Evil Hours, by David J. Morris

The Evil Hours, by David J. Morris
Narrated by Michael Chamberlain

In this important work, Morris traces the history of what we now call post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), even back into the ancient days. He begins the book with his own experiences with PTSD. He experienced many traumatic events when he was a war journalist in Iraq, most notably “the time he was blown up.” He remembers shortly before, one of the men asked him tentatively “Have you ever been blown up, sir?” Although the rest of the group chastised the man, it was too late. Morris had been “cursed.” When he was “blown up,” one of the men turned to him and yelled “What are you doing here?! We all want to go home and you’re here voluntarily?! What are you doing here?” Morris couldn’t answer that question. He understood that this moment had torn a rift between himself and this angry soldier – because Morris had chosen to put himself in danger. To be honest, I’ve often felt that way about war correspondents. Not that they deserve PTSD, no one deserves that. But if they repeatedly and purposely put themselves in danger, something will eventually happen.

In his book, Morris discusses not only his own PTSD & the history of PTSD, he talks about how PTSD affects the lives of its sufferers. He also discusses the major treatments for PTSD, many of which he has tried out himself. He apparently interviewed quite a few people for the book – at least he claims he did – though those interviews are generally chiseled down into two or three sentence mentions. 

One point that Morris brought up about “PTSD” in ancient culture is his suggesting that Epic of Gilgamesh and The Odyssey could be interpreted as allegories for PTSD. This was a fascinating new way to interpret an epic that I have been spending a lot of time thinking about lately (Gilgamesh, of course). The way he interpreted it, travel is good for the war-ravaged brain – seeing new places and having new experiences can release the trauma so that you can eventually return home to your life. I interpret it differently. I say that the voyage itself is in the mind. The voyage itself is the PTSD. Gilgamesh’s desperate hunts for immortality – whether by glory, by physical longevity, or by wisdom –  they’re different stages in his growth and healing from a trauma. I’d have to think about it more, but it’s definitely workable.

Morris also had an interesting section on treatments. The first he discussed was one that is highly lauded as the most successful treatment for PTSD: prolonged exposure (PE). In PE, the patient is made to relive his trauma in exact detail over and over. The theory is that after reliving it so many times, the mind becomes immune to the trauma, and is able to move on. This treatment has fantastic success rates. Problem is, the “success rates” of these studies don’t generally include people who drop out of treatment. And most people drop out of treatment because it makes their symptoms worse (at least at first). So is this a highly successful therapy? Or a potentially harmful one? Morris dropped out of PE because he became much, much worse. Morris also tried a form  of cognitive behavioral therapy which worked out much better for him – though Morris thought the idea of meshing out his cognitive distortions to be pointless and annoying. Morris also briefly talked about antidepressants. He pointed out that there is no proof that antidepressants have any effect at all on the symptoms of PTSD, but they might help the depression and suicidal ideation that often accompany PTSD.

One thing that disappointed me is that this is not a book about PTSD in general – it is a book about PTSD in military. PTSD is suffered more by women than by men. Most Americans with PTSD are women who have been raped or beaten or otherwise traumatized during a non-war setting. One review I read said “rape is also discussed extensively.” It wasn’t. Rape got a side comment every once in a while – generally in the form of a quote from Alice Sebold’s memoir. However, most of the research on PTSD, and Morris’ own personal experience with PTSD, is military-related, therefore it is understandable that he would focus on military PTSD.

The book also tended to wander and get a bit dull at times. And every once in a while there was a little touch of ignorance that the snobby intellectual will cringe at. Such as saying “as soon as I left PE, my stress almost mathematically declined.” That sentence is meaningless. Every decline can be modeled mathematically. I suppose he meant “exponentially declined.” But…sorry….I know….I’m a snob.

In the end, I thought this was a good book that could have been an amazing book if he had taken that extra step to include womens’ experiences a little more. Women are the majority of the sufferers of PTSD in the US, and a great journalist would certainly have the resources to look into this subject as well. 

A generous 4 stars for important content and good personal tie-ins


Dissociative Disorders

Dissociation is when an individual is able to go through complex cognitive processes without explicit knowledge of what they are doing. Someone might suddenly become self-aware while in a completely unfamiliar place without having any idea of how they got there. The DSM-5 recognizes several types of pathological dissociation: depersonalization/derealization disorder, dissociative amnesia, dissociative fugue, and dissociative identity disorder.

