Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Glee and OCD

Glee Born this way video (start at 47min 30sec): http://www.fox.com/glee/full-episodes/


In class we have been talking about psychological disorders, and treatment. We learned that there are many different kinds of treatments for different diseases. In Glee, the student guidance counselor has OCD, and in the last episode her OCD is getting worse. She scrubs her fruit till she feels comfortable to eat them, she scrubs the counter tops till she believes they are clean, and she wouldn't sit down until her chair was fully disinfected. Her OCD is getting worse and worse, and so she goes and sees a psychologist. The psychologist listens to her, and believes in her. She gives her a prescription for a SSRI to help her get better, and relieve her anxiety.


In class we learned about the SSRI's and about OCD. OCD is over compulsive disorder, where people get high anxiety and have to do things over and over. Like the teacher cleaning everything, or someone who's walls get touched, and need to clean them right away, or they worry about it all day. SSRI's help relieve anxiety, and prohibit serotonin re-uptake. This makes the person stay happier longer because the serotonin is being delivered more often. 

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Narcissistic Personality Disorder

1.       Summarize what you’ve learned by reading their glog.
      From this blog I learned that there is no known cause, but mental health professors believe that it is because of child rearing. It first starts with a grandiose sense of self importance, so they exaggerate things that they have done, and accomplished. Then they have fantasies of unlimited success, power, beauty, or ideal love. After that stage they are of high standards, and should only occupy themselves with people of the same status. They need to feel admiration, and unreasonable treatment. They begin to take others for granted, and use them to achieve what they want, and they lose all empathy for others. They begin to be overly confident, and feel that others are jealous of them, and their accomplishments. Their attitudes change from being understanding to self-centered. There are many symptoms that come with narcissistic personality disorder but most of them deal around the fact that they need to be the center of attention and anything they do is right and perfect, and when told differently they get mad and flustered. Something really interesting that this glog said is men are more likely to get this disorder than females.

2.       What psychotherapy method (not biomedical therapy) would be best suited to treat this disorder? 
      Humanistic Therapy/Client-Centered Therapy would be the best therapy for this disorder. This is because the patient already possesses the resources to change and grow, they just lack the genuineness, acceptance, and empathy from others to understand the problem. Helping the patient reach their own conclusions is the main goal. All the therapist does is try to help them realize what they are doing by giving positive regard, and not opinions or telling them what to do. I chose this because they already know what they need to do to change, they know that they need to stop being self-centered and try to interact with other people. It's in their brain, and they need to change on their own. The therapist just interacts with them, and tries to show without criticism what not to do, and how to change. They're there for support in changing, not trying to make them change.  

3.       What biomedical therapy would be best suited to treat this disorder? (if applicable)
      SSRIs work by slowing down the process of re uptake of serotonin. By doing this it will make a person happier, because serotonin is known as a happy drug. Because the serotonin isn't going through re uptake, the message of the serotonin is sent more frequently, although more isn't being produced. This allows the happy feeling to be sent throughout their brain more often, making the depression less.

Friday, April 15, 2011

Phobiassssssss... scary!

In class we read about phobias, and I did a glog on it. Phobias are anxiety disorders in which an irrational fear causes the person to avoid some object, activity, or situation. There are many different types of phobias, like fear of being in closed spaces, to being afraid of bugs or heights. Arachnophobia is a phobic disorder of spiders. It can be triggered by thoughts of spiders, or actually seeing a spider.


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/6326461/Halloween-fake-spiders-could-scare-arachnophobic-man-to-death.html

John Stafford, the man in this article, has arachnophobia, or fear of spiders. Holloween is a horrible time for him because of all the costumes, and decorations. His phobia is so bad that he has to stay inside on the holiday. If he sees a spider of any sort, he stops breathing and passes out. His doctor has even said that even fake rubber spiders could cause him to have a fatal heartattack. He has tried many things to stop it like hypnoses and pills, but nothing has worked to make his fear go away.

Glog Link!! :)

http://courtneykomorowski.edu.glogster.com/false/

Friday, April 8, 2011

Struggling to Find Youself

http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?index=0&did=119909693&SrchMode=1&sid=2&Fmt=6&VInst=PROD&VType=PQD&RQT=309&VName=PQD&TS=1302290226&clientId=14507

The article that I read was about a girl struggling with who she is. She has a white mother, and a black father, so to black people, she was considered white, and white people black. It's hard for her to fit it, and she struggled with her ability to figure out who she really is. She turned to starving herself, so people wouldn't notice the other aspects of her life- white or black? People just knew that she was "sick". She says in the article that it's hard for people to not realize someone who's starving... She would rather be known as that, then to have people talk about what color she really was.

In psychology this week we talked about eating disorders, and while it can be genetics, it's also body dissatisfaction, and the need for control. Anorexia is an eating disorder in which a person diets and becomes significantly underweight, yet still feels fat and continues to starve themselves. The girl in the article portrayed the need for control. She needed to be in control of herself, and not let other people tell her who she is. She also looked down on herself- what is she supposed to call herself... what race is she really? This led to not knowing, and dissatisfaction in who she is.