#nothing is helping the cognitive symptoms though

[an--artistic--autistic]

I think these two recent hospital trips really helped with the "imposter syndrome" I was experiencing regarding my health. Like, part of me really wanted to brush it all off and wait for it to go away on its own like I've done before, but seeing how seriously and quickly both the ER and the Urgent Care took my conditions put a lot of things into perspective.

I'm very glad that we've been able to rule out a number of other concerns (heart and lung problems, kidney stones, etc) with these trips, and it'll make this round of testing much faster. I think I should have gone a lot sooner.

The day after urgent care, I was in the least amount of pain and the most well rested than I've been in in months. I got so many things done and still had energy at the end of the day. If I felt like that every day, or even just a couple days a week, I'd be unstoppable. I could do so much, I'd be on top of all my classes, I could work extra hours, I could do advocacy works, I could cook and keep our house clean. I want to do so much but being disabled is actively preventing me from doing that despite my best efforts.

This week has really proved to me that I'm not being dramatic or using it as an excuse, and if I could be doing more, I would be.

[covid-safer-hotties]

Also preserved on our archive (Check in for daily updates!)

By Blake Murdoch

Since the COVID pandemic began, claims that the disease poses only minimal risk to children have spread widely, on the presumption that the lower rate of severe acute illness in kids tells the whole story. Notions that children are nearly immune to COVID and don’t need to be vaccinated have pervaded.

These ideas are wrong. People making such claims ignore the accumulating risk of long COVID, the constellation of long-term health effects caused by infection, in children who may get infected once or twice a year. The condition may already have affected nearly six million kids in the U.S. Children need us to wake up to this serious threat. If we do, we can help our kids with a few straightforward and effective measures.

The spread of the mistaken idea that children have nothing to worry about has had some help from scientists. In 2023 the American Medical Association’s pediatrics journal published a study–which has since been retracted—reporting the rate of long COVID symptoms in kids was “strikingly low” at only 0.4 percent. The results were widely publicized as feel-good news, and helped rationalize the status quo, where kids are repeatedly exposed to SARS-COV-2 in underventilated schools and parents believe they will suffer no serious harm.

In January 2024, however, two scientists published a letter with me explaining why that study was invalid. Some of the errors made it hard to understand how the study survived peer review. For example, the authors claimed to report on long COVID using the 2021 World Health Organization definition, but didn’t properly account for the possibility of new onset and fluctuating or relapsing symptoms, even though that definition and the subsequently released 2023 pediatric one emphasize those attributes. Any child with four symptom-free weeks—even nonconsecutive ones—following confirmed infection was categorized by the study authors as not having long COVID.

In August, the authors of the study retracted it. They did not admit to the errors we raised. But they did admit to new errors, and said these mistakes meant they understated the rate of affected children.

And that rate, according to other research, is quite high. The American Medical Association’s top journal, JAMA, in August published a key new study and editorial about pediatric long COVID. The editorial cites several robust analyses and concludes that, while uncertainty remains, long COVID symptoms appear to occur after about 10 percent to 20 percent of pediatric infections.

If you’re keeping score, that’s as many as 5.8 million affected children in the U.S.—so far. And we know studies and surveys of adults have found that repeat infections heighten the risk of long-term consequences.

The JAMA study comparing infected and uninfected children found that trouble with memory or focusing is the most common long COVID symptom in kids aged six to 11. Back, neck, stomach and head pain were the next most common symptoms. Other behavioral impacts included “fear about specific things” and refusal to go to school.

Adolescents aged 12 to 17 reported different leading symptoms. Change or loss in smell or taste was most common, followed by body pains, daytime tiredness, low energy, tiredness after walking and cognitive deficits. The study noted that symptoms “affected almost every organ system.” In other words, these symptoms reflect real physiological trauma. For example, SARS-COV-2 can cause or mediate cardiovascular, neurological and immunological harm, even increasing the relative risk of new onset pediatric diabetes when compared with other lesser infections.

Children in schools today are often described as struggling with emotional regulation, attention deficits and developmental problems. Adolescents have some of the worst standardized test scores in decades. Pandemic measures such as school closures—most of which were short-lived and occurred several years ago—have been blamed almost entirely for children’s present-day behavioral and learning problems.

While it is clear these early pandemic disruptions negatively impacted many children, the unproven notion that “the cure was worse than the disease” has become dogma and sometimes involves reimagining history. For example, the Canadian Pediatric Society’s most recent COVID vaccination guidance fails to even acknowledge the existence of pediatric long COVID, while stating without evidence in its preamble that children were more affected by pandemic disruptions in activities than direct viral effects. It’s hard to imagine how this wording could encourage pediatricians and parents to vaccinate children against a disabling virus.

Consider also a small but widely publicized Bezos Family Foundation–funded study which unscientifically claimed accelerated cortical thinning, a type of brain restructuring that occurs over time, is caused by “lockdowns.” The study design could not demonstrate cause and effect, however, but only correlation. Pediatric brain experts have critiqued the research, pointing out that “no supporting evidence” was provided for the claim cortical thinning is from social isolation, and that it isn’t necessarily pathological. “Lockdowns” were neither defined nor controlled for in the study, which relied on 54 pandemic-era brains scans from different children than the prepandemic scans they were compared to—meaning there was no measurement of brain changes in specific individuals. The pandemic-era scans came from months when relevant CDC seroprevalence data estimate that the number of children with one or more infections rose from about one in five to around three in five. We might reasonably predict that many of the studied brain scans were therefore from children who recently had COVID.

It is understandably disturbing to entertain the idea that we might currently be recklessly allowing millions of children to be harmed by preventable disease. That may be part of why problematic studies such as these have gotten headlines. It is more disturbing, however, that almost no public attention has been given to infection itself as a potential cause of children’s behavioural and learning problems.

This makes no sense. We know that COVID harms the brain. Neuroinflammation, brain shrinkage, disruption of the blood-brain barrier and more have been documented in adults, as have cognitive deficits. These deficits have been measured as equivalent to persistent decreased IQ scores, even for mild and resolved infections. Millions of people have, or have experienced, “brain fog.” What, then, do we guess a child’s COVID-induced “trouble with focusing or memory” might be?

When you put together the estimate that 10 to 20 percent of infected kids may experience long-term symptoms, that many of the most common symptoms affect cognition, energy levels and behavior, and that children are being periodically reinfected, you have a scientific rationale to partly explain children’s widely reported behavioural and learning challenges.

We can do something to protect our kids. We can vaccinate them every season, which somewhat reduces the risk of long COVID. We can keep sick children home by passing laws that create paid sick leave and end attendance-based school funding. We can normalize rather than vilify the use of respirator masks that help prevent the spread of airborne diseases.

Finally, we can implement fantastic new engineered indoor air quality standards designed to greatly reduce the spread of germs. Clean indoor air should be expected as a right, like clean water. The cost of providing cleaner indoor air is low relative to the economic benefits, which even when conservatively modeled are in the tens of billions annually in the U.S. and more than ten times the costs. These costs are also small compared to the price children and their families would pay in suffering as a result of preventable long-term impairment.

By regulating, publicly reporting and periodically inspecting building air quality, similarly to how we oversee food safety in commercial kitchens, we can greatly reduce the spread of disease and reap huge benefits for everyone—especially children.

[afusionoffandoms]

The symbol most associated with fibromyalgia is the butterfly, as well as the purple ribbon, since a butterfly despite being almost weightless can cause pain if it landed on a person with fibromyalgia.

Fibromyalgia (fibro) is a chronic and highly stigmatised condition that presents as pain throughout the body - often inconsistent both in strength and location as well as resistant to pain medication - along with a slew of other symptoms - mainly intense fatigue and cognitive dysfunction, in addition to headaches, abdominal pains and cramps, depression, insomnia and general hypersensitivity both to touch as well as the other senses.

These pains can be a draining inconvenience, or so crippling it robs the person of the ability to walk or function.

Due to lack of research, it's believed that anywhere between 2-6% of the population suffers from it.

Many people suffering from fibro will say they often wake up more tired and in more pain than they were in when they went to bed. Experts often describe it as the brain losing its ability filter out pains the human body constantly experiences throughout the day.

One thing known for certain is that it's triggered by stress. It can be something as simple as a bad divorce, or a surgery, or a bout of illness, to trauma (either microtrauma over time or one definitive event). Fibro patients will say it's as if their brain finally had enough and started striking. Unfortunately there's no going back once that happens, as there is no cure, and fibro is likely to progress and worsen over time.

It's an illness that can't be proven through samples or x-rays, but rather it's diagnosed when no other cause can be found, and all other treatments have proven unhelpful.

We have records dating all the way to ancient Greece about people whose symptoms today are assumed by experts to be caused by fibro, though it wasn't until the 1900s that the illness got its own name and field of study. That's about all it's gotten, however.

Unfortunately most people with the diagnosis are AFAB, which means the illness is subject to sexism and is often ignored in the medical field, resulting in little research and funding, little knowledge, and a lot of challenges for people suffering from it. Recent numbers suggest that the gender disproportion is far smaller than presumed, however, likely due to other factors such as social stigma keeping men from seeking help.

