Theoies of depression

Albert Bandura
Behaviorism: One of the most famous experiment was the Bobo doll, were a video of a women acting aggressive on a Bobo doll was shown to a women. After seeing it many children acted the same. His theory tried said that all behavior is directed by reinforcement or rewards.
Juilian Rotter
Social Learning Theory: personality represents an interaction of the individual with his or her environment. Rotter sees personality, and therefore behavior, as always changeable.
Martin Seligman
Learned Optimism: On Seligman´s theory he states that people learn to act a certain way, some people learn to be helpless and stop trying to escape something after trying and failing. His experiment on electrifying the floor of the dog cage tried to prove his theory.
Aaron Beck
Cognitive Behavior Theory: He believed that dysfunctional behavior is caused due to dysfunctional thinking, and that thinking is shaped by our beliefs

Frontal Lobotomy

Walter Freeman was the father of lobotomy. He was born in Philadelphia Pennsylvania his father was a successful doctor and his grandfather was the president of the American Medical Association. He graduated from Yale University of Pennsylvania Medical School. Later on he studied neurology and psychiatry in Europe. Freeman then began to study the human brain; he studied people that had mental diseases. Since many patients of the mental hospitals or asylum had no one to care for them he took advantage of this and started treating them as he pleased. From his research with the mental patients he introduced electro shock therapy (ECT). It proved to be useful, but not as significant as his later procedure .Freeman wasn’t the first to perform surgery on the frontal lobe with the purpose of treating mentally ill patients. Egas Moniz a Portuguese neurologist studied the frontal brain. He used surgery to physically severe nerve fibers between the frontal lobes. One of his procedures was spraying alcohol on the frontal lobes in order to destroy the white matter that connects it with the rest of the brain. Walter Freeman was inspired by this Portuguese neurologist (won the Nobel Prize) and started working with James Watts a neurosurgeon. They experimented on dead bodies from the morgue. After finding a way to disconnect the frontal lobe, which is the part of the brain that contains emotions, they performed it on a live patient. The surgical procedure was done by drilling a hole in the skull and disconnecting the frontal lobe from the rest of the brain. Their first patient was Mrs Hammet, he was sixty-three years old and suffered from agitated depression and sleeplessness. According to Freeman, Mrs. Hammet was transformed and was able to enjoy the theater. One of the most famous failures was the lobotomy done to President John F Kennedy´s sister, Rosemary Kennedy. She was speculated to be retarded, she was kind of slow and had some periods of rage, but could handle herself without anyone’s help. His father submitted her into having a frontal lobotomy. After the operation was done Rosemary regressed as if she were an infant. She wasn’t herself and was without doubt worst then she was prior to the surgery. She was incompetent of taking care of herself. Although the operation was a failure, Freeman kept treating patients. Walter Freeman searched for a new and cheaper way to perform the lobotomy. It was after trial and error with dead patients that he discovered that it could be done without opening the skull. His new procedure was done by lifting the eye lid inserting an ice pick instrument through the tear duct hammering the skull, he pushed the instrument about one inch and a half into the brain and moved it back and forth destroying the brain. This procedure was cheap and easy, it became popular and Freeman performed it in many patients throughout the country in a matter of minutes. Some had more success than other. The birth of new safer treatments sentenced the front lobotomy and later on it was illegalized.

Front Lobotomy didn’t cure the patients but changed them. Mentally ill people succumbed to this type of surgery since they sought it better to have no emotions then continue experiencing their illness. Frontal Lobotomy was not a cure, how can destroying a part of the brain be a cure, what it did was change the patient making them emotionless.

http://www.nndb.com/people/272/000128885/

http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/depression/63453

Kid Interrupted reflection

It was denounced that bi-polar disease could not be present on kids. Evan Perry was an unusual boy who had a different way of thinking. This documentary was based on his disease and how it affected his life. When Evan was a little boy he seemed happy with life, but had lapses of weirdness. He talked about death and his desires to die as if it was a normal topic. Even though he was a likable kid, he had this wired moments when according to his psychiatrist, he seemed to have demons inside him. As Evan grew up he had several attempts on commit suicide, his effort s failed, giving him time to live. Later on he was diagnosed with bi-polar disease. He was given medication and was sent to a special school, in order to help him to overcome his disease. This proved to be a positive experience. His parents could now see the essence of a child in him. He was now less tormented by the haunting disease. After sent to a new school in New York, Evan was an average teenager with good calcification and new friends. It seemed that he was enjoying life. It is lamentable that his request to reduce his medication dose was granted. This led to his suicide.

