Chapter 15 First Impression

There are a vast amount of different therapies that have been developed to help individuals overcome different mental illnesses. Many of these therapies can be broken down into four different categories, these categories being psychodynamic, behavioral, cognitive, and humanistic. If I were to rank these types of therapies for myself, they would go as follows: Humanistic, cognitive, behavioral, and psychodynamic. I think that humanistic would be the best choice for me because this is a therapy that is developed around the patient and is designed to help better the patient. The only downside of this method is that it is more focused in the patent becoming more accepting of themselves rather than them trying to change their actions if they are capable of doing so.

Cognitive therapy is designed to help the recipient to develop better ways of thinking about negative situations so they are less likely to be as severely affected. A drawback that I could foresee arising from this particular therapy is that it focuses more on how other people interact with you and how you interpret what they are saying, but does not take into account you being critical and criticizing yourself. There is not enough focus on helping alleviate self critcal thinking.

Behavioral therapy is focused on stopping negative behaviors. Although this can be helpful for individuals who tend to perform acts that may harm themselves or others, it does not discuss or put focus on why these acts are performed, but is more focused on stopping the behavior altogether.

Psychodynamic therapies help rid the patients of repressed memories and stress that may have caused them to develop a mental illness. The downside to this approach is that it does not focus on the conscious mind.

Media Production

For a significant amount of time, individuals of all ages have stated that the mobile phone has had more of a negative impact on our society than it has a positive one. But, are there any signs that this is actually the case? Many scientists with numerous and diversity backgrounds in different fields of study set out to see if there was any truth behind these beliefs or if they were just people not adapting to the shift in technology.

The particular study that I have investigated, was a study conducted to see whether or not phone usage could cause a decline in the user’s mental capacity. Although experimenting with such a touchy and quite frankly an unethical subject, so the researchers decided to see if they could find any correlation between the way an individual uses a cell phone and a decline in memory by splitting individuals into groups by the way they use their cell phones, and see if there was any variance between these groups. The criteria they used to organize these groups were as follows: which side they hold their phone up to when they are making a call, if they used hands-free devices, and how long they tend to use their devices at a given time.

The results from the experiments that they had conducted, showed that there was a correlation between individuals who made calls on the right sides of their heads and a decline in mental capacity. The study also found that individuals who just used their phones to send texts, play games, or browsing the internet did not show any adverse effects to their memory.

Reflection: Throughout the time that I took writing this post on the particular article that I had read, I made sure that I kept the five critical questions in the back of my mind to help pull the article apart. This article tried to convey the information that was outlined within the study without going into too much detail. It may be understandable to quickly summarize the main points within a research report but I think that the journalist may have been able to strengthen this piece by providing a bit more information from the research report. However, they did make sure to provide a link to the original publication, which I found extremely helpful to understand the nature of the research that was completed.

https://www.euronews.com/2018/07/23/new-study-reveals-smartphone-use-may-affect-teenagers-memory

Chapter 14 First Impression

For this Chapter, I decided to inspect the Change Direction website. Throughout the website they have different campaigns that they have either organized or endorsed that helped raise awareness when it comes to mental health issues.

Overall, I believe that this campaign can be very successful. Not only are they trying to send a great message, as well as offer help to individuals who are struggling with different mental illnesses, they are also doing a wonderful job in raising awareness with these different events. Although this movement isn’t very large at the moment, it is starting to gain a very large amount of momentum. The campaign was started with around 50 partners in 2013 and currently has 700 partners located all around the world. I think the largest strength of this campaign is that they are very active when it comes to social media and trying to reach the largest audience that they are capable of. The biggest drawback in my opinion is that they are not gaining enough traction globally and seems as if they are strongly focused on growth within the United States.

I believe that college students are most likely going to be the largest demographic that this campaign is going to reach. This is because many students are aware of other students or loved ones who may be struggling with a particular mental illness and also due to the fact that they are so involved and active on social media.

If Etown were to organize an awareness campaign on this particular issue, I believe they would be able to set time aside to host talks to raise awareness, but could also have the means to provide different services to help students feel comfortable talking about these issues, whether it be opening up to friends so they can provide help, or the individual seeking out professional assistance themselves.

Chapter 13 First Impression

After taking all four of the tests that were provided, I was not very surprised with the results that I have received. For several of the tests I received similar, or basically identical results that I had received from personality tests which I had taken previously.

I believe that the results I received from most of these tests fairly accurately categorize the type of personality that I have. For example, several of the tests showed that I have a very small small percentage of my personality is slightly more extroverted. This to me is probably one of the most accurate traits that are highlighted throughout these tests because I thoroughly enjoy interacting with people frequently, but I also enjoy having some time to myself and decompressing.

The test with the least amount of credibility in my opinion is obvious, this test being the color quiz. I find it very hard to believe that this test is able to accurately measure what personality traits that you have by just selecting two rounds of colors in different orders. I believe the next three tests are fairly similar when it comes to credibility, but the big five test being slightly less credible than the other two because it is not as in depth as the other two tests.