Interestingly there looks to be a large overlap between fibro symptoms and long covid, which has in recent years caught the interest of researchers, so it's likely that the world will understand the illness more in the future, which will hopefully help people with fibro sometime down the line.

If nothing else, it might finally be recognised as the life changing illness it is, for currently there are still doctors who claim it's not real, and refuse to diagnose and treat it, instead claiming people with fibro are just lazy and overly sensitive.

It's because of these things that global awareness days are so important.

Increasing awareness about this barely understood and largely unknown disease, makes life easier for those who suffer from fibromyalgia both directly through general knowledge and understanding from people around them, to a larger scale where funding and research is vital to perhaps one day find a medication or cure. Or at least find an indisputable way to diagnose it.

Please consider sharing this in order to help with just that. 💜 May your day be as painless as possible.

[loving-n0t-heyting]

If it’s not too personal, can I ask about your experience with antipsychotics and why they didn’t work for you? And general opinions? I was considering them really hard but I’m very wary and don’t want to take something that isn’t like. Worth stopping hallucinations. I guess.

Definitely. Somewhat tmi at parts, below the readmore

So i should say upfront that I am not psychotic and was not prescribed antipsychotics for psychosis, and the medications on reflection achieved basically nothing for me beyond their “side” effects; so I can’t speak directly to the comparative badness of hallucinations and antipsychotics (though there are many, many psychotic ppl you can easily find who will attest the cure is worse than the disease, and I have promised myself on the basis of my own experiences not to seek out medication even in the event I start undergoing serious hallucinations—it’s just that bad ime). This is the sort of thing that happens in psychiatry bc the entire discipline is half-submerged in the equivalent of bloodletting and humours-balancing

My own experience is principally with “extrapyramidal” symptoms: akathisia, dystonia, and a weird symptom I have not found attested in the literature that tended to co-occur with dystonia where I would desperately seek out circles in my field of vision. Akathisia was the worst of these (followed by the circle lust and then dystonia—tho they were all torture), and it went away after 6wk on lurasidone, but would start up again from 0 if I dropped the meds for more than a few days and then picked them back up. I experienced a brief respite from suicidality when I started the drug, which at the time I chalked up to efficacy, but looking back was more plausibly just akathisia painfully draining so much of my attention to itself I could not even contemplate suicide. Propranolol helped mitigate it, but only partially. You can find a lot of claims on the internet to the effect that akathisia is torture (the wiki article even includes citations for the claim it was used as such against political dissidents in the USSR), and they are right

The other two were also quite awful, developed only some time into my taking them, usually occurred together by the end, and persisted until I quit the drugs altogether; I am told from a nurse that inducing dystonia over the course of years is known to cause permanent neurological disability, which I was lucky to escape. My particular brand was “oculogyric crises” every 2-3 nights lasting ~5-7h, in which my eyes would roll painfully far back into my head virtually uncontrollably, taking a Herculean effort to move at all, at which time I would suffer from horrifying intrusive thoughts and lose my ability to speak clearly and without needless repetition. I could go into great detail about the circle lust, too, but suffice it to say it was miserable and incapacitating to the point that unlocking my phone became a struggle (too distracted by the circles in the numbers on the keypad to focus on entering the passcode)

At some points the drugs I used to treat these symptoms were almost as bad as the side effects themselves. Cogentin was the only one to really stop the dystonia, and even at a low dose it caused urinary retention that forced me to go to the ER to get a catheter installed so I could walk around for the next several days with a tube connecting my bladder thru my urethra to a bag of piss strapped to my leg. After that, I had to start relying on increasingly large doses of Benadryl to achieve a lower level of dystonia suppression; I did not reach the point of the drug’s notoriously bad trips, but I was running the risk

I was lucky enough to avoid the cognitive blunting also known to commonly affect antipsychotics druggies but that was dumb luck on my part, and they sound both nightmarish and fiendishly self-obscuring. Check out robnost’s category tag in the link

In conclusion, I would strongly urge you to seriously question whether the hallucinations are bad enough to be worth it, especially in light of the drugs’ tenuous levels of long term effectiveness . I think categorical denunciations of drugs are generally most likely to shut down thought one way or the other, but this comes as close as anything could for me I think. I would urge particular caution getting them prescribed by a professional embedded in a system capable of forcing compliance if at some point you abandon compliance of your own accord: involuntary confinement and drugging are very much realities for the psychotic and otherwise seriously mentally ill

Good luck, whatever path you decide on. I’m sorry the hallucinations are giving you trouble

[glitter-stained]

Hey Glitter, what does neuropsychology mean?

(Because I realise the name doesn't clarify stuff at all)

So, in my JT psychology meta, I don't exclusively write neuropsychology meta. For example, the TBI meta is a neuropsychology meta, but the catatonia meta is a purely atheoric psychopathology meta (we'll get back to what that means).

Academically, I study clinical psychology and psychopathology with a speciality in developmental psychopathology and child neuropsychology. That means I get classes on stuff like general clinical stuff (ie how to conduct a clinical interview, suicide prevention etc), some stuff about adult psychology, general psychopatholgy classes) and on top of that more classes about child psychology.

> clinical psychology: The psychology of care, what we do in therapy. Now the whole JT meta is organised under a clinical logic: first figure out what the issues/cause of suffering/diagnosis/etc. is, also identify the resources, and then based on that knowledge and where the patient is at, establish routes for therapeutical intervention: all of this is clinical psychology. As a field, I would oppose it to fields like social or IO psychology, which are focused on understanding how society or organizations work. Social psychologists are not therapists, however, it's not a disconnected field either; we owe them concepts that help in our understanding of psychopatholgy and clinical psychology at large, like learned helplessness (a concept we'll talk about in the UTH VS Rebirth Red Hood meta). The concepts I refer to in the victim-blaming meta come from social psychology.

> psychopathology: Pathology = study of illnesses; psycho= mind: the study of mental illness. With pathology, you can do two things: simply describe it without trying to explain/understand it according to a theory (what I called atheoric psychopathology) or use the framework from your theoretical field (or invent one, if you're a revolutionary) to understand it. Atheoric psychopathology is what the DSM-5 does (though sometimes imperfectly). That's what the S in DSM comes from: Diagnostic Statistic Manual of Mental Disorders, because we're basically doing statistics to see which group of symptoms are usually grouped together, and we use that to describe those disorders and make up diagnostic categories. It's an essential tool that allows clinicians to understand what everyone is talking about and communicate about patients without attempting murder on their colleagues, but it's also limiting because you take the risk of grouping two things that manifest the same way but don't work the same way, so that's why it's essential to understand how the disorders work.

> developmental psychopathology: So this is kind of the popular model in psychopathology rn, especially child psychopatholgy. Basically instead of studying disorders as classifications we study the development of psychopathology in terms of trajectories, and study the factors that may impact those trajectories. It's maybe a little complicated to explain simply here, but it's, for example, why children with very severe, super early criminal neglect might end up displaying symptoms akin to autism. I'll try to include it across my meta where I can, because I believe it's the most adequate perspective.

> neuropsychology: And this one is a lie. Well, not technically a lie so much as an abuse of the word? The thing is, neuropsychology is a real thing, but also when we talk about neuropsychology we conflagrate actual neuropsychology with cognitive psychology (at least in the country I'm studying in. Maybe in English speaking countries it might be different.) Let me explain.

-cognitive psychology is the psychology of cognitive functions. The study of intelligence, memory, attention, inhibition, flexibility, working memory, etc, etc. It has nothing to do with the study of the brain, and what we're doing is basically, through scientific experiments and the study of people with specific disorders, make models according to our theories of how those things work and develop, and of course study how the develop over time and what impacts them. And then, we use this knowledge to analyse how disorders work in terms of cognitive functions, conduct evaluations that help not only with the diagnosis but with designing strategies that help with the disorder and its manifestations in the person specifically. That therapist conducting your IQ test, autism evaluation, adhd tests, etc.? Cognitive psychology. That therapist helping you design a planner and come up with time management that actually work for you, designing flexibility exercises that cater to your special interest to keep you invested? Cognitive psychology. Nothing neuro about it. But for some godforsaken reason, we call the people who do it neuropsychologists (at least in my country) so, in practice, neuropsychology.

-actual neuropsychology, however, is also a thing! Now technically, neuropsychology is just the study of the association between psychological concepts and neurology. However, in practice, I've only ever seen and heard of cognitive neuropsychology, which is focused on the association between neurology and cognitive psychology (and that makes a lot of sense, I struggle to even envision what kind of scientifically valid neuropsychology would be based on any other kind of psychology).

In practice, the guy who makes your cognitive evaluation before and after a brain surgery to make sure you don't lose any major cognitive function during the surgery is a neuropsychologist (and that's important as fuck, ask the HM patient). The TBI meta, and evaluating the damage caused by a TBI in general, or by an epilepsy/encephalopathy or hypoxia (lack of oxygen in the brain) or an aneurysm or a stroke or a brain bleed etc, etc is neuropsychology. In terms of research, neuropsychology is super useful, but also be careful! A lot of research in neuropsychology (neurosciences in general) is badly interpreted and relayed in media, politics etc. and give way to a whole new branch of pseudoscientific bs, because neurosciences are 1) a very young branch of science and 2) a real bitch to explain simply. (I said it before, but what I explain of neuropsychology is a grossly simplified version that's good enough to explain how TBIs work, but would be insufficient to explain how recovery works.)

