Knowledge in Clinical Psychology

personality

Personality development

Introduction to Psychology

Psychology is the science of behavior and mind, including conscious and unconscious phenomena, as well as thought. It is an academic discipline of immense scope and diverse interests that, when taken together, seek an understanding of the emergent properties of brains, and all the variety of epiphenomena they manifest. As a social science it aims to understand individuals and groups by establishing general principles and researching specific cases. In this field, a professional practitioner or researcher is called a psychologist and can be classified as a social, behavioral, or cognitive scientist. Psychologists attempt to understand the role of mental functions in individual and social behavior, while also exploring the physiological and biological processes that underlie cognitive functions and behaviors.

What anxiety actually means in my views ?

People with anxiety disorders aren't the only people who experience anxiety; in fact, everyone feels it everyday, they just don't know it. Anxiety is what you feel before a big game or an important test. It's the source of excitement before you go on a ski trip at your favorite resort. It's the butterflies in your stomach on a first date. It's what can prepare you for a big event; it's the rush you feel. Depending on how you interpret this feeling, however, it can be your best friend or worst enemy.              People with anxiety disorders get this rush, but deal with it differently. Their mind and body turn this normally helpful emotion into a feeling of helplessness, and don't allow themselves to get motivated. Before big games and important tests, rather than getting inspired to prepare for the event, people with anxiety disorders get the feeling that there's no point in getting ready. They end up concentrating on something much less important because it feels much more comfortable. The rush that usually helps someone deal with a situation becomes the situation they're dealing with. They don't want to feel uneasy so they try and keep their mind off it. The most important thing to a person with this disorder is to get rid of the 'nervousness'; the problem is, the easiest way to do so is to avoid the situation that's causing it.              The mind will make subconscious decisions that postpone or even stop people from dealing with the situation. In the moments before a big event, people easily get distracted and find them selves tempted to engage in another activity. Although they might think it's a good idea to go through with their urges, it's really just a distraction to remove them from the situation in order to lower the anxiety.

predictions about behaviour

Motivation is any internal or external process, which is involved in instigating directing, and terminating behavior. All our involuntary responses are reflexes, where as all our voluntary activities involve motivation. But one's motivation cannot be observed directly. It is inferred from the behavior of the organism. Motivation is a driving state; it is also a behavior-arousal state within the individual. Motivation directs the behavior towards a goal. It is thus an internal eternal condition of the organism that forces him/her into action. Motivation has the following three aspects: (a) A driving state within the organism that is set in motion by bodily needs, environmental stimuli, or mental it’s, (b) The behavior aroused and directed by this state and (c) The goal towards which the behavior is directed. We never observe motives directly. Rather we infer their existence from the people say about the way they feel and from observing that people and animals work towards certain goals. In other words, motives are inferences behavior. If our inferences about motives are correct, we have a powerful for the explanation of behavior. Truly speaking, most of our everyday explanations of behavior are in terms of motives. Here is a simple question- "Why are you going to college?" The answer is given usually in terms of "motivation". You are going to the educational institution because you want to learn something or you need a college degree let a good job or it is a suitable place to make friends. You are a student in the college because you think it is expected of you, and one of your goals is to conform to what is expected. It is true that, most likely you are going to college to meet some combination of these needs. Someone who understands your motives can see why you do the things the way you do. For this reason, clinical and personality psychologists who study the behavior of individuals place so much emphasis motives. Sometimes motives do not tell us exactly what will happen; rather they give us an idea about the range of things a person will do. So, in other words, motives help us to make predictions about behavior.

Stay Hungry Stay Foolish By Rashmi Bansal

Stay Hungry Stay Foolish By Rashmi Bansal

Aging and the Sense of Smell

August 2014 - How does the sense of smell change as people age? Some studies show that sensory neurons in the olfactory system in people over 60 may show responses to odour that make it difficult to identify specific smells. This can create issues with identifying dangerous substances and promoting good nutrition. Discussing research published in Neurobiology of Aging in 2011, Professor Diego Restrepo, Ph.D., director of the Center for NeuroScience at University of Colorado School of Medicine said: "We found clear changes in olfactory sensory neuron responses to odours for those 60 and up. When we presented two different odours to the olfactory sensory neurons of younger people they responded to one or the other. The sensory neurons from the elderly responded to both. This would make it harder for the elderly to differentiate between them." The study showed that people losing their sense of smell had a higher risk of malnutrition because taste and smell are closely related. Also they may be unable to detect spoiled food, gas leaks and other toxic vapours. 440 subjects in two age groups - 45-years-old and younger and people 60 and over - were tested for responses to two distinct odours and also subsets of those odours. The objective was to find out if age-related differences in the function of Olfactory Sensory Neurons (OSNs) might contribute to the impairment of the sense of smell. Cells from the two groups were biopsied in collaboration with Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia. The researchers expected to find fewer OSNs in the older subjects and thought the neurons would be less likely to respond to stimuli. However, they found just as many neurons in the older group as the younger but the over 60s could not differentiate between two odours - they blended together. According to Diego Restrepo: "Whereas cells from younger donors were highly selective in the odorants to which they responded, cells from older donors were more likely to respond to multiple odor stimuli� suggesting a loss of specificity. The study suggests that changes in nose and the brain contribute to smell loss in the elderly." In a study of mice reported in 2014 in the Journal of Neuroscience, Florida State University post-doctoral researcher Nicolas Thiebaud and colleagues showed a reverse link: that a bad diet impacted on the sense of smell. When mice were given a high-fat diet over a period of six months showed a significant reduction in their ability to distinguish odours. Smell and Neurodegenerative Conditions Research by Dr Amy Johnston, from Griffith University's School of Nursing and Midwifery and the Eskitis Institute of Cell and Molecular Biology, published in the journal Chemical Senses in 2007 found that normal aging processes have little detrimental effect on the sense of smell. The study tested the ability of about 1000 Australian males and females of all ages to detect or identify a range of odours at different concentrations. The results showed that olfactory function deteriorates relatively slowly with age in the absence of other factors such as smoking, medication or history of nasal problems. Healthy women were found to have a more sensitive sense of smell than healthy men. However, the sense of smell was found to be adversely affected by some medications and deterioration to be associated with a number of neurodegenerative illnesses. The study supported findings that common anti-cholesterol and antihypertensive medications, and chronic conditions such as Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease were among those associated with impairment of the sense of smell. The study underlined important consequences of losing the sense of smell with particular relevance for older people, for example the risk of poor appetite and nutrition and being unable to assess the fitness of food for consumption.

