Perhaps You Hear this Often, but still, Is She Fatter or Am I Fatter?

The matter with the question is that people often compare themselves, in this case their body sizes, with those of other people. This objective of this blog post is to relate mental health, specifically mentality, with epdiet habits.

Nicholas Christakis, a professor, physician, and sociologist at the prestigious Harvard University, stress just how strongly societal factors mentally shape our perception of body image, and emotionally build and influence us to be personally either content, or dissatisfied with our physique. People around us will constantly change the height of the bar, causing the standards of how a healthy, acceptable body image should be, to fluctuate. Christakis says, "What's spreading from person to person is not a behaviour, but rather a norm. An idea is spreading."

Statistics from Christakis' research to exemplify how scary environmental factors can be:
1) If your friend's are obese, your risk of obesity is 45% higher.
2) If your friend's friends are obese, your risk of obesity is 25% higher.
3) If your friend's friend's friends are obese, someone you probably don't know (yet), your risk of obesity is 10% higher.
4) Only when you get to your friend's friend's friend's friends, that you cannot blame someone else for your body size.
5) Most importantly, whether your friends know each other has not just to do with their body size and genes, but also with yours.

The obesity epidemic, as the University of Laval, and other universities and research centres around the world have so far analysed as "...a complex disease resulting from the interactions of a wide variety of hereditary and environmental factors." We also learned at a 2007 CBC Newsworld interview with Doctor Glenn Berrall, head of the pediatric nutrition clinic at North York General Hospital in Toronto, "Poor diet, lack of exercise and genetics all contribute to the problem. We seem to be living in an environment that fosters excess weight." Here again, its supported that environmental factors outweigh genetic factors that lead to obesity.

Insanity Defences: injustice in justice?

The insanity defence virtually uses mental disorder as an alibi for crime. It specifically claims that because the offender is incompetent of distinguishing between right and wrong doings, that ultimately, the crime he or she commits should be discounted. This spikes controversy in legal judicial systems.

The verdict compromises strict laws with empathetic acts. Cornell University further explains the how society views misconduct due to "irresistible impulse[s]", and that judgement is ultimately through faith. If the persecutor gets away without charge, the verdict will not satisfy the victims, as it sets free "innocent" serial killers and rapists, and forgive barbaric or inhumane misconduct. No wonder there is uproar in the community who feels more pity for the victims. Is it fair for the victim that a mentally impaired person walks away freely with what they have committed?

PROS in judging medically:

- Persecutors aren't imprisoned after committing crimes they've "unknowingly" done so that they would not hurt prison mates

- Persecutors receive penalty by being sent to asylums in extreme cases, or help from mental conditioning

- Degree of mental illness will be examined thoroughly, so that not all who use "not guilty by reason of insanity" as an excuse to commit a crime

CONS in judging medically and judging legally instead:

- Too much empathy from society may nurture more use of the excuse

- Insanity may be temporary

My Stance

In Canada (considering that different countries have different laws and regulations), I have more faith in legal systems when they judge medically. It may be against morals and beliefs, but it seems for the safety of others, imprisonment will potentially cause other prisoners harm if left in the presence of the mentally unstable persecutor. It is not about pitying those with mental illnesses, as medical history may be used as factual information to discern a case with. According to Psychiatric Times, "...only 15%-25% of those who plead insanity are actually not found guilty by reason of insanity." Meticulous cognitive examinations are performed to ensure that using insanity as an alibi to prove innocence is not connivingly used.

Are Melancholy and Despair Self-Induced?

Until this conversation I had with my friend a few months ago (refer to the brief dialogue below), I perceived a person's state of "being depressed" merely as feelings of incompetency from peer pressure, or from one's lack of self-esteem and self-efficacy, which are dependent variables defined by how the person had been raised. Ultimately, depression was not a big deal to me

because I was taught that in life,"what goes up must come down". I can not fathom how

meticulously conjured the condition of depression is, in the sense that it is often self-induced by negative thoughts networked in the brain for the long term effect. This means the more negative thoughts a person has, the longer he condition persists. My friend's answer left me in slight awe and contemplation.

My Friend says: I'm always depressed.

I respond: Really? You've always seemed fine. Why is it you are depressed?

My Friend answers: If I knew why, it wouldn't be called depression.

I searched online about this mental and emotional condition named depression. But first off, this mental illness can be treated according to Health Canada. Most online sources define depression as a condition caused either by external factors - such as financial difficulties, addictions, relationship problems, and so forth - or internal, genetically predisposed reasons.

I changed my search key-words to "Cure for Depression" and successively stumbled across the following unconvincing website regarding natural cures.

It appears to claim that all depressed people need is L-tyrosine as "a" natural cure.

The questions above are extremely general and may mislead individuals to a wrong diagnosis.
There is no simple step in recovering from depression as it takes every individual different amounts and kinds of efforts for the mental healing to occur.

In order to conquer depression, there is an essential need for a supportive social environment and just time. Even if a person is predisposed to feeling sorrow all the time, they can see the bright side of life if others given constructive feedback on his or her ways of doing things in their life style to slowly help him or her build confidence.

References
(Note: I did not use APA format as I have already hyperlinked the websites in the post.)

http://www.cure-your-depression.com/naturalcurefordepression.html

http://depression.readabout.net/Self-Induced-in-How-to-Manage-and-Conquer-Depression.html

http://www.healthtree.com/articles/depression/treatment/major/

http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/hl-vs/iyh-vsv/diseases-maladies/depression-eng.php

http://www.cmha.ca/bins/index.asp

http://www.dbsalliance.org/site/PageServer?pagename=Signs_symptoms

INTRODUCTION: Happy Person or Sad Person? The Vastly Profound and Convincing Human Mind

Hello. I'm Emily Tso, a current freshman in the School of Interactive Arts and Technology at Simon Fraser University. My central aim, as I will be adding more posts to this blog, is to open my eyes as well as the views and perceptions of my audience -- whether they are youthful or already insightful -- specifically to matters related to mental health.

I have selected mental health as my topic of interest because firstly, I find it to be broad and bipolar as it ranges from information about the complicated scientific information that no average person understands to the generalised, easy-to-learn-and-teach information that I genuinely believe embraces more than the what: diet, physical activity, healthy weight, psychoactive drugs, sexual health, chronic diseases, alone could ever describe. I find is deeply intersting how mental health may be both innate and influential; A person's mentality is, perhaps not entirely, but certainly the core of life's pleasures and pains. It affects how a person feels, and sees the world around them, how it either makes them feel alone, or connected with the rest of the universe - be it physically, emotionally, or spiritually. The brain may frustrate or alleviate a person's mind... it can do all sorts of things.

At a TED talk, Marvin Minsky shares that, "...[there are] about 400 different parts of the brain [but] nobody knows how most of them work in detail." I think it will be an interesting topic to share later on in my other posts.