Not that Crazy

As you can see, the millions of people that are diagnosed with a psychological disorder are not abnormal, crazy, or weird. Whether they are diagnosed with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, an eating disorder, or schizophrenia, these are still people. They can still perform basic everyday functions just like everybody else. Although they may do it differently, no one is the same. Each individual person on the earth is different. They all have different traits or quirks that make them unique and themselves. No one can be duplicated to be like someone else, so why should we view people who have a problem in the brain differently? It is not their fault they got this way and there are ways to help them. They need the support of people to the help them so they can return to their old self. Also, anyone can catch a psychological disorder. Some of them may be hereditary and run in the family, but there are some people who can be the first to get one. But even though these people are different, they are not abnormal. After all? What is normal? Is anyone ever truly normal and why would someone just want to be normal? They should want to stand out and be unique.

Stress and Anxiety

          Stress.. Is it real or is it something we only imagine? Each of us can feel the effects of stress.  It's something that may  trigger an anxiety attack or even make someone avoid people at all costs to them. Some stress is good while it makes us work harder and stay focused longer.  However too much stress is bad for the body and the mind.  If there is too much stress in your life you may find that you are not sleeping well at night, you are having strange eating habits, you snap at people, you are not in a good mood for very long., and worrying about something days ahead of time.  There are good and bad ways to deal with stress.  A lot of people turn to alcohol and sometimes even drugs just so they can act normal and not worry so much about what is to come.  There are better ways to deal with stress.  Sometimes its as simple as talking it out with someone you trust, sometimes just going for a run can help, and it can even be just going out with friends to get you mind off of what is going on in your life. 

Other Maladies

Other disorders that a person can have are: specific phobia, social anxiety disorder, OCD, dissociative identity disorder, and personality disorder.

Specific phobia is an intense or irrational fear of an object or situation.  Some examples of this are the fear of spiders, snakes, heights, and the water.  The treatments for this kind of disorder is exposure treatments. Yes this kind of treatment is exactly what it sounds like.  A therapist will expose a person to the thing they are afraid of, first it may just be a picture of it as time goes on the object will become more and more real to the person going through the treatment.





Social anxiety disorder is and extreme and unreasonable fear in social situations.  Really its the fear of negative judgments and evaluations. Some treatments for social anxiety are medications and psychological counseling.







Obsessive-compulsive disorder or more commonly OCD is when a person has obsessions and compulsions to relieve the anxiety of the obsessions.  These obsessions are unwanted, and intrusive thoughts that create an anxiety in a person.  To deal with the anxiety a person will do a certain thing to relieve the anxiety they are feeling.  Treatments for this kind of disorder are medications and psychological counseling.





Dissociative identity disorder is really multiple personality disorder.  This is where a person will have a host personality and alter personalities.  These personalities really do exist in the person's mind and they will be very different from the host personality.  They will dress differently and even talk differently.  Treatments for this kind of disorder are creative art therapy,  cognitive therapy, and medications.

Personality disorders are problems with functioning and having relationships with other people.  They will also have harmful personality traits and anti-social personality disorder.  To treat this disorder a person would have to first see how bad their case is.  If it is mild often they will only have to see their family doctor, psychiatrist, psychotherapist, pharmacist, family members, and social workers.  All of these people are needed so that all of the disorders needs are met.  If a person has a very bad case the treatment will include psychotherapy, medications, and hospitalization.

What mood are you?

In psychology there are also mood disorders, these disorders can also be called depressive disorders. There are three main types of depression, as it is more commonly called. They are major depressive disorder, seasonal affective disorder, and dysthymia.  Each of these disorders have to do with the mood of a person.  A lot of the time depression is described as an overwhelming sadness that just doesn't leave no matter what a person does. 

Major depressive disorder can either be a recurrent thing or a single episode.  This feeling of sadness and depression can last for the minimum of two weeks.  The symptoms of this disorder can be a lack of interest in activities that normal are enjoyed by the person, it causes some kind of sleep disturbance, a lot of the time a person will feel worthless, they will have less of an appetite, and most will just want to be alone. Some will even develop something called psychomotor retardation, this is when a person's thinking and/or movements come slowly to them.  Treatments for major depression are talk therapy or psychotherapy and antidepressants.



Seasonal affective disorder is a depression that occurs at the same time every year.  Most often this depression sets in around the end of autumn and will continue throughout the winter months.  This is thought to be because of the change in the weather and change in the chemicals of the sunshine. In most people the symptoms will just be a sapping of your energy and this leads to you being a little moodier than usual.  The treatment for this type of depression is  light therapy, psychotherapy, and medications.  Light therapy is exposure to artificial light.  This light mimics the light outside.  Psychotherapy is commonly called the "talking treatment." This is because a lot of the time it is based on talking to a therapist or a group of people with similar problems. 