Our perceived birth status can affect our ?

Findings appearing in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships show people who believe they resulted from unwanted or unplanned pregnancies tend to have more insecure relationship styles as adults. "You could have learned about your birth status from your parents or sibling, you could have heard it from someone else, or maybe you did the math and figured out your older sister was born just 10 months before you," said Omri Gillath, professor of psychology at the University of Kansas, who headed the research. "I know people who went through such a process and found out they were probably unplanned or unwanted. In the way they behave and talk about their close relationships, it was clear to me that this revelation or knowledge had an impact on how secure and loved they feel as adults." Psychologists refer to the way people think, feel and behave in close relationships as their "attachment style." In the initial study, almost 350 participants completed an online battery of measures, including adult attachment style, and questions regarding their birth status. Two-thirds were women from ages 18-68. Among participants, 56 reported believing they were unwanted babies, 174 reported they were unplanned, and the rest were neither (a control group). After analysis of these measures and questionnaires, the researchers concluded, "being unwanted, and to a lesser extent unplanned, was associated with attachment insecurity (anxiety and avoidance). Birth status and knowledge about it play a role not only in parents' but also children's lives -- affecting their attachment and mental representation into adulthood." "People can be either anxiously attached -- concerned about being abandoned and rejected -- or they can be avoidantly attached -- they try to downplay the importance of close relationship and suppress their emotions. Alternatively, they can be securely attached -- when they feel comfortable or at ease in close relationships and are not worried about trust, dependence or getting too close or not close enough to others," Gillath said. "Attachment style plays a role in romantic relationships but also in people's relationships with siblings, friends and others in one's social orbit." Gillath's co-authors were KU's Jessica Casebier and Melanie Canterberry, along with Gery Karantzas of Deakin University in Australia. The research team conducted three additional studies outlined in the paper with volunteers who were "primed," or exposed to suggestions of an unwanted birth status, and found the subjects thereby felt more insecure in their attachment following this priming procedure. "Though we can't really change someone's birth status, we can simulate the process of revealing that you were unwanted or unplanned -- either because someone told you or you found out yourself," Gillath said. "We tried to create in a lab such a scenario. We asked people to imagine they found out they were unwanted or unplanned, then we measured state attachment, or how they felt at that moment. Even though they were only imagining something that may have happened 20, 30 or 40 years ago, doing that was strong enough to make people feel more insecure." The team also found that feeling unloved by one's romantic partner could generate a similar sense of increased insecurity. "Having such life experiences of feeling unwanted or unplanned increases the chances that people will have concerns and worries regarding trust, closeness and dependence toward relationship partners," Gillath said. "Having this mental image is hanging like a cloud over their heads and may result with higher sensitivity to rejection. This may doom every new relationship to fail." An insecure attachment style might assert itself in different ways within a close relationship, according to the KU researcher. "It could mean that people can't last long in relationships, or they may experience low levels of intimacy and satisfaction," Gillath said. "Insecure people are more likely to engage in extramarital relationships, or be stuck in a vicious cycle of breaking up and getting back together again." Gillath urged caution when informing a child or even an adult child of their birth status -- if it's unwanted or unplanned -- as this could have more serious outcomes than parents expect. "We often tend to assume that whatever happened in the past isn't going to be as important at present and time heals everything -- people will simply go on with their lives," he said. "For this specific type of event, we found this isn't the case. This is something that lingers even as people grow up and become adults and is affecting current relationships in a negative way. If you tell your child, even as an adult, it may have consequences -- and you should try and figure out ways to provide support so that any negative effects of the information would be buffered."

Psychological Theories of Love

Why do people fall in love? Why are some forms of love so lasting and others so fleeting? Psychologists and researchers have proposed several different theories of love to explain how love forms and endures. Love is a basic human emotion, but understanding how and why it happens is not necessarily easy. In fact, for a long time, many people suggested that love was simply something too primal, mysterious, and spiritual for science to ever fully understand.

Lee’s 6 Styles of Loving

Three primary styles: 1. Eros – Loving an ideal person 2. Ludos – Love as a game 3. Storge – Love as friendship Three secondary styles: 1. Mania (Eros + Ludos) – Obsessive love 2. Pragma (Ludos + Storge) – Realistic and practical love 3. Agape (Eros + Storge) – Selfless love

A CASE STUDY ON SCHIZOPHRENIA INDUCED MULTIPLE COMORBIDITIES

Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by abnormal social behavior which includes false beliefs, confusion, and auditory hallucination.

OCD Case Study

This case illustrates a comprehensive outlook on Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and the importance of awareness and correct diagnosis of a disorder according to the symptoms presented.

Early Child Care

Going into the psychology of a child and what a child needs at the early ages of his/her life.