Chapter 9 First Impression

Although Governor Miller may have had some very good intentions with the introduction of the program to supply parents of newborn children with CD’s or cassette tapes housing classical music, I do not believe that this was a very good decision on his part.

There may have been some evidence to support the Mozart effect at the time, but I do not believe that there was enough evidence given for Governor Miller to spend some of his budget on a theory that did not have a very large amount of evidence supporting it. Not only was this an issue, but even if there was fairly significant evidence supporting this theory, it did not mean that the parents would utilize the tapes or CD’s that they were sent. Therefor, may of the tapes and CD’s would go unused and the money spent on this project would most likely be more effective if it were spent elsewhere.

Chapter 11 First Impression

Stress management is absolutely crucial in most people’s everyday lives. This holds especially true for college students who are often sleep deprived and have to abide by very strict deadlines when it comes to assignments and testing.

To be truthful, during school I do not have a set tactic when it comes to managing my stress levels. I often try to keep a level head when work starts to pile on during the middle of the semester or I am tasked with a large work load. The largest tactic I employ on a regular basis would most likely be stepping back when I start to get stressed, take some deep breaths and break up my schedule in a way that makes it seem like I have less work than what I actually do.

I believe that if I were to incorporate more stress management activities I would most likely incorporate hiking into my schedule. I believe hiking is an extremely good stress management activity because not only are you able to go out and clear your head by surrounding yourself with nature, but the natural beauty of the sights that you see whilst going on hikes can be somewhat soothing as well which may improve your mood as a whole. I think this is an activity I could realistically incorporate into my schedule because you do not have to take an extremely long hike to experience the calming effects, and there are a large amount of interesting trails near Elizabethtown and near my hometown as well.

Chapter 10 First Impression

To start off chapter 10 I decided to take the emotional intelligence quiz. I received a 14 out of 20 on the quiz, which was quite a bit worse than I had expected to receive initially. I usually find that I am able to read other’s moods fairly easily and is why this score came as somewhat of a surprise to me. I believe that the test is fairly credible, but it seems as if the individuals who organized the material for the test tried to purposefully throw some of the test takers off by including several emotions that looked so similar, many individuals would not be able to tell that they were different emotions based solely on the very small differences.

Throughout the test, there were several emotions that stood out compared to the rest which were outlined in the test. Two of the emotions that stood out the most for me were disgust and happiness. However, as I had stated previously there were quite a few pictures that were almost identical which made identifying the emotion they were representing very difficult. These photos were mainly comprised of emotions of affection.

I can use the information I received from this test almost every day whilst I am working. Whilst at work, I converse with numerous customers and being able read someone’s body language and facial expression to gauge what type of mood they are in is crucial. Taking this test has further solidified my ability to read facial expressions and accurately assess what emotions a person, or people are experiencing at a given time.

Chapter 3 First Impression

College students absolutely have some of the worst sleep habits out of almost any group of individuals that you could imagine. Many students will attest to the difficulty of being able to balance a good night’s sleep, completing assignments on time, and keeping a social life. I often find myself deprived of sleep, especially during the school year. However, even when I make it home on summer break, it is extremely difficult to find a way to get back into a normal sleep schedule. Currently I would say that my sleep habits are extremely unhealthy. I often have to wake up fairly early to make sure that I have ample time to get myself ready for work. After I work most of the day, I tend to work on my course work for several hours on end, usually into late hours of night or the earlier hours of morning. Following the completion of my work, I usually enjoy watching TV for a short while to help myself relax and get ready for bed. Utilizing this schedule, it is nearly impossible for me to get around 8 hours of sleep and sometimes I may even struggle to get 6 hours of sleep.

I would say a realistic amount of sleep for myself would be within a range of 6-7 hours of sleep, depending the night. I think some of the ways I would be able to improve my sleeping habits would be to manage my time a bit better so that I will be able to finish my course assignments earlier than usual which would give me more time to rest. I also think that I should attempt to prohibit myself from staying up past a certain time so I will be able to set a sleep schedule for myself, which will also give me more time to sleep.

Chapter 8 First Impression

I will be one of the first people to admit that my study habits are most definitely not the most effective. I tend to get distracted fairly easily when I am trying to study for tests, so this makes it somewhat difficult to retain the information that I am trying to study. However, the times that I decide that I truly need to sit down and give my material my undivided attention, I make sure that I turn off most of my electronics to reduce any unnecessary distractions. Other times, I make sure that I put headphones in and either play music very softly or I may not even play music at all just so I can block out any loud noises that may be occurring outside. This would have to be one of the strongest parts of my studying, until something inevitably breaks my concentration

I would say one of the things that I do best whilst studying, is know the different terms that are important on the test because I make sure that I go through and re-read the notes that I have taken, and the material within the book. One of the things I struggle with is making sure that I do some of the practice problems or tests that are provided to help us study.

For the first test, I almost exclusively went back over the notes that I had taken. I had only briefly looked over the material outlined within the book, and I only took one of each practice test. For the next test, I would like to not only go back over the notes that I had taken previously, but I would also like to do more of the practice tests and also make sure that I read over the material within the book several times as well.