What are teens hoping to feel when they self-harm?

There are few things as disturbing as self-harm, which in extreme can lead to suicide or suicide attempts. Self-harm has many functions and the authors focus on the following two:

A common motivation teenagers give is that non-suicidal self-harm provides a way to escape unpleasant thoughts and emotions. Another motive, little explored before now, is that self-harm is a way to deliberately provoke a particular desired feeling or sensation.

Escape and seek. Escape pain, seek resolution. Pain because adolescents that self-harm are, to simplify, experiencing existential suffering or depressivity and eagerly looking for ways to cope with it. One of those ways is the downward spiral  of depressivity, which revalidates the main causes of depression - this leads to the annulation of the self; the other, is to seek an alternative to the pain that one is feeling, which is, more often than not, hardly meaningful, or impossible to signify - this leads to creative destruction through meaning-making processes.

The most common sensation the teenagers sought was "satisfaction" (45 per cent of them), followed by "stimulation" (31 per cent) and "pain" (24 per cent). 

Excruciating pain, psychological pain, can take many routes in order to be materialised and addressed but I question the meaning of satisfaction that it is attributed to this word. I believe that what is tried to symbolise here is the abject need to seek closure, to diminish activation, to give a sense of control to the experience of existential suffering. 

To seek pain is not in contradiction with seeking satisfaction or stimulation; they seem to be expressions of an experience of pain in the spectrum of making sense of the same pain. Different avenues to signify different aspects of this process of questioning the fabric of which one is made of. 

The meaningful construction of personal sense in the scope of one's identity in the maze of depressivity. This is quite interesting. The  experiencing of self-harm is, no question about it, intrinsic to its author, the individual. So, in that sense, the aggregation of meaning in categories proves to be less than ideal.

For instance, one explanation for the more frequent self-harming observed among those who say they self-harm because they want to experience pain, is that the act triggers pain-relief mechanisms in the brain - a form of euphoria. And yet, self-harming was less frequent among those who said they self-harmed for satisfaction. 

This is why. Contradictions emerge rapidly if the words are used to capture so powerful experiences without consolidating first the narrative constructions and experiential expressions of self-harm in the intersections of the basics of the pain that is experienced. 

Lastly, self-harm is tool, instrument, is expression, is an apparatus of the self to symbolise the need to create...destroying. But it is not the cause that leads to its reinforcement. It isn't cause and consequence but it can further aggravate the main issue, the ontological basic insecurity of the self. 

Here

Superior visual thinking may be key to independence for high schoolers with autism

As with the general population, some of us have specific capacities and abilities to perform in certain areas, whereas others focus their energy and deliver their abilities in different outcomes. This relates to the fact - obvious to everyone - that although we share a common human genome, our differences are very significant. Even identical twins are not bounded to have ASD, as there is a 20% chance that one doesn't have it. 

This leads to the fact that independence is crucial for us to travel our own paths and for some that is easier said than done. Think for a minute about the adolescent with severe social anxiety or that mother that has to care for her children on her own, without any help. Reality can be a very harsh experience.

It seems that for individuals with Autism, now Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), superior visual thinking is proving to be a very big help for high schoolers to achieve and improve their levels of independence. 

"It's clear that teaching independence to students with autism should be a central focus of their activities in high school."

This is of paramount importance because individuals with ASD have a very carved inability to communicate and interact according our socially defined, agreed and learned behaviours. It is like they have failed to learn the same social vocabulary that we did, although I would prefer to put it as an inability to function in the same level of meaning-making that is agreed in determined social contexts.

"When an adolescent with ASD has a pen that runs out of ink, that student may be more likely to wait for prompting from the teacher before asking for a new pen or just finding a new one,"

Given the literal understanding of relations, social interactions and communications, visual schedules can help students to reach higher levels of autonomy by bypassing the need to be prompted by others to act volitionally. The same could be said about Technology - the example of Microsoft's OneNote or Google Drive in schools could bring some interesting analysis. 

"Visual schedules, for instance, allow students with ASD to act independently, because they don't involve verbal prompting from teachers," Hume said. "Visual information that explains what to do also can be useful in home, school, and employment settings, because it eliminates the need for continual monitoring and support."

At the end of the day, for educators, it isn't so much different of adjusting techniques according to the unique individual.

Here

Interventions with Autism Spectrum Disorder: the case of Pivotal Response Training

Interventions for children are often focused on educational and behavioural strategies. Here is the case of Pivotal Response Training, that focus on motivating the child to improve their skills in social communication and interaction. 

The amazing durability of infant memory: Three-year-olds show recognition of a person they met once at age one

We all know that infants have incredible capabilities. For instance, we know that a big percentage of babies emit their first words or meaningful combinations of words around the age of 18 months. However, there is more to babies' abilities than just words, we all know that. 

A study addressed at the BPS Research Digest brings up an interesting but puzzling research study, that I haven't quite been able to put together. 

