: Archive

What’s your opinion on this?

I have serious reservations about beginning the report with this introduction: “Imagine going to bed tonight & having to lock your bedroom door out of fear - fear that you might be attacked in your sleep by your own child.” - way to help the cause of the schizophrenic, ABC. No wonder those with a psychotic disorders are generally met with fear & suspicion: this is the media image they have to contend with. The rest of the video is quite interesting though…

Nov 30, 20101 note

#childhood mental illness #schizophrenia #mindovermatterzine

The fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM=IV) — due out in 2013 — has eliminated five of the 10 personality disorders that are listed in the current edition.

Nov 30, 20104 notes

#mindovermatterzine #personality disorders #DSM-V

Nov 30, 201037 notes

#mindovermatterzine #crafts #knitting #crochet #brain

As a fan of both the brain & textile crafts, this site really is amazing.

Nov 30, 20103 notes

#brain knitted #mindovermatterzine #crafts #knitting #crochet #textiles #embroidery #brain #psychology #neuroscience #anatomy

“Everything great that we know has come to us from neurotics. They alone have founded our religions and created our masterpieces. Never will the world be aware of how much it owes to them, nor above all what they have suffered in order to bestow their gifts on it.” —Marcel Proust

Nov 30, 2010340 notes

#mindovermatterzine

Nov 29, 201028 notes

“Humans expect positive events in the future even when there is no evidence to support such expectations. For example, people expect to live longer and be healthier than average, they underestimate their likelihood of getting a divorce, and overestimate their prospects for success on the job market. We examined how the brain generates this pervasive optimism bias. Here we report that this tendency was related specifically to enhanced activation in the amygdala and in the rostral anterior cingulate cortex when imagining positive future events relative to negative ones, suggesting a key role for areas involved in monitoring emotional salience in mediating the optimism bias. These are the same regions that shown irregularities in depression, which has been related to pessimism. Across individuals, activity in the rostral anterior cingulate cortex was correlated with trait optimism. The current study highlights how the brain may generate the tendency to engage in the projection of positive future events, suggesting that the effective
integration and regulation of emotional and autobiographical information supports the projection of positive future events in healthy individuals, and is related to optimism.” —Sharat et al (2007): Neural mechanisms mediating optimism bias

Nov 29, 20107 notes

#amygdala #anterior cingulate cortex #neural #optimism #positivity

interestingbehavior:

The popular perception of creative thinkers and artists is that they often also have mental disorders—the likes of Vincent van Gogh or Sylvia Plath suggest that creativity and madness go hand in hand. Past research has tentatively confirmed a correlation; scientific surveys have found that highly creative people are more likely to have mental illness in their family, indicating a genetic link. Now a study from Sweden is the first to suggest a biological mechanism: highly creative healthy people and people with schizophrenia have certain brain chemistry features in common.

A research team at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm studied 13 mentally healthy, highly creative men and women. As noted in the paper published in May in PLoS ONE, other scientists had previously found that divergent thinking, or the ability to “think outside the box,” involves the brain’s dopamine communication system. The Swedish research team used PET scanning to determine the abundance of a particular dopamine receptor, or sensor, in the creative individuals’ thalamus and striatum, areas that process and sort information before it reaches conscious thought—and that are known to be involved in schizophrenia. The team found that people who had lower levels of dopamine receptor activity in the thalamus also had higher scores on tests of divergent thinking—for instance, finding many solutions to a problem.

Nov 28, 201021 notes

#mindovermatterzine #creativity #artistic #mental illness

Nov 28, 201021 notes

#mindovermatterzine

“You enter the brain through the eye, march up the optic nerve, round and round the cortex, looking behind every neuron, and then before you know it, you emerge in the daylight on the spike of a motor nerve impulse, scratching your head and wondering where the self is.” —

Daniel Dennett

This guy is brilliant. Thoroughly recommended reading, especially on qualia.

Nov 28, 201012 notes

#mindovermatterzine

cocollage:

A nice piece from the NYT about how complex emotions and ideas get their distinct flavor from hitching a ride on evolutionarily ancient parts of the brain.

This is an amazing blog. I have an ED

Thanks! If you feel like submitting an account, it would be more than welcome!

Nov 28, 20100 notes

#mindovermatterzine #ED #eating disorder

Nov 28, 201036 notes

#mindovermatterzine

I need YOU

Congruent with their high prevalence rates, I’ve had some really interesting submissions from those with schizophrenia, generalized anxiety disorder & depression. They’ve been super interesting & well-written accounts - thank you to their authors.

However, I want the zine to represent all kinds of mental health.

Do you have a specific phobia / social phobia / PTSD / OCD / eating disorder / personality disorder? I would love to hear from you.

When did you realise you needed help? Did someone realise for you? How do you cope? Have you undergone treatment? How does it affect your life?

Click here to submit. You can log out of tumblr & make up an e-mail address if you want to remain anonymous. Your account will be saved & put in the published zine in (hopefully) February. If at any time before now & then you would like to retract your account, just drop me a line to let me know.

Nov 28, 20106 notes

#specific phobia #social phobia #PTSD #OCD #eating disorder #anorexia #bulimia #personality disorder #paranoid #schizoid #schizotypal #antisocial #borderline #histrionic #narcissistic #avoidant #dependent #obsessive-compulsive #mindovermatterzine

“It is proposed that happiness be classified as a psychiatric disorder and be included in future editions of the major diagnostic manuals under the new name: major affective disorder, pleasant type. In a review of the relevant literature it is shown that happiness is statistically abnormal, consists of a discrete cluster of symptoms, is associated with a range of cognitive abnormalities, and probably reflects the abnormal functioning of the central nervous system. One possible objection to this proposal remains—that happiness is not negatively valued. However, this objection is dismissed as scientifically irrelevant.” —Bentall (1992): J Med Ethics. 1992 Jun;18(2):94-8.

Nov 26, 201083 notes

#mindovermatterzine

“A recent survey of attitudes conducted by Rethink found that 29% of the people surveyed would not be happy to live next door to a person with mental health problems, but this went up to 47% when asked about living next door to a Muslim person with mental health problems” —MIND report on the mental health of South Asian communities in Britain.

Nov 26, 2010-1 notes

#mindovermatterzine

“White feminists may have provided valuable and challenging research literature on gender in, among other areas, caring for the sick, the masculinisation of medicine, the journey of being a mother and the sexist nature of medical sociology, but these have routinely excluded the Black women’s perspective.
African-Caribbean women bring distinctive insights and experience to both feminism and anti-racism. However, they frequently find that they have to struggle against sexism and racism not only within society generally but also against racism within White feminist movements and sexism within anti-racist movements. Moreover, race equality initiatives tend to benefit mainly Black men, and gender equality initiatives mainly White women.” —MIND report on BME mental health.

Nov 25, 2010-1 notes

#mindovermatterzine

Nov 25, 201019 notes

#mindovermatterzine #brain

Not sure what to write about?

Some of the submissions we’ve had so far are:

‘Coming out as a depressive’: on the stigma associated with depression & the importance of getting help
‘Whispers in the dark’: an account by a schizophrenic about the onset of his auditory hallucinations, how he categorizes the different voices, and how he has overcome them
‘Medication’: one woman’s journey through the daunting field of psychiatric drugs; working through the side-effects and finding the right balance

Nov 25, 20101 note

#mindovermatterzine

November 2010

27 posts