Section 6-0: (Aside) Guest Talk

During this course we were given an opportunity to speak with two different individuals who had worked in the field of social work that ties closely with the field of psychology. The following is my Journal entries regarding the two presenters.

Our first guest speaker was a charming lady from the Brooks womens shelter, unfortunately her name escapes me at the moment, but I must say that I was pleasantly surprised by her professional presentation regarding abusive situations. As she was a woman who was currently serving in a womans shelter, I had predicted that I would be subjected to a thoroughly sexist presentation and at first things seemed to be headed in that direction. As a male who has suffered the effects of spousal abuse and a father who has lived through the same it is my opinion that in todays modern age abuse from one gender is no more likely than another. I do believe however, that due to classical gender roles men are less likely to report cases of abuse. Even in my own case, when hospitalized, filed no report to police following the event. I was thus very pleased that at a moment when students were given statements to read and were asked how many of these statements were made by women... as most of the class began to answer highly (70-80%), I was prepared to stand up and leave the class in the middle of the lecture. What happened next caused me to be taken aback as rather than the presenter reinforcing their answer and saying they were correct, she told the class it was a 50-50 split between male and female, and that the womens shelter although currently catering to woman primarily was actively working towards gender equality.

Our next presenter, Maureen from the SPEC association in Brooks (full disclosure, I can only recall her name because I have her business card.) she took more of a personal approach to her presentation. 'Moe' discussed the story of her struggles to raise both her foster AND biological children simultaneously while dealing with the death of her husband. She paired this personal story with the services her organization, SPEC, offers. Both of these ladies have helped me to reinforce for me that I am headed on the right path in my studies towards a social work degree. I highly reccommend everyone in my area check out the services offered by both of these individuals and their respective organizations.

Womens shelter facebook page

 (Requires a facebook account to view)

Alberta Council of Women's shelters

SPEC Association official website

Section 6-1: (Mini) Where am I?

Hi Lara...
-Courtesy ivances.deviantart.com-

I'm pretty sure if I ever read a book on the bubonic plague that I'll be a
goner. I seem to associate with topics on a biological level. If we talk about stress, I'm stressed. If we talk about sleep (we are doing that now.) I get sleepy... I even fell asleep while reading the textbook chapter on sleep, mid-sentence and everything. Mind...



Wandering..



What was I saying? Right. so can you name someone that hasn't had their mind wander? If you can, tell your local university as they probably have some studies they'd like to conduct. At any given moment I have a dozen thoughts lying just under the surface waiting for me to pay attention to them, at the time of writing my initial Journal entry my thoughts were occupied by lunch, videogames, television... now it's work, finals, dinner. Fortunately I am able to keep these thoughts subdued and focus on the task at hand. the one area where my concentration will tend to break is if someone is speaking to me while I attempt to focus on another task... the words spoken will slip into my "train of thought" and I will end up writing what is being spoken rather than what I had intended to put into writing.

So readers...  where is your mind wandering to right now? (PG answers only please...)

Section 6-2: More than monophasic.

A Time lapse camera captures a couples sleep.
-Courtesy anzenbergergallery.com-

Circadian rhythms, the approximately 24 hour day-night cycle that people move through which tends to persist even with the elimination of any external cues. A significant segment of this cycle is a sleeping period, one which usually lasts between 6-9 hours a cycle. The textbook interestingly enough does not make any mention of different sleeping patterns aside from "abnormal" sleep patterns and cultural variations in sleeping arrangements.

There are many different and varying ways one can achieve their required sleep in each circadian cycle. I myself subscribe to one of these sleep patterns not described in the book. While most people around the world sleep in a monophasic sleep cycle (that is, one continuous sleep cycle) I personally use a biphasic sleep cycle. My first rest through the night runs from approximately 11pm-3am, and then I am awake again from 3-5am, during which I almost exclusively partake in leisure activities such as reading, video games and television, (on some days this period is the only leisure time I take) and I then rest again from approximately 5-8am before awaking for my longer waking period. I find this sleep pattern to be much more effective for me than any other sleep pattern I have attempted and according to some research on the area of sleep it is suggested that this is the typical way in which humans used to be accustomed to sleeping.

Monophasic and biphasic are not the only two types of sleep rhythms either, it can be further divided into what is known as polyphasic sleeping... the most frequently talked about in popular culture is the multiple 30-minute nap cycle in which the body becomes accustomed to slipping directly into a deep sleep and through a series of naps throughout the day an individual attains the required 6-8 hours of sleep.

