With every death, no matter how expected or prepared for one can be, there is always a lingering question of “could I have done better?” or “could I have prevented this somehow?”. With suicide patients, these questions can be haunting for years to come for several people, most affected among them being their therapists. Between 30% to 40% of therapists who have lost a patient to suicide report severe distress—including anxiety and depressive experiences. This is even more devastating when a psychiatrist experiences this situation during training. It was found that 33% of all psychiatric residents had had a patient commit suicide during their residency. The resident’s vulnerabilities were noted during training and of those who had the experience of a patient suicide, 77% felt the impact to be ‘severe’ or ‘strong’ and 62% found it to have a ‘major effect’ on their development. Dr. Herbert Hendin, the medical director of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and the lead a...

JEFFERY DAHMER –The mass murderer   (a case study) There are over 16 million people all over the world who indefinitely suffer some form of personality disorder or another. In some cases, they are easily diagnosed, but other times they are not. There are a variety of personality disorders, each having a broad spectrum of symptoms for each that are mentioned in the DSM-5. A man named Jeffery Dahmer is a very important and rare specimen who was under the lens of the Psychology Department for decades for his unique and complicated condition. It was difficult to even diagnose this man with a psychological condition in spite of the vast research done on personality disorders and the like. Broadly, he suffered a mixture of antisocial, schizotypal personality disorders as well as psychotic disorder. He clearly suffered symptoms for all three disorders to an extreme which caused him to perform gruesome acts that harmed the society around him. In this blog post, I would...

Personality disorders are a type of mental disorder that arises when one has a rigid and unhealthy way of thinking, functioning and behaving. People usually have troubles relating to people and/or situations which lead to problems in social relationships. A kind of the same is Narcissistic Personality Disorder. The hallmarks of Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) are grandiosity, a lack of empathy for other people, and a need for admiration. People with this condition are frequently described as arrogant, self-centered, manipulative, and demanding. They may also concentrate on opulent fantasies (e.g. their own success, beauty, brilliance) and may be convinced that they deserve special treatment. These characteristics typically begin in early adulthood and must be consistently evident in multiple contexts, such as at work and in relationships (Psychology Today, 2018). People with this disorder, tend to feel that they are superior or special, and tend to enhance their own self ...

By Amiya Walia (Blogging for final exam) In recent times colleges in the United States have seen an increasing demand for trigger warnings in their academic courses. The movement in favour of trigger warnings in the early 1980’s  was an effort to enforce political correctness and control freedom of speech regarding matters such as racial slurs (Lukianoff and Haidt). The current movement is focused on building a more inclusive space for those vulnerable to having extreme responses to potentially triggering stimuli. The current debate revolves around the effect of trigger warnings used on colleges campuses. Some argue that trigger warnings are harmful. The University of Chicago in their welcome letter to the batch of 2020 stated that they do not support trigger warnings or the “creation of intellectual safe spaces”. Their rationale is that trigger warnings stifle intellectual growth and academic freedom. Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff believe tha...

By Amiya Walia (Blogging for final exam: Instead of doing 2 different articles I've done one long one to do the topic justice) Owing to consumption patterns of increasingly desensitized consumers, television producers have had to go out on a limb (and many times even get rid of a few limbs) to create provocative content to attract and hold the attention of their disinterested and saturated audiences. As in the case of a drug addiction, viewers crave content that is more dramatic than the previous hit. Shows such as Game of Thrones, Peaky Blinders, and American Horror Story are among the most viewed shows,largely because of their shock value. Their unhesitant depiction of sex, violence, incest (to name a few) seduces viewers. The conditions are almost comparable to those of an arms race where each producer is on a lookout for content to captivate viewers. 13 Reasons Why also falls into the same category of unnerving content. Due to melodramatic plotting,surface level en...