People In Your Life Research Articles

The Digital Revolution on Society through Digital Detox in the Modern Era

This study reveals on the negative impact of the digital revolution on society. This is a kind of the enablement of social isolation, addiction, and mental health issues. Technology has changed how people interact and communicate, often leading to increased social isolation and addiction to technological platforms such as social media. The study tells about the digital detox and how it tell us about a break from the screen will help people to bring balance to their digital and real-world lives. This way of soaking up real-time instead of screen time will ease anxiety, increase happiness, reduce multitasking, reduce those technology cravings, and allow you to connect more with the people in your life. This doesn't have to be a prolonged stretch or period where you quit technology entirely. But you can choose how long you feel comfortable doing a digital detox for anywhere from 24 hours to 1 week. Digital detox should not only refer to a time period during which a person refrains from using electronic devices, but also to time periods during which a person does not engage in certain types of applications, branded media, special features, interactions, and/or messages the studies is the lack of device-based measurements of smartphone use that would allow for reliable assessments of the duration of usage. Then also it is helpful to measure physiological indicators of health-related outcomes, and the study belongs to the aspect of compensatory behaviors during the digital detox intervention in this new era of technology use. While they sound like a good idea, digital detoxes are unsustainable because they cut us from the world. This can also have a negative impact on our overall mood, as well as leading to feelings of isolation and loneliness.

When Familiar Faces Seem Unknown: Face Blindness

Think about the people in your life whose faces you could pick out in a crowd. It might surprise you to learn that some people are unable to recognize faces—even the faces of people they see often like their friends, family, and teachers. This happens with a condition called prosopagnosia, which is also known as face blindness. Prosopagnosia affects one’s ability to understand facial expressions, judge someone’s age or gender, and follow where people are looking. The fusiform face area (FFA) is a part of the brain that is responsible for facial recognition. When the FFA is underdeveloped or becomes damaged, it can lead to prosopagnosia. Currently, there is no treatment for prosopagnosia, but people affected by this condition can practice relying on other cues like sounds and smells to help them recognize others. Researchers are looking into treatment options for people with prosopagnosia.

Retaining Psychodynamic Thought in Contemporary Psychiatry

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article Psychiatry & PsychotherapyFull AccessRetaining Psychodynamic Thought in Contemporary PsychiatryRandon S. Welton, M.D.Randon S. WeltonSearch for more papers by this author, M.D.Published Online:30 Nov 2022https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.pn.2022.12.11.30AbstractPsychodynamic psychotherapy was once a cornerstone of psychiatric training and practice. Historically, most psychiatrists would have felt comfortable exploring patients’ unconscious and interpersonal issues in weekly therapy sessions. In contemporary psychiatry, however, psychodynamic thought has lost its preeminence. Managed care’s preferential reimbursement of psychopharmacology and reliance on lower-cost therapists compounded by the mistaken belief that psychodynamic psychotherapy lacks empirical support led to a steady decline in psychiatrists providing psychodynamic psychotherapy. Ironically this occurred simultaneously with the emergence of a literature demonstrating the efficacy and cost-effectiveness of psychodynamic psychotherapy in managing personality disorders, chronic depression, and anxiety. What can psychiatry do to preserve the benefits engendered by a psychodynamic understanding of patients?In addition to promoting psychodynamic psychotherapy, psychiatric training should focus on the advantages of incorporating psychodynamic thought into a wider range of patient interactions. Psychodynamically informed psychiatrists can emphasize once commonly held beliefs such as these:Everyone has an active unconscious that in part dictates their desires, reactions, and behaviors.Past experiences shape one’s current relationships, emotions, and decisions.People tend to form recurring patterns of relationships often based on early childhood models.The relationship between the psychiatrist and patient contains both diagnostic and therapeutic potential.We must act quickly, however, if we want a psychodynamic orientation to remain a core feature of psychiatry; the last generation of psychiatrists who were steeped in psychodynamic thought are rapidly reaching retirement age. Some psychiatrists, especially those in private practice, are able to offer traditional psychodynamic psychotherapy, but all psychiatrists can still inculcate a psychodynamic understanding into routine clinical care. Consider the following example:A young man was seen in the ICU by the consultation/liaison team. He had cut his wrist and taken an overdose of acetaminophen. When the resident sat down with him, the patient was curt and dismissive. “Let’s get this over with. ... I was suicidal, but I am not anymore. I have seen the error of my ways. I promise.”Despite the aggressiveness of these remarks, the resident sensed the patient was more scared than angry. She asked why he was trying to push her away when she was trying to help him. He became suddenly tearful, “That is what they always say. You pretend to care, but when I need you, no one is there for me.” Recognizing that the intensity of his response came from previous disappointments, she tried to reassure him of her desire to help and said, “It sounds like people have let you down before. I wonder if that had something to do with you trying to kill yourself.” This led to a conversation about his chronic relationship struggles and the argument with a close friend that had precipitated the suicide attempt.A minimal psychiatric response to this situation would be to thoroughly document a risk assessment and make recommendations about psychopharmacology. A psychodynamic psychiatrist would reflect on what these interactions say about the patient’s past experiences and inner life and how those factors should guide her approach to the patient.The consultation/liaison resident encouraged the patient to discuss the relationship with his friend and their distressing conversation. She then asked him to consider a different perspective.“You two sound very close. You have felt rejected by many people in your life, but maybe his spending time with other people is not a rejection of you. I wonder if there are parts of his life that don’t involve you, just like there are parts of your life that don’t involve him.” The patient nodded. “Well, he was going over to play some stupid online game. He knows that I get bored with that stuff. He has asked me before, and I have always said ‘no.’ ” The resident suggested, “So maybe he didn’t invite you because he knew you wouldn’t want to go.”The resident’s understanding of the patient’s interpersonal vulnerabilities allowed her to strengthen their therapeutic alliance and to help the patient re-examine long-standing, unconscious beliefs about his relationships. She continued his current medications without change and arranged for a next-day appointment with his outpatient therapist.Retaining a psychodynamic orientation can deepen our understanding of patients and guide our interactions wherever we work. We should not settle for a reductionistic view of patients’ symptoms, as if their primary problem was a medication deficiency. Today’s psychiatrists can incorporate these practical psychodynamic principles into their everyday work and thereby provide the comprehensive care that patients need and deserve ■Randon S. Welton, M.D., is an associate professor of psychiatry and director of the psychiatry residency program at Wright State University School of Medicine. He is also a member of the Committee on Psychotherapy of the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry (GAP). ISSUES NewArchived

