Home Archives for July 2016

Saturday, July 16, 2016

Hypnic Jerk

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Didn't you ever feel while sleeping that you are falling from a high place or falling?!

 it could be that it felt like you were having a huge muscle spasm. You may have even felt a small shock sensation or a bouncing feeling.
During the most dream-filled phase of sleep, our muscles become paralyzed, preventing the body from acting out what's going on in the brain


actually,what you've experienced is called "Hypnic Jerk".It’s estimated that around 70% of people experience hypnic jerks at some point in their lives. I know I definitely have.
But what is hypnic Jerk exactly ??!
During this transitional state, the sleeping mechanism usually wins, but the wakeful one sometimes puts up a fight. “One of the things that happens as you fall asleep is your muscles relax, but the awake part may still be stimulating enough that it will temporarily overreact and you get this jerk of muscle activity,” he says. And for reasons that are unclear, it’s sometimes accompanied by an image.
Are hypnic jerks thing to worry about ?!
Hypnic jerks are nothing to worry about. If one wakes you up, simply roll over and go back to sleep. But keep in mind: a high caffeine intake, strenuous evening activities, emotional stress, or sleep deprivation may increase the frequency and intensity of hypnic jerks. If you suspect that one of these factors may be worsening your nighttime muscle twitches, try cutting back on caffeine, usingrelaxation techniques to help you decompress, or practicing better sleep hygiene. And if the jerks themselves
Some people report that hypnic jerks happen as they dream they are falling or tripping up. This is an example of the rare phenomenon known as dream incorporation, where something external, such as an alarm clock, is built into your dreams. When this does happen, it illustrates our mind's amazing capacity to generate plausible stories. In dreams, the planning and foresight areas of the brain are suppressed, allowing the mind to react creatively to wherever it wanders - much like a jazz improviser responds to fellow musicians to inspire what they play.
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Monday, July 4, 2016

What is Paranoia it's Causes , signs , Effects and Way of treating ?

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What is Paranoia?

Paranoia involves intense anxious or fearful feelings and thoughts often related to persecution, threat, or conspiracy. Paranoia occurs in many mental disorders, but is most often present in psychotic disorders. Paranoia can become delusions, when irrational thoughts and beliefs become so fixed that nothing (including contrary evidence) can convince a person that what they think or feel is not true. When a person has paranoia or delusions, but no other symptoms (like hearing or seeing things that aren't there), they might have what is called a delusional disorder.  Because only thoughts are impacted, a person with delusional disorder can usually work and function in everyday life, however, their lives may be limited and isolated.

What is can Paranoia do to you?

Paranoia makes the patient very afraid of everything of his wife , manager , son , friend ,father even his mobile and the doctor.
The Paranoia patient won't admit that he is ill.
The Paranoia patient may also be threat to his family and his close friends.
The patient will be also doubted in everything.

What is the causes of Paranoia?

The cause of paranoia is a breakdown of various mental and emotional functions involving reasoning and assigned meanings. The reasons for these breakdowns are varied and uncertain. Some symptoms of paranoia relate to repressed, denied or projected feelings. Often, paranoid thoughts and feelings are related to events and relationships in a person's life, thereby increasing isolation and difficulty with getting help.

Social and environmental

Social circumstances appear to be highly influential on paranoid beliefs. Based on data collected by means of a mental health survey distributed to residents of Ciudad Juárez (Mexico) and El Paso (Texas), paranoid beliefs seem to be associated with feelings of powerlessness and victimization, enhanced by social situations. Potential causes of these effects included a sense of believing in external control, and mistrust which can be strengthened by lower socioeconomic status. Those living in a lower socioeconomic status may feel less in control of their own lives. In addition, this study explains that females have the tendency to believe in external control at a higher rate than males, potentially making females more susceptible to mistrust and the effects of socioeconomic status on paranoia.
Emanuel Messinger reports that surveys have revealed that those exhibiting paranoia can evolve from parental relationships and dis-trustworthy environments. These environments could include being very disciplinary, stringent, and unstable. It was even noted that, "indulging and pampering (thereby impressing the child that he is something special and warrants special privileges)," can be contributing backgrounds. Experiences likely to enhance or manifest the symptoms of paranoia include increased rates of disappointment, stress, and a hopeless state of mind.
Discrimination has also been reported as a potential predictor of paranoid delusions. Such reports that paranoia seemed to appear more in older patients that had experienced higher levels of discrimination throughout their lives. In addition to this it has been noted that immigrants are quite susceptible to forms of psychosis. This could be due to the aforementioned effects of discriminatory events and humiliation.

