abpsych blog

2006-04-26T15:18:00.000-07:00

Well I suppose this is the last blog I'll publish for the class. It's been a long and difficult semester, and the creation of this blog has been somewhat of a safe haven for me to retreat to when things get a little too worrisome. I've enjoyed posting my little weekly blog and wonder whether anyone outside of this class will ever read them. Maybe I'll keep the blog up and running just in case some time in the future I decide to become famous enough to necessitate some kind of outlet for my titilating rants and raves. This could become very interesting. The blog is sooooooo anonymous. Far more anonymous than email or instant messaging. Perhaps I'll use my blog to enterain some kind of electronic dissociative disorder, disclosing my more personal alternate identities wishes and whims over the internet. But I digress......... Thank you for the great class and I hope you have a nice summer!

2006-04-26T15:08:00.000-07:00

To be honest, when I first heard that we had to do an oral presentation I was not too pleased. Oral presentations are my least favorite part of being a student, and in the past I would do anything to get out of doing them. However, after giving mine and listening to everyone else's I would have to say that it has been a positive experience. Maybe something changed since high school. Perhaps the fear of being chastized by my fellow students has subsided a bit with older age. At any rate, it was fascinating to hear so many different personal accounts of relatives or close friends who have recovered, or are still recovering from a mental illness. It's always reassuring in a strange way to know that you're not the only one in the universe who is a little "strange".

2006-04-21T11:46:00.000-07:00

Since I wasn't able to update my blog for the past two weeks these next two will be make up. Anywho, we didn't have class this week because of the presentations so I'll have to comment on them. I found the presentation on "Angell's syndrome" ( I hope I spelled that right) to be fascinating. I think she said the symptoms were uncontrollable laughter and muscle rigidity, although I'm pretty sure there were others. I had never heard of such a disease before this week, and I've been racking my brain trying to think if I've ever known anyone who had similar symptoms. I can't say I have, although I've definately known people who laugh at their own jokes uncontrollably. At any rate, I'm very glad she talked about this disorder so that more people are aware of it.

2006-04-18T12:52:00.000-07:00

It was great to talk about schizoprenia last week, especially since my neighbor last year was schizoprenic. "Butch", as he referred to himself, had many of the symptoms of schizoprenia. He had aural hallucinations in which he thought my roommate and I were having large parties, when most of the time we were studying quietly. He would spend hours screaming in his apartment about how we were too loud and were breaking the rules of the lease. He would yell at us through the walls, threatening to call the landlord to have us evicted. If he was particularly mad, he would pretend to not see us when we were walking home. I remember after one of his "episodes", I saw him out by the dumpsters on my walk to class. He pretended to not see me when I stepped out of the door, hiding his head in the dumpster. I couldn't believe it. He kept his head in the dumpster until I had walked all the way around the block. He must of been in there for at least five minutes. Needless to say, it was very sad to see what this man had to live with. I couldn't imagine what it must be like to live with illusory voices and loud noises all the time. I saw him recently on main street and asked him how things were going. He said he had been evicted from the apartment because he was yelling too loud at the tenants that had moved into my old place.

2006-03-30T19:11:00.000-08:00

It's funny that we were talking about personality disorders this week. I was on a bus coming back from washington dc last weekend and I think I encountered a someone with a personality disorder. I hope this doesn't sound too judgemental, but I had the pleasure of listening to her for nine hours so I believe I'm given the right to form some judgement. I don't know what disorder this falls under; I think it might be narcissistic. This woman found it necessary to talk about herself for the entire ride. She was having a conversation with four other students and totally dominated the discussion with endless facts about herself. People would be talking about something interesting they did and she wouldn't have the slightest care in the world. Nothing interested her. She wouldn't ask them questions, look them in the eye, nor would she give any indication that she was connecting to anything being said in the conversation. She seemed to be talking at them not with them. Anything they said seemed to be a springboard for her to launch into an endless diatribe, describing in full detail how she had "been there, done that." I had never encountered anything like that in my entire life. Perhaps you can make an accurate diagnosis. I am certainly interested in knowing.

2006-03-08T18:48:00.000-08:00

I thought the lecture about anxiety attacks was pretty interesting. I didn't know that there was a biological aspect to panic attacks. I remember when I was younger breathing in and out really hard to see what would happen, and I remember getting dizzy and having tingling sensations. However, I don't remember the negative thoughts about dying. I thought it was interesting that breathing in too much air would change the pH of your blood, making the hemoglobin sticky. I guess I would believe that there is more of a psychological influence in panic attacks, especially now that I know that if people are informed as to what the symptoms are they would be less likely to have one.

2006-02-23T17:08:00.000-08:00

I know someone with autism and it just so happens that her brother has asperger's syndrome. I found the video we watched in class to be exactly like the person I know. Just like everyone in the video, he is awkward socially, has poor motor skills, has weird behavioral "ticks", and is infatuated with one particular interest; in his case movies. He knows every movie's director, lead actors/actresses, when it was shot, and even sometimes it's budget. He seems to be on the more mild side of the asperger's spectrum because he is not as socially challenged as the people in the video. Also, as he's grown up his behavioral oddities have generally gone away, although he still clears his throat quite a bit.