The Placebo Effect

According to H.K Beecher the placebo effect is the outcome of feeling cured, better or actually being cured with just believing you would get cured or better. Confusing isn’t it? Well let me explain you with an example, a person is feeling ill, a doctor very convincingly gives her a pill that medically speaking makes no difference or treats the illness, but she or he are convinced it does. The person gets much better and feels healthier, this is the placebo effect. The patient’s symptoms were alleviated by an ineffective treatment. It is said that all medication includes the placebo effect since the patient is receiving the treatment but are also convinced the treatment works. Placebo is proven to work on 35 percent of 1082patients according to H.K Beecher study. Doctors all over the word have used this for centuries. Some researchers say that the placebo effect may involve conditioned response which is a learned response to a stimulus that previously had no meaning. We have learned that medicine makes us feel better and cures us when we are sick. So any treatment we receive makes us psychologically believe this. Other research has shown that conditional response provides stimulus that releases endorphins in the brain. Endorphins are the body’s own pain killers. There are many types of experiments that show many types of different results but most if not all show positive results for placebos. Some problems of these studies is the amount of deception used in the experiment and also the type of placebo such as surgery or medication.

http://www.ukskeptics.com/explanation.php?dir=articles/explanations&article=placebo_effect.php

http://health.howstuffworks.com/medicine/medication/placebo-effect.htm

The Halo Effect by Solomon Asch

The Halo Effect is a classic finding of social psychology. A Halo is a luminous disk or ring of light on top of a person’s head that represent goodness, sort of that of an angel. That is why it is called the “Halo” Effect; it resembles the positive attributes and qualities in an individual. It is when we assume a person’s general traits are positive by observing a single trait which we find appealing. This one trait leads to the formation of an overall opinion of a person. Have you heard the phrase “Don’t judge a book by its cover”? In the Halo Effect people do exactly the opposite of what the phrase tells us not to do. We judge a person by the way he looks, speaks, thinks or other important qualities that may or may not reflect who the person is or their abilities and capacities. We believe an individual to have many positive attributes because the assumption that the individual has a positive significant trait. Opposite to the Halo Effect comes the “Devil Effect”, also known as the “Horn Effect”. It is when it is assumed that a person has general negative traits when we believe that the person has a negative critical trait.
Have you noticed that most of the advertisements have good looking individuals? Of course it is not coincidence, the advertisers are trying to sell their product as best as they can. Usually it illustrates the attractive people using the product, saying they have used it, or recommending it. They use the Halo Effect on us considering that we see them as attractive people so we assume them to have other positive traits that also may resemble the product and its effectiveness. For example, an advertisement about toothpaste is shown on T.V, an attractive actor is dressed as a dentist is shown explaining how the toothpaste works and why it works, afterwards he recommends that toothpaste to the viewers and approves it works. Since the dentist is attractive we assume many qualities such as intelligence and honesty. We assume he knows the product works and that he is not lying, therefore we think the product will work and we buy it. Although the Halo Effect is good for the advertisements, many people are negatively affected because of this. A boss can assume that an employee could not be good for his business by the way he looks or dresses. It could cost the employees job. So something that we must always remember, always look the best you can.

http://www.spring.org.uk/2007/10/halo-effect-when-your-own-mind-is.php
http://www.envisionsoftware.com/articles/Halo_Effect.html

Are all memories alike?

The article about sex differences in memory talks about how women have better verbal episodic memory such as remembering words, pictures, objects or every day events. Men are better in remembering visuospatial memory, which is remembering symbols or non-linguistic information. This means the men can remember their way out of a place more easily. However women are better remembering faces specially of those as female.

At Remembering Everyday Events." ScienceDaily, 21 February 2008. Web. 6 November 2010. /releases/2008/02/080220104244.htm>.
The cultural difference in memory article talks about how depending of the culture, your first memory would be earlier on then others. In some cultures memory is easily remembered do to the fact that the parents stimulate the memory of their child by telling their kids stories of their childhood. This makes them remember better than others.
http://www.apa.org/monitor/sep05/culture.aspx

Alzheimer's Disease

Alzheimer is a Brain disease that causes problems with memory, thinking and behavior and gradually increases while you are diagnosed with it. The symptoms usually develop slowly and gets worse to the point that you can’t take care of yourself or perform logical acts. Alzimers is the worst form of dementia, it accounts for 50%-70% of dementia cases. This terrifying disease is irreversible, although it can be prolonged by drinking pills that help to slow the disease from progressing. Alzheimer makes life much harder and much frightening, knowing that in the future your memory and skills will fade and you would not be able to take care of yourself, henceforth depending on others. It only occurs from the age of 40 until death. Studies have also shown that damage to the brain can occur 10-20 years before any problem manifests. Alzheimer is most present on people 65 years or older; however the disease does not occur from old age. Some of the most common symptoms are placing items in odd places, forgetting name of family and common objects, can’t follow directions, forgetting conversations and get lost in familiar places. It was very hard to watch the HBO documentary of people suffering from Alzheimer. It is stressful to even watch it; I imagine it is more nerve-racking to have to deal with Alzheimer patients. This type of dementia not only affects the people who posses it, but the family of the carrier of this cruel disease. It must be hard to watch how your relative gradually forgets or confuses you for another person.

"Alzheimer’s Disease: Signs, Symptoms, and Stages of Alzheimer’s." Helpguide.org: Understand, Prevent and Resolve Life's Challenges. Web. 04 Nov. 2010. .