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Book: Anxiety – Overcome It and Live Without Fear

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Book Title:

Anxiety – Overcome It and Live Without Fear.

Author(s): Sonali Gupta.

Year: 2020.

Edition: First (1st).

Publisher: HarperCollins.

Type(s): Paperback and Kindle.

Synopsis:

Do you know the difference between anxiety and stress? What can you do when you have a panic attack? How do you know when it is time to get help?

Anxiety is a mental health crisis that has gripped over three crore Indians. In Anxiety: Overcome It and Live without Fear, clinical psychologist Sonali Gupta delves into the condition, using case studies to identify how anxiety can be triggered at work, in relationships, and by social media. Gupta shares a unique glimpse into this mental health condition in India, especially among Gen Z and millennials.

Recommending strategies and techniques for anxiety-prone readers, this book will help you confront your fears and take control of your life.

Book: An Introduction to Psychological Assessment & Psychometrics

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Book Title:

An Introduction to Psychological Assessment & Psychometrics.

Author(s): Keith Coley.

Year: 2014.

Edition: Second (2nd).

Publisher: SAGE Publications.

Type(s): Paperback.

Synopsis:

In An Introduction to Psychological Assessment and Psychometrics, Keith Coaley outlines the key ingredients of psychological assessment, providing case studies to illustrate their application, making it an ideal textbook for courses on psychometrics or psychological assessment.

New to the Second Edition:

  • Includes occupational and educational settings.
  • Covers ethical and professional issues with a strong practical focus.
  • Case study material related to work selection settings.
  • End of chapter self-assessments to facilitate students’ progress.
  • Compliant with the latest BPS Certificate of Testing curriculum.

On This Day … 02 October

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People (Deaths)

  • 2011 – Peter L. Benson, American psychologist and academic (b. 1946).
  • 2012 – J. Philippe Rushton, English-Canadian psychologist, theorist, academic (b. 1943).
  • 2013 – Gottfried Fischer, German psychologist, therapist, and academic (b. 1944).

Peter L. Benson

Peter Lorimer Benson (1946-2011) was a psychologist and CEO/President of Search Institute.

He pioneered the developmental assets framework, which became the predominant approach to research on positive facets of youth development.

J. Philippe Rushton

John Philippe Rushton (03 December 1943 to 02 October 2012) was a Canadian psychologist and author. He taught at the University of Western Ontario and became known to the general public during the 1980s and 1990s for research on race and intelligence, race and crime, and other apparent racial variations. His book Race, Evolution, and Behavior (1995) is about the application of r/K selection theory to humans.

Rushton’s work was heavily criticised by the scientific community for the questionable quality of its research, with many alleging that it was conducted under a racist agenda. From 2002 until his death, he served as the head of the Pioneer Fund, an organisation founded in 1937 to promote Eugenics, which worked actively with the Nazi party to promote theories of racial superiority and inferiority, and has been described as racist and white supremacist in nature and designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Rushton was a Fellow of the Canadian Psychological Association and a onetime Fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

Gottfried Fischer

Gottfried Fischer (13 September 1944 to 02 October 2013) was a German psychologist, psychotherapist and psychoanalyst.

He is considered to be the founder of psychotraumatology in Germany and has been director of the Institute for Clinical Psychology and Psychological Diagnostics at the University of Cologne from 1995 to 2009.

Is Schizophrenia Associated with Urbanisation?

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Research Paper Title

Association of Urbanicity with Schizophrenia and Related Mortality in China.

Background

Although higher prevalence of schizophrenia in Chinese urban areas was observed, studies focused on the association between schizophrenia and urbanicity were less in China. Using a national representative population-based data set, this study aimed to investigate the relationship between urbanicity and schizophrenia and its related mortality among adults aged 18 years old and above in China.

Methods

Data were obtained from the Second China National Sample Survey on Disability in 2006 and follow-up studies from 2007 to 2010 each year. The researchers restricted their analysis to 1,909,205 participants aged 18 years or older and the 2,071 schizophrenia patients with information of survival and all-caused mortality of the follow-up surveys from 2007 to 2010.Schizophrenia was ascertained according to the International Statistical Classification of Diseases, 10th Revision.

