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Well, what else would you call an emo elephant? And he’ll never forget his angst, either. Link
This time-lapse video shows the changing moods of people in America over the course of a day, as ascertained by emotional keywords that they use on Twitter. It was created by computer scientist Alan Mislove at Northeastern University in Boston:
Mislove speculates that a signal shines though because the sheer abundance of data means that occasional misinterpretations are lost in the crowd. Bryan Routledge at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, agrees. With colleagues, he recently used a similarly simple analysis of words in tweets to determine whether Twitter mirrors conventional opinion polls. “The volume is massive, so the subtle stuff kind of washes out,” he says.
Because Twitter data is publicly available, Routledge says mood can be sampled more quickly, simply and cheaply than using traditional polling tools – albeit more crudely.
Steven Gray at University College London, who also crowdsources data through Twitter, agrees. For all of the problems with decoding the data, “Twitter offers researchers a unique, live data set that changes by the minute”, he says.
Link via Geekosystem | Project Website | Previously: Tweet Sleeve: Wear Your Emotions on Your Sleeve
Do you wear your emotions on your sleeve? Well, with Vanessa Sorenson’s Tweet Sleeve, you can do that a bit more literally. This gadget searches for keywords in your most recent tweets to gauge your mood and then displays that mood on the sleeve of a hoodie.
Link via technabob | Video | Designer’s Blog | Image: Fashioning Tech
Matt Kaplan writes in National Geographic about a new study that suggests a link between a person’s olfactory sensitivity and awareness of the emotions of other people. Denise Chen of Rice University in Texas led the research process:
Women have a more uniform sense of smell than men, and are also thought to be more sensitive to emotional cues.
So Chen and graduate student Wen Zhou presented 22 pairs of young women living in university dormitories with identical t-shirts to sleep in.
After being worn for one night, the t-shirts were later presented to the same women to smell.
Each woman was given three t-shirts and informed that one of the shirts had been worn by her roommate, and that the other two had been worn by other university students.
The subjects were asked to identify the shirt that had been worn by their roommate.
The women then took a series of recognized emotional-sensitivity tests.
Subjects who correctly selected the t-shirt worn by their roommates tended to score high on the emotional tests.
Link | Photo: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
Being a depression sufferer myself, I find it interesting and inspiring to see people deal with their chronic depression. I love seeing what people can do with their lives, despite the agonizing pain they have had to cope with. While we probably all know about Heath Ledger and Kurt Cobain, there are plenty of surprising celebrities with depression, like Harrison Ford. A few others you may not have know about include the five stars below.
In an interview during 60 Minutes, Mr. Carrey revealed that the inspiration behind his funny-man antics was “desperation.” Like many famous comics, Carrey channeled his emotional pain and scarring into humor. The laughter and attention brought from audiences helps ease the depression comedians feel and soothes their pain.
Carrey’s attention getting antics started when he tried to entertain his sick mother. To get her spirits up, he’d do anything from impressions to rolling down the stairs. When he was young, he grasped on to an optimistic dream of making it big. In 1987, he wrote himself a check for ten million dollars “for acting services rendered.” As it turns out, the check was a massive underestimate of what he ended up making when he cashed the check 1995. As financial worries lessened, so did his depression symptoms. He has since learned to better cope with his sadness and he says the valleys and peaks have gradually smoothed out a bit. While he used to take Prozac to help stabilize his mood, he now focuses on treatment through spirituality and clean living.
Sources: one, two & three Photo by IBWK [Flickr]
“If a really good comedian isn’t depressed,” says Bob Saget, “something’s wrong.” Rodney Dangerfield is no exception to this rule. Around the end of his life, he attended regular therapy sessions with his psychiatrist and took around 137 prescription drugs a day, including anti-depressants and Valium.
Rodney’s father abandoned the family when he was a child and he was instead raised by a cold-hearted mother.
He found an outlet in writing jokes, and even remembers the first one. At age 4, Dangerfield finished dinner and whined, “I’m still hungry.”
“You’ve had sufficient,” replied his mom.
“But,” said Rodney, “I didn’t even have any fish.”
He has had wild mood swings throughout his career and tried to escape the pain and suffering in every way imaginable, including prostitutes and drugs. His wife helped pull him through to the end, but he still experienced these problems until the end of his days.
Source Photo by Breakfast For Dinner [Flickr]
J.K. Rowling will be the first to tell you about the hardships of being a single parent. In fact, in her darkest hour, she strongly contemplated suicide while suffering from a massive bout of depression. She missed her ex-husband and worried about finances, that’s when the dark thoughts started coming out. Fortunately, her daughter was there to inspire her to seek treatment:
“Mid-twenties life circumstances were poor and I really plummeted,” said Rowling. “The thing that made me go for help . . . was probably my daughter. She was something that earthed me, grounded me, and I thought, this isn’t right, this can’t be right, she cannot grow up with me in this state.”
Rowling opted too treat her depression with cognitive therapy rather than anti-depressants. This type of therapy seeks to cure the emotional problem, rather than treating it. The therapy involves a series of counseling sessions providing the sufferer with the mental tools to cope with their emotions. Rowling has been very forthright about her disorder in the hope she can help remove the stigma associated with mental illnesses.
Many people already know about Owen Wilson’s depression. After all, his attempted suicide took over all the tabloid headlines at their local grocery stores two years ago. But, you may still be wondering why.
The fact is, like millions of other Americans, Wilson is clinically depressed and will be throughout his lifetime. He has been battling depression by taking anti-depressants for years, however, breaking up with Kate Hudson pushed him beyond the effects of his medication and made him feel hopeless. While it has been debated whether Wilson was taking cocaine or heroin around this time, the fact is that either way, a major life change can dramatically endanger a depression sufferer.
Sources: one & two Photo by Smellmoregloves’ [Flickr]
Mrs. Shields is a perfect example of how beauty does not equal happiness. While not a lifelong depression sufferer, she has been very vocal about her experience with postpartum depression, an illness experienced by 13% of pregnant women and new mothers. Her book “Down Came The Rain” describes her experiences in detail.
Like many postpartum depression sufferers, she experienced a detachment from her baby daughter and self-destructive thoughts. At her lowest point, Brooke says she wanted to jump out of a window and throw the baby against a wall. Brooke began taking Paxil to cope with her emotions and eventually recovered. She now has a very close relationship with her daughter.
After being criticized by Tom Cruise for her use of anti-depressants, Brooke published an essay in the “New York Times” detailing the need for global recognition of postpartum depression and the use of anti-depressants for treatment.
Source Photo by WatchWithKristin [Flickr]