This article focus on the topic of memory formed by babies on moment A and their retrieval on moment B. 

To maximise the chance of uncovering long-term memory through infancy and into early childhood, the researchers devised a scenario involving many many prompts - what they described as "massive cueing". Kingo and his team first renewed contact with parents and their children who'd taken part in an earlier study when the children were age one. That earlier research involved the infant children interacting with one of two researchers for 45 minutes - either a Scandinavian-Caucasian man or a Scandinavian-African man.

Now two years on, 50 of these parents and children - the latter now aged three - were invited back to the exact same lab (hopefully cueing their earlier memories). Here the children were shown two simultaneous 45-second videos side by side. One video was a recording of the researcher - either the Scandinavian-Caucasian or Scandinavian-African man - interacting with them two years earlier; the other video showed the other researcher (the one they hadn't met) interacting with a different child in the exact same way. The children themselves were not visible in these videos.

The key test was whether the three-year-olds would show a preference for looking at one video rather than the other. Amazingly, the children spent significantly more time looking at the video that featured the researcher they'd never met. This is not due to the children having a bias for either the white or black man, because for some of these children the previously unseen researcher was Scandinavian-African  and for others he was Scandinavian-Caucasian. All background features and behaviours in the videos were identical, so this result provides strong evidence that the children had some recognition of the researcher they'd met, and were drawn more strongly to look at the unfamiliar researcher. 

This conclusion puzzles me. Shouldn't children look at the researcher that they had met two years before, as if they were identifying familiarity in the process of memory retrieval? Why is that looking at the unfamiliar researcher makes the case for the conclusion that the babies had memory of the researcher two years before and therefore were drawn to the unfamiliar researcher?

I believe there is something missing in this puzzle.

How Much Do Parents Determine Their Children’s Success?

The author presents the following main conclusions:

• parents put too much on their short-run comfort and too little on long-run satisfaction. 

• “parents picture kids as clay they mold for life, when they’re actually more like flexible plastic that responds to pressure, but pops back into its original shape when the pressure is released.”

I think the author completely fails to address that the self-other patterns of functioning are tremendously important variables that determine the impact that parents have on their children. Just think for a minute on the cases where parents have anxiogenic patterns of functioning with their children and how that can impact their self-development; or, on the other extreme, parents that teach principles in a robust manner, where the child feels empowered by a vicarious experience that makes sense. 

There is so much to this discussion that the points addressed just feel short of enlightening the questions that they are supposed to answer.

Here

The poor neglected gifted child

A great article on Boston Globe raises the question of delivering the right resources to those who are commonly labeled as gifted, challenging the general assumption that that population already has the Nature in its favor and that they don't need anything else.

“It’s difficult to introduce stratification into the system without introducing inequality in how people get into those stratifications,”

On the other had, in addressing this issue, it should be made clear that without continuing to pursue the lower end of spectrum, the system leads to deeper inequality. Therefore, the question to be discussed here is the one of exploring and stimulating the potential of every student according to his own contextual factors. It is only through this route that the top will become larger and bottom will become smaller.

Here

Late Sunday Reading

Some really nice gems from around the web. 

Drowned in a Stream of Prescriptions: psychopathologizing the human being. 

When did life itself become a treatable mental disorder? Idem

Where The World Lives, By Latitude [Infographic]

I still love Kierkegaard: He is the dramatic thunderstorm at the heart of philosophy and his provocation is more valuable than ever

Portugal é um dos melhores países do mundo para se ser mãe (in Portuguese): Portugal is one of the best countries to be a mother. Yes, ahead of Canada, the US and others. The report is here.

Change is good by Thomas Hawk, a well known photographer. An analysis about the intersection between the social narratives and technology. I don't agree completely but there are some really good points here. 

On the road: Leaving LA? Forget the scenic route along the coast: hit the Five instead and see what’s on California’s mind

Late Sunday reading

Or maybe for the week. :)

A 75-Year Harvard Study Finds What It Takes To Live A Happy Life: it's all about the love and your relationships.

Consciousness After Death: Strange Tales From the Frontiers of Resuscitation Medicine: what is death? When do you become dead?

How Ray Kurzweil Will Help Google Make the Ultimate AI Brain: living in intersections.

Arriving at Auschwitz, October 4, 1944: From the Diary of Helga Weiss: History will never forget. 

Helga's Diary: Holocaust survivor Helga Weiss relives her story (video)

In the dark: Dark matter is the commonest, most elusive stuff in the universe. Can we grasp this great unsolved problem in physics?

Exploring the therapeutic effects of yoga and its ability to increase quality of life

LIfe: just a thought

If you want to get somewhere in life, no one is going to do the pushing for you. You have to push yourself.

Anonymous.

Sunday reading

Silicon Is the New Ivy: is Stanford the Harvard of the 21st century? The catalyst power of universities. 

Eighth grader designs standardized test that slams standardized tests: she says it all. 