How Do Our Brains Support Our Friendships?

Have you ever wondered how your friends impact how you see the world? Or how you are able to keep track of the many different people in your life? To study these questions, scientists have begun to look at people’s social networks and their brains at the same time. In this article, we introduce this area of study and discuss how scientists use ideas from both neuroscience and mathematics to examine these questions. We also highlight some recent discoveries that reveal both how our brains support our ability to socialize with others and how our relationships with other people are related to how we use our brains.

Well-Being Matters: An index to measure student thriving

According to Google Ngram, which tracks the popularity of words and phrases in books, well-being is having a moment. But the moment, I think, will last the millennia. Because a concern for well-being is not a passing fad—it’s a permanent transformation. Around the globe, policymakers are prioritizing well-being. Why? Because our lived experience as human beings matters as much as the bales of cotton, kilowatts of energy, and gigabytes of information that we, as a society, produce each year. And the pandemic has only added to the concern, for adults and children alike. How are the young people in your life feeling right now? Are they thriving, languishing, or somewhere in between? Do you know?

Step Outside

What's one thing you hope the young people in your life do this summer? I recently asked a version of this question to the grandfather of one of my students. Without hesitation, he leaned forward and said with conviction, “I'd say, get off those screens!” I couldn't agree more. Come September, what will young people look back on the summer and remember? Will their highlight reel be an endless stretch of mornings, afternoons, and evenings in their bedroom, faces down, staring into their phones? For too many students, this has been a necessary reality for more than a year.

The Stories We Tell

Last week, I told you about my daughter Amanda's first experience with “hard math.” My guess is that the young people in your life have their own stories to share. No doubt they have struggled and failed at something important to them. Surely they have stories of success, too—perhaps, as it was for Amanda, following a dark period when self-efficacy was at a low point. If, as four decades of research have shown, self-efficacy grows with small wins, does anything turbocharge such learning? A recent experiment supported by Character Lab suggests that experience is an even better teacher when followed by writing. Students spent 15 to 20 minutes writing about a time they failed, and at least one way this failure changed them for the better, as well as a time they succeeded, and the steps they took to “make this success a reality.” Compared to a control group, the students who did this writing exercise demonstrated greater academic persistence, which in turn predicted better grades the following marking period.

