Mehak Vohra Disorders of consciousness (DoC) are medical conditions with inhibited consciousness such as minimally conscious states, a persistent vegetative state, and even chronic coma. DoC presents unique problems during diagnosis, prognosis and treatment, since it is extremely difficult to assess an individual’s consciousness and is caused by traumatic head injuries. Due to the difficulties in forming an accurate diagnosis, and inadequate knowledge about the residual symptoms experienced, there is difficulty in forming rehabilitation techniques for DoC. This paper will look at how rehabilitation techniques for disorders of consciousness could be improved by eliminating the possibilities of misdiagnosis through better aids. In a research study conducted by Macdonald et al on patients thought to be in the vegetative state (VS) of a comma under DoC, it was found that they were often misdiagnosed as covert signs of conscious awareness went unnoticed. The cost of a misdiagnosi...

Anandita Lidhoo Remedial for Mid Term Exam “...I’d say ayahuasca is the best and worst thing I’ve ever done. I spent a week staring down all my bullshit and all my insecurities, and it was totally liberating.” recalls Sea Illing, narrating his experiences with ayahuasca at a retreat centre in Costa Rica. The plant concoction contains a naturally-occurring hallucinogen, DMT (dimethyltryptamine), for which even celebrities like Lindsay Lohan, Sting, and Chelsea Handler come from afar. Their experiences are dictated by certain repressed memories that are activated during the high, suggesting that its users get to experience past traumas with a new perspective. They return from the experience liberated and more at peace than they have been before. Ayahuasca is just one agent of the psychedelics debate, where LSD, psilocybin (“shrooms”), and other hallucinogens are all being claimed to help with depression and anxiety. One main reason psychedelics are supposed to soothe mental ill...

Remedial for overall Innocent Until Coerced As I was looking for an article to write my blog post on, I stumbled across an article titled, Innocent people don't confess and they don't plead guilty. The article is based on the serial killer William Heirans, dubbed the Lipstick Killer. He confessed to committing three murders, however, the author is unsure about whether or not he did commit the murder. The article talks about how almost one out of every fourth case consists of a person who was falsely convicted because they falsely confessed at the time. It is usually a trend that the guilty party never confesses to their crime. Then what pushes an innocent person to confess that they are guilty? Some people do it for the attention and others do it because they convince themselves that they are guilty. However, more often than not the victim is coerced into confessing to the crime. This especially happens when the victims can be easily influenced (in the case of adolesce...

Ananya Sood Remedial for Missed Quiz 6 Why Do We Develop Certain Irrational Phobias? Katherina K. Hauner, a postdoctoral fellow at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, attempts to answer the posed question by Andrew Watts and decipher the prominent causes of different phobias and in her answer, suggests different treatments to these phobias. She begins her article by highlighting the fight or flight response which is predominantly caused by fear. Fear is normally considered a reaction to a stimulus. This stimulus is one that immediately threatens a person's safety and security. The author distinguishes this response to threatening stimuli with maladaptive reactions, which are known as irrational fears or phobias.  According to Butcher, Phobias come under the diagnostic category of anxiety disorders, which are broadly divided into 5 different categories. The first is Specific phobias, also focused on in Katherina's articl...

Ananya Sood Remedial for Quiz 7/ Overall Grade In this article by Lisa Conti, the author explores and understands the relationship between Nicotine and Schizophrenia. According to her, drugs like nicotine show the hope of alleviating cognitive impairment caused by the onset of schizophrenia. To give a background of the disorder, some of the major symptoms of Schizophrenia include delusion, hallucination, and cognitive impairment. Even though symptoms vary from patient to patient, there are other common symptoms, such as social isolation, thought disorder, anger, paranoia etc.  The  Scientific American  author observed that about 85% patients with diagnosed schizophrenia and symptoms of schizophrenia resort of smoking cigarettes at various stages in their disorder. According to these patients, smoking cigarettes helps reduce cognitive impairment. But is that really possible?  Scientists over time have observed therapeutic effe...

Anushree Saboo Remedial for Quiz 10 Casual throwing of mental health terminology can cause a lot of problems. A word repeated again and again can lose its meaning. People seem to forget that words like "depressed" and "OCD" carry a lot of weight and meaning with it and are actual mental conditions which people are diagnosed with. My favourite TV character died? "I'm depressed." I want to eat something completely different from what I like. "You're bipolar." The problem is that most people do not even realise that is this a problem. Here comes in ignorance. Why is mental health viewed as to be inferior to physical health? Those who have actually gone through these mental health conditions can effectively tell how struggling it would have been. People don't use words like "cancer" as a metaphor for someone being weak. Then why so with terms associated with mental disorders? Using such terminology in a lay manner can b...

Moksha Pasricha Remedial Blog Substance abuse or Cool factor: Coffee and anxiety Coffee is a widely available and consumed drink that has high levels of caffeine. Drinking coffee is not only widely practiced but it is also highly promoted in today’s modern world. It is a supposedly ‘cool’ drink which increases social status. With an increasing number of cafes like Starbucks and costa coffee along with the practice of taking pictures of your drink for social media, coffee drinking has become more than a recreational or energy inducing drink but a social activity in itself. There is also a lot of peer pressure involved with coffee drinking which adds to its large use in society. Coffee dates for studying, work and other activities have become quite the hype. Another reason why the sudden increasing coffee intake could have begun is because of an increasing cool factor associated with being busy. The glorification of being busy and overworked – which is supposedly a symbol for s...

Roshnee Mrinalini Chatterjee Remedial For Quiz 6 The question of the effects of cannabis on the mental health of schizophrenics has been a very important one which we need to answer. It is known that many schizophrenics smoke cannabis, however, it is unclear whether the effects are harmful or beneficial for patients. In a study by Andrasson et al, they tried to find a link between the two. In studies before this, it had been found that there was a strong association between the level of cannabis consumption in conscripts (a person enlisted compulsorily, typically into armed forces). It is known that cannabis has psychoactive properties which could hypothetically alter the mental well being of a person. However, in these studies, it was difficult to analyse the effects because there is a lack of baseline data on cannabis exposure in conscripts where schizophrenia prospectively followed. The relative risk for schizophrenia developing among those who had an intake of cannabis fo...