| Chapter Guide Topic Guide | Personal Health | Disciplines
Your Complimentary Custom Book |
| |
|
| Chapter: Mental Health and Stress | ||
| Add | 8 pp. | Albee, “The Answer Is Prevention” |
| Top | Albee evaluates the condition of the American mental health community, and his findings are discouraging. Given what little we know about mental health etiology, a concerted prevention effort would be prudent. Furthermore, the prevalence of mental disorders is widespread in America, and effective treatment is unavailable for too many. Reduction of need through primary and secondary prevention is cost-effective, politically wise, and psychologically informed. | |
| Add | 8 pp. | Seligman, “Fall into Helplessness” |
| Martin Seligman created an explanation for human depression based on what he, Maier, and Overmier had learned about learned-helplessness in dogs. Dogs were strapped initially into an apparatus and shocked; they had no escape. Later, these dogs were transported to a second shuttlebox where they were shocked but could escape, but they did not try, that is, the dogs learned to be helpless. Obvious parallels to the listless and passive behaviors symptomatic of reactive human depression were compelling for Seligman. | ||
| Add View | 28 pp. | Rieker: Mental Illness: Framing the Social Problem (Chapter) |
| This chapter is designed to clarify the social context in which mental illness is defined, experienced, and treated. The material is presented within a framework that integrates social and psychological perspectives to show how subjective experiences and emotional processes are determined by a wider social reality. The chapter explores patterns of mental illness by gender, race, ethnicity, social class, age, and sexual preference to demonstrate how singly and in combination these factors interact to form the basis of the social origins of mental illness. The implications of these social patterns for mental health policy are also addressed. | ||
| Add | 12 pp. | Wechsler, “A New Prescription: Mind Over Malady” (Contemporary) |
| Top | Health psychologists and holistic practitioners have contended for decades that a relationship exists between mental states and susceptibility to physical illness. In this article, Rob Wechsler describes a new generation of scientists, calling themselves psychoneuroimmunologists, who are investigating the biochemical link between emotions and the functioning of the immune system. | |
| Add | 7 pp. | Miller, “Rx: Biofeedback” |
| Biofeedback and other forms of behavioral medicine developed from Pavlov’s classical conditioning, Thorndike’s trial-and-error learning, Skinner’s operant conditioning, and, most recently, from behavior therapy. Neal Miller, a historically pre-eminent voice in behavior theory and technology, describes several human biofeedback applications. It is remarkable how individuals can learn (or unlearn) complex behaviors in response to subtle environmental cues. Biofeedback and other behavioral technologies are efficacious adjuncts to biochemicals in the treatment of mental disorders and physical illness. | ||
| Add | 10 pp. | Neese, “What Good Is Feeling Bad” (Contemporary) |
| Psychologists and psychiatrists often spend their careers trying to make people feel better. But if feeling negative emotions is so disagreeable, why do such unpleasant feelings occur so often? In this article, Nesse offers an answer. Using an evolutionary framework, he argues that just as physical pain enables us to avoid injury and tend to our wounds, negative feelings are also highly functional. | ||
| Add | 9 pp. | Women’s Physical and Mental Health — Introductory Essay by Mary K. Zimmerman |
| Top | ||