The degree of urbanicity and the region of residence were used to be the proxies of urbanicity. Of these, the degree of urbanicity measured by the ratio of nonagricultural population to total population and the region of residence measured by six categorical variables (first-tier cities, first-tier city suburbs, second-tier cities, second-tier city suburbs, other city areas, and rural areas).

Logistics regression models and restricted polynomial splines were used to examine the linear/nonlinear relationship between urbanicity and the risk of schizophrenia. Cox proportional hazards regression models were used to test the role of urbanicity on mortality risk of schizophrenia patients.

Results

10% increase in the degree of urbanicity was associated with increased risk of schizophrenia (OR = 1.44; 95% CI, 1.32 to 1.57). The nonlinear model further confirmed the association between the degree of urbanicity and the risk of schizophrenia. This association existed sex difference, as the level of urbanicity increased, schizophrenia risk of males grew faster than the risk of females. The hazard ratio (HR) of mortality in schizophrenia patients decreased with the elevated of urbanicity level, with a HR of 0.42 (95% CI, 0.21 to 0.84).

Conclusions

This research suggested that incremental changes in the degree of urbanicity linked to higher risk of schizophrenia, and as the degree of urbanicity elevated, the risk of schizophrenia increased more for men than for women. Additionally, we found that schizophrenia patients in higher degree of urbanicity areas had lower risk of mortality.

These findings contributed to the literature on schizophrenia in developing nations under a non-Western context and indicates that strategies to improve mental health conditions are needed in the progress of urbanicity.

Reference

Luo, Y., Pang, L., Guo, C., Zhang, L. & Zheng, X. (2020) Association of Urbanicity with Schizophrenia and Related Mortality in China. Canadian Journal of Psychiatry. doi: 10.1177/0706743720954059. Online ahead of print.

Book: Acceptance And Commitment Therapy For Dummies

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Book Title:

Acceptance And Commitment Therapy For Dummies.

Author(s): Freddy Jackson Brown and Duncan Gillard.

Year: 2016.

Edition: First (1st).

Publisher: Wiley.

Type(s): Paperback.

Synopsis:

Do you want to change your relationship with painful thoughts and feelings that are holding you back from making changes to improve your life?

In this book, you will discover how to identify negative and unhealthy modes of thinking and apply Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) principles throughout your day-to-day life, creating a healthier, richer and more meaningful existence with yourself and others.

Book: Abnormal Psychology

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Book Title:

Abnormal Psychology.

Author(s): Thomas F. Oltmanns and Robert E. Emery.

Year: 2019.

Edition: Ninth (9th).

Publisher: Pearson.

Type(s): Paperback.

Synopsis:

An overview of abnormal psychology that focuses not on “them,” but on all of us.

Abnormal Psychology brings both the science and personal aspects of the discipline to life with a focus on evidence-based practice and emerging research. Authors Thomas Oltmanns and Robert Emery cover methods and treatment in context in order to helps readers understand the biological, psychological, and social perspectives on abnormal psychology.

The 9th Edition has been updated to integrate coverage of the DSM-5, as well as the latest research and contemporary topics that will interest students.

Book: 30 Days 30 Ways to Overcome Anxiety

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Book Title:

30 Days 30 Ways to Overcome Anxiety.

Author(s): Bev Aisbett.

Year: 2019.

Edition: First (1st).

Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers.

Type(s): Paperback and Audio CD.

Synopsis:

Outlines a thirty day programme to overcoming anxiety, with daily exercises and mantras to help readers manage the emotion.

Book: The 10 Best-Ever Anxiety Management Techniques

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Book Title:

The 10 Best-Ever Anxiety Management Techniques.

Author(s): Margaret Wehrenberg.

Year: 2018.

Edition: Second (2nd).

Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company.

Type(s): Paperback and Kindle.

