Parents should avoid harsh, combative ways of disciplining their aggressive children. That's according to psychologists whose new research shows that harsh parenting makes children more aggressive in the long run.

Michael Sheehan and Malcolm Watson followed 440 children and their mothers for five years. On four occasions during that time, the mothers answered questions about their own style of parenting and their children's behaviour. At the start of the study, the children's average age was 10 years and by the final assessment their average age was 15.

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People Smile When They Are Frustrated, and the Computer Knows the Difference

ScienceDaily (May 28, 2012) — Do you smile when you're frustrated? Most people think they don't -- but they actually do, a new study from MIT has found. What's more, it turns out that computers programmed with the latest information from this research do a better job of differentiating smiles of delight and frustration than human observers do.

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The research could pave the way for computers that better assess the emotional states of their users and respond accordingly. It could also help train those who have difficulty interpreting expressions, such as people with autism, to more accurately gauge the expressions they see.

"The goal is to help people with face-to-face communication," says Ehsan Hoque, a graduate student in the Affective Computing Group of MIT's Media Lab who is lead author of a paper just published in the IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing. Hoque's co-authors are Rosalind Picard, a professor of media arts and sciences, and Media Lab graduate student Daniel McDuff.

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Positive Psychology and Resilience

Posted in Blog Posts, Professional Development on May 10, 2012   0

By Mrs Toula Gordillo
What makes one person ‘bounce back’ following adversity and another person seem to ‘crumble in a heap’? This question has always posed a fascination for me. I have often wondered whether individuals are simply born with the skills to cope with the difficulties that life often presents or whether there are a set of stress-coping skills that individuals can learn. I love Martin Seligman’s response. As the founder of the modern Positive Psychology movement approximately 20 years ago, Seligman believes we can create our own happiness. That is, we can all learn how to become more resilient. I agree. I believe that individuals can learn the skills needed for a more positive life. I also believe that we, as counsellors, particularly need to learn and apply these skills in everyday life. We owe it to our clients.

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School Bullying

School Bullying

This article was published on Thursday, May 13th, 2010

There is a plethora of information available on the topic of bullying. There are many different types of bullying including; child or school based (schoolyard) bullying; workplace bullying; cyber bullying; military bullying and hazing. The purpose of this article is to focus on child or school-based bullying as opposed to any of the other types of bullying.

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Working with Young Children

Working with Young Children

This article was published on Monday, May 24th, 2010

It is important that children are able to express and understand how they are feeling. Some children feel uncomfortable talking about their feelings, therefore combining discussion with an external activity will often help them open up about their feelings. It is important when working with children to remember to apply the strategies and techniques that work best with the child. For example, a toddler may be able to express their feelings using a finger puppet or a stuffed animal whereas pre-school aged children like to express their feelings through creative imagery, drawings, and feeling charts.
Sessions with children tend to be short and brief. When identifying the issue, keep the idea simple and at the level the child can identify with, e.g. a little boy called Tim wanted to get rid of his fears of vampires and monsters. In the session Tim indicated that he liked chocolate, therefore he was asked by the counsellor to make all the monsters into chocolate and place them in the sun and make them melt. This gave Tim control over the monsters as he could watch them melt away (Baumgardner, 1989).

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Hey 'Revenge' writers: be careful how you portray mental illness

Date

May 2, 2012 - 7:52AM

Amy Corderoy

Amy is a Health Reporter for The Sydney Morning Herald. Before working at the Herald she worked as a freelance journalist and radio presenter, as well as writing for a number of publications for doctors. She also keeps a health blog at www.dailylife.com.au.
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What the hell is with the Tyler Barrol character in Revenge?

I love television, everything from Mad Men to Game of Thrones to sitcoms like New Girl. Lately, I’ve been watching the latest hit drama to come from the States, Revenge, along with about 2 million other Australians, apparently.
It’s got everything; sex, drama, swapped identities, bitchy mother-in-laws… and you could play a serious drinking game with all the meaningful glances and the staring-apprehensively-over-the-shoulder-of-the-person-you-are-hugging-because-you-are-hiding-such-a-terrible-secret-ness of it all.
But one thing is really bothering me – and at the risk of sounding too PC I think I should call them on it.

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