Remote Ready Biology Learning Activities has 50 remote-ready activities, which work for either your classroom or remote teaching.
Serendip is an independent site partnering with faculty at multiple colleges and universities around the world. Happy exploring!
Mental Health |
Comments are posted in the order in which they are received, with earlier postings appearing first below on this page. To see the latest postings, click on "Go to last comment" below.
To post a comment, you should click on "Post a comment" below. This will bring up, in a separate window, a form in which you can either type your comments or paste them from some other word-processing program, and a set of instructions for using the form. Whether you are typing or pasting, you need to be aware that (as it says in the posting window, along with the other instructions), the posting program "treats your material as an HTML document". If this means nothing to you, the only thing you need to know at the moment is that the posting program will ignore "white space", such as tabs and carriage returns. If your comment consists of only one paragraph, there is no problem; type or paste as you always would. If you want to separate two paragraphs, however, you will need to type in <p> at the end of each paragraph or all paragraphs will run together.
Comments are not actually posted until you click on "Post comments" in the posting window. If you decide not to post, you can simply close the posting window and nothing further will happen. If you want to see what your comment will look like before you post it, you can do that by clicking on "Review for editing" in the posting window. You can then make any modifications you want and, when satisfied, click on "Post comments".
The posting program recognizes all HTML tags, so feel free to use any you know about and want to use (but please use the "review for editing" function to be sure you're using tags correctly, since improper tag use may affect not only your posting but all subsequent ones). The "review for editing" option also makes it possible to use the posting window to learn about the effects of HTML tags and practice their use (write, using HTML tags, and "review for editing", to see what it looks like, as many times as you want; just don't click on "Post comments"). A brief introduction to HTML and basic glossary of HTML tags are available from the posting window.
Go to last comment or
Post a comment
Some bio 202 student papers on the subject, for additional perspectives and links to other resources
Seems to me we developed a pretty strong consensus that phobias could probably originate either in genetic information or in experience. And that, regardless of origin, they could probably usefully be treated by both "talk therapy" and pharmacotherapy. And that, re Daniel's concerns above, that at least part of the phobia "problem" has a cultural component, a "making things worse" for individuals related to cultural norms/expectations. The "cultural issue" slant on mental health continues some conversation from our first meeting. Along those lines, there was a very interesting article in the NY Times magazine this Sunday: Regional Disturbances, documenting cultural variations in "mental illness" and considering why they occur.
Its probably my own interests at play, but I was particularly struck by the conversation comparing pharmacotherapy, "cognitive therapy", and psychoanalysis. From my perspective at least, all three, to the extent they are effective, must be affecting the brain ... but probably in different ways? Drugs, I think we agreed, may well lessen the feeling of anxiety, without necessarily (at least immediately) altering the source of the anxiety. "Cognitive therapy" may (?) help the conscious part of the brain (what I call the I-function) cope better with the feelings of anxiety, but again not alter the source of the anxiety (at least immediately). As noted, one can "understand" a phobia, but that doesn't make the "feeling" go away. This suggests perhaps that, as Freud originally conceived, the source of the anxiety is actually in the "unconscious" part of the brain ... and perhaps that psychoanalysis as a therapeutic technique is unique in directly targeting that part of the brain and the actual source of the anxiety?
More food for thought, at least (yes, it IS the issue of how the two parts of the brain, as characterized above, communicate that it, at the moment, on my mind, for a variety of reasons). Thanks again to everyone for contributing. Hope others took useful things from the conversation too ... and that, in future years, we can build on the foundation of this one.
Go to first comment or
Post a comment
| Back to Mental Health | Back to Science in Culture | Back to Serendip |
| On Line Forum
| Mental Health
| Science in Culture
| Serendip Home |