Abstract C37: [Advocate Abstract:] Kidney cancer incidence levels in minority populations

Abstract Action to Cure Kidney Cancer (ACKC) is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization founded in 2003 by patients, and their families to advocate for increased federal and private funding for kidney cancer research to identify people at risk, develop an inexpensive and accurate screening test, improved treatment and ultimately find a cure for kidney cancer. To date ACKC has provided close to $400,000 to fund kidney cancer research. Early on we discovered the existence of the Congressionally Directed Medical Research Program (CDMRP), which was created to augment cancer research funding given that members of the U.S. military suffer from similar or even higher rates of cancer than does the general public. The CDMRP is very different from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) grant process. As pointed out in the summer issue of the AUA Investigator, ?CDMRPs play a unique role in the medical research community, investing in high-reward research grants through a peer-review system ?The initiatives under the CDMRPs are critical to advancing our understanding of a variety of health issues and have a proven track record of contributing to major medical breakthroughs,? The CDMRP is a two tiered system with patient advocates as voting members in addition to the scientific members in each of the two tiers. In the Programmatic Panel they participate in developing the vision for the disease research in the Peer Review Panel they evaluate and grade the proposals. After the proposals are graded the Programmatic Panel selects the proposals to be funded. The patient advocates are respected members of the CDMRP panels because they provide the face to the disease and can identify from their experience where the disease research needs to focus. In 2004, ACKC initiated a campaign calling for inclusion of kidney cancer as a separate line item in the CDMRP. We obtained bi-partisan Senate and House sponsorship of a Dear Colleague letter, which was sent to the Defense Appropriation subcommittees asking for this funding. In 2006 kidney cancer was added as a topic area to the Peer Reviewed Medical Research Group (PRMRG) and was moved to the Peer Reviewed Cancer Research Group (PRCRP) in 2009. Kidney cancer in the PRMRG/PRCRG had to compete with other diseases/cancers for research grants. From 2006 through 2015 kidney cancer researchers received a total of $10 million in research grants. ACKC was and still is the only not-for-profit organization to advocate for a kidney cancer CDMRP line item. In addition to our ?March on Washington? in the spring of each year we have given briefings to Congressional health staffers about kidney cancer and the need to fund research as it has been significantly underfunded compared with other cancers. This year we attained a breakthrough in that the House passed the FY2017 Defense Appropriations bill, which includes $10 million targeted for kidney cancer research. We are anxiously awaiting the passing of the 2017 Defense Appropriations bill because we anticipate kidney cancer having its own annual budget line. We await the Senate which has not yet passed a 2017 Defense Appropriations bill. The American Urological Association (AUA) is supporting our efforts and we are very hopeful that kidney cancer will receive its own research budget line. If we are successful, a new and significant avenue for kidney cancer research will open up which would be very exciting news for the members of the AUA. At present ACKC participates with One Voice Against Cancer (OVAC) advocating for National Institute of Health (NIH) funding increases to $33 billion and proportional increases for the NCI. In addition we have and continue to advocate to The NCI for additional Special Programs of Research Excellence (SPOREs). ACKC is a member and a founding partner of the International Kidney Cancer Coalition (IKCC). We attend and selectively report on our website on The American Association of Cancer Research (AACR), The American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), and the Brigham & Women?s Hospital/Dana Farber/Renal Carcinoma meetings. The ACKC website (www.ackc.org) emphasizes not only the latest news in kidney cancer research, but also provides Four Patient Guides for patients and caregivers. All four guides were updated in April 2016: - Guide 1: Understanding My Disease is written for the newly diagnosed patient - Guide 2: Managing My Cancer is about the care and treatment of kidney cancer patients with metastatic disease. - Guide 3: Caring for My Caregiver is for the people in your life who are helping you. - Guide 4: When Treatment Ends is designed for both patients and their loved ones. Citation Format: Bryan Lewis. [Advocate Abstract:] Kidney cancer incidence levels in minority populations. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the Ninth AACR Conference on the Science of Cancer Health Disparities in Racial/Ethnic Minorities and the Medically Underserved; 2016 Sep 25-28; Fort Lauderdale, FL. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2017;26(2 Suppl):Abstract nr C37.

More Than a Name on the Wall

More Than a Name on the Wall

Heart smart guide for young patients with cardiac devices.

Learning that you have a heart condition can be scary and confusing. The purpose of this patient page is to answer questions you may have about how to confidently manage your condition and your new device. Strategies to help you stay healthy, deal with stress, and return to school and other activities can help you feel more confident. Learning about what to do in different social situations can help you prepare to talk to friends and other people in your life about your device. If you do not find all your answers here, keep asking questions and engage your loved ones in the process. Your cardiac care team can help, along with other key people in your life. The first step in getting used to life with a cardiac device is to get heart smart! Learning about your cardiac disease and your device can go a long way, especially when it comes to improving your confidence. The best way to start this process is to learn about your device and why your care team decided you needed one. Cardiac devices are implanted for a couple of reasons. Devices can be used to stop dangerous heartbeats with a shock or add heartbeats when they are missing or slow. They can also be used to pace a heart out of a dangerous heartbeat (arrhythmia) with small electric signals. Figure. Cardiac devices: a primer for the family, friends, and support team. If you have a pacemaker, you can feel comfortable knowing that your pacemaker will do its job automatically. If you have an implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD), it will also do its job automatically, but you will also want to know what to do if it provides a shock. Another patient page, …