Mark Haddon synopsis

2006-02-09T16:49:00.000-08:00

The curious incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, by Mark Haddon is about a young boy named Christopher who, while snooping in his neighbor, Ms. Shear's yard, stumbles upon a dead dog. The dog, Wellington, has been stabbed with a garden fork and Christopher takes it upon himself to find out who has killed him. Christopher lives with his father, Ed, in the town of Swiddon, England. He has either autism of asperger's syndrome. Christopher goes to a school for children with learning disabilities and his teacher, Siobahn, gives Christopher the idea to write about his investigation into the murder of his neighbor's dog. When Christopher tells his father about the murder of Wellington and his ensuing detective work, Ed becomes angry and tells Christopher to stop butting into other people's buisness. Christopher disregards his father's command and continues to do detective work asking neighbors and even the dog's owner if they were involved in the dog's murder.
At school Christopher continues to write his detective story and even borrows investigative tips from his hero, Sherlock Holmes. One day, Christopher comes home from school and sees that his father has found the book and is furious. He informs Christopher that he is taking his book and keeping it so that he can no longer write in it. Christopher being determined to solve the mystery, waits for his father to leave for work one day and then combs through the house in search of his book. He eventually finds it on top of a shelf in his father's closet, underneath a toolbox, but what he finds along with the book proves to be the most important part of the story.
Along with finding his detective novel, Christopher finds a stack of letters written to him from his mother, who he believes has been dead since he was a young child. Confused, Christopher brings the pile of letters to his room where he reads them and concludes that his mother is alive and that he has been lied to. His father returns home from work and finds Christopher in his room having thrown up on himself, laying in a pile of his mother's letters. His father begins to cry and tells Christopher that he lied to him about his mother's death, explaining that he had no idea of how to tell his son why his mother had left them, and that instead he thought it would be better to tell Christopher that his mother had become sick and that she needed to go to the hospital, but that she got worse and died. He also confesses to killing Wellington. Christopher decides that he cannot trust his father and that if he killed the dog, he might also kill him. He waits for his father to go to sleep and then sneaks out the front door, beginning a long and dangerous quest to find his mother. After several train rides and a run-in with a few police officers, Christopher finds his mother's apartment and waits outside in the rain for her to come home. His mother, along with her new boyfriend, Ms. Shears's ex-husband, finds her son waiting for her on the front steps. He moves in with his mother but is eventually forced to move back in with his father. The story ends with his father buying him a puppy and slowly trying to regain his trust.
Christopher appears to have symptoms of asperger's syndrome and autism. For instance, Christopher has very little development of social skills and appears to lack interest in haveing friends, both characteristics associated with autism. He never plays with any of the children at school and does not interact with children in his neighborhood. He also displays what our textbook calls, "maintanence of sameness, and stereotyped and ritualized behaviors" (pp. 520, Durand) evidenced in his need for surroundings to stay the same and in strange necessities such as not having food touch other food on his plate. He also makes groaning noises and screams loudly when upset, characteristic of autism. However, Christopher has developed meaningful speech and does not have a low IQ, which implies that he leans more towards asperger's syndrome than autism. Also symptomatic of aspeger's syndrome is a tendency to be obsessed with arcane facts, which Christopher certainly shows in his memorization of every country and it's capital, and by knowing every prime number up to 7,057. Christopher can also be very vocal when he wants which is characteristic of asperger's syndrome and not autism.
The book was very realistic in portraying the difficulties inherent in raising children with developmental disorders. Christopher's father had to make sure that his food wasn't yellow, because Christopher hated the color. He was not able to hug his child because he didn't like to be touched, and had to accomodate all of the special needs that come with raising a child with autism or asperger's. The characters were also realistic and sympathetic to Christopher's needs, especially his teacher, Siobahn, who taught him many skills to function in society outside of school. His mother howeved did not seem to be sympathetic to Christopher's needs. The ending made sense because it showed that Christopher was going to need a lot of time before he was able to trust his father again.
I found Christopher's character strange because I know someone with autism and someone with asperger's syndrome and he seemed to fit right in the middle in respect to his symptoms. The person with autism cannot function nearly as well as Christopher and the person with asperger's syndrome is much less ritualized and exaggerated as him. Also, I knew someone with autism who lived in the same dorm as me freshman year, who is much more talkative and self-sufficient than the person I know. This shows me that there is a broad spectrum of symptoms and abilities among people living with autism and asperger's syndrome.

2006-02-09T16:43:00.000-08:00

In class monday we discussed different types of anxiety disorders. I found it interesting that people with social anxiety usually had test taking anxiety too. I deffinately have test taking anxiety as well as some social anxiety and can see how they both are based on a fear of being evaluated negatively.

2006-02-08T11:57:00.000-08:00

just testing new blog...