In depersonalization/derealization disorder, one loses track of oneself or environment. Depersonalization is when a person feels disconnected from himself – he might feel like he is floating elsewhere, looking down on his body, or he might feel like events are happening to someone else. In derealization, the individual feels like everything happening to them seems unreal. Everybody feels this way sometimes, for instance after sleep deprivation or during a panic attack, but to be diagnosed with this disorder the individual must lose his ability to function in daily life due to frequent or severe symptoms. 

In dissociative amnesia a person forgets very specific events of her life, generally something that is traumatic. To share something very personal, I was raped by my first boyfriend, and I am wracked with self-doubt about what actually happened (and whether it happened) because the memory has become so foggy. (I admit this very personal and humiliating bit of information not because I feel the need to share such things with strangers, but because there is so much stigma attached to women who were raped that it has become necessary to say “this can happen to anyone, it’s wrong, and it’s destructive.”) 

I know another person who, while in prison, was continuously attacked verbally and physically by one of the other inmates. At one point, my acquaintance grabbed the throat of her bully and began throttling her while screaming in her face. Afterwards, she left feeling that she had handled herself quite well, and that the argument had ended peacefully. She only discovered her behavior later, when other inmates told her what happened. These events can happen to everyone to some extent, but in order to be diagnosed with dissociative amnesia the symptoms must cause significant troubles in dealing with daily life.

A more serious condition is a dissociative fugue. This is a state in which a person completely dissociates from their consciousness and forgets pieces or all of his past. Days, weeks, or years later the person might find himself in an unfamiliar environment, working another job, or living a whole new life. I know someone who experiences a less extreme case of fugue in which he will lose awareness for hours at a time and suddenly become aware of himself in awkward situations (missing clothes, banged up car, etc.) 

During a fugue state, the individual is generally unaware of the amnesia, but his memory of what has happened during the fugue state remains intact. Many times a fugue state will remit on its own, and the memories from before the fugue state return, while the memories of what happened during the fugue state disappear. Like people experiencing conversion disorder, the individual is generally escaping from a highly stressful situation, but in this case they remove themselves from the source of the stress.


Dissociative identity disorder (DID), formerly known as multiple personality disorder (MPD), is another mental illness that is popularized in books and movies – usually with rather trite effects. (I mean come on, how many murder mysteries need to have the murderer be someone’s other personality?) DID is the most extreme of the dissociative disorders. It is characterized by two or more distinct personalities that have different ways of thinking and behaving. They also might have different personal history, self-image, name, sex, handedness, sexual orientation, eyeglass prescription, language, or age. There is generally an identity which most often presents itself, called the “host identity,” which may or may not be the best adjusted of the identities. 

One of the reasons the term “multiple personality disorder” was dropped was that it gives the impression that the affected person has separate identities making them more than one person. Actually, it is more like the affected person is fractured and is less than whole. People with DID might exhibit a slew of other symptoms such as depression, self-mutilation, suicidal behavior, headaches, hallucinations, and PTSD. 

According to the posttraumatic theory, the cause of fracturing is due to a traumatic event, usually during childhood. DID may be a coping mechanism in which the child can forget that something horrible has happened, or believe that the horrible thing is happening to someone else. Another theory is the sociocognitive theory, in which therapists inadvertently convince highly suggestible, hypnotized, patients that they have more than one personality. One argument for the sociocogntive theory is that “normal” patients can adopt multiple personalities under hypnosis. Also, many patients diagnosed with DID did not show obvious signs of DID before diagnosis. I tend to be a proponent of the sociocognitive theory, though I believe that the posttraumatic theory is probably true for many cases. 

Over the years, the prevalence of DID has increased dramatically. One reason for this is the 1973 release of Flora Rhea Schreiber’s Sybil, which depicted a woman with 16 separate personalities. The book, and subsequent movie, made a dramatic splash in popular culture as well as psychological circles. Highly suggestible patients began to wonder if they, themselves, had more than one personality, and these imaginings were encouraged under hypnosis by over-eager psychologists. The case of Sybil was since then discredited – for more information you can read Sybil Exposed, by Debbie Nathan – however, this discovery of fraud came too late for the MPD movement. It was about this time that the DSM-III recognized MPD as a mental illness. The DSM-III also tightened the criteria for schizophrenia so that people who had been previously diagnosed as schizophrenic were now diagnosed with MPD. 

