Theories of Depression by 4 Geniuses

Albert Bandura - The Social Learning Theory
In his Social Learning theory, Banduras implies that aggression is learned through behavior modeling. Bandura in his theory believes that individuals do not inherit violent tendencies they are rather moldered. He argues that individuals, especially children learn aggressive responses from observing those around, whether it be personally, through the media or environment. Moreover, the theory states that aggression will produce reinforcements, reduction of tension, financial rewards, praise of others, or building one’s self esteem. Bandura, through his Bobo doll experiment is able to show that children imitate the aggression of adults because of rewards. Bandura was intrigued by children’s aggression and asked himself whether aggression in children would be reflected in their adult years, would they turn into criminals? He argued that aggression in children is shaped by reinforcement offered by the family and their environment as a whole.

Julian Rotter – The Social Learning Theory
Julian Rotter in his Social Learning theory explains that personality represents an interaction of an individual with his or her environment. He says that one cannot speak of a personality internal to the individual, it should rather be reflected as independent of his or her environment. Rotter also shows that behavior should not be considered to being an automatic response to an objective set of environmental stimuli. One must rather, take both the individual and the environment into account. Personality, according to Julian Rotter is a stable set of potentials for responding to situations in a unique way. Personality is therefore considered to be changeable. Rotter strongly believes that the more life experience one has on building a set of beliefs, the more effort and intervention is required for personality to change. He seem to be quite optimistic on the subject, he sees people as being drawn by their goals who seek to maximize their life style rather than avoiding punishment. The theory has to it 4 main components: behavior potential, expectancy, reinforcement value, and psychological situation.

Martin Seligman – Learned Helplessness Theory
Seligman, an American psychologist decided to challenge B.F. Skinner’s behaviorism theory by conducting an experiment with three individual groups. The first group was the control group, out of 150 dogs, a group was places in harnesses for a set period of time and then released. Group two dogs were put in pairs; one dog in a pair would receive mild electrical shocks. The dog could end pain of electrical shock by pressing a lever. Group three dogs were also put in pairs and one dog would be wired in parallel with a dog in group two, who was receiving shocks. The dog would therefore receive group two’s dog electrical shock but his own lever couldn’t stop the shock, group three dogs received a shock that was inescapable. Groups one and two dogs recovered quickly but group three dogs didn’t, they presented depression and learned to be helpless. Through this experiment Seligman developed this theory, which showed that people learn to be helpless when given a task a being miserable at it. A term that also shows this is the vicarious trauma. Learned helplessness as shown by Seligman is the state of mind created by an animal or human in which they learn to behave helpless even with the means to escape or avoid an unpleasant situation. The theory states that it facing helplessness, mental illnesses may arise from the lack of control one has over a situation.

Aaron Beck – Cognitive Behavior Theory
Aaron Temkin Beck is an American psychiatrist who has developed research on psychotherapy, psychopathology, suicide and more. He is considered the father of cognitive behavioral therapy. Indeed, he developed a cognitive behavior theory in which he states, “If beliefs do not change, there is no improvement. If beliefs change, symptoms change. Beliefs function as little operational units”. Beck shows through this theory that dysfunctional behavior is caused due to dysfunctional thinking and that basically thinking is shaped by our beliefs. Moreover, he says our beliefs decide the course of our actions. They take hold of our actions. Aaron Beck shows that patients can be persuaded to think constructively and reject negative thinking.

Works Cited:
Isom, Margaret Delores. "Theorist - Albert Bandura." Criminology.fsu. 30 Nov. 1998. Web. 27 Mar. 2011. .
Mearns, Jack. "The Social Learning Theory of Julian B. Rotter." Psych.fullerton.edu. 30 Nov. 2000. Web. 27 Mar. 2011. .
Pollick, Michael. "What Is Learned Helplessness?" Wise Geek. 25 Feb. 2011. Web. 27 Mar. 2011. .
"Aaron Beck Cognitive Behavior Theory." Buzzle.com. Google. Web. 27 Mar. 2011. .