In any case, I hope that clarified what all those branches of psychology refer to, be mindful of pseudo-science, and don't hesitate to ask if you have questions!

Masterpost

[secularprolifeconspectus]

I’m the same OP who has congenital disability. The pain and trauma I’ve endured through my life don’t make any sense to me. I think my brain is literally damaged from complex trauma and all the medical procedures, now as result I have multiple mental illnesses along with neurodevelopmental disorders, and I’m extremely tired and angry. It seems like you don’t understand me to the core, maybe our disabilities are too different or it’s double empathy issue. I’ve dreamed about having my own kids since I was a girl, I love babies, but no way I will give them my genes and make them suffer like I do. Because IM NOT SELFISH.

Trust me, yes, I’d still choose to be aborted in womb, as I’d most likely didn’t feel anything and remembered anything, even if it’s cruel. Bringing a child to the world that will never be really happy and normal - it’s egotistical, period. And I’m not talking as an eugenic fanatic, I’m talking from my own experience, that NOT being born is NOTHING compared to things that kids with severe disabilities experience. For me, abortion is a mercy. Think about those DISABLED kids, not their parents in a minute. Everyone is like «Aw, what a strong mother/father you are!” or whatever, but nobody GAF that their child suffers immensely.

You think I'm not suicidal too? Lmao my brain is fucked. I'm just not feticidal. I may want to die, but I don't want to murder babies. Abortion is homicide. (Don't worry friends, I'm on extensive psych meds and in therapy. I have help 👍🏻)

I feel a lot of sympathy for you, it sucks that you've suffered so much. You're probably right about C-PTSD. I think the compassionate response to human suffering isn't to get rid of the sufferer, especially not through violence. That's what euthanasia is, and abortion. It sets up a horrific double standard that while abled and "healthy" people get suicide prevention, disabled and sick people get suicide assistance and "mercy" killing. I think that's wrong. I think that's legal murder.

If you don't want to pass down your genes, then I highly recommend getting sterilized. Because once you fertilize another human being, it's too late, you've passed down your genes to another person, and abortion would murder them.

So your argument is that lack of pain perception and cognitive inabilities disqualify humans from being people? I think that's an ableist framework to be working from. Not to mention, a medically inaccurate one; pain perception likely begins as early as 12 weeks, and at just 8 weeks an embryo begins to flinch if touched. Just because another human doesn't process pain the same as you doesn't make them subhuman.

And bodywide memory begins at fertilization; our body absolutely keeps the score of the traumas inflicted upon us early on, remembered in our very cells. This is why abortion survivors often exhibit C-PTSD symptoms; their bodies absorb the attempt on their lives, even though they cannot consciously recall it. Their body-minds do. We've also seen in case studies that the siblings of twins who are selectively aborted have worse life outcomes due to the early trauma of experiencing their sibling's demise.

And none of this even addresses that much of in-utero testing happens after the first trimester, when some disabilities first become detectable. So disabled and sick babies are often killed in later abortions after 20 weeks; they are premature infants, they absolutely have pain perception and early cognition. I made a masterpost about later abortion here.

Abortion is literally suffocation, poisoning, and dismemberment. It's not mercy. It's deliberate violence. I think about disabled kids all the time, and I think they deserve better than being murdered. You really think Harriet is better off because her brain got sucked out of the back of her neck? You think that's love? Nah fam. Bonkers shit.

[sky-squido]

HI I'M DOING INCREDIBLY JANKY PSYCH RESEARCH ON TUMBLR WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG

basically i'm doing a paper and trying to really dissect and understand the experience of having and coping with depression. while i've thought about this, i've sort of been extrapolating off my own experiences, but i just realized i have no idea if anyone other than me has had this experience:

do you ever feel depressed emotionally and physically, but not cognitively and like, morale-wise? like you have no energy, and are really sad, and nothing seems interesting or can hold your attention, and you're just kind of a lump who wants to curl up in a ball under a desk somewhere and melt into the floor.

but at the same time, you're not like,,, deeply existential or mentally spiraling or having self-hating thoughts about it. like your internal monologue isn't depressed, too. somewhere in the back of your mind, you're sitting there like "hey, man, i know it's rough right now. just hang in there, okay?" maybe your brain produces the thought "what's the point?" and you go "dude. no. there are so many points. don't talk like that."

i'm sort of imagining an army that's been losing a war but still has high morale, if that helps at all. like you're not winning. you're not okay. but in a sense, some part of you is okay, because you still have hope. in short:

i couldn't have as much specificity/put as many options as i would have liked so please feel free to elaborate in the notes/tags if you want, but i know it's personal so no pressure. also don't worry about if you're Officially Diagnosed or not—if you have a reasonably strong suspicion, go with it for this.

THANK YOU EVERYONE ILY!!

[cdd-swag-bracket]

Explanation of the various CDDs

(NOTE: This is not meant to be complete definitions of all presentations of these disorders. Do not use this as a diagnostic tool. This is only for the purposes of helping decide what disorder you headcanon characters as having)

A paraphrase version of DSM 5 Criteria for DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder)

Criteria A: Disruption of identity characterized by two or more distinct alters, which, may in some cultures as an experience of possession. The alters fronting involves marked discontinuity in sense of self and sense of agency, accompanied by related alterations in mood, behavior, consciousness, memory, perception, cognition, and/or sensory-motor functioning.

Criteria B. Recurrent gaps in the recall of everyday events, important personal information, and/or traumatic events inconsistent with ordinary forgetting.

Criteria C. The symptoms cause clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.

Criteria D and E. The disturbance is not a normal part of a broadly accepted cultural or religious practice. The symptoms are not attributable to the physiological effects of a substance (e.g., blackouts or chaotic behavior during alcohol intoxication) or another medical condition (e.g., complex partial seizures)

C-DID or Polyfrag DID (Complex Dissociative Identity Disorder or Polyfragmented Dissociative Identity Disorder)

Note sometimes C-DID and Polyfrag DID are used to refer to similar but slightly different presentation, sometime they are used to refer to the exact same prescriptions. For the sake of this bracket they will be used interchangeably.

Refers to a subtype of DID, there are several different definitions used both clinically and by the system community.

A DID system that has a high number of alters and fragments. Usually 100 or over, however some clinicians put the number as low as 26+.

A DID system that splits fragments very easily, often times making some the system has more fragments than full alters

A DID system that have a complex internal structure. For example many subsystems, or an innerworld with layers. These internal structures often have strong memory and/or communication barriers between them.

Often times definitions include multiple of the above mentioned.

OSDD-1, refers to disorders very similar to DID that do not meet either Criteria A or B.

It's worth mentioning the the "A" and "B" are not actually used clinically, but will be used here.

OSDD-1A (Other Specified Dissociative Disorder)

Refers to DID like symptoms without fully meeting Criteria A. OSDD-1A system do still have identity alterations, however they are less intense than that of DID or 1B. Usually version of the same person or similar people. Alters in OSDD-1A systems are sometimes called aspects

We've seen it described as, in OSDD-1A systems alters are more likely to be described as "me but not me", "other/also me", "sorta me", or "me but different". Whereas in DID or 1B alters are more likely to be described as "nothing like me" or "someone else"

It is a spectrum though of course.

The memory gaps in OSDD-1A are like those in DID

OSDD-1B (Other Specified Dissociative Disorder)

Refers to DID like symptoms without fully meeting Criteria B. Meaning there are not substantial memory gaps of everyday events, important personal information, and/or traumatic events. Some OSDD-1B do report less complete memory problems, such as emotional amnesia.

The alters in OSDD-1B systems are like those in DID

P-DID (Partial Dissociative Identity Disorder) paraphrased from the ICD-11

Partial dissociative identity disorder is characterised by disruption of identity in which there are two or more alters associated with marked discontinuities in the sense of self and agency. Each alter has its own pattern of experiencing, perceiving, conceiving, and relating to self, the body, and the environment.

One alter is dominant and normally functions in daily life, but is intruded upon by non-dominant alters (dissociative intrusions). These intrusions may be cognitive, mood, perceptual, motor, or behavioral. They are experienced as interfering with the functioning of the dominant alter and are typically aversive. The non-dominant alters do not recurrently take executive control of the body's consciousness and functioning, but there may be occasional, limited and transient episodes in which a distinct alters assumes executive control to engage in circumscribed behaviors, such as in response to extreme emotional states or the reenactment of traumatic memories.

The symptoms are not better explained by another mental, behavioral, or neurodevelopmental disorder. Are not due to the direct effects of a substance or medication on the central nervous system, including withdrawal effects. Are not due to a disease of the nervous system or a sleep-wake disorder. The symptoms result in significant impairment in personal, family, social, educational, occupational or other important areas of functioning.

U(S)DD (Unspecified Dissociative Disorder) in the DSM 5 is described as

"This category applies to presentations in which symptoms characteristic of a dissociative disorder that cause clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning predominate but do not meet the full criteria for any of the disorders in the dissociative disorders diagnostic class.