Synopsis:

The newly updated workbook companion for putting the top anxiety management techniques into practice, first edition released in 2008.

Brimming with exercises, worksheets, tips, and tools, this complete how-to workbook companion expands on the top 10 anxiety-busting techniques Margaret Wehrenberg presents in the earlier edition of this book, showing readers exactly how to put them into action.

From panic disorders, generalised anxiety, and social anxiety, to overall worry and stress, manifestations of anxiety are among the most common – and often debilitating – mental health complaints. But thanks to a flood of supporting brain research, effective, practical strategies have emerged that allow us to manage day-to-day anxiety on our own.

Here Dr. Wehrenberg offers us a trove of them, showing just how physical, emotional, and behavioral symptoms can be alleviated with targeted methods. Step-by-step exercises for practicing counter-cognition, mindfulness meditation, thought-stopping, and thought-replacement, “breathing minutes,” demand delays, cued relaxation, affirmations, and much, much more are presented – all guaranteed to overcome your anxious thoughts.

The accompanying audio downloads feature an array of calming, author-guided exercises including targeted breath work, muscle relaxation, mindfulness, and much more.

Book: The 7 Principles of Stress

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Book Title:

7 Principles of Stress: Extend Life, Stay Fit, and Ward off Fat. What You Didn’t Know About How Stress Can Reboot Your Mind, Energy, and Sex Life.

Author(s): Ori Hofmekler.

Year: 2017.

Edition: First (1st).

Publisher: North Atlantic Books, US.

Type(s): Paperback and Kindle.

Synopsis:

Ori Hofmekler, acclaimed author of The Warrior Diet and one of the first proponents of intermittent fasting, challenges conventional wisdom about diet, fitness, and anti-aging with a new approach to health that uses stress to live longer, stay fit, and ward off fat.

Supported by cutting-edge research, this book redefines the term “nutrition” as it reveals the stress-mimicking nutrients that yield the same benefits as fasting and exercising.

At the core of the book is the biology of stress and the way it affects key aspects of life from feeding and sexual behavior to mental and physical performance. Hofmekler demonstrates that that there is a thin line between beneficial stress and harmful stress, and shows how to put knowledge of the difference into powerful practice.

His book is a call to action – a manifesto of living life to its utmost evolutionary potential, under stress, as nature intended.

On This Day … 01 October

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People (Births)

  • 1940 – Phyllis Chesler, American feminist psychologist, and author of the best-seller, Women and Madness (1972).
  • 1950 – Susan Greenfield, Baroness Greenfield, English neuroscientist, academic, and politician.

Phyllis Chesler

Phyllis Chesler is an American writer, psychotherapist, and professor emerita of psychology and women’s studies at the College of Staten Island (CUNY).

She is known as a feminist psychologist, and is the author of 18 books, including the best-seller Women and Madness (1972), With Child: A Story of Motherhood (1979) and An American Bride in Kabul: A Memoir (2013). Chesler has written on topics such as gender, mental illness, divorce and child custody, surrogacy, second-wave feminism, pornography, prostitution, incest, and violence against women.

In more recent years, Chesler has written several works on such subjects as anti-Semitism, Islam, and honor killings. Chesler argues that many western intellectuals, including leftists and feminists, have abandoned Western values in the name of multicultural relativism, and that this has led to an alliance with Islamists, an increase in anti-Semitism, and to the abandonment of Muslim women and religious minorities in Muslim-majority countries.

Susan Greenfield

Susan Adele Greenfield, Baroness Greenfield, CBE, FRCP is an English scientist, writer, broadcaster, and member of the House of Lords. Her research has focused on the treatment of Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease. She is also interested in the neuroscience of consciousness and the impact of technology on the brain.

Greenfield is a senior research fellow at Lincoln College, Oxford, and was a professor of Synaptic Pharmacology.

She was chancellor of Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh between 2005 and 2013. From 1998 to 2010, she was director of the Royal Institution of Great Britain. In September 2013, she co-founded the biotech company Neuro-bio Ltd, where she is Chief Executive Officer.