Author Archives: mentzersblog

Spotlight Post #3: Peer pressure

--Original published at MentzersBlog

Peer pressure is something may people deal with everyday, some good and some bad. Many schools sped lots of time teaching kids to do thats right, but what are the right steps for not giving in to peer pressure?

One the first website they are reaching out to children and little kids with a five step method of avoiding peer pressure. The first step they have them do is take a deep breathe and clam down. Secondly they have you find your words to speak up for yourself. Thank it through the consequences is the third step. The forth step they have down is that you should suggest another activity or thing to do. Lastly they have you just walk away. These methods are generally good and are easy for children to follow. Taking a deep breathe is big to me because the more clam yo are the better you will do. Another good method they had down was suggesting something else which is very good at working.

https://www.greatschools.org/gk/articles/5-steps-resist-peer-pressure/

The next website focuses more on teenagers. They talk about things you can say. The website first expressed that you candy NO. When saying these things be firm about it but not aggressive. Stand up tall when speaking and all them how you feel about the situation. Just like the first website the last thing you candy is walk away. These methods seem to be good but it is hard for a teenager to stand up against the group, and express how they feel. So this may be effective it won’t work if the child is shy.

https://www.howtolearn.com/2012/10/how-to-resist-peer-pressure/

The last website focuses on young adults on avoiding peer pressure. The steps they first start out by thinking your yourself ” Am I okay with this.” The website also wants you to have a close friend with you that will back you up. Just like the other websites it wants you to say NO when feeling uncomfortable and peer pressured. If they are pressuring you to do bad things, they are not your friends and you need to walk away. Not only that, if you see someone being pressured stick up for them. Lastly the website says that you can not please everyone so do what is right. These methods of peer pressure have you stop and think if this is right, and thinking if you are comfortable with these actions. Also they bring a good point about bringing your close friend to be there for you.

https://caps.ucsc.edu/counseling/aod/peer-pressure.html

Overall fund these websites helpful for anyone who is peer pressured a lot. It can be stressful in the situation but you just ned o remember what you were taught. In my town we learned a lot about peer pressure and emphasized these methods on what to do when facing problamatming situations.

 

 


Media Production: Alcohol use disorder

--Original published at MentzersBlog

Increasing in many situations is a goo thing but no for Alcohol use disorder. Increasing in alcohol use disorder (AUD) this is not to be taken lightly as it has shot through the roof by 49% from 8.5% to 12.7% in just a decade.  

Data collected about alcohol use disorder and high-risk drinking. Looking over the data that is displayed there are multiple statistics that stand out. Significant increases in alcohol use disorder occurred in subgroups and minorities over the last decade from 2001-2002 and 2011-2012. The highest increase in AUD was from the 65 and older age. The senior citizens age group increased by 106.7%. This group is almost 14% higher than any other age group or minority in America. The next highest increase would be by African American individuals. This group is 13.9 % lower, but still increased at an alarming number of 92.8%. The age group of the highest increase in alcohol use disorder was odd itself but it comes back for the the forth highest increase. Thats right ages 45-64 was just the beginning and once you got over 65 you got to the a higher increase in AUD.  Alcohol use disorder  in the ages between 45 and 64 increased by 81.5%. this is the same number as the CNN new article says. Most of the statistics raised by more than 50 % and is very alarming. All these results have been found in other national surveys showing alcohol use disorders are increasing at an unhealthy rate. The higher rate of increased high-risk drinking and alcohol use disorder in groups are less likely to have adequate health coverage. This is concerning for the 65 and older group since it has the highest increase AUD at 106.7%. The older you are the more you can inherit multiple preexisting disorders that can be exacerbated by heavy drinking. When at the ages of 65 and up you take medications ad many will interact adversely with alcohol. This results in significant medical problems and costly health consequences. Increased AUD in lower education and income is alarming because these individuals who drink often can not afford appropriate health insurance that does not limit or does not cover alcohol-related treatments. When the collected data women showed up to be high at 83.7% of AUD which was the third highest increase in all of the Unites States. Women also increased at 16% of drinking alcohol and 58% in high-risk drinking. In the CNN article it explains that AUD is not juts the problem here it also is the high risk drinking. This is a problem because suboptimal childrearing practices, and children with fetal alcohol spectrum disorders, with potential lifelong functioning impairments. All in all if the absence of access to medical care for individuals with long term, often severe medical problems associated with heavier drinking is likely to result in the individuals to turn to emergency departments. CNN also talks about what happens to health care and medical treatments. This results in increased costs to taxpayers both directly and through higher insurance. 