The unspecified dissociative disorder category is used in situations in which the clinician chooses not to specify the reason that the criteria are not met for a specific dissociative disorder, and includes presentations for which there is insufficient information to make a more specific diagnosis (e.g., in emergency room settings)"

U(S)DD does not inherently make someone part of a system, however sometimes it does

In this bracket it will also be used for characters where you are not sure what they have.

[maybeophe]

There's nothing funnier than the supplementals from season two. The tonal shift from,

"I had my assistants follow up on this statement to predictably little result. Of course, with my suspicions against Tim and Martin, I suppose their inadequacy is to be expected; likely a symptom of their inevitable betrayal. Fortunately Sasha had some luck with her research, though she gained no notable information that wasn't already given in the statement itself. At least she's as dependable as ever. Of course, this statement's validity hinges on the statement giver's clearly impaired cognitive abilities, as well as their state of inebriation during the events... though I can't help but shake the lingering feeling of... foreboding, I suppose. End recording."

To,

"Supplemental. I've broken into the local B&Q and raided the hardware isle for supplies. They'll be useful for my coming traversal of the tunnels, though I was unfortunately spotted by one of the overnight workers. I'm hiding out in one of the fake decorative bushes in the gardening isle - with any luck I'll be able to sneak out undetected."

Is literally unmatched. Season two Jarchivist's unhinged energy is peak.

[rabbitholeresearch]

The Diagnosis of Chris Redfield

It all began in the spring of 1998. Raccoon City had a case of cannibalistic murders and mysterious animal attacks, both on hikers and residents that lived near Raccoon Forest. The city’s police department guess a satanic cult of some kind, probably on narcotics of some kind, given the extent of the violent attacks. However, as the investigation continued, they guessed the base of operations for this cult was somewhere deep within Arklay Mountains, about northwest of the city. With public pressure, the RPD gave in to and put a specialized task force on the team known as the Special Tactics and Rescue Service, AKA S.T.A.R.S., led by Captain Albert Wesker.

Shortly after STARS is put on the case, they send Team Bravo into the suspected hideout deep within said mountains in the mid-summer. Radio contact is lost. Alpha Team went in, finding out that Bravo was attacked, and fled into the mansion and split up.

And it’s here. It is here that young Chris Redfield’s life takes a turn for the worst. Without getting too into detail, he straight up is thrown from the world of a young cop who just had fun little shooting competitions with his friends, to a gritty, beefcake, boulder punching man who lost his memory at one point due to a concussion caused by a fake Ada Wong, regains those memories, and eventually finds the origins of Oswald Spencer’s research and destroys the origination of the Mold.

But that’s just it. How does he stay this cool, badass character that just shows up and sprays down zombies like it’s nothing? Well...he doesn’t. I think the leader of the Alpha team has severe PTSD.

Please note that this post will be talking about severe trauma from a psychiatric perspective so please, if you see or think anything might affect you, I beg you to turn away. This post will also have spoilers for the recent Resident Evil 8 game for those that haven’t played.

–

So let’s start by defining PTSD. According to the American Psychiatric Association, PTSD is and I quote: “A psychiatric disorder that may occur in people who have experienced or witnessed a traumatic event such as a natural disaster, a serious accident, a terrorist act, or war/combat.”

Okay so at the very least, Chris Redfield is probably already a qualified patient. “Terrorist act”? Check. I would absolutely say that the events of Resident Evil 6 count as that. “War/Combat”? We saw that for the most part in RE5. “Natural Disaster?” Aaaaah. Maybe six or seven? That one’s kinda weird to be honest. But serious accident? Yes. Absolutely! Why? Because, referenced in Resident Evil 5, we see Jill Valentine, who is basically his sidekick/best friend from the very first game, and even survives on her own for a bit in Resident Evil 3, falls out of a window after attacking Albert Wesker who betrayed STARS and was infected with some form of the zombie virus. Chris presumed her death, only to find out she survived the fall through, ya know, video game logic, and was experimented on by Wesker.

Which honestly, I was surprised he didn’t come back too. I mean, in Resident Evil 5, his last hoorah is literally in a freaking volcano! What is up with that?! But his son, Jake Muller (who until RE6 didn’t even know who his dad was), appeared and I really expected Wesker to just pop up like “Hey son. I’m back with those smokes. Also, you’re immune to the C-Virus so congrats. My zombie body helped make you with your mom--” Alright that got too weird. ANYWAY.

We’re here because Chris, in all fairness, has trauma. But let’s try and figure this out. The A.P.A. states that PTSD symptoms, though they can vary in specificity, fall into four categories:

Intrusion

Avoidance

Alterations in cognition and mood

Alteration in arousal and reactivity

Now I will say I actually have PTSD of my own. Avoidance and Intrusion are absolutely symptoms I got through, as well as Cognition and Mood alterations when triggered.

Something I noticed is Chris definitely doesn’t avoid anything so we can go ahead and cross that off. Chris Redfield always dives in headfirst cuz well...he’s the American Boy. He’s the definition of charge in and be the American hero because human lives are at stake so the second one is crossed off.

Now the third one, Cognitions and Mood. This basically means important details of events aren’t remembered, everything’s kinda blurred, which results in detached behavior and Survivor’s Guilt. Now while Survivor’s Guilt is often a result of PTSD, it isn’t a form of PTSD. It’s just another symptom. It’s basically kinda like when you eat way, way too many blue gummy bears and then your poop is blue. It’s blue because of the gummy bears. If you didn’t have the Gummy Bear, you don’t have the blue poop. 

Fun fact, that’s an actual thing that happened to my dad one Easter, but I think it might’ve actually been jelly beans. I can’t really remember.

Survivor’s Guilt could very well be something Chris suffers from, dating all the way back to the Mansion Incident in the first Resident Evil. He was one of few people who survived that entire incident and what happened afterward? Did he take a mental health break? Nope! Chris takes on a mission in Europe, as seen in Resident Evil 2 when Claire is going to Raccoon City to try and find her brother. 

Now let’s think about this. Rather than rest and recover from this event, he proceeds to pursue his investigation of the Umbrella Corporation. Chris is treated at the hospital and, despite trying to report their findings to the police chief, Irons, STARS is ultimately shut down. Chris then reports everything he needs to the FBI and even assaults a fellow officer.

The RPD tells Chris he needs a break and he says he’s going to Europe for a “vacation” but this was just an excuse to get to Europe in order to enact his vengeance on Umbrella for all the Hell it caused his city and possibly even the world.

That’s nuts. I wish I could do that at my work and get away with it. Just fight someone on the shift and then go to Corporate armed with nothing but a fry basket, ready to take them out.

This leads me to that fourth category: Alterations in arousal and reactivity. This is defined as reckless or self-destructive behavior, angry outbursts, hypervigilance, and even trouble sleeping.

This is entirely reckless. I mean, I get it. Going rogue because this company is obviously evil and has a hand in bio-terrorism. Yeah. That’s fair. Let’s take them out. But if only it were that easy, as we can see throughout the franchise. Despite Umbrella BARELY hiding their attempts at world domination, as seen in RE6, no one really flinches. They’re somehow still in the running.

Having said that, in Resident Evil 4, three years after RE3, Leon actually says in the introduction that Umbrella was wiped out by the investigation. Without digging into this, I’m presuming this is because Jill managed to escape Raccoon City and was able to report her findings as one of five survivors, six if you count Ada Wong. Which does make me wonder how they’re still hanging around like a more gruesome Team Rocket.

And the last category is Intrusive. Now, this is where this unravels, actually. Intrusive is basically intrusive thoughts. Those little thoughts or images that flash through just enough to unsettle you and if you’re like me and have diagnosed OCD, then you play these thoughts over and over in your head.

It’s like you want to go to the park. Okay, great, the park is outside. Nice. The outside is where people are. People aren’t that great, in my perspective. Bad people exist. Bad people like to hurt people. I’m a people that could be hurt by a bad person. Because of that, I can’t go to the park now. 

It’s like being stuck in a loop that wants you to be sad. Like, thank you brain. I just wanted to get stuck in the baby swing but now I’m going to sit on my phone and scroll through TikTok and be sad.

Intrusive thoughts are what had me curious. The intrusive category is actually where most people are commonly confused about what PTSD is as this is where we find that flashbacks fall into. A great example of a flashback in Resident Evil is actually in the fifth game. This is where Jill Valentine doesn’t really become Chris’ partner. We learn that during the last bout, they had against Wesker is where she’d fallen out the window as I mentioned earlier. This is explained in a flashback.

That’s interesting to me. Yes, from a storytelling perspective, it makes sense, but Chris remembers such vivid details, even Wesker’s eyes glowing.

But what’s interesting is, this event, in particular, seemed to affect Chris the most. Despite that his sister has been kidnapped by people affiliated with both Umbrella and Wesker, Jill’s “death” shook him up the most, which is fair. His best friend and partner throughout the entire thing, someone he shared his trauma with and even started the BSAA with was just gone. No even a body. Three months and nothing was found before she was declared dead. He dove into his work head-on, taking every mission he could!

