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How Psychiatry Went Crazy
The Wall Street Journal: The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders is often called the "Bible" of psychiatric diagnosis, and the term is apt. The DSM consists of instructions from on high; readers usually disagree in their interpretations of the text; and believing it is an act of faith. At least the Bible lists only 10 Commandments; the DSM grows by leaps and bounds with every revision. The first edition, published by the American Psychiatric Association in 1952, was a spiral-bound pamphlet that described 11 categories of mental disorder, including brain syndromes, personality problems and psychotic disorders.
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Reading well at seven is the key to job success
The Guardian: The ability to read well and do maths at an early age has been found by researchers to be a key factor in deciding whether people go on to get a high income job later in their lives. Psychological scientist Timothy Bates and PhD psychology student Stuart Ritchie from Edinburgh University analysed the relationship between early maths and reading skills and their socio-economic impact beyond the classroom. Read the whole story: The Guardian
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Desktop Diaries: Daniel Kahneman
NPR: Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman is the latest subject in our Desktop Diaries series, although he has no desk. Kahneman, professor emeritus at Princeton University, won the Nobel Prize in economic sciences in 2002 for his research with the late Amos Tversky on our sometimes irrational intuitions and how they affect decision-making. Read the whole story: NPR See Daniel Kahneman at the 25th APS Annual Convention.
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Every Every Every Generation Has Been the Me Me Me Generation
The Atlantic: Millennials are the "ME ME ME GENERATION," writes Joel Stein for the cover of Time magazine, which is apparently a marked departure from the Baby Boomers, who were the plain old "Me Generation" (one me, no caps) and who created the "Me Decade" in the 1970s, and who coined the phrase, "But enough about me… what do you think about me?" in the 1980s when they were raising the next narcissists, Generation X.
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Trauma Survivors Deserve Therapy That Actually Works
The Huffington Post: The mind-boggling events of the past month -- the Boston Marathon bombings, the fertilizer plant explosion near Waco, a deadly collapse of a garment factory in Bangladesh -- will undoubtedly leave in their wake a host of survivors suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Many victims will get over the short-term trauma of those events, but others -- in the coming weeks and months --will begin experiencing the chronic bad dreams, flashbacks, sleep difficulties, and frightening thoughts that characterize PTSD. Those individuals will likely avoid places, events or objects that remind them of the experience.
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Psychologie: Druck kann leistungssteigernd wirken (pressure can help improve performance)
Der Spiegel: Der Druck, mehrere Aufgaben gleichzeitig erledigen zu müssen, kann unter bestimmten Bedingungen die Leistung steigern. Das haben Forscher der Universität Basel herausgefunden. Der Grund dafür ist, dass Berufstätige unter Druck ihre Arbeitsweise wechseln. Sie entscheiden eher mit Hilfe von Ähnlichkeitsstrategien als anhand von Regeln. Muss ein Arzt in einem Krankenhaus etwa anhand von Symptomen bei einem Patienten eine Diagnose stellen, greift er unter Druck eher auf seinen Erfahrungsschatz zurück und zieht Parallelen zu ähnlichen Fällen.