Taking Hold and Letting Go of the Life Ladder

Taking Hold and Letting Go of the Life Ladder

Back to Blackbrick by Sarah Moore Fitzgerald (review)

Reviewed by: Back to Blackbrick by Sarah Moore Fitzgerald Jeannette Hulick Fitzgerald, Sarah Moore . Back to Blackbrick. Simon, 2013. [208p]. Trade ed. ISBN 978-1-4424-8155-8 $15.99 E-book ISBN 978-1-4424-8157-2 $9.99 Reviewed from galleys R Gr. 5-8. Young Cosmo is unwilling to accept that there is no cure for his grandfather's Alzheimer's, and he tries to prime Granddad's memory so that the man can at least stay in his own home. When Granddad gives him a key and a mysterious command to go to the south gates of Blackbrick Abbey, however, Cosmo discovers that maybe there is a way to help his grandfather after all. Entering the gates of Blackbrick, Cosmo is transported back in time and meets Kevin—Granddad as a sixteen-year-old stable boy. Cosmo manages to wangle a temporary job at Blackbrick, and he takes frantic notes about his granddad's past in order to help the old man pass the doctor's memory test in the present. Unfortunately, Cosmo's own existence in that present is placed in jeopardy when he helps Kevin meet up with his crush, Maggie, who is not Cosmo's future grandma. Cosmo finally manages to get back into his own time, his notes do in fact help Granddad pass his memory test, and Granddad [End Page 88] is able to remain in his own home. The book is a thoughtful blend of time travel adventure and family drama, and Cosmo's voice balances wry humor with deeply felt angst over his grandfather's illness ("There are one or two people in your life who should always know who you are. You'll probably never know how important that is unless one of those people starts to forget you"). Fans of gentle fantasies and readers with relatives suffering similar physical challenges will find Cosmo a worthwhile companion. Copyright © 2013 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Ego's important discussants or significant people: an experiment in varying the wording of personal network name generators

Abstract There is considerable disagreement about the best personal network name generator to employ when only a single question is practical. One general approach is to ask the respondents (egos) to delineate the core members (alters) of their personal networks according to affective criteria (e.g., “the most significant people in your life”). Another approach provides more guidance to the egos by asking about alters with whom they have had specific interactions or social exchanges (e.g., “discuss important matters”). Finally, most name generators have been criticized for their preoccupation with positive ties to the exclusion of the difficult or negative relationships that may be an important part of ego's social world. An experiment (2×2 factorial design) was embedded within an interviewer-administered survey of 426 college students to explore the effects on reported network size and composition of (a) varying the delineation criteria (“significant people” or the 1985 General Social Survey (GSS) “important matters”) and (b) including or excluding a probe for negative interactions (“These may include people that sometimes make you angry or upset”). The name-generator wording manipulations produced modest network compositional differences (ego–alter role relationships and discussion topics) that varied by the sex of both egos and their alters. Compared to the “important matters” criterion, the “significant people” generator elicited slightly more cross-sex relatives and fewer same-sex close friends and co-workers from female (but not male) respondents. The negative probe produced some statistically significant but substantively unimportant compositional differences. The results suggest that major differences in name-generator wording may in some situations have little or no effect on reported egocentric networks.

People in Your Life

A scale was developed to assess psychiatric patients' perceptions of the quality and quantity of supportive relationships. The measure's psychometric properties were assessed in an initial study in which 500 subjects (divided between psychiatric patients and nonpatients) completed the 23-item scale. The results showed good subscale alpha coefficients, test-retest reliability, and face and construct validity. Differences in patients' and nonpatients' perceptions of social support were examined. The influence of demographic factors on both groups' responses to the support measure were assessed. In a second study, the support scale's concurrent and predictive validity were tested. Forty-two patients treated in brief, dynamic psychotherapy completed the scale pre- and posttreatment. Patients' perceptions of supportive relationships pretreatment were associated with pretreatment self-report ratings of symptoms and social adjustment and posttreatment changes in social adjustment. Also, posttreatment responses on the support measures were significantly more positive than were pretreatment perceptions of the quantity and quality of social support.

Review of The people in your life: Psychiatry and personal relations.

Review of The people in your life: Psychiatry and personal relations.

The People in Your Life

The People in Your Life

The People in Your Life: Psychiatry and Personal Relations

The People in Your Life: Psychiatry and Personal Relations