This is why he takes deaths so personally. This is also shown in Resident Evil 6 when Piers, a young soldier who looked up to Chris and helped find him after he lost his memory after an incident with a fake Ada Wong, is infected with the zombie virus, he holds onto his humanity in order to save Chris, but ultimately does die in the underwater lab facility, supposedly by water pressure before losing his mind to the virus.

The former Alpha Team consisted of the following:

Chris Redfield

Albert Wesker

Barry Burton

Brad Vickers

Jill Valentine

Joseph Frost

All members of the original team that infiltrated the Spencer Mansion in RE1. Let’s go ahead and cross some people off.

Wesker? Dead as of Resident Evil 5. Good. Stay dead. You suck! You’re like the Capcom version of Ganondorf, just stay dead, dude!

Burton?  Alive, but hasn’t appeared in a main RE game since the first.

Vickers? Dead as of the third installment of the game. He was the pilot who sacrificed himself after being bitten during the attempted escape from Nemesis in Raccoon City before the place was blown sky-high. You actually see him later again in the third game attacking the cop you meet in the second Resident Evil, interestingly enough, but what’s sad really is that he still has some semblance of his humanity and ends up groaning out the cop’s name before attacking and infecting that man. Poor guy. Really was just a poor soul.

Moving on. Jill Valentine? Still alive and definitely kicking but she’s become more of an iconic character for the movies. So from a lore perspective, as of the end of 5, she is no longer in the main series that we’ve seen. Mostly just referenced. This might change however later on as I do believe there will be a ninth installment coming soon if not already in the works as of writing this.

Frost? Dead. He was actually the first to die as soon as they touched down at Spencer Mansion, by zombie-dogs, no less. He stood no chance.

That means, of the original team, Chris is the only one still active. This means that he is the most trained to handle situations from a tactical perspective, but not an emotional one.

I mean, we see him really weighing the whole situation in Resident Evil 8. He’s seen smoking a cigarette, clearly stressed out and tired of dealing with everything, despite creating an Anti-Umbrella team called Blue Umbrella. Yeah. Not that creative, my guy. But he’s tired of hearing and seeing people die which...is fair.

I’d say he does have PTSD and it is Survivor’s Guilt.

Yes, he and his team are ready to die, but it doesn’t change the fact that he’s losing people he’s had long nights with, sharing beer, shooting pool, busting bad scientists with, and he still loses them.

In the military, a soldier doesn’t fear his own death but the death of his comrades.

Survivor’s Guilt is really just a terrible thing. I’d say actually several characters in the Resident Evil franchise have this, including poor Mia Winters!

Chris might have it but uses it to his advantage. He uses the knowledge he’s gained from staying alive in an attempt to help others stay alive and ultimately bring down the Umbrella Coorporation.

Ultimately, Chris Redfield seems to be wanting to make up for the lives lost to this organization.

Research links:

Coping with survivor’s guilt: https://artherapyinternational.org/blog/traumatic-events-coping-with-survivors-guilt-afterwards/

What is PTSD?  https://www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/ptsd/what-is-ptsd

Chris Redfield Bio https://residentevil.fandom.com/wiki/Chris_Redfield#Biography

Symptoms of Survivor’s Guilty: https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/325578#symptoms

[reasoningdaily]

There is growing evidence that simple, everyday changes to our lives can alter our brains and change how they work. Melissa Hogenboom put herself into a scanner to find out.

"It's surprisingly hard to think of nothing at all", is one of my first thoughts as I'm lying in the maw of a machine that is scanning my brain. I was told to focus on a black cross while the functional Magnetic Resonance Imagine (fMRI) machine does its noisy work. It also feels impossible to keep my eyes open. The hum of the scanner is somewhat hypnotic, and I worry a little bit that drifting off will affect how my brain appears on the resulting images.

As a science journalist I've always been fascinated by the workings of the mind, which is how I found myself inside a scanner at Royal Holloway, University of London, to have my brain examined before embarking on a six-week brain-altering course.

Simple mindfulness exercises can help keep our minds healthy, research shows (Credit: BBC)

Our brain has an incredible ability to adapt, learn and grow because by its nature, it is plastic – that is, it changes. This is called neuroplasticity, which simply means the brain's ability to adapt and evolve over time in structure and function. It was once thought to be limited to youth but we now know it's a constant force in shaping who we are. Every time we learn a new skill, our brain adapts.

Neuroscientists and psychologists are now finding that we have the power to control that to some extent.  And there's good reason to want to boost our brain – an increasing number of studies suggest it can play a role in delaying or preventing degenerative brain diseases.

So, with the help of Thorsten Barnhofer, a professor of clinical psychology at the University of Surrey in the UK, that's what I set out to do. He's currently running a study on the effects of mindfulness in managing stress and difficult emotions, with a special focus on individuals with severe depression.

I was surprised that something as simple as mindfulness can play such a crucial role in keeping our minds healthy. Research has shown that mindfulness is a simple but powerful way to enhance several cognitive functions. It can improve attention, relieve pain and reduce stress. Research has found that after only a few months of mindfulness training, certain depression and anxiety symptoms can ease – though as with any complex mental health problem, this may of course vary depending on individual circumstances.

There's more to it. Mindfulness can change the brain. That's because when the stress hormone cortisol increases and remains high, "it can become toxic for your brain", says Barnhofer. Stress can also directly inhibit neuroplasticity, so managing it allows the brain to remain more plastic.

The question is, would this work in my brain? Over six weeks, Barnhofer modified a mindfulness research course for me to try out. For 30 minutes a day, either as one single session or two 15-minute sessions, I practiced a guided mindfulness meditation by listening to a recording. In addition, I had one weekly meditation session with Barnhofer, who guided me over Zoom. The full mindfulness course can be accessed online for free.

My instructions were to be as aware as possible to the present moment – and pay attention to things I might usually ignore, such as where my thoughts go, and what occupies my mind from moment to moment. He also encouraged me to be more mindful in daily life – say when cooking or running, to really focus on the moment, bringing my mind back to what I was doing, as well as noticing how often it wanders.

One simple mindfulness technique involves focusing on one's breath

What's fascinating about this area of research is that mindfulness, which appears to be such a simple process, can have a measurable effect. "What mindfulness does is it can buffer stress, you become aware of challenges and those more ruminative responses, a tendency to worry," explains Barnhofer.

While I'm perhaps not an ideal candidate – my stress levels, which were measured before and after the process, are generally low – I still felt a benefit. As soon as I started a session, it felt like the first minute or two were easy. I would focus on my breath, or parts of my body as instructed. But at any moment of silence I would find my mind going on time-travelling journeys. I'd think about a conversation with a friend from weeks ago, then flit within seconds to thinking about scheduling a dentist appointment, then next about an upcoming work deadline… and so on. In quick succession, I could see just how rapidly my mind shifted from thought to thought. Speed this up and it can become extremely exhausting.

"Mind wandering is something that of course might be helpful in many ways," says Barnhofer. "It might help us with creativity, but it's also something that can go awry. And this is where repetitive thinking comes in, where ruminative thinking comes in, where worry comes in. And those are the factors which increase stress once it's there."

When I started to notice this, it made more sense that this brilliant ability we all have to think ahead, to plan, to worry, can be debilitating if it goes into overdrive. In other words, revealing the workings of our own mind is a crucial first step of letting go of some of that busyness.

Thorsten Barnhofer, a professor of clinical psychology, explains how mindfulness can shape the brain (Credit: BBC)

For instance, evidence shows that both meditation and exercise boost plasticity. I didn't increase my normal levels of exercise, but I did to push myself to run faster – regularly running a 5k in my hilly local park in about 21 minutes. Knowing that this might help boost my brain too, kept me motivated. "Physical activity facilitates the procedure of plasticity," says Ori Ossmy, a lecturer in brain and cognitive development at Birkbeck, University of London in the UK. "If you combine it with cognitive tasks to improve skills you are interested in, you probably will be able to do this in an enhanced way."

This makes sense given how closely the health of our bodies and our brains are tied together, agrees Gillian Forrester, professor of comparative cognition at the University of Sussex in the UK. "Our physical health and mental health are absolutely tangled up together to create a quality of life," she says.

Physical health is tied to cognitive health, too. It's by studying infants that scientists like Forrester are learning to see the brain/body link in action.

In Birkbeck University's brand-new Baby Lab, Forrester showed me her latest project called Baby Grow. The study will monitor babies' development in their first 18 months, with the aim of spotting signs of cognitive disorders before they become apparent. And the reason it's crucial to do it so early? It's tied to neuroplasticity too. A child's brain is especially plastic in its early years of development – new neurological connections and networks are being created at a frenetic pace as they grow and learn about their environment. This means it's potentially much easier to apply interventions for those who need it during this highly plastic state. This is one of the reasons why Forrester believes it is so important to learn more about everyday processes that help mould the brain.

The same idea also comes into play when patients are recovering from serious brain injuries. I met with Angelo Quartarone, the scientific director of the Centro Neurolesi Bonino Pulejo, a centre for brain injuries in Sicily. He witnesses plasticity in action every day. "Even in the worst conditions the brain helps to repair itself in some way… With neurorehabilitation we can accelerate recovery," he says. His team uses varied methods of assisting rehabilitation, including robotics, virtual reality, and placing electrical currents on the brain. "A tiny amount of currents can interact with the same mechanisms which are engaged by neurorehabilitation techniques," he says. "So you have a double hit."

