Spotlight Blog Post 3

--Original published at David's Blog

For our third and final spotlight blog post I decided to do my topic on mental illness in tv and how it turns it into entertainment. We are to compare different articles on mental illness in tv and discuss weather or not it is ethical or not. Before starting this blog post I am sort of on the edge and I am not to sure if it is ethical or not.

“Some are less offensive than others, but overall they tend to highlight examples of low or no insight, such as a client who cannot recognize that a food item is rotten, and they zoom in on squalor.” stated by Everyday Health. One of the biggest problems with mental health tv shows is how they only look at the worse cases. This is done since viewers are more likely to view shows with more odd or strange people with these illness. By doing this it can misinform the public on on the mental illness portrayed in the show.

“media should ‘desist from using mental health problems to entertain and shock the public.'” written by Anna Almendrala. One of the other big reasons on why these tv shows are not ethical is how it exploits peoples personal problems. This alone can be fine but the producers are doing it so they can get more views on their shows.

“In this case, the families or individuals have to agree to the ‘intervention’ and work with the organizers.” stated by Movie Rewind. This is one of the up sides to the television shows. They bring in teams and experts to get the people with the mental illness help. The teams that come in do their best to help people turn their lives around for the better. Having a whole group of people helping to turn someones life around can do so much good in their lives, sometimes in the show they even do check ups on past people to see how they are doing.

“These realistic depictions of mental illness can be deeply helpful to those who suffer at home.” written by By showing these mental illness to the general public it can help people more aware of the illness. By making the public aware of the illness it can also help others see if they may have a mental illness of their own. This can be both good and bad. If a show gives false info and bad symptoms on the illness audience members can do a false diagnostic. But if the info is portrayed correctly it can help people do accurate self diagnostics and the audience will be more likely to seek help from professionals.

After looking at all the articles on mental illness in tvI was able to form a better opinion on weather it was ethical or not. Personally I think I can be good and bad. If the person that is focused on in the show give consent to filming I think it can be very beneficial for the general audience to learn more about certain illness. We have to be carful though when producing shows like hoarders they need to include correct and accurate information for the public. If that can be do those tv shows can be both ethical and beneficial.

Citations

Almendrala, Anna. “Hoarding Reality Shows Might Do More Harm Than Good.” HuffPost, HuffPost, 17 June 2015, http://www.huffpost.com/entry/hoarding-reality-shows_n_7605804.

“Does Reality TV Accurately Portray Hoarding?” Stroke Center – EverydayHealth.com, Ziff Davis, LLC, 10 Jan. 2014, http://www.everydayhealth.com/g00/anxiety-disorders/experts-does-tv-accurately-portray-hoarding.aspx?i10c.encReferrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8=&i10c.ua=1&i10c.dv=20.

“TV Hoarding Shows – A Compare & Contrast.” Movie Rewind, 20 May 2012, movierewind.com/2010/tv-hoarding-shows-a-compare-contrast/.
ZEMLER, EMILY. “How TV Is Slowly Getting Mental Health Right.” ELLE, ELLE, 16 Feb. 2018, http://www.elle.com/uk/life-and-culture/culture/longform/a38623/tv-mental-health-bojack-13-reasons-why/.

Media Project

--Original published at David's Blog

Research Summary

Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder or ADHD is a childhood neuropsychiatric disorder, which is now affecting 10 percent more of the population in the United States. The disorder can preset into early adulthood. A new study came out looking at kids in a time frame of 20 years 1997 to 2016 showing a drastic increase in the percent of children with ADHD. The percent in 1997 to 1998 was around 6.1% later in 2015 to 2016 it rose to about 10.2%. The study is telling scientist that they may need to do more research in the area of childhood ADHD to help find the cause of this increase of children with ADHD. The prominence of ADHD differs all over the world; the study talks about how most of the European countries have a significantly less prominence of ADHD but America has one of the highest showings of ADHD in the world. The statistics of the study was done with in-person interviews and they would select one child if there was one by a computer-generated program. The interviewers would ask an adult such as a parent questions about their child since they know the most about there health. The questions that the parents were asked were “Has a doctor or health professional ever told you that [the sample child] had attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or attention-deficit disorder (ADD)?” and “Does [the sample child] currently have attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or attention-deficit disorder (ADD)?” The children that were included in the study were in the age range of four to seventeen. It was then found in the studies that the average age of kids who had ADHD were between 10.6 and 10.9 years old.

Reflection

When writing the summary for the research that was done of children with ADHD in America there were certain things I chose to leave out of the summary. I was given a cap of how ever long the original article was written. This obviously limited the length in which I could write my own article. One thing I left out of my summary was the specific precent of kids with ADHD in different ethnicities. I didn’t find it too important to include that in the article since the main thing was how much ADHD has grown in America.