Some personalities in DID are aware of the other personalities, and know what they know, and some personalities are completely unaware of the other personalities and lack explicit knowledge of events that occurred to the others. However, these personalities that lack explicit knowledge actually have some implicit (unconscious) knowledge. For instance, if you teach word associations to one personality and then ask another personality to repeat the associations, that second personality will be unable to do so. But if given a word and asked to free-associate, the personality that lacks explicit memory of the pairs will often come up with the matching word. 

There is a controversy about whether DID is real or faked. Because of episodes like Sybil, and because some people fake DID in order to get out of prison sentences, and because some over-eager therapists might be accidentally planting personalities into the mind of highly suggestible hypnotized patients, DID diagnoses are viewed with skepticism. 

Another symptom that clinicians are skeptical of is retrieved memories of abuse. Patients do not remember the abuse before they are treated, but upon probing begin to remember abuse as a child. These memories are real in the mind of the patient, but they might not be grounded in truth. Memory is frighteningly suggestible. Something I was highly suspicious of when I was reading Sybil as a teenager is her recovered memories from the age of 2 and earlier. Really? She suddenly remembers forgotten things that had happened to her when she was 2? Although I hate to discount the horror of sexual abuse, I also hate to see innocent people falsely accused of atrocious acts. 

I, myself, am skeptical of DID, as mentioned in an earlier post. It’s not that I don’t believe in DID hands down, only that I tend to think more cases are formed as described by the “sociocognitve theory.” However, due to the fact that part of my goal in this blog is to decrease stigma about  mental illness, I now feel a little ashamed of my skepticism, despite the fact that some clinicians express the same skepticism. I think I might read a few books on the subject and reevaluate.

This is a series of posts summarizing what I’m learning in my Abnormal Psychology course. Much of the information provided comes from reading my James N. Butcher’s textbook Abnormal Psychology. To read the other posts, follow these links: 

The Definition of Abnormal
A History of Abnormal Psychology
Abnormal Psychology in Contemporary Society
Contemporary Viewpoints on Treating Mental Illness – Biology
Contemporary Viewpoints on Treating Mental Illness – Psychology
Frontline: New Asylums
Brave New Films: This is Crazy
Clinical Mental Health Diagnosis: Biological Assessment
Clinical Mental Health Diagnosis: Psychological Assessment
Does the DSM Encourage Overmedication?
Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome – The Basics
Panic Disorder
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
Hoarding and Body Dysmorphic Disorders
Depression – an Overview
Personality Disorders – Clusters and Dimensions
Personality Disorders – Cluster A
Personality Disorders – Cluster B
Personality Disorders – Cluster C
Biological Effects of Stress on Your Body
Somatic Symptom and Related Disorders
Dissociative Disorders
Borderline Personality Disorder
Dialectical Behavioral Therapy
Paraphilic Disorders
Gender Dysphoria – Homosexuality and Transgender
Anxiety Disorders
Bipolar Disorder – The Basics
Suicide – An Overview


References:

Butcher, James N. Hooley, Jill M. Mineka, Susan. (2014) Chapter 8: Somatic Symptom and Dissociative Disorders. Abnormal Psychology, sixteenth edition (pp. 264-292). Pearson Education Inc.

Quiet, by Susan Cain

Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking,
by Susan Cain
Quiet is Cain’s celebration of introversion. She discusses how America is a world of extroverts and that introverts are encouraged to be extroverts against their personalities. This is a society that does not appreciate introverts. Through interviews and personal experience, she provides scientific and anecdotal evidence that introverts can provide just as much (or more) to society as extroverts. 

I really wanted to like Quiet. Everybody seems to. And at the beginning I did. After all, I’m an introvert, at least I consider myself one despite the personality test that I took in a previous post. And that gets me to my first point. What is an introvert? Cain, and most others, define introverts as people who are drained by interpersonal interaction and need time to rejuvenate after a social situation. Extroverts are charged by socializing. But this is very black and white. What about the people like me who are 57.5% on the extroversion scale? I do need to rejuvenate after too much socialization, but I also seek out social situations. I do not seem to fit in her nice little structure. Cain briefly approaches this issue in her book, but I’m not sure most people care about the difference.

Another issue I had with the book is that it provided so much anicdotal scientific research. Don’t get me wrong. The research was fascinating. I just gobble that stuff up. But then I realized that she didn’t really seem to understand the implication of the research, and therefore the findings she presented weren’t very trustworthy. 