Reflection:

When reading this article it is not that hard to read. It does give you a lot of numbers and percentages but they all seem to add upend make sense. I picked out the percentages and  the study results to show the differences in AUD. When it comes to experiments the only thing that matters is the numbers and what they stand for. SO in my summary I tried to give you those numbers and what they mean to give you the data that the experimenters received. The only other trouble was remembering all the data so I wrote it all down to remember the results of the study. Usually when researching a study of some sort they use large terms and scientific work but luckily my article did not so it helped me with understanding hat is being done. I did leave out some information as I could not fit all. I Took out pieces that were confusing and not important. I went to the facts and stayed there to give you the difference in AUD. Overall these sources helped out a lot and realizing that drinking has become a problem.

 

http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/10/health/drinking-alcoholism-study-trnd/index.html

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/article-abstract/2647075

 

 

 

 


Schizophrenia

--Original published at MentzersBlog

I took Psychology in high school and learned little about schizophrenia and watched A Beautiful Mind in the class. My first impression that came to mind was that it would be freaky to see people that you can only see. Also you ca hear voices tell you things like the angle and the devil on your shoulders. People will think you are crazy when you really aren’t. Something new I learned from the video Types of Schizophrenia – A day I the life of (scary) is that the voices can be negative. I thought that is was only like a bickering voice in your head. The voices can be harmful and negative towards you and influences you to do thing. In the video he doesn’t eat the pizza and talk on the phone because of hat he’s being told. I also learned that people with schizophrenia can take medicine to help with it and not go through episodes. I always found schizophrenia to be unique ad interesting that your mind can do this and I’m glad I got to get more information on it. Overall the video helped a lot with understanding more about what people who have schizophrenia go through on a everyday life.


Year-round schooling: Spotlight Blog 2

--Original published at MentzersBlog

 

Is Year-round Schooling Worth It?

A common debate that has been talked about for a long time has been year-round schooling. Students still will hit the 180 days required but in two different ways. Today only 10% of the nation’s school do year-round while the other 90% are traditional. So, is year-round really worth all the debate?

When it comes to schooling many kids develop the summer slide. The summer slide is when students unlearn what they learned during the summer and get back tracked. Even when you acquire tutor the student will still get summer slide but when going to year-round schooling this will not happen. A study in 2007 from Ohio State University showed that there is no difference in students who go year-round and traditional schooling. However, decades of research by National Summer Learning Association shows that students who tend traditional schooling will take 8-13 weeks to catch up to speed. In an interview with Anna Habash, she said that schools with high poverty and minority student’s numbers benefit from year-round schooling because it keeps the students “on task” and leads to a more “meaningful instruction” when there are not a lot of academically sound options in their home. To Jessica Washington of Politic365, the solution to student’s success is year-round schooling. She reports that the national dropout rate is at 5 percent, while the dropout rate for year-round school students is below that at just 2 percent. When kids go to school year-round they develop a bong and relation stronger than traditional schools which helps them academically. Results from studies show that students in a year-round schooling are more self-confident, have a higher self-concept, have fewer inhibitions, and feel positive about their schooling and academic experience.

On the other hand, no kid wants to go to school year-round and have a small summer break. When kids go to school all year around they get tired and bored of the same thing and do not want to hand in their assignments and do their work. People always forget that teachers need breaks to which they do so during the summer. Kids and faculty of the school need to spend time with their family and relax from the hardships of school. I students go to year-round schooling they will miss more school because they will have to miss time when going on vacation since they don’t have a summer to do so. There will be an increase in cost when it comes to keeping the school open year-round. The cost will average 100,000 plus to do so which will cause a chain reaction. Parents will have to pay more in taxes which causes them to work more and be distant from their child. When hitting the summer time for schooling the cost to keep the school cooled during the months of June, July, and august will increase the cooling bill by three hundred times. Another negative is that when teenagers need to tend school during the summer are lacking work experience and trying new activities. Von Hippel’s from the University of Ohio State research showed no difference in academics and still go to the same amount of days.

Overall there are many pros and cons for each argument. I believe that schooling all year-round will be helpful because we will not lose a lot of the material we gained during the summer the year before. We will not be academically smarter, but we will be able to obtain more knowledge because we will have time to learn more information since we are not behind the 8-13 weeks.

