MIND YOU.
Introduction
For my final presentation of Winter Term of 2020, I decided to finish off this term with a project focused around the concept of mental illness and the "evolution" of the awareness and attention that has been changing as we progress further into the future. My guiding question was "How do misconceptions about mental disorders begin to develop?' This idea comes from one of my core classes "Disease," in which we focused on not only bodily illnesses but those that take effect in the mind. I had to make a simulation during one of my action projects that made it a challenge to simulate all the symptoms of our chosen mental disorder. I decided to take a similar approach to through this final presentation by testing the ability of a person to recognize when something is abnormal through a slideshow where I time them to see how quickly they can spot it, whether or not it exists, and then use that as my transitioning.
Simulation
Down below you'll find my simulation to test whether or not the viewer is able to recognize where (and if) the image is abnormal, tested by photoshopping and pulling confusing pictures off the internet.
What is normality?
Normality is subjective to our experiences, our lifestyles, our culture, our every part of our being. It changes through time and place. Normality is not normal, there is no universal normal. Why bring up this? Because mental disorders have often been labeled as abnormal, a flaw in a being that needs to be "fixed." Are we even able to point out these flaws to deem them this? What you'll see below is my view on the subject and how we should go about addressing it.
Putting numbers into perspective
I believe that we all have our own sense of what is normality and what isn’t, which is true as we all have our own experiences to go off to recognize what’s appropriate to our minds and what isn’t. We’re able to recognize unique features in our lives and in others more often than we realize. Such as a way somebody walks, or how they structure their wording in a sentence. How well are we able to recognize somebody with a mental disorder though? According to a study done by a Psychiatric University Hospital in Zurich, Switzerland, involving 844 people to collect information from, they tested their ability to recognize somebody with a depressive disorder. Only 39.8% of the people tested were able to correctly recognize the person was suffering a depressive disorder. They not only tested their ability to recognize depression but also Schizophrenia. Schizophrenia has more alarming symptoms in comparison to depression, which was viewed by the people who incorrectly guessed it as just “having a crisis.” When they tested their ability to recognize the symptoms of schizophrenia, the vast majority of them succeeded. 73.6% of the interviewees correctly guessed it. This study was done in 2003, and since then I believe we’ve seen some progression towards acknowledging that mental disorders need more public recognition that is past the idea of just being a minute of one’s life that will eventually change with time.
We cannot help each other if we cannot recognize our problems. It’s not always easy to recognize what is going on in the minds of others. If you’re wondering why this is significant to do or care about, let me throw some more statistics at you. 16.2 million American adults are estimated to be suffering major depressive disorder. That’s 6.7% of American adults out of the very many in America. Social anxiety gets diagnosed in about an estimated 40 million (or 18.1%) American adults. Anxiety treatments are highly effective as well, but only 36.9% of those diagnosed actually seek out treatment for it. The majority of us find our own ways to treat ourselves of our problems. The truth being a lot of us are scared to reach out for help of any sort, including me. Depression runs pretty far back on my mom’s side of the family, and with how I grew up, it’s hard to talk about what I’m thinking all the time. Form the wrong words in a sentence and you scare whoever’s listening off the deeper the conversation gets. It’s a narrow path with a hard fall if you slip, and that’s why some of us take alternative routes to helping ourselves. To compensate for my constantly recurring feeling of being unsuccessful, I play games that reward me with success for my efforts in it. My final presentation does not demand anything out of you, it does not want you to read up on all the mental disorders in the world to make sure you can recognize everything. I only request that when you’re with a friend or family member that you ask them how they’re feeling and if they’re alright, as cliché as it might sound, it really does let whoever you’re asking know that you care about their wellbeing.
Self-Help
If you cannot help others because you can't help yourself, there are ways to inform yourself about what's going on in your mind through well written books, like for depression there is a book (with a fairly long title) that goes into detail about what cognitive-behavioural therapy is and how to apply it to yourself, along with dealing and understanding depression. There's even a book my mom ended up giving me (that I didn't bother to read because I'm lazy when it comes to reading in my free time). It is called "Outsmarting Worry," which deals with anxiety within older kids. It is written by Dawn Huebner, who has a PhD as a clinical psychologist. Finding out what's wrong first is key to starting on the right foot. If you can't find what you're looking for through Google, try looking through the DSM-V, which is a documentary that entirely is focused on collecting information on quite literally every mental disorder, listing its symptoms, behaviors, and a lot more. If you really want to be that person that knows every mental disorder, this is where you want to start. Citations
No comments:
Post a Comment