One example is that she discussed an experiment in which people were forced to “smile” by placing a pencil in their mouths. Then they watched a sad video. The people who were forced to smile felt much more cheerful after the video than the people who did not have pencils in their mouths. But later in that experiment, those same people – those who felt better after wearing the pencil – were more likely to react poorly to another sad video than the people who had not been forced to smile during the first video. Thus it s bad to suppress your emotions, because you will feel worse later.  

Then in the same chapter, she talked about another experiment in which people could not produce an angry face because of an injection of Botox. When anger was stimulated, the people who could express their angry-face were left feeling more angry after the experiment than those were weren’t able to express their angry-face.Thus it is bad to express your emotions because you will feel worse later.  

Note the contradiction?  

Another issue that bothered me about this book is her tendency to generalize a small population with the gigantic and diverse continent of Asia. In one study she quoted, the researchers compared the reactions of people from Hong Kong to the people of Israel, and found Israelis more willing to express their emotions. But Cain referred to the people from Hong Kong (a teensy tiny bit of Asia) as “Asians.” She referred to the people of Israel (a slightly larger territory) as “Israelis.” Israel, by the way is in Asia. Before you generalize, Ms. Cain, make sure you know your geography.

The last thing that bothered me about this book is that I felt it praised introverts to point of degrading extroverts. Yes,she continuously pointed out that both were needed, but I think if that were the case, she might have done a better job of showing how both are necessary to have a successful culture.

3 snowflakes for being an interesting read despite the weak points.


Crazy: A Father’s Search Through America’s Mental Health Madness, by Pete Earley

Crazy: A Father’s Search Through America’s Mental Health Madness,
by Pete Earley, Narrated by Michael Prichard 
When Pete Earley’s son was diagnosed with schizophrenia Earley was devestated. His son’s potential career was on the line, he wasn’t willing to accept treatment, and he was generally unpredictable and very unsafe. When Earley tried to get his son into the hospital, his son was turned away because he didn’t want to be treated – and laws say that unless someone is an immediate threat to himself or others, he can not be treated involuntarily. Earley had to pretend his son was a threat to Earley’s well-being to get his son hospitalized. Then Earley went to a commitment hearing to make sure his son stayed in the hospital until he was better. Early was appalled by his son’s defense lawyer who did her best to defend Earley’s son despite his son’s clear mental illness. In her own defense, the lawyer said it was her job to defend the rights of someone who did not want to be committed. Earley’s son won the case and was released. 


After this incident, Earley’s son broke into a house, peed on the carpet, turned over the all the photographs, and took a bubble bath. He was arrested and charges were filed against him by the family. Despite Earley’s pleading with the family that his son was not targeting them specifically, that he was sick, the mother felt threatened and continued to press felony charges. Earley knew that the charges would be an irremovable bar from his son’s career choice. 

Because of the horrors of being unable to treat his son, and the unfairness of the charges, Earley decided to research the state of the mentally ill in the Miami jail system. There are, according to the staff psychiatrist, “a lot of people who think mentally ill people are going to get help if they are in jail. But the truth is, we don’t help many people here with their psychosis. We can’t. The first priority is making sure no one kills himself.” The psychiatrist said that the point of the prison was to dehumanize and humiliate a person. Such treatment is counter to improving anyone’s health. 



The psychiatrist’s task was to try to convince the inmates to take antipsychotic medication so that they could be deemed stable enough to stand trial. Earley was shocked at the state of the prisoners. Most of them refused the medication, and were clearly psychotic. Some huddled down into corners, covered in their own body matter. Some stood motionless and unresponsive. Some harassed the guards as they walked by with strange and crude accusations. The prisoners who were on suicide watch were stuck alone in a cell with no blanket, mattress, or clothes. 

Miami has high numbers of mentally ill homeless people because of the nice weather and the immigration from Cuba. It is rumored that when a law was passed allowing Cuban refugees to enter America, Fidel Castro released his mentally ill inmates and deported them all to America – they ended up in Miami. 

Earley picked mentally ill inmates at “random” and decided to follow them throughout the next couple of years to watch their recidivism rate. Most people who were released were not given proper care after release. They were given some pills and sent away; not being given proper social services to help keep themselves off the streets and stable. Thus, these people ended up back in prison within months. Others were held indefinitely because they cycled from jail to a hospital, where they were stabilized and deemed ready for trial; back to the jail, where they destabilized; and then back to the hospital again. 

Earely wasn’t only out to castigate the Miami prison system, he also focused on what the system was trying to do to make the situation better for the prisoners. He discussed the CIT program, which is meant to train officers to respond with compassion to mentally ill people in crisis so that they are less likely to be shot or arrested. (This program is discussed in a previous post.) Earley also researched institutions that tried to keep the mentally ill off the streets by housing them.  

