Unrealistic expectations have mental health costs

Many Australians are being impacted by their unrealistic expectations of themselves; with a leading Australian psychologist suggesting "unhealthy perfectionism" is resulting in mental health issues.

Professor Tracey Wade of the School of Psychology at Flinders University said some people feel they’re worthless if they fall short of their goals, or make mistakes in attempting to achieve them.

These high standards, combined with brutal self criticism, comes at a significant cost, with Professor Wade saying it is often identified in the sufferers of conditions such as depression, anxiety and even eating disorders.

"There is nothing wrong with perfectionism, which is striving for high standards, but when people get caught in a cycle of self-blame and criticism when those ambitions are not met, and really feel that they are worthless because they have failed, it can be extremely damaging. It can also prevent them seeing that mistakes present an opportunity to learn, which is hugely valuable in itself," Wade said.

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Studying Generosity

Imagine you're dining at a restaurant in a city you're visiting for the first - and, most likely the last - time. Chances are slim to none that you'll ever see your server again, so if you wanted to shave a few dollars off your tab by not leaving a tip, you could do so. And yet, if you're like most people, you will leave the tip anyway, and not give it another thought.

These commonplace acts of generosity - where no future return is likely - have long posed a scientific puzzle to evolutionary biologists and economists. In acting generously, the donor incurs a cost to benefit someone else. But choosing to incur a cost with no prospect of a compensating benefit is seen as maladaptive by biologists and irrational by economists. If traditional theories in these fields are true, such behaviors should have been weeded out long ago by evolution or by self-interest. According to these theories, human nature is fundamentally self-serving, with any "excess" generosity the result of social pressure or cultural conformity.

Recently, however, a team of scientists at UC Santa Barbara conducted a series of computer simulations designed to test whether it was really true that evolution would select against generosity in situations where there is no future payoff. Their work surprisingly shows that generosity - acting to help others in the absence of foreseeable gains - emerges naturally from the evolution of cooperation. This means that human generosity is likely to rest on more than social pressure, and is instead built in to human nature. Their findings appear in the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"When past researchers carefully measured people's choices, they found that people all over the world were more generous than the reigning theories of economics and biology predicted they should be," said Max M. Krasnow, a postdoctoral scholar at UCSB's Center for Evolutionary Psychology, and one of the paper's lead authors. "Even when people believe the interaction to be one-time only, they are often generous to the person they are interacting with."

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You can run but you can not hide

In the middle of India’s anti-corruption agitation fueled by ‘civil society’, one is reminded of the theory of information-blitzing and opinion-building that underwrites the practice. Much of politics, apart from media, marketing, advertising and public relations, runs on these very tracks. We have to invoke Herbert Marshall McLuhan, the famous Canadian professor, who made a considerable impact when he published The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects in 1967. This book was about the effect of different media on the human sensorium. Media, such as TV with its visual content in addition to audio, radio, music on vinyl, even “noise”, were not only “hot” and “cool” on the senses, said Prof McLuhan, but were “extensions” of human personalities, their emotions and thoughts.

Prof McLuhan not only anticipated the ability of the various mediums of communication to witness, record, influence, but actually chronicle the inevitability of change. Through the 1970s, hip media types toted Prof McLuhan’s books around because it was loaded with futuristic phrases such as “global village” and “surfing”, meaning the very same as what we do today with keyboard and mouse, and not what beach boys do at Malibu or Bondi Beach. Prof McLuhan, who died in 1980, also visualised the “world-wide-web”, still called “www” in his very own phrasing, even though the Internet was not even fashionable till the 1990s.

Prof McLuhan anticipated the freedom of information and action the Web would bestow on the ordinary member of the public. Still, he didn’t foresee the ubiquitous cellphone in every pocket, and the apexing and convergence of various abilities on this platform of great portability. In the relatively simple 1960s and 1970s, technologically if not culturally speaking, people were exploring sexual freedom with the advent of the contraceptive pill — minus the scourge of HIV and AIDS. They were also much troubled by the Vietnam War in a time when Left-liberalism, even socialism, in certain quarters was thought to be fashionable.

