Eating Disorders

Eating disorders are another very common, and very dangerous mental disorder. Either a person refuses to eat or a person exercises themselves to death without nourishing themselves in anyway. Or some gorge themselves on large amounts of food then puke all of this food up. This is most commonly believed to be caused by childhood eating habits and more importantly it is an unhealthy body image during adolescence and puberty. This disease most commonly affects adolescent girls and young women but it can happen to anyone. There is no cure for eating disorders. An anorexic or bulimic can not gain weight and can not become healthy again unless he or she truly wants to. However by the time it is discovered that an eating disorder has taken over the person's bodily image is so distorted that he or she will choose to die before getting fat.
Cures for mental diseases are unlikely just from the fact that we have limited knowledge about the specific causes. Treatment is optimistic in most cases and the sooner a disorder is recognized the sooner it can be treated. Major laws have been put into place to ensure some protection for the mentally ill, and care is now more easily attainable than ever. In as much as there are mentally ill people who need to be hospitalized and treated with the proper care to ensure healthy life, there are those who only want to live like normal people. Katie Flair, a mentally disturbed 13 year old, wants nothing more than to go to school with other kids her age who live normal lives. Her parents are currently fighting with all they have to ensure her acceptance in public school, despite the school's claim they have no teachers prepared to accommodate Katie. Mentally ill people are just people with different needs. They need to be assisted in a positive way, by people who have been trained to care for people with special needs. Practically everyone in the world at least knows someone with some sort of disorder and i believe its become more common for people to just accept the mentally ill then it has been in the past.

Mental Disorders

Mental Disorders- Any of various conditions characterized by impairment of an individual's normal cognitive, emotional, or behavioral functioning, and caused by social, psychological, biochemical, genetic, or other factors, such as infection or head trauma.
Each disorder is very different, and very complex. Over 20 million Americans suffer from some sort of mental disorder, such as depression, anxiety disorders, and OCD. Each disease is very different, with different symptoms, and different treatment needs. Sadly most people with mental disorders are called/known as crazy or weird. Some people think that mental disorders are caused by the person with the disorder convincing themselves that they have the illness. Some also believe that the mental illness is caused by emotional weakness or that its caused by bad parenting. In order for those diagnosed with mental illness to be better understood and treated, we need to be more aware of the illnesses causes, symptoms, and special needs.
There are two main categories for mental illnesses, those which affect solely the mind, and those which have bodily affects. Examples of mental illnesses with severe mind effects are
clinical depression, schizophrenia, and mania. Examples of disorders with mental as well as physical consequences are catatonic schizophrenia, eating disorders, and another very serious disease called Fragile X Syndrome. This disease causes severe mental problems during childhood, and eventually leads to brain damage. It starts in the mind and begins to affect the body. This disease has a definite cause, however newly discovered one in ten males have a weak X chromosome, which can break off during very early fetal development. Which causes genetic information to be lost. This disease can be tested in early in pregnancy, and sufferers as well as carriers can be easily identified. Soon after this discovery, a large number of males found to have fragile X syndrome were found in psych wards. Now that there is a definite cause for such a disease, there is high hope for a cure.
Each person handles different disorders differently, for some people depression is something they see a doctor for and take medication for. These people are able to live their lives with minimal affects of their disorder. However others go day by day with sever depression issues contemplating their life continually. The causes of mental illnesses are largely mysterious since the disease is of the mind and not a physical part of the brain. However, for each disease there are a number of proposed causes. Schizophrenia is a disease characterized by multiple personalities.Schizophrenia is one of the most serious mental illnesses. This disease is said by psychologists to be caused by dysfunctional relationships between very young children and their mothers. Doctors tend to lean towards a more medical explanation, which is babies with low birth weight are more predisposed to schizophrenia.

Processing Psychology

Psychology for me-
In reading the Everything Psychology Book I guess I kind of hoped I would understand more as to why people do the things they do. I believe that psychology is so interesting to me because of the experiences I've gone through in my life. My brother in his younger ages had aggression problems, he would become so angry his whole body would turn firetruck red. In reading the book I read a section on aggression. The definition for aggression is an act of hostility that one displays in front of another when it feels threatened, challenged, or an immediacy to protect its territory. With this definition it helps me understand my brother a little more. Psychology to me is a life time career. Psychology is helping people in psychological need to me. Psychology defined to me means understanding the brain functions and the reactions of people and animals. My goals for achieving a career in psychology are starting to hit me faster and faster. My first goal is to enroll into all of the classes that ill need to get an associates degree at Kirkwood Community College Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Then my goal is to graduate from Kirkwood and then move on to a university to either get my bachelors degree or my doctorate in psychology.

Therapy

In reading the Everything Psychology Book it's made it easier for me to narrow down the type of therapy that I want to pursue. I'm mostly interested in group therapy, couples therapy, and family therapy.

Levels of Consciousness and Memory

Conscious- is the term that describes your active awareness.
Preconscious- it keeps all of the memories that you don't have any use for at the present time, but they can still be retrieved if needed.
Subconscious- it works the information and mental processes needed to perform routine activities that don't require conscious thought.
Unconscious- keeps the memories that we know we have
Non-conscious- keeps information that we need to live but that we don't know we have.
Memory- Short term memory for humans doesn't have a lot of expanding room. The magic number of memory room in our short term memory is seven. Even though we don't realize this number is constantly apart of our daily lives. It's in our phone numbers, zip codes, and id numbers. All of these numbers abide by the magic number.
Forgetting- when you forget something it just has to do with how the memory was processed and stored.