The end of the book returns to his son. Luckily, after too many postponements, the family that was pressing felony charges against Earley’s son were unable to make it to the trial. Therefore, the sympathetic prosecutor and judge found him guilty of a misdemeanor and was he mandated to stay on his medications. His career was no longer at stake. 

Earley encouraged society to end stigma about mental illness, and to change laws that inhibited proper treatment of unwilling mentally ill patients. Of course, this is easier said than done. 

If you are interested, I also have a post discussing the state of the mentally ill in Ohio state prisons, with a Frontline documentary. 
4.5 stars for excellent research, well- written narrative, and a fantastic, revealing topic

Stress and Your Body: An introduction

Great Courses: Stress and Your Body, by Professor Robert Saplosky,
narrated by Robert Saplosky
Robert Saplosky is a professor of biological sciences, neurology, and neurosurgery at Stanford University. His lab focuses on how stress affects the nervous system. He also has extensive field work, studying a particular population of wild baboons in East Africa – where he examines how social rank, personality, and sociality affect vulnerability to stress-related disease. He is a fantastic lecturer, and if you get the chance to watch a YouTube video of him lecturing, go for it. 



Saplosky and The Teaching Company developed the course Stress and Your Body to teach us about the detrimental effects of stress on our health. The primary textbook is his own Why Don’t Zebras Get Ulcers? Which, as far as I can tell from chapter 1 versus lecture 1, is pretty much verbatim with his lectures.  


Remember that time you were lying in bed, worrying about the big exam, presentation, or event that might make-or-break you the next day? You couldn’t sleep because you were ruminating about the fact that if you couldn’t sleep, you’d do terribly the next day. Then you noticed some minor symptom that’s been troubling you lately. Your head’s been aching. Oh no! You have a brain tumor! Now not only can you not sleep because of your event the next day, but you’re worried about your health.

This is the type of stress that often happens to humans. We worry about things that might happen in the future, rather than worrying about things that are happening now. Thus, our stress is generally long-lasting rather than immediate and acute. 

Animals biologically respond to stressors in very similar ways to ourselves, but their reasons for being stressed vary significantly from ours. A zebra might be munching contentedly on grass until suddenly he spots a lion. His fight-or-flight response ramps up. A part of his autonomic nervous system (responsible for controlling unconscious bodily functions) called the sympathetic nervous system is activated. His body goes into energy saving mode: it turns off all the functions that are unnecessary for fight-or-flight, and turns on the ones that are. 

He saves energy. That means his stomach stops digesting, he stops producing semen, his immune system – which requires a huge amount of energy – slows way down. Tissue repair – also another drain on energy – halts.  The rate of his heart and glucose metabolism increases so that oxygen and energy flows to the limbs for fight or flight. 

He runs.

This is a very helpful response to an immediate stressor like a lion. As soon as the zebra escapes the lion, the stress is gone and the zebra contentedly starts munching on the grass again. His parasympathetic nervous system activates, reversing all the bodily changes outlined above. He’s now in rest-and-digest mode. 

When humans experience long-term stress, many of the same pathways as short-term stress are activated, leading to chronically increased blood pressure, poor digestion, dysfunctional glucose metabolism, and heightened susceptibility to infection (among many other things). Such effects on the body will be discussed in detail as we explore Saplosky’s course. 

References:
Saplosky, Robert. (2004) Chapter 1: Why Don’t Zebras Get Ulcers? Why Don’t Zebras Get Ulcers? Third edition. (Nook ebook pp. 13-30). Holt, Henry & Company, Inc.

Saplosky, Robert. (2010) Lecture 1: Why Don’t Zebras get Ulcers? Why Do We? Stress and Your Body. The Teaching Company, The Great Courses.

Black Five, by J. Lynn Bailey

Black Five, by J. Lynn Bailey
In exchange for a fair and honest review,
I received an advanced release copy of this book through NetGalley
in exchange for a fair and honest review. 

Penelope Jackson has had a hard life. Her earliest memories were living with her crack-addicted adopted mother – who died when she was 8. Scarred by horrible memories of that time, Penelope moved to live with her aunt JoAnne. Life for the next almost-10-years went pretty calmly. She wasn’t popular in school, but she had her couple of good friends, and her loving aunt. But then everything changed. She found out that she’d been lied to her whole life. That she was a special immortal being called a “black five.” She was the only one who could save the world from an evil tyrant. 