Work Cited

 

21803, et al. “Top 3 Reasons the US Should Switch to Year-Round Schooling.” The Edvocate, 13 Aug. 2016, www.theedadvocate.org/top-3-reasons-the-us-should-switch-to-year-round-schooling/.

 

Kimberly Demucha Kalil in Waltham, MA. “The Pros and Cons of Year-Round School.” Care.com, Care.com, 18 July 2017, www.care.com/c/stories/3283/the-pros-and-cons-of-year-round-school/.

 

“Students shouldn’t have to attend school year-Round.” Nwitimes.com, 30 Jan. 2008, www.nwitimes.com/news/opinion/mailbag/students-shouldn-t-have-to-attend-school-year-round/article_bb25beeb-37f4-5009-bef2-ddf4204764f9.html.
“Year-Round schools don’t work, so districts should abandon the idea.” DeseretNews.com, Deseret News, 30 Jan. 2011, www.deseretnews.com/article/700105078/Year-round-schools-dont-work-so-districts-should-abandon-the-idea.html.

 

 

 

 


Personality

--Original published at MentzersBlog

When I finished taking the four personality test they all seemed to turn out similar. All the test had in common was that I do not open up which is true and is something I need to work on. Another one that comes up was that I am too trusting. This is true, I do trust a lot of people but I feel as if it is not a bad thing because of the people I have in my life. A couple of the test’s showed that I judge people before knowing them. This is very true but thats how this generation is. Recently I have been doing a better job of knowing them before judging but I still can work on it. The last personality trait is that I like to avoid arguments and conflicts. This is very true as I do not like to make people mad but its not to a point where I do not speak my mind. That personality is in the middle as I do both sides of it. Some of the test say I’m unorganized and unprepared and I do not agree with how low I scored on that personality. I am usually on time for appointments, class, and have a clean room. Sometimes it might get a little hectic but not to bad. Another personality trait I disagree with is that I do not understand long-term consequences. I do understand them but at the time f the act I do not care or want to take the risk but I’m 100% aware of the consequences for the action. Overall the personality test’s showed many of my personality traits but had some flaws along the way. I would recommend these test to other people to see to get an idea about their own traits.


Stress

--Original published at MentzersBlog

Stress is something that everyone experiences from work, school and family. Since in college I have been more stressed because of papers and studying for that big exam coming up. One way that I cope for that is to take a deep breath and take a break from what I am doing and watch TV. Usually after 15 minutes you are more calm and can proceed back to work. Another way is, I take a break and play a couple video games for a hour. This helps me to relax and realize everything is going to be okay. Overall I mostly get away from what is stressing me out and then go back to it with a different mindset. I am not sure if these really work well but hopefully I can find more ways to cope with stress in my psychology class.


Ted Talk: Restoration

--Original published at MentzersBlog

Russell Foster  on Ted Talk outlined three reasons on why we sleep. I chose to agree with his one option restoration against the other two, energy conservation and brain function. In restoration there  has been proof of genes that only turn on during sleep and that is only associated with restoration. Your brain behaves like a muscle when it comes to sleep. When you workout you need a full nights of rest for your muscles to recover. The brain needs to do the same; restore, replace and rebuild over the night. Without these three orders the brain won’t be able to be refreshed to go back to work. This the same as when you workout the somebody part everyday for a week. If you do this your muscles can’t be recuperated and will not grow correctly. Overall Russell Foster explained everything, but restoration  stood out to me and has been proven and makes the most sense.


Divorce: Spotlight Blog 1

--Original published at MentzersBlog

  1. Divorce intensifies the child’s dependence and accelerates the adolescent’s independence.

In the article “The Impact of Divorce on Young Children and Adolescents”, Carl E. Pickhardt discusses the effects that divorce has on children. He states, “Basically, divorce tends to intensify the child’s dependence and it tends to accelerate the adolescent’s independence; it often elicits a more regressive response in the child and a more aggressive response in the adolescent. Consider why this variation may be so”. The article discusses that in a child’s world, they are very dependent, especially on their parents. However, when in an adolescent’s world, they become less dependent on their parents and slowly become more dependent on friends. A child may struggle to comprehend the fact that the parents will not be together again someday. They fantasize the ruination of their parents. When the parents of the dependent child become divorced, this causes worry to the child. The child falls uncertain to the future, thinking that if their parents don’t love each other, then they may lose love for him as well. Some side affects of divorce can lead to separation anxiety, crying at bedtime, bedwetting, clinging, and whining/tantrums.