The Lobotomist

Recently, in class we saw a video that was quite shocking for myself. Its pretty interesting how scientists as well as psychiatrists were speculating on the reasons why people suffer from depression. Such controversial “disease” had to be treated someway and somehow. Over the years, Dr. Walter Freeman, a prestigious American physician who specialized in lobotomy, conducted tons of lobotomies on typically adults. Not only was Walter Freeman’s prestige acquired through his famous lobotomies but he was as well part of the American Psychiatric Association. It is said that Freeman performed over 2500 lobotomies all over the United States. With just having the knowledge of neurology and no surgical training, Freeman initially worked with some surgeons, one of them James W. Watts. Watts become popularized because of the fact that he performed prefrontal lobotomies. Once in handy, the idea of practicing lobotomy skills on Freeman’s patients, he and Watts perform a more easy and effective procedure. In it, they first had to gather ice picks and a hammer, using the ice picks, Freeman hammered the ice picks into each frontal lobe, through the back of the eye socket. The advantages to this procedure was that it could be effectively carried out outside an operating room and without a surgeon. While Freeman was impatient about the famous pioneer, Moniz, he was finally able to come up with a momentarily effective way to treat mentally ill patients. Just with a light tap of a mallet, and the wishing back and forth of the ice picks he could make miracles. The prior difficult patients were no passive. Freeman recommended this intense procedure for everything, whether it be psychosis, depression, neurosis or criminality. Freeman even developed what people called assembly line lobotomies, in which he went from one patient to another ice picking their eye ball sockets and jiggling what is the frontal lobes of the brain. It is said that some of his surgeons even fainted at experiencing such hard method to which patients were summoned. Studies show that even Watts agreed on the level of harshness in this experiment. Among the strengths of this experiment lie the fact that it was a procedure of minutes which was most likely to stabilize the patient. Moreover, Dr. Freeman himself performed between 3,500 and 5,00 “soul surgeries”, of which he claimed to be used in schizoprenics, depressive people, people suffering from chronic pain and other mental and physical conditions. This “soul surgery” was not only aimed at functioning in a brief amount of diseases it rather helped treat and even cure many diseases. Amonf the weaknesess of the experiment lie, the violence that is induced in its patients, this considered to be totally unethical should not be implemented whatsoever. Furthermore, the procedure had not been tested before, they rather used it without testing it before, due to this results were not always the desired ones. Likewise, lobotomies were said to “violate the principles of humanity and chanfe and insane person into an idiot”. Even worst, psychiatrists were accustomed to performing long-term care for their patients in order to assess the surgery’s effectiveness. In the end lobotomies were very useful during its due time, through the course of history its uses include, treating patients with psychological illnesses and behavioral disorders, and in place of recommending medications, talk therapy and other forms of treatment, these lobotomies were performed as a fast track to end the disease or illness. Freeman in psychology history is a well known neurologist who awakened people since his texistence into brainstorming new and improved ways on performing lobotomies, he was the one to discover that it was passible to access the frontal cortex thrugh a human’s eye sockets. With this he was able to improve some person’s lives but also damage others’.



Works Cited:

Renato Sabbatini, "The History of Psychosurgery" (Brain and Mind, June 1997). A selection from this article is available at http://www.epub.org.br/cm/n02/historia/lobotomy.htm.

Freeman, Shanna. "How Lobotomies Work." Discovery Health. Web. 22 Mar. 2011. .

Evan Perry Video Reflection

The video shown in class has completely changed my perspective on the Bipolar Disorder. The boy, Evan Perry and his family made apparent the fact that the bipolar disorder does not only affect the victim but as well the victim’s surroundings. It totally amazes me the rapidness of the bipolar cycle and the fact that it cannot be cured; only treated. Although it can be controlled it does not have and guarantee of better symptoms, it rather makes the victims of this tragic disorder feel helpless and born for nothing. The disease apparently, varies among those who are born with it. A person might not be treated in the same way as another; the steps involved in the treatment of one might vary in another. The video has also shown me that there are different levels of the disorder, Evan Perry unfortunately withholds a strong level of bipolar disorder in him, this being shown through his constant suicidal thoughts and his feeling of uselessness in the world. It worries me the fact that neither psychologists nor scientists have been able to develop a cure for this disorder which seems to be non important but is rather of great importance. This video has definitely increased my awareness on this disorder; it has made me understand the implications it has to it and the implications on the victims of this disorder.

Internal Assessment - The Stroop Effect

The Stroop Effect is an experiment that was carried out by John Ridley Stroop in 1935. He did this experiment to understand human being’s mental processes. The Stroop experiment is portrays a psychological test of our mental vitality and flexibility. The task consists in taking advantage of the participant’s ability to read words shaded in different colors. Stroop showed in his experiment that people consider reading the word of the color easier rather than saying the color used as a shade in the word. The cognitive mechanism, after all is called direct attention in which one has to manage his or her attention, and stop one’s response in order to say another thing. This experiment as a whole emphasizes the interference that automatic processing of words has on the mental effort taking task of naming the colors. The experiment is said to produce activity in a part of the brain called the anterior cingulated. This part of the brain is just in between the right and the left halves of the brain of the frontal portion of the brain. This part of the brain concentrates on thought processes and emotional responses. The Stroop effect’s sensitivity to changes in brain functions are said to have much to do with the anterior cingulated. The effect this experiment has had on others is the fact that it can be concluded by the results shown that it is much harder than it sounds to respond correctly to tricks done to our minds. The experiment involves the experimenter to hand the participant or participants a paper in which the names of various colors are written but the trick lies in the fact that the words are shaded in a different color as to the one it says. For example, if the word is orange, the word will definitely be shaded in blue or whichever color, except orange. An interesting fact on this experiment is the fact that results cannot be improved by training. The brain cannot be trained to allow certain of its areas to dominate others. Results show that verbal activity can reduce the depth of hypnotic trance and that the functional area of the brain that is most of the time dominant is responsible for language function and critical rejection of suggestion. In the end, one can conclude that the brain has limited attention resources that only one function area of our brain can spark our behavior at a time and this most certainly will inhibit the other areas.