Any place can be infiltrated, anything can be streamed and/or recorded with spy cameras, on cellphones, or be conveyed, via MMS/SMS message or e-mail, almost simultaneously, with reasonable anonymity. It gives a new meaning to the notion of ‘live’ reporting because this kind does not need the services of a professional journalist, except perhaps to contextualise and distribute the information. No Cabinet meeting, notwithstanding the Ministers’ vow of secrecy, is safe anymore. Besides, 24x7 news channels have ample time and space to give blanket coverage to opposing points of view, and newspapers specialise in merciless analyses.

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Loose link from mental health to homeless

Mental illness is not as big a pathway to homelessness as many believe, a study suggests.

Australian researchers said despite a perception that people with mental disorders are at risk of ending up homeless, most homeless people actually develop disorders after sleeping on the streets.

Factors like family breakdowns and financial difficulties are more likely to contribute to homelessness in Australia.

"Most people when they think of homelessness, they make a connection with mental illness," said Guy Johnson, from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology.

"There's no doubt there's disproportionately high rates of mental illness amongst the homeless population.

"(But) we thought that a number of papers that had estimated the rate had high estimates."

Dr Johnson and Professor Chris Chamberlain examined the case notes of nearly 4300 people living on the streets of inner-city Melbourne.

Their results, released this week, reveal just over 30 per cent had a mental disorder.

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Mental illness is not a convenient excuse

It is little wonder that the stigma surrounding mental illness persists (''Mum's the word'', April 20). Such is the media-cultivated perception of those who suffer from a mental illness that many of my friends struggle to believe I have a bipolar spectrum disorder. Quite simply, because I don't behave like a moron.

Too often when a crime or act of stupidity is committed, a defence of mental illness is proffered.

Most recently, Todd Carney and Anthony Watts from the Sydney Roosters were , respectively, caught drink-driving and charged with assault before their depression was broadcast by media outlets. The same has applied to the actor Matthew Newton, and the footballers Ben Cousins, Andrew Johns, Brendan Fevola and Wayne Carey to name only a few. That these men have become the public faces of depressive-related illnesses is an insult to those who suffer from and battle the dreadful symptoms with dignity. Even more so because it could easily be argued that these celebrities have made choices which create, worsen or exacerbate their respective conditions.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/national/letters/mental-illness-is-not-a-convenient-excuse-20110420-1dp0t.html#ixzz1K5TbfDO3

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Study on Breastfeeding: Mothers seen as less competent

Breastfeeding might be better for babies, but it might be murder on Mom's career.

New research from Montana State University, published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, suggest people hold lower opinions of women who breastfeed.

The researchers conducted three experiments. In one, subjects rated actress Brooke Shields as less competent - but warmer and friendlier - when given biographical information saying she breastfed, rather than bottle-fed, her children.

Another test showed women were judged less competent and not as capable in the workplace after being shown in a magazine advertisement endorsing a breast cream to treat nipples after breastfeeding.

The competence scores for women in the ad were higher when the breast cream was described as a product to "refresh nipples before intimacy" or to treat nipples chafed by jogging.

The third experiment put subjects in a situation where they overheard a woman's voice-mail messages. Some of the messages addressed a situation in which the recipient would go home to breastfeed her baby. Others mentioned the woman going home to give her baby a bath. In another manipulation, meant to sexualize the breast, the message talked about the woman going home to put on a strapless bra. A fourth message was considered neutral.

In the cases where the messages addressed breastfeeding, the woman involved was ranked more negatively.

Significantly, the researchers found no appreciable difference in the way males and females responded in the experiments. All of the subjects were childless.

Breastfeeding rates are higher in Canada than the U.S., but one expert said it's possible a similar bias exists in Canada.

"A lot of the gender research and stereotypes don't show many differences between Canada and the U.S.," said Jennifer Berdahl, a psychology professor with the University of Toronto.

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