I was amazed to learn that one of his patients, who had lost power in their right limbs, was able to forge new neural connections by playing simulated computer games. This helped them to regain lost motor skills.

Learning a new skill – in this case, how to play a tambourine – is fun and helps the brain to continue to grow (Credit: BBC)

At the end of the six weeks, I was extremely curious to see if all this work had any effect on my brain. After another brain scan, and some trepidation about what might have happened inside my head in the intervening weeks, I visited Barnhofer at the University of Surrey to find out. He had been analysing and comparing my two brain scans long into the night.

There was a result: the structure of my brain had in fact changed. And there were a few measurable changes to be seen.

One half of my amygdala – an almond-shaped structure important for emotional processing – had reduced in volume on the right side. The change was minute but measurable. However, what's exciting is that this aligns with the scientific literature that shows mindfulness can reduce its size because it buffers stress seen in the amygdala. When we experience increased stress, the amygdala grows. I didn't feel particularly stressed to begin with, but even so, it was exciting to still see a change.

The other change was to my cingulate cortex, part of the limbic system that is involved in our behavioural and emotional resonses. It is also important for the default mode network, a region that becomes active when the mind wanders and ruminates. In my brain, it had slightly increased in size over the six weeks, indicating increased control of that area. Again, this chimes with published studies in the scientific literature.

It also resonates with what I had noticed during my sessions. Over time I found I was able to keep my mind more restful – I was better able to zone out busy thoughts.

It was quite, if you will excuse the pun, mind-bending to see these results to my brain on a big screen in front of me. Just by being mindful, I had managed to increase a part of my brain that prevents my mind wandering too much.

A final note of caution – it is important to acknowledge that any brain changes we had seen could also be random. The brain is constantly changing anyway. But nevertheless, the studies suggest that the whole experience was a worthwhile challenge – and a process many people could easily benefit from.

Of course, for the changes to be long lasting, it's clear I should keep pushing myself to do some of these "hacks".

Am I going to continue meditate every day? I'd really love to say: "Yes of course." That is, if life doesn't get in the way

[ariessential]

Okay as much as i love someone hating stuff like the mbti... i wanna add to the above.

First of all, and this is nitpicky but is important to me: 'made up' is an unfortunate and misleading label, even though i know what its supposed to describe. but ALL measurements, especially in psychology are made up. every psychological model? made up. we just try to find the best concepts to describe the human psyche and convert those into handy scores for various purposes. those will never ever be accurate, some are better, some worse. just like some purposes are better, some worse. and even if you have a solid instrument, you can still use it for a lot of crap. that being said.

although isabel briggs myers did both develop the mbti and write novels, i dont know if these two things are super connected. she and her partner in crime (haha, get it?) were self-proclaimed CG Jung fangirls, which is already a big yikes, and randomly tried to apply his psychoanalytic theories to a type-sorting personality test. As far as i know they did this to create a tool for a good person-job fit around/after WW2 (which means it could be potentially racist but i know nothing in that direction). this test, the mbti, was obviously not developed in accordance with any scientific standards or any real system behind it. The theories of CGJ are pretty abstract (aka not suited to base any for of systematic research or instrument on) and the concept of a type based personality test is bullshit. in the field of researching personality it is the norm to use dimensional questionaires instead of categorization by now (NEO-FFI my beloved). plus, there have been some, few, attempts to hold the mbti to todays scientific standards, and its shit. validity wasnt even measured, retest reliability was bad, there are no norming tables to see adjustments regarding gender, age, cultural differences.. the fact that the mbti is still used in many big companies and, as far as i know, the us army, is just disgusting and a product of marketing. Pseudoscience.

IQ: tough to discuss any intelligence test, since the official definition of intelligence is "intelligence is what the intelligence test is measuring" (no, im not kidding.). there are different approaches to what it is and what model describes it best and the IQ is just one of the attempts that stuck. I do agree that it has since been used in many stupid ways and its meaning in the general public is ridiculous (used to justify racist agendas, true, and obviously also used to support classicism. basically any form of "this group is more stupid and therefor less than"). HOWEVER if used correctly its pretty reliable when it comes to diagnosing people with cognitive disabilities. as in: can be used in psychiatric settings or psych evals in court to help decide whether someone is capable of making their own decisions, has special needs, what kind of help is best suited for them. As with any instrument used for those purposes, it shouldnt be used by itself as the sole argument for a decision. And in these situations, we are talking IQ levels that are severely below what is considered the "norm". So, it has its flaws, but it can be helpful.

BMI: i hate the bmi. again: of course its made up, like every other quotient and score in any psych test. the Beck depression inventory score is made up but still reliably connects to depressive symptoms. Thats not the problem with the bmi. the problem, as suggested above, is that its not complex enough. most obvious thing is that it is just based on your height and weight and assumes that more weight = more fat = less health. but just to name an example, famously, muscles weight more than fat so any muscly dude automatically has a bmi thats too high and would be considered obese. the fatphobia point is more complicated because more fat does correlate with health problems. obesity is a problem and is medically relevant. do non-white people struggle more with obesity? yes. does our western white society treat overweight people like shit? absolutely. it is theoretically still good to have a handy score to determine whether someone's weight impacts their health. its just that this score is shit and is used to treat people like shit instead of just helping them. why do we still rely on the bmi for diagnosing eating disorders?? baffles me.

So yeah.. if i missed anything or got something wrong im all ears.

I can't keep having the same conversations about love languages, mbti, iq, bmi, "brain fully formed at 25" and shit over and over again...

[saharawesturgnet123]

Safe Alcohol Detox Programs For Lasting Recovery

Alcohol is a poisonous substance which is not good for the health and also affects the relationship in an individual’s life. Detoxing without help is risky. Private detox centers give quality services to their patients. Regardless of whether you are entering the keywords “alcohol detox Las Vegas” or “drug detox Las Vegas” or “alcohol treatment Las Vegas,” you can look for reliable treatments nearby.

Why Choose a Professional Alcohol Detox Program?

There are various benefits in a professional detox program:

Medical Supervision: In case of any medical complications, a doctor is standby all through to oversee your health condition.

Patient-Centered: It entails that treatment is individualized according to the individual’s situation.

Support: Therapists are there for the purpose of treating psychological disorders.

Slept Environment: Safe environments exclude places that act as stimuli for drinking.

So always try to choose profession alcohol detox program. Because your health is important and you should not take risk on your health.

Common Alcohol Withdrawal Symptoms

It is nothing more than a fact that when you quit drinking alcohol, your body does react. Symptoms may vary for a mild and severe condition:

lower-intensity discomforts such as sweating, nausea, headache, shaking etc.

Moderate Symptoms: Fast heartbeat, anxiety, and confusion

Moderate Symptoms: Hearing voices, see visions, confusion, confusion, anxiety, tremors (severe)

Since symptoms can be dangerous, one needs to seek medical attention.

So, if you feel these symptoms in you or your loved one. Then you don’t waste your time and go to hospital for treatment. Because it is necessary to control this in early stage.

What to Expect in a Detox Program

Detoxification therefore follows certain procedure:

The problem or the disease is diagnosed Before it is diagnosed, health care givers review your medical background and status.

Medical Stabilization: Patients are administered with medicines in order to minimize the withdrawal(pathological) symptoms.

Proper Counseling: This involves managing of emotions through counseling periods.

Recovery management: There is a planning that is done long term for individuals to be able to maintain their sobriety.

Benefits of Detoxing in Las Vegas

Most of the centers that we enlisted to provide detox in Las Vegas offer:

Experienced Staff – professional doctors and specialist qualified nurses for substance use disorders.

Wholism: Treatment is both the physical and the psychological aspect of a person.

Flexible Programs: Options for inpatient or outpatient care

Aftercare services: Ensuring long lasting support for the clients

So, these are the benefits of detoxing in Las Vegas. Though no need to waste time and go to Sahara west urgent care or any other detox center.

Drug and Alcohol Detox: A Combined Approach

A large number of patients are dependent on alcohol and narcotics at the same time. Facts About Las Vegas Detox Center shows that most of it give care to both kinds of cases. If you require this kind of care, searching “drug detox Las Vegas” will give you the combined treatment that you need.

Mental Health Support in Detox Programs

Looking at the returned form it is evident that mental health remains part of the patient. Detox programs often include:

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT): This is aimed at changing a person’s ways of thinking to counterbalance negative feelings.

Psychiatric Support: Medication for mental health conditions

Generally, group therapy entails the participation of people who share similar experiences in a way that all of them offer help to one another.

How to Maintain Sobriety After Detox

Detox is the first step. Staying sober requires continued effort.

Helpful Tips:

Stay on Task: Adhere to the aftercare strategies.

Attend meetings: There are support groups such as the AA out there that one can attend.

One should attend counseling sessions when the need arises: This is a focus on mental health.

Lead a Healthy Lifestyle: Exercise and take a balanced diet for healthy living.