Dysthymia is less severe than a major depression episode, however it can last longer than that of a major depression. This kind of depression messes with a person's ability to function and to enjoy life around them.  Some of the symptoms of dysthymia are feeling hopeless, a lack of productivity, and a low self-esteem.  A person may also loose interest in things they normally enjoy.  This can stay around for two years or even longer in some.  Some treatments for this are psychotherapy, and medications such as antidepressants, or a combination of these therapies

Janus-faced Syndrome

Bipolar I disorder is often called the Janus-faced Syndrome because a person will go through a series of depression and mania, which makes a person seem like they are two faced.  When a person is in  a manic state they will have an elevated mood that is not justifiable.  Most times they will be over the moon for no reason at all.  They will have increased energy, grandiosity or rage states.  They will have a reduced need for sleep. They will be more active,  have pressured or rapid speech, rapid and constant thoughts.  They will engage in risky and irresponsible behaviors. Sometimes people even become psychotic during a manic episode.  The depression episode is when they are the opposite of when they are having the manic episode.  This means they are sad and have no energy.  Often they will just want to be alone and have nothing to do with anyone or anything.  Each of these episodes will last at the minimum of a week at a time

There is another bipolar disorder.  This one is less severe and with a shorter time of duration.  Bipolar II disorder in also less intense than bipolar I disorder.

Eating disorder Treaments

Getting treated for an eating disorder depends on the person. One site said that to begin the healing process you first need to admit that you have a problem.  This is one of the hardest parts because you are still so used to thinking that true happiness comes from how much you weigh and how you look.  You can only get help if you are really willing to change the way you are thinking.  Most of the eating disorders start with how you think. Recovering from this can be a life long journey. (Eating Disorder Treatments ).  Some other things you could do to help with recovering from an eating disorder are to have a therapy session for eating disorders, or join a support group with other recovering people, they can help you with the road you have ahead of you.  Another thing you could do is go to nutritional counseling for people with eating disorders.  These can help you figure out how to get back into normal eating habits.  For things to help improve your body image, you can put the scale away that way you won't feel as if you need to check your weight every time you see it.  Another thing you can do it wear clothes that make you feel comfortable and pretty, this helps when you feel nice often you will feel as if you are making progress in what you are doing.  Also doing something nice for your body can also help.  This can be getting yourself a massage or a manicure and pedicure.  All of these are ways to help you stay on track to recovery. 

Anorexia and Bulimia.... What it really is.

Anorexia and bulimia are both life threatening disorders.  These disorders deal with how you look and how a person feels about how much they way.  Some put these disorders under the health part of psychology, when really it could also be under the psychological disorders field of psychology.
With anorexia a person will most likely see themselves as fat and overweight when in reality and to everyone else they are extremely underweight.  This is a perception problem, when someone sees themselves as something that really isn't there.

With anorexia a person will look in the mirror and see someone who is fat, when really they are very skinny.  An anorexic person will have a fear of gaining weight. They will also feel like they are fat with really they are underweight.  They will have a thinning of hair, an irregular heart beat, and  they will feel tired a lot. Anorexic people will literally starve themselves so they can feel like they will be able to fit in with the small people they know.  Sometimes because they don't have much weight on them, they will start to grow hair all over their body.  This hair is soft and downy and not very noticeable.

Bulimia is very different from anorexia.  This disorder is a very secretive thing.  People with bulimia often plan out when they binge and then how they plan on getting rid of the food that they ate.  This can be with vomiting or exercising for hours on end. Other things that come with this are dehydration problems and decaying teeth.  The reason bulimia is so hard to detect is the person is in the normal weight range.

Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia is a mental disorder that generally appears in late adolescence or early adulthood,  however, it can emerge at any time in life. It is one of many brain diseases that may include delusions, loss of personality (flat affect), confusion, agitation, social withdrawal, psychosis, and bizarre behavior. This definition is from What is Schizophrenia?.  This disorder is a psychotic disorder.  This means that a person may have lost the ability to tell what is real and what is not.  Often some of the symptoms include visual and auditory hallucinations, delusions, impossible ideas, disorganized thinking and languages,  catatonic behavior is when there are episodes of extreme opposite behaviors at complete ends of the behavior spectrum, flat affect, alogia this is a poverty of speech, and avolition is a lack of all motivation. Schizophrenia can be diagnosed in people as early as the age of seven while others it takes a while for the symptoms and diagnosis to come around.  Each person is different and will not have all of the symptoms at one time.  They come in stages and sometimes will get progressively worse as the person gets older.