Physical

A paranoid reaction may be caused from a decline in brain circulation as a result of high blood pressure or hardening of the arterial walls.
Based on data obtained by the Dutch NEMISIS project in 2005, there was an association between impaired hearing and the onset of symptoms of psychosis, which was based on a five-year follow up. Some older studies have actually declared that a state of paranoia can be produced in patients that were under a hypnotic state of deafness. This idea however generated much skepticism during its time.

The Relationship between Violence and Paranoia

It has generally been agreed upon that individuals with paranoid delusions will have the tendency to take action based on their beliefs. More research is needed on the particular types of actions that are pursued based on paranoid delusions. Some researchers have made attempts to distinguish the different variations of actions brought on as a result of delusions. Wessely et al. (1993) did just this by studying individuals with delusions of which more than half had reportedly taken action or behaved as a result of these delusions. However, the overall actions were not of a violent nature in most of the informants. The authors note that other studies such as one by Taylor (1985), have shown that violent behaviors were more common in certain types of paranoid individuals, mainly those with a history of being offensive such as prisoners.

Other researchers have found associations between childhood abusive behaviors and the appearance of violent behaviors in psychotic individuals. This could be a result of their inability to cope with aggression as well as other people, especially when constantly attending to potential threats in their environment.The attention to threat itself has been proposed as one of the major contributors of violent actions in paranoid people, although there has been much deliberation about this as well.Other studies have shown that there may only be certain types of delusions that promote any violent behaviors, persecutory delusions seem to be one of these.
Having resentful emotions towards others and the inability to be able to understand what other people are feeling seem to have an association with violence in paranoid individuals. This was based on a study of paranoid schizophrenic's (one of the common mental disorders that exhibit paranoid symptoms) theory of mind capabilities in relation to empathy. The results of this study revealed specifically that although the violent patients were more successful at the higher level theory of mind tasks, they were not as good at being able to interpret others feelings.

What are the Signs of Paranoia?

Symptoms of paranoia and delusional disorders include intense and irrational mistrust or suspicion, which can bring on sense of fear, anger, and betrayal. Some identifiable beliefs and behaviors of individuals with symptoms of paranoia include mistrust, hypervigilence, difficulty with forgiveness, defensive attitude in response to imagined criticism, preoccupation with hidden motives, fear of being deceived or taken advantage of, inability to relax, or are argumentative.
A popular symptom of paranoia is the attribution bias. These individuals typically have a biased perception of the world often exhibiting more hostile beliefs.A paranoid person may view someone else's accidental behavior as though it is with intent or threatening.
An investigation of a non-clinical paranoid population found that feeling powerless and depressed, isolating oneself, and relinquishing activities are characteristics that could be associated with those exhibiting more frequent paranoia. Some scientists have created different subtypes for the various symptoms of paranoia including erotic, persecutory, litigious, and exalted.

How are Paranoia and Delusions Treated?

Treatment of paranoia is usually via medication and cognitive behavioral therapy. The most important element in treating paranoia and delusional disorder, is building a trusting and collaborative relationship to reduce the impact of irrational fearful thoughts and improving social skills. It can be difficult to treat a person with paranoia since symptoms result in increased irritability, emotionally guardedness, and possible hostility. Often times, progress on paranoid delusions and especially delusional disorder is slow. Regardless of how slow the process, recovery and reconnection is possible.
But there is an new way to treat or reduce Paranoia by using Virtual Reality

'Paranoia melts away'

This group, who fully tested out their fears, showed the biggest reduction in their paranoid delusions. More than half of them no longer had severe paranoia at the end of the testing day.
The first group, who used their defences, also saw some reduction in the level of severe paranoia.
The study was led by Prof Daniel Freeman, a clinical psychologist at Oxford University's Department of Psychiatry. He told me: "At the heart of paranoia is the unfounded belief that people are under threat.
"With virtual reality we can help the person to re-learn that they are safe, and when they do that, the paranoia melts away."



VR
Image captionToby experiences the VR with the help of researchers at Oxford University

The Oxford team estimate that around 1-2% of the population have severe paranoia at some point in their lives, typically associated with a mental health disorder such as schizophrenia.

References

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