The Placebo Effect - Is it real or just imagined?

According to the articles given by our teacher, the placebo effect is “the measurable, observable, or felt improvement in health or behavior to a medication or treatment that has been administered”. The idea of the placebo effect developed from the famous H.K Beecher. Beecher developed 15 experiments in which he evaluated 15 clinical trials with numerous and unique diseases. Beecher found out that 35% of 1,082 patients were relieved or healed by a placebo pill. In all the experiments conducted by Beecher on this controversial topic, Beecher implemented medical personnel, this kind of setting gave the patients comfort in the pill they were given to “alleviate” their disorder or disease. Up to this day, there is no correct answer to rely on, even though psychologists have come up with a hypothesis. They say, that is all in the patient’s minds, they say that a person’s beliefs and hopes revolves around neurochemistry and neurochemistry is said to eventually affect one’s biochemical, immune or hormonal system, this, resulting in a person’s well-being or health. Besides there being a quite scientific explanation to it, psychologists mention that a person’s mind is powerful in the sense that when one is told that a pill will cure the ongoing disease they have, it will eventually heal the person since the person is relying and strongly believing that the pill will be the solution to their problem. Although, Beecher’s experiments seem to be quite logical, denunciations towards his experiments have been made. Among these lies the fact that, the patients were taken off a drug because of side effects, this resulting in improvement in the patient’s bodies since they were taken off something that provided harm in their bodies, this having nothing to do with the placebo effect. Another downfall in Beecher’s experiments is that he only reported to percentage of improvement from the placebo, showing absolutely no percentage in deteriorated conditions of the patients. It is said that one-third of the time, the patients showed improvement but not necessarily because of the placebo pills they were on and that about 40% of the time, conditions showed no improvement at all. Beecher’s major limitation in these experiments was that he did not report all of the gathered data. After all, I personally think that placebo pills should be used more often since they do show a lot of improvement in patients as shown by Beecher. Regarding this issue I strongly agree with the used of placebos and definitely think that they do more good than harm as to drugs. Placebos have no side effects whereas drugs do so. I do concord with psychologists when they say that it all lies in our minds. We have the power in ourselves to heal all by our own or with placebo pills which contain no source that says it will heal one even though it does.

Bibliography:
http://www.skepdic.com/placebo.html

Are ALL Memories Alike?

Gender Differences:
The article shows that a group of psychologists from Stockholm, Sweden have made experiments on trying to show if women or men exceed each other’s knowledge, in other words, which one is better. The experiment was carried out by pulling out three groups of participants with black and white pictures of men and women. They concluded that women tend to have a better episodic memory than men do, this because women are usually very meticulous with detail, especially in men. In fact, the article reads that women pay more attention to women faces than to male faces, making it easier for them to recall the face in future moments. The psychologists also discovered that men exceed women’s abilities on remembering symbolic, non-linguistic information, known as visuospatial processing. In the end, we may conclude that women perform much better in episodic memory whereas men perform better in remembering symbols and information that does not require linguistic explanation.

Cultural Differences:
The article about cultural differences explains through a series of descriptions and experiments that memories varies up to 2 years in difference among cultures around the world. For example, it’s said that a Korean may not remember anything before the age of 4 whereas a Maori New Zealander may remember things up to his 2 and a half years of age. A series of psychologists are still working on experiments to show that culture does have an effect in memory, that is, that people’s memory capacity differ from culture to culture. For example they have shown through experiments that a Caucasian has a better capacity of storing memories than do Chinese. After all, the article talks about the differences in memory capacity of people of different cultures among the world although it was not specific in the respect to why it is how it is.

Alzheimer's Disease

In respect to what we have previously since about the Alzheimer's disease, I personally believe it is one of the most terrifying diseases ever. Not only affecting the person with the disease but the loved ones who surround the person are the ones who suffer the most. Although many studies have been conducted to eradicate this deadly disease scientists have failed to come up with its cure. According to previous research, it has been shown that Alzheimer’s disease has a 10% of hitting a person of 65 years old all the way through 80 and in the first place, giving people a slow degradation of thought, memories and language. The Alzheimer’s disease is said to worsen through time but it can be regulated and controlled for a specific time period. The disease, being composed of 3 stages, stage mild, stage moderate and finally stage severe a severe page. The Alzheimer’s disease varies from person to person being it severe in some patients and being moderate in other. Alzheimer’s is said to be a progressive disease which means that it may start being able to be treated and being able to be controlled but in a blink of an eye it kills people as well. In my opinion, it is difficult for people to keep up with such disease since it stops people from being able to accomplish tasks and interferes with people’s daily routines. I can definitely conclude that Alzheimer’s disease influences every aspect of a human being when it affects one. It can consummate one’s mind until the point where one needs permanent assistance for all daily activities consuming the brain’s ability to process information perfectly.