When looking at the original article that was put out by CNN there are some clear differences. One of the differences was how CNN talked about how they believe the new affordable care might contribute to the rise of ADHD. They also talked about how there is a rise of ADHD in minority groups, which they believe that is also connected to the new affordable health care. These are defiantly important things to include in a news article but I believed I should have left it out of mine to save space.

It was a nice and interesting experience trying to put myself in the shoes of a journalist while I wrote my own article summary. I have already though taken an entire journalist class in my college career since its required for my communication major. So I had some background in what all went into journalism. But the projects helped me get a glimpse at what goes in to writing about psychology specifically which is definitely different from what I wrote before. I’m glad I was able to be apart of the projects to earn more about psychology journalism.

Johari Window Bonus Prompt

--Original published at David's Blog

Last week we were assigned to look at the Johari Window website. Our task was to pick five to six traits we thought described us. After we did that we needed to send the link to our website to at least ten other people. Those ten other people then did the same, they picked out five to six traits they thought describe us. After this process was done everyone got almost all of the traits I selected. The only traits that were not selected by my friends was logical and self-conscious. Everything else I picked for myself at least one other person picked out for me. I think this can defiantly be a good measure of other peoples personality. I find this to be true, since there are some things we don’t know about our selfs that the ones around us do. One thing I can say that maybe faulty in this experiment could be how different people think of us in different ways. Depending on how much you are around with the people you gave the survey to their answers can change. Another thing is some people act differently around others. There is a old Japanese saying that everyone has three different “faces” or personalities around others. One is for the public like co workers or class mates the, second is for close friends and family members. The last is the face of the unknown the one you keep to yourself and no one knows about. In conclusion I learned that a lot of people think a lot of different things about me. I think this since I have twenty plus traits other people picked out for me.

Johari Window Results

Spotlight Post 2 Stress

--Original published at David's Blog

For this weeks spotlight post, I decided to do option number two, which was the prompt all about stress. Our task is to find three different websites that address ways in which to deal with stress. The three that we will go over have to be for different audiences such as college kids or older adults. We must go over each of the websites different strategies and judge how effective or successful each of the tips given would be.

The first website gave me tips for dealing with stress in high school. This is very important for young kids to know how to deal with stress. They have plenty of stressors in their high school carrier. Things like exams, quizzes, and social peer pressures. “academic pressure can get the best of you if you don’t learn how to deal with it properly” (Huffpost). The main topic that I gathered from this online site was that high school kids need to be better organized in their work. They need to do things like take more time during exam periods and take assignments one step at a time. Another thing the site suggests is that high school kids take more time for themselves. I believe these are all good tips for high school kids and have a good chance of being very effective. A lot of them deal with not over working and the main purpose of that is the ability to get good sleep. It’s know to be a common problem among those who go to school. they put things of till last minute and stay up all night doing homework, and lack of sleep can do a number on your stress levels. So I think by getting more sleep, it would be very effective for high schoolers and reduce their stress.

The next website that I looked at gave tips for college age students. College and high school kids have very similar stress related problems, which are being over worked and social pressures. Only this time, the college kids normally have their stress amplified by more work. Just like the high schoolers, college kids need to make sure they don’t over load on their work. The website also lists that they should eat well, get exercise and receive emotional support. I like the ideas of eating well and having emotional support, but the exercise is the one I have a problem with. We learned in class that doing exercise can help with stress only if the person actually enjoys doing it. This means that running would be ineffective if that person hated exercise. For example if I exercise or go for a run it’s more stressful since I get tired and run out of breath quick. I do like all the other tips it gives, because they are very useful when dealing with stress.

The last website I looked at dealt with stress in the work place. It’s important to stay relaxed at work so as to get your work done, and there is little chance to lash out at work or at home. Some of the main things the website was going over, was knowing your work and keeping it organized. This is a good idea so as to not be overwhelmed with work. There are two things I have a problem with on this website though. One, is it suggest to walk at lunch and two it says to listen to music on your way home. Like the last one, exercise is only good for those who enjoy it. When it comes to listening to music it can be good for reducing stress, but it depends on what it is. If you listen to very load and intense music it can cause a faster heart rate and even make your stress worse. However, if the music is sooth and calming it can help reduce your stress. In general the website still gives out other good advice when it comes to dealing with stress.

Citation

Organization. “5 Ways To Cope With School Stress.” The Huffington Post, TheHuffingtonPost.com, 20 Aug. 2014, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/27/academic-pressure-5-tips-_n_2774106.html.