This picture shows what a person with schizophrenia sees.  They will see people in their minds and think that they are standing in the room with them.  They will have actual conversations with these 'people'.  A lot of the time these other 'people' will change a person's personality.  Sometimes with schizophrenia it is misdiagnosed as multiple personality disorder.  This is because of the fact that the other 'people' living in the body of one person will take over that person's body and make them do something they would never normally do.

 

The treatments for schizophrenia are just some antipsychotics to help curb them from seeing they people in their minds. There are also psychosocial interventions which are therapy sessions with family or groups to help the person get used to having interaction with people in real life. 

Charles isn't there...

A Beautiful Mind is a film that was released in 2001. Russell Crowe plays a brilliant young, mathematician, named John Nash Jr.  This movie is about John's life before and after he is diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. However before all of this happens he is asked to join the Pentagon and crack encrypted codes.  During this time he starts to develop paranoid schizophrenia. This is the result of seeing some terrifying things while he is on a job with the Pentagon. He has hallucinations of three people during this time.  After he is diagnosed, he is put through many different treatments and most do not help him very much.  However, after a little while he refuses to do or take any more of the treatments the doctors have him doing.  Instead he learns to deal with his hallucinations on his own and eventually he earns a job teaching at Princeton.

Veterans with PTSD

The video above shows a variety of Veterans and how they all share the disorder of post traumatic stress disorder. It was posted to YouTube in December of 2011 and was made by the account called "Make the Connection" which is a video account raising awareness for Veterans.

In this specific video, men and women Veterans from different ages and races share their symptoms and thoughts of PTSD. They all say that they were not aware they had PTSD. Each victim shares their different emotions and how they dealt with it. One man says that he slept with a knife in his hand and how any slight noise would wake him up. Another says that he turned to drinking to cope with the pain because his "consciousness was not attractive."

This video was created for the support and awareness of veterans with PTSD. The patients make it very clear that therapy is very important and can help victims.

PTSD Treatments

How does someone overcome post traumatic stress disorder? Can someone ever truly forget or move past after the horrific event? The answer is yes and no. While some treatments may work for others, it will not guarantee to work on everyone.
The most common treatment for PTSD is psycho therapy. This is when the patient speaks to a professional about their experience. A patient can chose to go through this therapy alone or go with a group of people also diagnosed with PTSD. This can take up to six to twelve weeks or even longer depending on the person.
Another very helpful therapy is called Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT. There are different types of CBT which include exposure therapy, cognitive restructuring, and stress inoculation training. As one can guess, exposure therapy is when one is literally exposed to the event and faces it in a safe manner until they are comfortable and no longer feel afraid.
Cognitive restructuring is looking at the event in a realistic way. A lot of patients may feel guilt when they have no control over the situation, so therapists help them deal with this. Stress inoculation training is helping a person approach anxiety and how to reduce so it does not control them.
Therapy is not the only treatment for PTSD, there are two medications used to treat patients. These are Zoloft and Paxil. This does not cure PTSD, the two are both antidepressants and are used to reduce emotions of anger, sadness, and so on.

OMG PTSD

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is a very serious and sometimes long term psychological disorder. This disorder is not bias or stereotypical, as anyone can be diagnosed with this horrific disorder. Several things can trigger this feeling of danger when one is not actually in harm. For example, witnessing a murder, being in war, rape, torture, car accidents, or natural disasters. and many other unpleasant experiences. When we are afraid, our body changes in order to protect ourselves. This sensation is called "fight-or-flight." However, when one person has PTSD, this reaction is altered, according to http://www.nimh.nih.gov/.
The symptoms of PTSD can be disturbing to the patient and to the people around the patient. Some of the most common symptoms are vivid, reoccurring flashbacks of the incident. This can make the patient feel like they are back in the situation and is a horrible memory for them. Nightmares are also a symptom, waking the person in night and not allowing them to have a good night's sleep like other people would. The patient diagnosed will also avoid places or areas where the event occurred, or something similar. They will sometimes lose interest in activities, become depressed, and constantly feel on the edge.
How serious is this disorder? Roughly 7.7 million American adults are diagnosed, although anyone at any age can be diagnosed. Although veterans diagnosed with PTSD are most well known for being diagnosed with this disorder because of the sights and dangers that they were surrounded by during their time in the war.

Stereotypes of Addcits

According to HBO.com, there are many myths of people who rely on drugs or alcohol in their everyday life. The most typical myth is probably one you could come up with yourself. that addicts are "bad, crazy, or stupid." This is extremely untrue. Addicts are said to have a brain disease that can cause them to become addicted.
A lot of people think that if someone is addicted to something, it is because they are weak and do not have willpower. However, even the strongest of people can become addicted to a substance. The mesolimbic dopamine system in the brain is responsible for addiction and is not controlled by the conscious.
Some extremists say that addicts should not be helped because they did this to themselves. What they might not know is that addicts have a disease in their brain that causes them to not be able to control it. They need the help of doctors and medicine to help them become clean.
Addicts cannot be treated once and be expected to heal automatically. Due to the impairment of their brain, an addict needs to be worked with for however long it takes in order for them to get better.
Addiction can compel anyone, anywhere. People who became dependent on any substance deserves the help to get clean. They need the support of everyone to help them return to their normal self.