I think this book would appeal to its target audience – perhaps 12-15 year old girls. Penelope is a unique, charming, and engaging character. The two romantic interests are handsome, powerful, masculine, mysterious, and totally enamored by her. This is also a nice story because the main character is a girl; but a loving, strong-willed, powerful one. Flawed, as well, which makes her likable. Most stories like this feature a boy as the magical-one-who-will-save-the-world (e.g. Harry Potter). Or if it’s a girl, she’s either a weak, needy one (yeah, I’m thinking Bella Swann); or a hard, unempathetic one (e.g. Tris or Katniss). I’m thinking of this book as sort of a mix between Harry Potter and Twilight. It’s young, it’s clean, it’s magical, and it’s got that love triangle. So, yes, if you’ve got a 12-15 year old girl who loves this type of book, it’s definitely appropriate and enjoyable.  

Now I get to the part that’s harder to say, but this is a “fair and honest review” after all. This book was not for me. I doubt it’s really for many adults at all. Love triangles? Ick. Not only do they give me the willies because I feel like the girl likes one guy and leads on the other, but they always seem to be leading on the guy that I think is better (so it always comes with disappointment in the end). Oh, and the Edward Cullen creepiness factor? It’s in this one too. Except – oh change-up! – it’s in the guy that I actually like. 🙂 Another problem I had with this book is the lengthy journal section. The hand-writing was atrocious. The writer even admitted that his writing was atrocious. It was an incredible struggle for me to read. 

Ok. So here’s what I think. This book wasn’t for me, but it’s a great book for 12-year-old girls. Therefore, I think it’s fair-and-honest to give the book 4 stars with the disclaimer: this is a book for young girls. 🙂

4 stars for appropriateness, likable characters, and magical story

Nonfiction in Audiobooks

The discussion post for the third week of Nonfiction November is to discuss “nontraditional nonfiction.” I admit, I’m a really slow reader and by the time I’m relaxing at home with a book, I’d rather be reading fiction. Therefore, my “traditional” nonfiction reading is pretty much at a snail’s pace. But I get a lot of nonfiction read through audiobook. In fact, I alternate fiction with non-fiction when I’m listening, so I get a lot of nonfiction “read” this way. I can’t recommend a specific book, because there are just too many, and I’m  not all that picky – as long as the reader is reasonably good, I’m happy. 

Instead, let me tell you about why I started listening to audiobooks. When I was younger, I never listened in class. My teachers in middle school used to accuse me of “staring off into space instead of listening,” which I really didn’t think I was doing. By the time I got to high school, I knew I didn’t listen – my chemistry teacher used to always praise me about how I’d discovered a new way to solve his problems. Well, the reason I didn’t do it his way is because I never listened to a word he said. I had no idea how he told us to solve the problems. I didn’t tell him that. Then in college, I had a rather shocking experience. I was sitting with a group of students discussing a class. One of them mentioned something the professor said. I was floored. People actually hear what the professor says? 

After that, I tried. The rest of my undergraduate career I tried really hard to pay attention. It didn’t work. During the first couple of years of grad school, I tried chanting in my head “you must listen, you must listen, you must listen.” Somehow I managed to continue that chant in my head while thinking of other things. I even tried yoga. No luck. I just couldn’t listen to what people said. I decided I was audibly challenged. As in, low auditory comprehension, not poor hearing.

That’s when I tried out audiobooks. I figured I could practice listening to auditory stimulation while I was exercising and stuff. I specifically picked books that I wouldn’t otherwise have read – because I didn’t want to miss something that I actually wanted to read. For instance, I listened to the entire Twilight series. 🙂 

It worked! Now I am able to listen to books that I want to read, and I do it all the time. I like audio for non-fiction, because it doesn’t make my eyes blur over when I’m tired, like written non-fiction can. (Though maybe if I stopped reading books that “read like textbooks” I’d not have this problem – but I like those books!)

Less importantly, I’m better able to listen in classes now. So, thank God for audiobooks!


The Biological Effects of Anxiety on the Body

Stress and anxiety can wreak havoc upon your body. It can lead to problems with childhood physical development, and affect the immune, endocrine, gastrointestinal, and cardiovascular systems. It can exacerbate diabetes. Stress affects the mind as well, a tragic example being PTSD, where an individual might relive a traumatic event over and over. 