Chapter 13 First Impression

--Original published at David's Blog

For this week we were told to take quizzes on our personality. It’s always interesting to see what these quizzes say about someone based on the questions they give. For the first quiz It says I’m more towards extroversion than introversion and i’m more sensing then intuition. It also says I prefer thinking and judging. The quiz then describes that I want to achieve order and continuity which I find very true I like keeping things nice and orderly. I then took the second quiz to see f it would give me different results. At the end of the quiz it gave me the same personality as the first one which is ESTJ. I think its interesting I have the same score from the first two quizzes. The third test I took gave me a similar answer as the other ones did. I was told from the test I Like to be organized in my work and that i’m also extroversion. It is quite impressive three of the quizzes so far explained my personality. The last quiz I took was the color test. I found it odd that someone would base a personality on what colors you happen to choose. The results from this one described myself pretty accurately as well. It told about how I like to be the center of attention which is normally true. In general I enjoyed taking the quizzes to see if they would come back true or not. They all came back true and very close to the same thing each time. So I believe these test are very credible since I got basically the same results each time and they were very true to what I think my personality is.

Chapter 10 First Impression prompt

--Original published at David's Blog

For this first impression prompt I decided to choose the second option which talked about the ability to read peoples emotions based on there facial expressions. Before I took the test I believed that I could read facial expressions fairly well. After taking the test I found out that I got a twelve out of twenty. The website that the test was on also let me know that was an average score and that if I wanted to I could improve my facial reading skills. I’m not to sure how credible the sites test was, some of the facial expressions were quite odd and didn’t seem right. I also showed the quiz to some friends and they also found it odd and not quite right. The most easiest emotions to tell apart would be sadness and happiness. Some of the hardest to tell apart would have been surprise and pain. I wasn’t to sure why some of them were to easy or hard but I do believe some of the easier ones were just natural instinct. This information could be used every day to help others find out what could be wrong with there friends or loved ones. I do find it interesting how well certain people can read others emotions and feelings just by looking at their face expressions. It also intrigues me how some people are not good at reading emotions at all to the point to where there almost mute to emotions. I look forward to learning how to read emotions in our later classes.

First Impression post Chapter 11

--Original published at David's Blog

For this weeks blog post I decided to chose option one. This prompt talks about how stress is something every american faces, some worse than others. But some of the most people effected by it are college students. It’s very crucial for college kids to have good stress management, this way they don’t get over worked and can stay calm through out there college career. Looking at my own stress management I feel as hough I do a decent job. Out of most people in my family I am always the most relaxed. Even if I have a lot of assignments due in a short amount of time I still stay cool under the pressure. Things I do to stay calm would be to tell myself everything will be ok. Something else I might do would be vent to my friends about somethings going on in my life. By doing this I get my problems off my mind and my friends will even help me to solve my problems. I’ve learned over the years its not good to keep whats stressing you inside. It;s sometimes better to let it out you defiantly feel better after doing so. So more things I could do to relive my stress would be to schedule my day with all my assignments and activities. By doing this my days would have more organization and I could tell what is going on in my day. I wouldn’t be surprised by any upcoming assignments and it may even help me stay up to date on my assignments.

Chapter 3 First Impression Sleep

--Original published at David's Blog

For this weeks first impression post I decide to go with the second prompt about college students sleep habits. It’s well know that college kids have terrible sleep habits, they have bad habits for multiple reasons. Some of the main factors could be late night studying or cramming in work thats due the next day for there classes. Other reasons unrelated to classes could be attempts to socialize or do other personal activities for fun. It can some times be stressful for college kids when there in college so its nice to do somethings that make you happy, but sometimes this comes at the price of lack of sleep.

I believe college students should try and get at least eight hours of sleep. When thinking of my own sleep habits I’d say I don’t have the best or the worst sleep habits. after college I g to my job that last until 9:30 at night so by the time I finally get home its almost ten at night. This leaves me little time for school work but I still get it done regardless. I also find myself staying up to play games and talk to friends to relive the stress of college and work. But doing this cuts into my sleep schedule which can be problematic.

There are different ways which I could improve my sleep schedule. One way is to do better planing of my days, like do class work as soon as possible and not wait last minute for it to pile up. Another big factor that would help would be to lessen my video game use at night. If I can work on these my sleep should improve greatly.

Chapter 3 Drugs Impression

--Original published at David's Blog

For the chapter three drug post I decided to look at option two. Which was wether abstinence or harm reduction was a better form to eliminate or reduce drug use. I have some experience with people I have know using drugs so I thought it would be a good idea to cover this subject.

First the topic of abstinence, this method is when you completely stop using said drug. This is defiantly the most common or most know. Like mentioned in our prompt the AA group uses this method a lot for recovering alcoholics.

The next model was the harm reduction which in basic still allows drug users to use drugs just less or safer ways. Some examples given were designated drivers or testing of drugs to make sure they don’t cary any harmful or deadly chemicals. The real purpose is to reduce the issues that come with the drug use or “side affects”.

If I had to chose one of these models for someone close to me or a loved one I would probably go with the abstinence. This way I know they aren’t using the drug at all and it seems less likely of using the drug again. With harm reduction its not really teaching people to live without the drug its just making them a little safer. The person is still using the drug so there still going to b addicted and can still cause harm. So again I would prefer my loved ones to go through abstinence than harm reduction because I would like to see them off the drug and living better and healthier lives.