Section 6-3: Fantasy = Reality

While we are talking about sleep and all. I rarely dream.

I actually very much dislike dreaming... as when I do dream it usually interferes with my waking life, the following is an example of what my dreams are usually like.

No. not like this. that would be cool.
-Courtesy theresalwaysroomforonemore.com-

Alarm goes off. I shut off the alarm, complain about how much I don't wanna get up, after fighting with myself to get out of bed I stumble towards the shower. I stay in the shower for an incredibly long length of time enjoying the hot water. Finally having "awoken" I get out and brush my teeth, get dressed in my work clothes, put on some deodorant and cologne and head out for the day of work ahead of me. As I sit at my desk things start to fall apart in my dream... I don't use a Mac at work... I don't own a green dress shirt... I haven't driven a plymouth breeze since I was sixteen... ah. I'm dreaming.

As you can see, the reason that my dreams interfere with my waking life is they mirror each other. Sometimes I will stay dreaming after this revelation, but usually not for long as half of these actions are things that I need to do, and some of them are things I may have already done. I have a terrible habit of shutting off my alarm in my sleep. When I have these dreams it's followed by a full on adrenaline rush because I have come to the realization that I am still in my bed and am probably late for whatever I needed to get done that morning.

To me, this is a dream.
-Courtesy www.guardian.co.uk-

When it comes to dreams I follow the Activation-synthesis model, because as a child I did have very amazing vivid and and colorful dreams, as I grew up though I found my dreams becoming more and more mundane. not that I lacked an imagination but my mind was preoccupied with more realistic issues. You could say that I also follow the problem-solving interpretation of dreams suggested by Cartwright, because I don't think these two areas are incongruent.

To me, dreams are the result of neurons firing while we are unconscious, turned into dreams so the brain has a way to handle these firing neurons. I believe that the neurons firing most during our waking hours (usually associated with issues/concerns most affecting us in that space of time). These neurons have "residual firing" during our sleep which results in these dreams being tied into our waking life.

Section 6-4: Party time

I think we can agree that most people over the age of majority (and some people under) have experienced the mind altering effects of alcohol. As a friend of mine once stated "Whoever called Alcohol a depressant obviously didn't drink enough of it". Sadly, I think most people generally feel the same as he does.

The reason that most people will not realize that Alcohol is a depressant is because it is almost always paired with some sort of dopamine stimulant, I don't mean chemically, but some sort of social activity or public event such as a party, dance, sporting event, nightclub or just generally experienced with friends. Thus Alcohol is associated with "having a good time" and people only realize the inhibition loss but not the effects of the depressant.

-Image courtesy uniquesquared.com-

Ever have a really bad hangover? While you are suffering this hangover not only are you experiencing mild alcohol poisoning but your self-appraisal is probably a lot worse than what the objective reality of the situation is as your dopamine uptake is temporarily reduced.

Except this guy... his self-appraisal is spot on.
-Image courtesy thechive.com-

Just prior to having my depression diagnosed I became acutely aware of the depressant effects of alcohol. While drinking I would have all of the desired effects of alcohol: loss of inhibition, mild dizziness/coordination loss, dopamine release from fun activities. I soon began to notice that the day following a night of drinking, light or heavy consumption irrelevant, was an absolutely terrible day. I was consistently moody, irritable, upset and felt as though something was out of place. This was consistent even if all logic suggested that I should feel otherwise. Only after self-inflection did I realize that all that was occurring was the depressive effects of alcohol being compounded by depression, my bodies reduced ability to counter with dopamine and serotonin release.

Section 6-5: (Mini) Correlation between drugs and crime?

-Image courtesy of wikiworldorder.org-

While there is no doubt a correlation between illicit drugs and criminal charges, how many of these charges are solely from the drug itself being illegal? (Possession/Intent to sell charges) While the correlation between hard drugs such as cocaine and methamphetamine and serious non-drug criminal charges such as general juvenile delinquency, break and enter, theft, and armed assaults/robberies is well established, can the same be said of smokers? My hypothesis would be no. Many studies show that the effects of marijuana are less life threatening than those of alcohol and even less harmful than cigarettes, the question though is does it lead to increased (non-drug related) criminal activity? With a few states having now legalized the use of marijuana only time and new studies on the matter will be able to tell us for sure.