Do Not Get into Harm’s Way: Try to be aware of the situations that are dangerous for you.

Referrals for the Best Alcohol Rehabilitation Facility in Las Vegas

When in despair, type “alcohol treatment Las Vegas” to get help. Trusted programs offer compassionate care. Look for counseling for a safe and long-term end to the situation. I would like to mention Sahara West Urgent Care. Because they have the best alcohol rehabilitation facility in Las Vegas. So, if you are a resident of Las vegas and looking for a detox center. Then Sahra West is best for you. 

Final Thoughts

Detoxification from alcohol is possible in case the individual in question receives the necessary help. Education at the professional level in Las Vegas services offer you what it takes to achieve all-round success. One can obtain a bright future through embracing and practicing good health. Take the first step today!

[drkarenhawk]

Managing Social Anxiety with Practical Guidance from Dr. Karen Hawk

Social anxiety is a common but often debilitating condition that can severely impact an individual’s ability to interact with others in various social situations. The overwhelming fear of being judged, rejected, or humiliated can prevent people from engaging in everyday activities, such as attending social gatherings, making presentations at work, or even participating in casual conversations. However, with the right support and strategies, social anxiety can be effectively managed and reduced.

Dr. Karen Hawk, a licensed therapist with years of experience in treating anxiety disorders, specializes in helping individuals overcome social anxiety. Through a compassionate and evidence-based approach, Dr. Hawk provides practical guidance to help clients build confidence, manage anxiety symptoms, and create positive social experiences. In this article, we’ll explore how Dr. Hawk helps clients navigate social anxiety and regain control over their social interactions.

1. Understanding Social Anxiety

Social anxiety, also known as social phobia, is characterized by an intense fear of being scrutinized or judged by others in social or performance situations. Individuals with social anxiety often worry excessively about being embarrassed, criticized, or rejected, which can lead to avoidance of social events, interactions, or opportunities for personal or professional growth.

While it is normal to feel nervous or shy in unfamiliar or high-stakes situations, social anxiety goes beyond these temporary feelings of discomfort. It often manifests as persistent, overwhelming fear and anxiety that can interfere with daily life.

Dr Karen Hawk psychologist works with clients to help them understand the nature of social anxiety, normalize their feelings, and explore the underlying causes of their fears. This initial phase of therapy allows clients to gain insight into how their thoughts, beliefs, and past experiences contribute to their anxiety.

2. Identifying Triggers of Social Anxiety

A key part of managing social anxiety is identifying the specific situations or triggers that provoke anxious thoughts and feelings. Common triggers for social anxiety include:

Public Speaking: Fear of speaking in front of an audience, whether in a professional or social context.

Meeting New People: Anxiety about interacting with unfamiliar individuals, leading to avoidance of networking or social events.

Negative Self-Evaluation: Constantly worrying about how others perceive you, leading to self-doubt and insecurity.

Social Performance Situations: Situations where one feels they must perform or impress others, such as job interviews, dates, or group discussions.

Dr. Hawk works with clients to identify their personal triggers and break them down into manageable parts. This process often involves discussing past experiences that may have led to the development of these fears, allowing clients to challenge and reframe unhelpful beliefs about themselves and their social interactions.

3. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) for Social Anxiety

One of the most effective therapeutic approaches for managing social anxiety is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). CBT focuses on identifying and changing negative thought patterns and behaviors that contribute to anxiety. Through CBT, Dr Karen Hawk psychologist helps clients recognize the irrational thoughts that fuel their anxiety, such as:

Catastrophizing: The tendency to imagine the worst-case scenario, such as assuming you will embarrass yourself or be rejected in a social situation.

Mind Reading: The belief that you can predict how others perceive you, often assuming that they are judging you negatively.

All-or-Nothing Thinking: Viewing social situations as either a complete success or utter failure, without acknowledging the gray areas.

Dr. Hawk guides clients in challenging these cognitive distortions and replacing them with more balanced and realistic thoughts. For example, instead of assuming that everyone at a party will judge you negatively, clients are encouraged to consider the possibility that others are focused on their own experiences, rather than scrutinizing you.

Through this process, clients gain greater control over their thoughts, reducing the power that anxiety has over them in social situations.

4. Exposure Therapy: Gradual Desensitization to Social Situations

Exposure therapy is another effective technique used by Dr Karen Hawk psychologist to help clients manage social anxiety. The goal of exposure therapy is to gradually expose clients to feared social situations in a controlled and systematic manner. By doing so, clients can reduce their anxiety and learn that their fears are often exaggerated or unfounded.

Dr. Hawk works with clients to create a personalized exposure hierarchy, which involves ranking social situations from least to most anxiety-provoking. For example, a client who fears speaking in public might start by practicing conversation with a close friend, then progress to attending a small social gathering, and eventually work up to giving a public presentation.

The key to exposure therapy is gradual desensitization. As clients experience these situations and realize that their worst fears do not come true, they begin to feel more confident and capable in social interactions.

5. Developing Relaxation and Grounding Techniques

In addition to cognitive and behavioral interventions, Dr. Hawk teaches clients relaxation and grounding techniques to manage the physical symptoms of anxiety, such as racing heartbeats, shallow breathing, and dizziness. These techniques can help clients calm their nervous system and regain focus during stressful social situations.

Common techniques taught by Dr. Hawk include:

Deep Breathing: Practicing slow, deep breaths to activate the body’s relaxation response and reduce feelings of panic.

Progressive Muscle Relaxation (PMR): A technique that involves systematically tensing and relaxing muscle groups to release physical tension.

Mindfulness and Grounding: Focusing on the present moment by using the five senses (sight, touch, sound, smell, and taste) to ground oneself in the here and now. This helps individuals stay connected to reality and prevent their thoughts from spiraling out of control.

Dr Karen Hawk psychologist also encourages clients to practice these techniques regularly, so they are prepared to use them when anxiety arises in social situations.

6. Building Confidence through Social Skills Training

One of the challenges of social anxiety is the fear of social inadequacy or not knowing how to navigate social interactions. Dr. Hawk provides social skills training to help clients feel more confident and competent in social situations. This training includes:

Effective Communication: Learning how to start and maintain conversations, ask open-ended questions, and listen actively to others.

Non-Verbal Cues: Understanding the importance of body language, eye contact, and tone of voice in making positive social connections.

Conflict Resolution: Learning how to handle disagreements or awkward situations in a calm and constructive manner.

By developing these essential social skills, clients gain greater self-assurance and are more likely to engage in social situations with less anxiety and more confidence.

7. Challenging Perfectionism and Embracing Imperfection

Perfectionism often plays a significant role in social anxiety. The desire to be flawless in social situations can create intense pressure and fear of making mistakes. Dr. Hawk helps clients challenge the unrealistic expectations they place on themselves and embrace the idea that imperfection is a natural part of life.

Through self-compassion exercises and reframing techniques, Dr Karen Hawk psychologist encourages clients to accept that they do not need to be perfect in every social interaction. Mistakes are an inevitable part of being human, and they do not define one’s worth or ability to form meaningful connections.

8. Long-Term Strategies for Maintaining Progress

Overcoming social anxiety is a gradual process, and maintaining progress requires ongoing effort. Dr. Hawk helps clients create a long-term plan to continue building their social confidence, which may include:

Regularly attending social events: Even if it feels uncomfortable, continuing to practice socializing is key to maintaining progress.

Engaging in new experiences: Trying new activities, such as joining a club or taking a class, can help clients expand their comfort zones and build new social connections.

Seeking support when needed: Dr Karen Hawk psychologist encourages clients to continue therapy if necessary or seek additional support groups or resources to keep progressing.

Conclusion

Managing social anxiety is a process that takes time, self-compassion, and the right tools. With Dr. Karen Hawk’s practical guidance, individuals can learn to manage their anxiety, build social confidence, and create more meaningful connections. Through a combination of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), exposure therapy, relaxation techniques, and social skills training, Dr. Hawk helps clients regain control of their social lives, reduce fear, and embrace new opportunities for personal growth. Social anxiety no longer needs to hold you back; with Dr. Hawk’s support, you can confidently navigate the world and enjoy fulfilling social interactions.

[anthem-for-orion]

I don't know what I have, and at this point I know better than to go wandering into a psych office again to find out.

Official diagnoses are major depressive disorder and general anxiety. Diagnosed with psychotic depression during a trip to the psych ward in college: auditory hallucinations for a few days prior to getting committed, advanced to commands - which, for the record, I was not following.

Symptoms consistent with MDD, being episodes lasting between days to months of depressed mood, lowered energy, physical and mental fatigue, episodes going back to age 11 as far as I can remember. I distinctly remember having a period of about a month in 5th grade where I couldn't stop thinking about how I could feasibly kill myself. General anxiety symptoms have been improving in the past few years: historically, it has been panic attacks during stressful situations and dread to the point of impacting executive functions. Exogenous testosterone and cognitive behavioral therapy have helped with anxiety but not depression.

Symptoms inconsistent with my existing diagnoses and which I should probably find a therapist for but which I will absolutely not, at least not while I am in a position to be easily coerced into treatment that would negatively impact me:

Olfactory and tactile hallucinations on a regular basis (at least once a week, more if generally stressed or tired). Auditory and visual hallucinations when stressed (observation voices, not command).