Stereotypes

Along with any other person, people affected with a disorder are viewed differently, or stereotyped. With most who are diagnosed with anxiety, they are viewed as over paranoid freaks. People with bipolar are thought to be extremely violent and out of control, which is not always the case. But what is responsible for all of this negativity?

Media has a huge impact on the way people view disorders. In many films or television series, people who would be diagnosed with a psychological disorder are often poked fun of. The character is always portrayed as stupid and is known to make the audience laugh. On the other hand, if the character is not making people laugh, he is scaring people. From mcuup.org, it provides a list of the stereotypes and why they are not accurate.
For example, it states that recent studies show that drugs and alcohol are a result of violence than a disorder is. People with disorders are also viewed as not curable. This is false, over 80% of people can cure their sickness and return to their natural state.

Disorder Stereotyping.........Have you done it?

Stereotyping.... We have all done it before.  Each one of us is put into a stereotype whether we like it or not.  With disorder stereotyping it's no different. Each disorder comes with its own set of stereotypical actions, though not all have these symptoms and behaviors. Some of them have it and others these things don't affect them at all.  A lot of people assume that with mental disorders you are violent, comical, not curable, unreliable, unpredictable, not able to communicate with them, they have bizarre and disruptive behaviors.  These are just a few of the list of stereotypes from  Myths and Stereotypes.  There are stereotypes for each kind of disorder.  For eating disorders the stereotypes are: that only rich girls have eating disorders, you will never overcome this disorder, and being thin will make you happy.  All of these are false and hurtful to the people who find out this is what is being thought about them. 

Addictions

People can be addicted to anything. These days a lot of people are addicted to social media sites or thir cell phones. But what else can people be addicted to? That's right, drugs and alcohol. An addiction is psychology is described as " a condition that results when a person ingests a substance (alcohol, cocaine, nicotine) or engages in an activity (gambling) that can be pleasurable but the continued use of which becomes compulsive and interferes with ordinary life responsibilities, such as work or relationships, or health. Users may not be aware that their behavior is out of control and causing problems for themselves and others." (psychologytoday.com) A lot of people view people who are addicted as low-life, bad people in general. But in reality, addiction can affect anybody who ends up in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I'm Sailing!

The film What About Bob? was released in 1991 with Ghost Busters star, Bill Murray. Murray plays Bob, a man who is an obsessive-compulsive agoraphobic. While some of the characteristics of his character do represent someone who is afraid of dangers of the outside world, it is still a comedy movie. Yet again, a psychological disorder is poked fun at. In this scene, the daughter of Bob's psychiatrist invites him sailing. But because Bob is afraid of most things, he first rejects the offer because he fears that something horrible could go wrong. However he decides to give it a chance, but it is not your typical sailing.

What is Normal?

What do you think is normal?? Are you normal or are you odd? With all disorders come some actions that are strange and unusual. Abnormal is something that is unusual in a bad way, something that can harm the person or others around that person.  Being odd or a little different isn't a bad thing only when it can be hurtful to you or the people around you.  We all have weird little things that we do and it makes us all feel comfortable in our surroundings.  Like when I'm nervous I twirl my hair around my fingers or tap my hand on my leg.  It just helps me get the nervous energy out.   This is just a way for us to express ourselves.  If there is something you do that may be a little weird as long as it doesn't hurt you or anyone around you there is no need to worry about it. 

Disorders

What most people are familiar with is the psychological disorders. These disorders can range from anxiety of public speaking or hallucinations so real that a person thinks he or she is the President of the United States. A psychological disorder is defined as ,"A psychological disorder, also known as a mental disorder, is a pattern of behavioral or psychological symptoms that impact multiple life areas and/or create distress for the person experiencing these symptoms." (Definition by Kendra Cherry of psychology.about.com)

There are different fields of disorders that include anxiety, (the most common) dissociative disorders, eating disorders, factitious disorders, impulse-control disorders, mental disorders, and neurocognitive disorders.

Psych... what is it??

Psychology is the scientific study of the human mind and its function, especially those affecting behavior in a given context. Basically this means its the study of behavior in certain situations. There are many different fields of psychology.  They are Clinical Psychology, Counseling Psychology, Experimental Psychology, School Psychology, Educational Psychology, Developmental Psychology, Biological Psychology, Health Psychology, Social/Personality Psychology, Industrial/ Organizational Psychology, Forensic Psychology, and Human Factors Psychology.