Facebook
usage can reveal mental illness
Scientists
believe that a person’s Facebook profile could reveal signs of mental illness
that might not emerge during regular sessions with a psychiatrist. Social media
activity when used as a tool in psychological diagnosis can remove some of the
problems associated with self-reporting. ‘‘For example, questionnaires often
depend on a person’s memory, which may or may not be accurate. By asking
patients to share their Facebook activity, we were able to see how they
expressed themselves naturally,’ said study researcher Elizabeth Martin. ‘Even
the parts of their Facebook activities that they chose to conceal exposed
information about their psychological state,’ said Martin. Social media
profiles could eventually be used as tools for psychologists and therapists, according
to Martin, doctoral student in MU’s psychological science department in the
College of Arts and Science. ‘Therapists could possibly use social media
activity to create a more complete clinical picture of a patient,’ Martin said
in a statement.
Martin’s
team asked participants to print their Facebook activity and correlated aspects
of that activity with the degree to which those individuals exhibited
schizotypy, a range of symptoms including social withdrawal to odd beliefs.
Some study participants showed signs of the schizotypy condition known as
social anhedonia, or the inability to experience pleasure from usually
enjoyable activities, such as communicating and interacting with others.
People
with social anhedonia tended to have fewer friends on Facebook, communicated
with friends less frequently and shared fewer photos. Other study participants
concealed significant portions of their Facebook profile before presenting them
to researchers. These participants also showed schizotypy symptoms, known as
perceptual aberrations, which are anomalous experiences of one’s senses, and
magical ideation, which is the belief that events with no physical
cause-and-effect are somehow causally connected. Hiding Facebook activity also
was considered a sign of higher levels of paranoia.
The
study was published in the journal Psychiatry Research.
Source:
http://health.india.com
30.01.2013
Sons
more likely to get treatment for chest infections in India
Even
when it comes to hospitalizing their children, Indians discriminate between
their sons and daughters. A male child with acute chest infections is nearly
three times more likely to receive hospital care than a girl child in India.
This
was announced on Tuesday by scientists from the University of Edinburgh in the
UK who conducted a first-of-its-kind large scale study. The study noted that
this was because male children are slightly more susceptible to such illnesses
and because families are more likely to ensure the sons receive health care.
This gender disparity was visible across the developing world and was most
pronounced in South Asia. In some areas of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, up to
four times as many boys under five receive hospital care for chest infections
compared with girls, the study published in the British medical journal the
Lancet says.
According
to the study, around 38% of children under five who became critically ill from
chest infections did not even reach hospitals.
‘Boys
are biologically 1.2 times more prone to be suffering from severe chest
infections than girls. It is mainly due to smaller airways among boys. But in
India, the difference becomes more acute in the ratio of boys getting
hospitalized for pneumonia than girls confirming gender as the main reason
behind the trend,’ Dr Harish Nair from the University of Edinburgh’s Centre for
Population Health Sciences, who led the study told TOI. ‘This study shows that
much more could be done to reduce infection and save lives, such as by
improving access to hospitals in the developing world, or by ensuring that both
boys and girls receive similar health care,’ he said.
The
study was conducted by a large international consortium of 76 researchers from
39 institutions, in 24 countries and was supported by the WHO. The study also
reported that in Yamunanagar in Haryana, a boy aged 0-11 months is 3.2 times
more likely to get hospitalized than a girl child. In Vellore, it is 1.8 times
more likely and in Ballabgarh, it is 3.7 times more likely.
12
million children under five are hospitalised worldwide with chest infections
each year. A male child in Southeast Asia is 1.9 times more likely to receive
hospital care when affected with pneumonia while it is 1.3 times in the US and
in Africa it is 1.4 times.
Lack of will
power has caused more failure than lack of intelligence or ability
Flower A.
Newhouse
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