Stress can be either good or bad event – such as marriage or a divorce. Low levels of stress can actually be a good thing – for instance, a small amount of stress might help you prepare for an upcoming exam better than you otherwise would have. But sometimes stress becomes overwhelming, and biological systems in your body that would usually only slightly increase during “good stress,” go into overdrive – potentially on a long-term basis. 

In order to understand why long-term stress can be bad, we need to understand what immediate effect stress has on our bodies. Under stress, the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal system (HPA axis) is activated. The hypothalamus releases corticotrophin-releasing-hormone (CRH). CRH stimulates the pituitary gland. The pituitary then secretes adrenocorticotrophic hormone (ACTH). The Adrenal cortex then produces the stress hormone cortisol in humans. 

Anatomy of hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal system
Top left, the pituitary gland is red
Top right, the hypothalamus and pituitary glands are connected
Bottom left, the adrenal glands are bright red
Bottom right, the adrenal glands are the yellow cones on the kidneys

Cortisol activates the fight-or-flight response. The sympathetic nervous system shuts down anything that your body doesn’t need during a traumatic event where you might need to fight or run away from a threat. That means your stomach stops digesting, you stop producing semen / ovulating, your immune system – which requires a huge amount of energy – slows way down. Tissue repair – also another drain on energy – halts.  Activation of the sympathetic nervous system leads to release of the adrenaline (epinephrine) and noradrenaline (norepinephrine). These hormones circulate through the body and increase rate of the heart and of glucose metabolism – that gets the oxygen and energy flowing so you can use your limbs for fight or flight. 

Cortisol is the hormone that prepares the body for fight-or-flight; thus, it is a good hormone to have around in an immediate danger. However, if stress continues, and cortisol is not turned off, the long term effects of suppression of vital bodily functions is quite detrimental to the body. Usually, after immediate stress, the cortisol has a feedback inhibition mechanism, in which it signals to slow its own production. However, if the stress continues for too long, cortisol’s feedback inhibition loop can be deactivated; thus allowing the adrenal cortex to continue pumping out cortisol and keeping the physiological effects of the sympathetic nervous system still active. 

Since the immune system is inhibited by the sympathetic nervous system, individuals experiencing long-term stress are susceptible to infection by viruses and bacteria. 


The best known physical side effect of stress is cardiovascular problems. As mentioned earlier in this post, the sympathetic nervous system increases heart-rate so that blood pumps more quickly throughout the body. Not only can this increase blood pressure directly, but it can also lead to damage of the blood vessel walls. The high blood pressure leads to tiny tears in the blood vessel walls. These tears are susceptible to accumulating circulating “junk” such as particles of fat and cholesterol. This accumulation – pictured n yellow above – can decrease blood flow through the vessel, or completely block flow as seen above. When the heart doesn’t get enough oxygen, then a heart attack may occur. Another problem with decreased blood flow is that if the brain doesn’t get enough oxygen, this can cause a stroke. 

As you can see, stress can have a huge impact on your health. Doesn’t that stress you out?


This is a series of posts summarizing what I’m learning in my Abnormal Psychology course. Much of the information provided comes from reading my James N. Butcher’s textbook Abnormal Psychology. To read the other posts, follow these links: 

The Definition of Abnormal
A History of Abnormal Psychology
Abnormal Psychology in Contemporary Society
Contemporary Viewpoints on Treating Mental Illness – Biology
Contemporary Viewpoints on Treating Mental Illness – Psychology
Frontline: New Asylums
Brave New Films: This is Crazy
Clinical Mental Health Diagnosis: Biological Assessment
Clinical Mental Health Diagnosis: Psychological Assessment
Does the DSM Encourage Overmedication?
Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome – The Basics
Panic Disorder
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
Hoarding and Body Dysmorphic Disorders
Depression – an Overview
Personality Disorders – Clusters and Dimensions
Personality Disorders – Cluster A
Personality Disorders – Cluster B
Personality Disorders – Cluster C
Biological Effects of Stress on Your Body
Somatic Symptom and Related Disorders
Dissociative Disorders
Borderline Personality Disorder
Dialectical Behavioral Therapy
Paraphilic Disorders
Gender Dysphoria – Homosexuality and Transgender
Anxiety Disorders
Bipolar Disorder – The Basics
Suicide – An Overview

References:

Butcher, James N. Hooley, Jill M. Mineka, Susan. (2014) Chapter 5: Stress and Physical and Mental Health. Abnormal Psychology, sixteenth edition (pp. 129-161). Pearson Education Inc.