 

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/surviving-your-childs-adolescence/201112/the-impact-divorce-young-children-and-adolescents

 

  1. Children in intact families have lower rates of delinquency than children in non-intact families.

 

In the article, “Effects of Divorce on Children’s Behavior”, Robert Sampson reports “after studying 171 cities in the United States with populations over 100,000, that the divorce rate predicted the robbery rate of any given area, regardless of its economic and racial composition. In these communities, he found that lower divorce rates indicated higher formal and informal social controls (such as the supervision of children) and lower crime rates”. This essentially means that when the parents of the children aren’t divorced, they have more supervision, therefore the children are less likely to commit crimes. In Wisconsin children who had divorced parents were twelve times higher to be incarcerated as juvenile than kids with married couples. In addition, a crucial study found that boys who go through family transitions at the ages of 14 or 15 are more likely to be delinquents when they hit the ages 16 and 17.Theft rates are significantly lower from intact families than single divorced families. Divorce contributes to externalizing behaviors, which includes weapon carrying, fighting, binge drinking, and substance abuse.

 

http://marripedia.org/effects.of.divorce.on.children.s.behavior

 

  1. Divorce is not always bad.

 

In the article “Is Divorce Bad for Children”, Hal Arkowitz and Scott O. Lilienfeld discuss how divorce is not always a negative thing. The article reads, “Divorce affects most children in the short run, but research suggests that kids recover rapidly after the initial blow. In a 2002 study psychologist E. Mavis Hetherington of the University of Virginia and her then graduate student Anne Mitchell Elmore found that many children experience short-term negative effects from divorce, especially anxiety, anger, shock and disbelief. These reactions typically diminish or disappear by the end of the second year. Only a minority of kids suffer longer”. Researchers assessed the child’s academic achievement,behavior and emotional problems, delinquency, social relationship and self-concept. Studies found only very small differences on all these measures between the children with divorced parents and those with  married families. This suggests that the vast majority of children endure divorce quite well.

 

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-divorce-bad-for-children/

 

  1. Divorce has very little impact.

 

In the article, “Study: Divorce may not cause kids’ bad behavior”,  social demographer Andrew Cherlin of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore looked at children before and after parents divorced and compared them with children with married parents. He found that some of the problems children showed after the divorce were apparent before the split. Others, including Robert Emery of the University of Virginia at Charlottesville, agree that much past research has been overly simplistic in assuming divorce causes the behavior problems. But he adds that he believes Li’s conclusions “are too strong.” He found that an unhappy marriage without a lot of conflict is better for children than divorce. Allen Li who researched divorced vs. non-divorced parents had this to say this  “It really depends on the individual marriages and the family,” and states “My conclusion is that divorce is neither bad nor good.”

 

https://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/health/2008-04-24-divorce-kids-behavior_N.htm

 

Conclusion:

Overall there are many sides to each opinion by research and surveys. Allen Li put it into perfect words to which I agree with, stating that it all depends on the marriage and family involved which will create different outcomes on the child. In the end, I do not thing divorce has a significant effect on the child.


Should Cannabis be Legal?

--Original published at MentzersBlog

For the last couple years there has been a long debate if marijuana should be legal. For medical use it should definitely be legal because it has proven to have many uses in the field. It helps with glaucoma and to control people who have frequent seizures. The best medical use is that it stops cancer cells from growing which is a break through for this terrible illness. The most controversial part is the recreational side. I think cannabis should be legal because there is a substance legal right now that causes more deaths than marijuana has caused; alcohol. If a more dangerous substance is legal then I think weed should be to because it is a lot safer to consume. On the other side weed can be a gateway drug. This is the biggest reason for it to not be legal today because the government is afraid of other drug overdoes to rise because of cannabis. Overall the pros outweigh the cons of marijuana use and should be legal in the United States.


Study Habits (Memory)

--Original published at MentzersBlog

When it come to studying I do not do much of it. Since in college I have been doing better with studying and reviewing my notes. The method I have been doing is rewriting my notes down in a notebook. I been using this method because I heard if you write it down that it gets imprinted into your memory. After I write my notes down I reviewed them briefly. I realize now that I need to review my notes more than just once and to study longer and harder. My exam grade reflexes how much studying I do and I didn’t do well on both of my exams so far. I would say my strength on studying is my organization. When I study the content I make is neat and in order. I also use stars to have the most important content stick out to review those more to remember for my exams and quizzes. In general I need to improve my study habits to achieve better exam scores and overall better knowledge of the course.