Man Brilliantly Quits His Job to Pursue Dream Job With Resignation Letter Written on a Cake: creativity and passion.

News is bad for you – and giving up reading it will make you happier: my take? Be conscious of the filter through which you're seeing reality. 

20 of the best bargain beach holidays for 2013: Portugal, of course.

There is no mental illness (or maybe there is)

Mad, or bad? : Even in the decade of dissent, Thomas Szasz stood alone when he attacked the concept of madness from the political right

The case of Szasz. Read it carefully.

The end of sleep?

Following other posts (here and here) about sleep and all that it entails, here's an excellent article on the illusion and trendable movement towards living without sleeping, kind of.

The end of sleep?: New technologies are emerging that could radically reduce our need to sleep - if we can bear to use them

Content citizens

Tao Te Ching by Stephen Mitchell

Reading suggestion

Another great piece about this that makes us humans. 

This is humankind: if my grandfather could survive the Siege of Leningrad and still distinguish between a German and a Nazi, then so can I

Liver disease in Canada: a crisis in the making

Here's a very interesting report on liver disease for the period of 2000-2007 in Canada.

Some striking figures:

The costs of treatment of liver disease are high. A course of treatment for hepatitis C may cost $20,000-70,000 depending on the subtype of the virus (genotype). Treatment of hepatitis B may cost between $7,000-9,000/year for 10-20 years or more. Drug treatment for hepatocellular carcinoma costs $6,000/month. Liver transplantation costs upwards of $100,000 per case with ongoing costs for medical care and immunosuppressive drugs.

Just a different perspective about austerity

Actually, is a lot smarter than that. And I love the Scottish accent. :)

Sunday reading

Here is a good selection - I'm biased, of course - of some really interesting articles on different topics.

An instant cure: The latest edition of the psychiatrists’ manual has decided that my personality disorder is not so bad after all.

Voices from Solitary: A Sentence Worse Than Death: I have served a sentence worse than death.

Don't worry - an anxiety wheel of misfortunate

This wheel of worry, violently copied from the last Brain pickings newsletter, explains how one individual organized his circadian states of anxiety. I find the wheel type of presenting the focus of anxiety during the day as a powerful instrument to reflect upon how we live our emotional states. 

There also a nice quote:

We should make ourselves stop trying to explain our own difficulties. Our first impulse is to try to account for them, figure out why what has happened. Sometimes such an effort is beneficial: more often it is distinctly harmful. It leads to introspection, self-pity, and vain regret; and almost invariably it creates within us a dangerous mood of confusion and despair. Many of life’s hard situations cannot be explained. They can only be endured, mastered, and gradually forgotten. Once we learn this truth, once we resolve to use all our energies managing life rather than trying to explain life, we take the first and most obvious step toward significant accomplishment.

My questions are:

• although it makes sense that we probably can't explain everything, we are lead to think that we should. Is that positive? Does it have to be explained as being positive or negative? Probably just a sign that we need to make sense of ourselves. 
• do we have to start to reason before we understand why a specific emotional state dominates us? What is anxiety and what are the emotions that characterize the way we position ourselves toward the Others, the World?
• Is this quote based on the assertion that thoughts are our experiences? There's no cognitive mark when experiencing events that have a significant impact; there's a bodily experience that modifies our emotional state, which we will use to create meaning of a specific event but also about ourselves, the fabric of our being. 

Sunday reading

Here is a good selection - I'm biased, of course - of some really interesting articles on different topics.

From the New York Times

Looking for a Lesson in Google’s Lavish Perks

Is There Life After Work?

Living With Less. A Lot Less.

And the Aeon Magazine

The science of love

Walking on oil

Losing my voice

Enjoy! 

A pedir numa rua de uma cidade canadiana

Hoje vi um senhor com cartaz, a pedir. A pedir numa das ruas principais de Kingston, no Canadá. A pedir. Não é o primeiro, não será o último. Se fechasse bem os olhos, diria que estava algures num país pobre ou mais pobre do que o Canadá. Afinal de contas, todos os indicadores apresentam melhorias significativas relativamente ao ano passado, crescimento económico, qualidade de vida, enfim, basta olhar para eles.

Contudo, cada vez mais me apercebo da elevada disfuncionalidade que grassa nesta sociedade. Uma camada rasteirinha, que vive de subsídios e completamente encostada ao chão, totalmente ausente da sociedade. Uma classe média baixa que vive de part-time toda uma vida ou ainda um grupo de pessoas que fazem dos trabalhos relief, que mais não são do que trabalho temporário com uma pitada de fantasia, o auxílio para as despesas. Dessa forma, aniquilados numa qualidade de vida reservada a grupos da sociedade que fazem o seu trabalho das 8 às 5, sobrevivem. Fazem aleluia a um país fantástico. Por necessidade, por quererem acreditar, por não poderem mudar. Um sinal, importante.