Loss of affect, can generally fake it for brief periods, but I've been called out for "looking like a psychopath, got those, like, dead shark eyes."

Bouts of... low level aphasia? True aphasia is more intense than what I experience, but if sometimes feels as though I can't get words lined up in the correct order. For example, I was speaking with a coworker the other day about where I could find the stock of a particular size of autoclavable biohazard bags, as we had run out. It came out as something akin to "Bags-ss the orange ones? Do you know any more somewhere?" It's embarrassing. I can speak quite fine most of the time, but sometimes my speech processing just gets clogged, I suppose.

Variable levels of derealization. I spend more of my time in a haze than I do in reality these days. This one I have discussed with a therapist regularly in college, so I feel decently sure this is the correct term. I've followed her advice about 54321 grounding and such, and while it helps during intense bouts, I can't do it constantly for months straight.

Sometimes I can't feel my legs. At its worst, I can't move them either, which becomes rather inconvenient. They get dead frigid too, which makes me concerned that this is a physical problem with my blood flow. 18% body fat 5'8" 140 pounds, normal blood pressure, cholesterol managed via lipitor. I'm not sure what's up with that, but it does happen more often during depressive episodes.

Maybe I am somewhere on the schizophrenic spectrum. The therapist in college wanted me tested, but I fell off with regular appointments during summer break. They put me on an SSRI (escitalopram, trintellix) and started trying different antipsychotics (invega, risperidone, paliperidone once). Trintellix *kind of* worked; it got rid of the fatigue but did nothing for my actual mood or any other symptoms. The antipsychotics cooled down the rate of hallucinations but shredded my mood and affect entirely, and I gained about 30 pounds. This is most of why I don't want to go back. My creativity and those few flashes of good mood are the only things I'm living for and proud of right now. I cannot lose them.

My brother thinks I'm just autistic and that I need to "stop trying to mask." His idea of "not masking" is continuing to exist as an anxious mess in his childhood room while using his neurodivergency as an excuse to never attempt to improve himself. He is diagnosed: he also has other, curable issues that he has been convinced are unfixable. Maybe I am autistic: that doesn't mean I don't have other things I need to pay attention to. Still, I feel annoyed with him for trying to brush me off in the way he's brushed himself off, and I fear it wells up sometimes with autistic people who aren't my brother excuse their own behavior as "whoopsies, my autism is showing." If that is who I'll be grouped with if I do get a positive autism diagnosis from a professional, I don't want one.

[goldislops]

Long COVID Is Harming Too Many Kids

Pediatric long COVID is more common than many thought, and we keep letting kids be reinfected with new variants

Blake Murdoch

A small child draws a frowning coronavirus using red colored pencil, top view

SergeyChayko/Getty Images

Pediatric long COVID is more common than many thought, and we keep letting kids be reinfected with new variants

Since the COVID pandemic began, claims that the disease poses only minimal risk to children have spread widely, on the presumption that the lower rate of severe acute illness in kids tells the whole story. Notions that children are nearly immune to COVID and don’t need to be vaccinated have pervaded.

These ideas are wrong. People making such claims ignore the accumulating risk of long COVID, the constellation of long-term health effects caused by infection, in children who may get infected once or twice a year. The condition may already have affected nearly six million kids in the U.S. Children need us to wake up to this serious threat. If we do, we can help our kids with a few straightforward and effective measures.

The spread of the mistaken idea that children have nothing to worry about has had some help from scientists. In 2023 the American Medical Association’s pediatrics journal published a study–which has since been retracted—reporting the rate of long COVID symptoms in kids was “strikingly low” at only 0.4 percent. The results were widely publicized as feel-good news, and helped rationalize the status quo, where kids are repeatedly exposed to SARS-COV-2 in underventilated schools and parents believe they will suffer no serious harm.

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In January 2024, however, two scientists published a letter with me explaining why that study was invalid. Some of the errors made it hard to understand how the study survived peer review. For example, the authors claimed to report on long COVID using the 2021 World Health Organization definition, but didn’t properly account for the possibility of new onset and fluctuating or relapsing symptoms, even though that definition and the subsequently released 2023 pediatric one emphasize those attributes. Any child with four symptom-free weeks—even nonconsecutive ones—following confirmed infection was categorized by the study authors as not having long COVID.

In August, the authors of the study retracted it. They did not admit to the errors we raised. But they did admit to new errors, and said these mistakes meant they understated the rate of affected children.

And that rate, according to other research, is quite high. The American Medical Association’s top journal, JAMA, in August published a key new study and editorial about pediatric long COVID. The editorial cites several robust analyses and concludes that, while uncertainty remains, long COVID symptoms appear to occur after about 10 percent to 20 percent of pediatric infections.

If you’re keeping score, that’s as many as 5.8 million affected children in the U.S.—so far. And we know studies and surveys of adults have found that repeat infections heighten the risk of long-term consequences.

The JAMA study comparing infected and uninfected children found that trouble with memory or focusing is the most common long COVID symptom in kids aged six to 11. Back, neck, stomach and head pain were the next most common symptoms. Other behavioral impacts included “fear about specific things” and refusal to go to school.

Adolescents aged 12 to 17 reported different leading symptoms. Change or loss in smell or taste was most common, followed by body pains, daytime tiredness, low energy, tiredness after walking and cognitive deficits. The study noted that symptoms “affected almost every organ system.” In other words, these symptoms reflect real physiological trauma. For example, SARS-COV-2 can cause or mediate cardiovascular, neurological and immunological harm, even increasing the relative risk of new onset pediatric diabetes when compared with other lesser infections.

Children in schools today are often described as struggling with emotional regulation, attention deficits and developmental problems. Adolescents have some of the worst standardized test scores in decades. Pandemic measures such as school closures—most of which were short-lived and occurred several years ago—have been blamed almost entirely for children’s present-day behavioral and learning problems.

While it is clear these early pandemic disruptions negatively impacted many children, the unproven notion that “the cure was worse than the disease” has become dogma and sometimes involves reimagining history. For example, the Canadian Pediatric Society’s most recent COVID vaccination guidance fails to even acknowledge the existence of pediatric long COVID, while stating without evidence in its preamble that children were more affected by pandemic disruptions in activities than direct viral effects. It’s hard to imagine how this wording could encourage pediatricians and parents to vaccinate children against a disabling virus.

Consider also a small but widely publicized Bezos Family Foundation–funded study which unscientifically claimed accelerated cortical thinning, a type of brain restructuring that occurs over time, is caused by “lockdowns.” The study design could not demonstrate cause and effect, however, but only correlation. Pediatric brain experts have critiqued the research, pointing out that “no supporting evidence” was provided for the claim cortical thinning is from social isolation, and that it isn’t necessarily pathological. “Lockdowns” were neither defined nor controlled for in the study, which relied on 54 pandemic-era brains scans from different children than the prepandemic scans they were compared to—meaning there was no measurement of brain changes in specific individuals. The pandemic-era scans came from months when relevant CDC seroprevalence data estimate that the number of children with one or more infections rose from about one in five to around three in five. We might reasonably predict that many of the studied brain scans were therefore from children who recently had COVID.

It is understandably disturbing to entertain the idea that we might currently be recklessly allowing millions of children to be harmed by preventable disease. That may be part of why problematic studies such as these have gotten headlines. It is more disturbing, however, that almost no public attention has been given to infection itself as a potential cause of children’s behavioural and learning problems.

This makes no sense. We know that COVID harms the brain. Neuroinflammation, brain shrinkage, disruption of the blood-brain barrier and more have been documented in adults, as have cognitive deficits. These deficits have been measured as equivalent to persistent decreased IQ scores, even for mild and resolved infections. Millions of people have, or have experienced, “brain fog.” What, then, do we guess a child’s COVID-induced “trouble with focusing or memory” might be?

When you put together the estimate that 10 to 20 percent of infected kids may experience long-term symptoms, that many of the most common symptoms affect cognition, energy levels and behavior, and that children are being periodically reinfected, you have a scientific rationale to partly explain children’s widely reported behavioural and learning challenges.

We can do something to protect our kids. We can vaccinate them every season, which somewhat reduces the risk of long COVID. We can keep sick children home by passing laws that create paid sick leave and end attendance-based school funding. We can normalize rather than vilify the use of respirator masks that help prevent the spread of airborne diseases.

Finally, we can implement fantastic new engineered indoor air quality standards designed to greatly reduce the spread of germs. Clean indoor air should be expected as a right, like clean water. The cost of providing cleaner indoor air is low relative to the economic benefits, which even when conservatively modeled are in the tens of billions annually in the U.S. and more than ten times the costs. These costs are also small compared to the price children and their families would pay in suffering as a result of preventable long-term impairment.

By regulating, publicly reporting and periodically inspecting building air quality, similarly to how we oversee food safety in commercial kitchens, we can greatly reduce the spread of disease and reap huge benefits for everyone—especially children.

This is an opinion and analysis article, and the views expressed by the author or authors are not necessarily those of Scientific American.