Women’s Classic Literature Event 2016

Women’s Classic Literature Event
Hosted by the Classics Club
Ok. I’ve broken down and decided to join the Women’s Classic Literature Event with the Classics Club. “Why do you say ‘broken down'” You ask? Because I’m trying to only join events that will supplement my personal reading goals or introduce me to bloggers with common interests. After thinking about it, I’ve decided that this challenge fits those needs. I’m starting today. 

I hate making lists of books to read, because I will not stick to it – in fact, writing my Classics Club list was stressful enough. But here are the books (8 of 54 – oh sad, sad day; I’m embarrassed) on my Classics Club list that are by female authors – I will try to focus on them this year as much as feasible. 

  1. Persuasion, Jane Austen
  2. The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath
  3. The Collected Poems of Sylvia Plath
  4. Ten Days in a Mad-House, Nellie Bly
  5. North and South, Elizabeth Gaskell
  6. Middlemarch, George Elliot
  7. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte
  8. Cotillion, Georgette Heyer
Furthermore, Ali @heavenali is maybe hosting a Woolf-a-long through 2016, though its structure is still a little up in the air. I told her that the books by Woolf that I am interested in reading are: Mrs Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, Orlando, The Waves, and Between the Acts.

The Gilgamesh Epic and Old Testament Parallels, by Alexander Heidel

This classic book published in 1946 begins with a short introduction to The Epic of Gilgamesh, gives Heidel’s translation of the Epic, and finally provides a comparison of the Epic of Gilgamesh, and other Mesopotamian tablets with similar stories. Heidel’s translation is organized into tablet format, with fragments and unsure translations represented with an ellipsis and brackets.
Heidel begins his comparison with a chapter about death and the afterlife. In Mesopotamian literature, gods can die, evil was innate because humans were formed from the blood of a “bad” god, and there was an afterlife in which a person carried the objects buried with him into the afterlife. In Hebrew tradition, the one God can not die – he lives forever. However, there is a concept of original sin, similar to the Mesopotamian belief of innate evil. There seems to be some contradiction about whether Hebrews believed that there was an afterlife or not – most likely because of different beliefs of different sects.
The Mesopotamians partook in ancestor worship, which suggested that the ancestors could somehow intercede on behalf of their descendants. On the other hand, in Hebrew culture, there doesn’t seem to be any contact between the spirits of the dead and the living people.
The second, and final, chapter of Heidel’s book compares the Utnapishtim’s flood story that took place in the Epic of Gilgamesh with Noah’s flood story that took place in the Old Testament. There are obvious similarities. Utnapishtim and Noah both built ships to save them from a massive flood that the gods (or God) unleashed on the earth. They collected a male and female of every animal so that they could repopulate the earth. And at the end they released birds to let them know if the flood had subsided. Both the gods and the one God promised never to kill off humanity with such a calamity again.
But there were some interesting differences. First of all, Utnapishtim was not directly told of the flood. Nobody was meant to be told. But a god that favored Utnapishtim whispered to him through the wall of his home while Utnapishtim was sleeping. He told Utnapishtim to lie to the people around him – saying that one of the gods hated him, and that in order to save the entire community, he must leave in a ship. If the community helped Utnapishtim build the ship, they would be rewarded with a season of plenty, which would start with a “wheat-rain.” The community built the ship. Utnapishtim loaded on his family and his entire household of servants. At the end of the story, not all of humanity had died – just most of them. Some had survived the flood.
In the Old Testament, Noah was told directly by God to build a ship. He was asked to warn the community – telling them they must repent. The community did not repent. Noah built the ship and took only his family with him. All of humanity died.
Finally, Heidel discussed arguments of whether the Old Testament story had been derived directly from the Gilgamesh Epic, or if they had the same origins from a different source. He also wrote an interesting, though incredibly theoretical discussion about whether the flood really did happen, and what could have caused such a flood.
In the end, this book was very interesting, though I was hoping for a little more from it. However, I’m not quite certain what I expected, or why I expected it. After all, it delivered what was promised in the title. I think part of my higher expectations came from the fact that pretty much every list of references for studying the Gilgamesh Epic included this book.
Besides the rather silly overly-detailed theoretical discussions about the origins of the flood, one other thing I found annoying about this book was his over-use of the word “obviously.” These points were certainly not obvious to me, so why did he keep using that word? Perhaps his target audience was nothing like me.
3.5 stars for excellent research and being a classic reference book for Gilgamesh Epic.