Anushree Saboo Exam bonus  In his book titled, "The Myth of Mental Illness: Foundations of a Theory of Personal Conduct," Thomas Szasz goes too far in claiming that mental illness is a myth. Szasz argues against the illnesses of the mind and says that naming problems which we today call "mental illnesses" is a logical error. Though Thomas Szasz would love to have a world without psychiatry, it seems horrendous to even think of that as a possibility. Achieving a utopic world without any mental illnesses would be idealistic but mental illnesses do exist and it is wrong not to acknowledge that.   Szasz accepted that people have problems in their life and coping difficulties but did not want to label these problems as "mental diseases" rather call them "difficulties in living." But his supporters failed to notice that Szasz's definition of disease is very narrow. His definition of disease is obsessively centred around cellular patholog...

Sunayana Sibal For the Exam Bonus Resilience can be understood as the ability to persist in the face of life challenges that evoke distress. Although resilience has been conventionally thought of as a skill that can be developed over time with effort, recent research suggests that resilience may in fact be determined by certain neurobiological factors which manifest early in life. It is fascinating to know that neuroscientists have developed a drug which can boost the amount of resilience individuals displays. Currently this drug is being tested before approval. Many neuroscientists have argued that this resilience-boosting drug could be a key force to reversing depression amongst clients. A resilience boosting drug would be particularly significant in today’s time when depression is prevalent and the current treatment for depression seems to provide only transient relief. To test the relationship between depression and resilience, experimenters first explored the neuro-...

Vedika Jogani Remedial for exam score The Perks of Being a Wallflower This film centers around the life of a high school student, Charlie, played by Logan Lerman. Charlie suffers from clinical depression from childhood and has recently been discharged from a mental health institution. Like every other young adult Charlie is nervous about his freshman year. He hopes to ‘fit in’ and fears getting bullied. From the very first day of high school Charlie counts down the days till the very end. With a keen interest in literature Charlie knows all the answers and submits assignments beforehand. This leads to other students picking on him while he finds a friend in Mr Anderson (his English teacher). At a football game, Charlie befriends Sam and Patrick who invite him to many social gatherings and parties. In a state of intoxication he tells Sam he lost his best friend last year. Sam and Patrick realize he is lonely and take him into their friend group. Charlie then e...

Three weeks ago, I watched a documentary on Netflix called “Take Your Pills”. In a super competitive world, students and adults in the United States have begun to seek a performance edge to boost their work output. The documentary chronicled the use and misuse of Adderall and other prescription stimulants as the defining drugs of this generation, highlighting not only the demand for these drugs to keep up with this hyper-competitive world but also the overdiagnosis of ADHD patients in the 1990’s. Though the documentary addresses view points of people from all scales of life, it more specifically shows us slices of lives of those children born in the 1990’s who were diagnosed with ADHD. In the unravelling of the complicated relationship with the prescribed medications, we also learn how interestingly it contrasts with the misuse of these same drugs they see among their peers. In 2011, the CDC reported that the prevalence of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder in children ag...