Author: Anna Sulecki

In class, we learned about mood disorders, and specifically, major depressive disorder. Depression is one of the most common reasons why people seek professional help. It is usually a response to past or current loss. Depression slows people down, defuses aggression and restrains risk taking. PET scans have shown that people with depression have lower brain energy consumption. The social cognitive perspective explains that depression can arise partly from self-defeating beliefs and negative explanatory styles. People who tend to explain with stable, global, or internal styles tend to be more depressed/have a higher chance of depression than those who explain with temporary, specific, or external styles. Temporary, specific, and external explanations mean that the person has successful coping skills, rather than those who use stable, global, or internal. Some signs of depression are: tiredness and lethargy, feeling of worthlessness, loss of interest in family and friends, and a loss of interest in activities. If these signs last more than two weeks, you might have depression, and should seek help/go to therapy.

One of my close family members ended up being diagnosed with depression in October 2017. She was starting her freshman year of college for music education and she was so excited to be starting. The more she was in college, the more overwhelmed she felt and the more, as she explains it, “worthless”, that she couldn’t do it. One of her professors told her that “school comes first and mental health comes second”. So, she pushed herself past her breaking point, lost all interest in music, and she sadly ended up trying to commit suicide, which lead to her being hospitalized for 3 days. She then had to drop out of college because her mental health had to come first. She then went home and started going to therapy. She has been in a much better place since then, and she recently has finished an intensive 3-month therapy program. Since then, she has started talking about going back to college for music education and has become much better after going to therapy.

She says that if she didn’t go to therapy, that she probably would not have gotten better. She started to become herself again, and the whole family saw a difference in her too.

In class, we talked about object permanence. When babies are first developing, they have such centralized senses, that if they do not directly see the object, they will not know that its there. Piaget did a study with babies under six months old that if he hid one of their toys under a blanket, then the baby will think that the toy has just magically disappeared. The babies wouldn’t go looking for it because they don’t know where to look for it. Once the toy magically reappeared again (once the blanket was removed from the toy), the babies just smiled and would reach for their toy again. It isn’t until about 8 months of age that babies know that the toy isn’t gone, but its just hidden.

I have a baby cousin and her name is Madison. Madison is currently 6 months old, and I love to play peekaboo with her. Every time we play, she is as shocked, happy, and surprised as the very first time that I played with her. She never seems to get tired of the game, even though it’s the same thing over and over again. All I’m doing is hiding my face behind my hands, then moving them away and smiling at her, yet she loves it. Since Madison is under the 8-month-old mark, she does not have object permanence yet. Madison cannot detect that my face is there, even though my face is only hidden by my hands. Since I am not “directly” in front of her, she cannot tell that I am there.

It’s the same concept as Piaget tested with 6-month-old babies, when the blanket is placed on top of the baby’s toys, the babies think that the toy is gone. The toy never disappears, its only that the babies cannot see it, and since they don’t have object permanence, they don’t know that it’s there. It’s the same as when I play Peekaboo with Madison, since I hide my face, she thinks that I left, even though I’m right there.

Also this is Madison, I just thought I’d put her picture here because she’s so cute.

The nervous system is broken into 2 general categories, the peripheral and central nervous systems. The Central Nervous System controls the brain and the spinal cord while the Peripheral nervous system controls about everything else. Within the Peripheral NS there are 2 sub categories, Autonomic and Somatic. The Autonomic NS controls all internal actions while the Somatic NS controls all voluntary movements. Now within the Autonomic NS, there is the Sympathetic and Parasympathetic Nervous Systems. The Sympathetic NS is called the “fight or flight”, while the Parasympathetic NS is called the “rest and digest”.  The Parasympathetic NS works to calm the body down and to help conserve energy. The Parasympathetic NS helps to calm the heart rate down and to increase intestinal/digestive activity. For example, the Parasympathetic NS works best when we are asleep, so when people get less sleep than others, their Parasympathetic NS doesn’t have time to properly work/do its job to help calm the body. One experience I have of utilizing the Parasympathetic Nervous System is during and after Penn State game days. I am in the blue band, so the past few game days have been around 12-13 hours long for me. For the Buffalo game two weeks ago, I had to be at the building at 11am ready to go. Then we practice for about 2 hours which is us running through the halftime show and pregame, which is a lot of work in itself. Once we huddle around the ladder for our director to talk to us, my parasympathetic nervous system is helping me to calm my heart rate down after high stepping for a 15-minute pregame show and marching a 10-minute half-time show. The Parasympathetic NS also helps after I finish the parade into and out of the stadium. During parade the band does a bunch of different dances, and we also play various fights songs, all while marching in hot wool uniforms. My heart rate is constantly beating quickly during band, but once we get to rest for a few minutes, my Parasympathetic Nervous System kicks in and helps to calm me and my body down.