HOME |
RSS | 
The Brothers McLeod have a series of videos called The Existential Pleading of the Inner Heart. This installment, Fear of Flying, continues the musings on everyday anxiety with a particular focus on flying. -Thanks, Myles!
Got pre-test jitters? The solution to clearing a panicky student’s mind before taking a test is actually quite easy: just have them write about it:
Students who were prone to test anxiety improved their test scores by nearly one grade point after they were given 10 minutes to write about what was causing them fear, the researchers found.
The exercise likely gave tense students an outlet for their anxieties before the test, and as such, freed up brainpower that had been tied up with worrying, explained the study’s senior author Sian Beilock, an associate professor in psychology at the University of Chicago.
Comments Off
The secret to happiness doesn’t come from thinking happy thoughts … it comes from thinking happy thoughts fast.
Here’s what researchers at Princeton and Harvard universities found:
Results suggested that thinking fast made participants feel more elated, creative and, to a lesser degree, energetic and powerful. Activities that promote fast thinking, then, such as whipping through an easy crossword puzzle or brain-storming quickly about an idea, can boost energy and mood, says psychologist Emily Pronin, the study’s lead author.
Pronin notes that rapid-fire thinking can sometimes have negative consequences. For people with bipolar disorder, thoughts can race so quickly that the manic feeling becomes aversive. And based on their own and others’ research, Pronin and a colleague propose in another recent article that although fast and varied thinking causes elation, fast but repetitive thoughts can instead trigger anxiety.
Why? The researchers think that "thinking quickly may unleash the brain’s novelty-loving dopamine system, which is involved in sensations of pleasure and reward."
Come to think of it, reading Neatorama should trigger the same novelty-loving dopamine system and thus make you all feel happier!
Think a baby is too young to be depressed? Think a again. A new study out of the University of Montreal in Quebec suggests a strong link between depression in mothers and anxiety and depression in infants and toddlers:
The longitudinal study of 1759 children, ranging in age from 5 months to 5 years, found that 15% of study participants had unduly high symptoms of depression and anxiety and that these children were more likely to have mothers with a history of depression. The study also found that difficult temperament at 5 months was the most important predictor of depression and anxiety in children.
“As early as the first year of life, there are indications that some children have more risks than others of developing high levels of depression and anxiety. We also found that these symptoms increase in frequency during the first 5 years of life,” one of the authors, Sylvana Côté, PhD, from the Université de Montréal in Quebec, told Medscape Psychiatry.
