July 2011

What makes us happy?

kanye-westScientific American has great article written by Sam McNerney on what makes us happy.What makes us happy? Alexis de Tocqueville vs. Kanye West

The article discusses the ingredients essential to happiness. Contrasting what Alexis de Tocqueville’s paradox of choice outlined back in 1835 in the seminal text Democracy in America? with iconic Kanye West’s struggle (despite his fame and success) to find the elusive ingredients and emotional fulfillment.

Kanye’s problem is choice: he simply has too much of it.

This idea is what many call the paradox of choice, where the issues of discontent are perpetuated every time we are given more options.
The assumuption being that more choice means better options and greater satisfaction.

Tocqueville warned us, that there are people like Kanye who still don’t understand that money is not intrinsically fulfilling.

So what does make us happy? What did Toqueville know that Kanye doesn’t know?

Curious?Link to read the article

Source:Scientific American

bitten-fingernails

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Most people worry from time to time. A new research study, led by a Case Western Reserve University faculty member in psychology, also shows that worrying can be so intrusive and obsessive that it interferes in the person’s life and endangers the health of social relationships.

These people suffer from what’s called generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), says Case Western Reserve psychologist Amy Przeworski.

Individuals with GAD frequently put social relationships with family, friends, or coworkers at the top of their lists of worries, but the negative methods they use to cope—from over nurturing to extreme detachment—may be destructive.

Przeworski and colleagues at Penn State University observed that people in therapy for GAD manifested their worries in different ways based on how they interact with other people.

In two studies the researchers found four distinct interactive styles prominent among people with GAD—intrusive, cold, nonassertive and exploitable.

Both studies supported the presence of these four interpersonal styles and their significant role in how people with GAD manifested their worrying.

“All individuals with these styles worried to the same extent and extreme, but manifested those worries in different ways,” Przeworski said.

Take the examples of two people with similar worries about someone’s health and safety. [continue reading…]

The discovery of a link between genetics, age and late-onset dementia could help men identify their risk of developing the disorder later in life.

In research published in the August edition of the journal Neurology, Monash researchers Professor Kim Cornish and Dr Darren Hocking led a team which examined impulsivity, attention and working memory skills of men aged 18 to 69 years, who were all carriers.

Men who are carriers of the FMR1 (Fragile X Mental Retardation 1) gene may be at high risk of developing severe dementia as they age, despite having no obvious symptoms earlier in life.

Fragile X Syndrome is the leading inherited cause of intellectual disability and the most common known genetic cause of autism.
The FMR1 gene occurs in two stages: as a small-medium expansion (carriers) and as a large expansion. Those with the large expansion will have Fragile X Syndrome (FXS) and experience the full effects.
Approximately one in 250 women and one in 800 men will be carriers of the FMR1 gene. For many years, those who carried the gene were assumed to be unaffected by any of the challenges faced by those with FXS.

The men were tested for their ability to phase out irrelevant information as well as actively store short-term information. These core brain functions decline with late-stage dementia.

The research found that carriers of the gene who were at the upper end of the medium expansion were more likely to have problems with inhibition and remembering materials, demonstrating cognitive dementia symptoms, whereas those who had expansions just within the medium range appeared risk-free. [continue reading…]

Depression across countries and cultures

depressed woman

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Depression affects 121 million people worldwide. In can affect a person’s ability to work, form relationships, and destroy their quality of life. At its most severe depression can lead to suicide and is responsible for 850,000 deaths every year. New research published in BioMed Central’s open access journal BMC Medicine compares social conditions with depression in 18 countries across the world.

In conjunction with the World Health Organization World Mental Health (WMH) Survey Initiative, researchers from 20 centers collaborated to investigate the prevalence of depression around the globe. To be classified as having had a Major Depressive Episode (MDE) a person was additionally required to fulfill five out of nine criteria including sadness, loss of interest or pleasure, feelings of guilt or low self-worth, disturbed sleep or appetite, low energy and poor concentration.

Based on detailed interviews with over 89,000 people, the results showed that 15% of the population from high-income countries (compared to 11% for low/middle-income countries) were likely to get depression over their lifetime with 5.5% having had depression in the last year. MDE were elevated in high-income countries (28% compared to 20%) and were especially high (over 30%) in France, the Netherlands, and America. The country with the lowest incidence was China at 12% but, in contrast, MDE were very common in India (at almost 36%).

Some aspects were cross cultural – women were twice as likely to suffer depression as men and the loss of a partner, whether from death, divorce or separation, was a main contributing factor. However the contribution of age varied from country to country. Age of onset of depression was almost two years earlier in low income countries and, while the amount of difficulty a person had with aspects of their life increased with depression and how recent their last attack was, it was more apparent in people from high income countries.

Prof Evelyn Bromet from State University of New York at Stony Brook said, “This is the first study which uses a standardized method to compare depression and MDE across countries and cultures. We have shown that depression is a significant public-health concern across all regions of the world and is strongly linked to social conditions. Understanding the patterns and causes of depression can help global initiatives in reducing the impact of depression on individual lives and in reducing the burden to society.”

Source: Cross-National Epidemiology of DSM-IV Major Depressive Episode
Evelyn Bromet, Laura Helena Andrade, Irving Hwang, Nancy A Sampson, Jordi Alonso, Giovanni de Girolamo, Ron de Graaf, Koen Demyttenaere, Chiyi Hu, Noboro Iwata, Aimee N Karam, Jagdish Kaur, Stanislav Kostyuchenko, Jean-Pierre Lepine, Daphna Levinson, Herbert Matschinger, Maria Elena Medina Mora, Mark Oakley Browne, Jose Posada-Villa, Maria Carmen Viana, David R Williams and Ronald C Kessler BioMed Central Limited