Blog Post #12

Psychological disorders are viewed as an ongoing pattern of thoughts, feelings, and actions that are deviant (different), distressful, and/or dysfunctional. Something becomes a disorder when it fully interrupts the thoughts and actions or everyday life. Just because you are different doesn't mean you have a psychological disorder. People have disorders when you can no longer function as a person without a disorder would.'

I have never personally known someone with a psychological disorder. However, I find bipolar disorder to be interesting. Bipolar disorder happens when you have to distinct moods that swing back and forth between the two. These two moods are a mania mood, where you are wildly optimistic, and the depression mood, where you tend to live in slow motion. The mania state of bipolar disorder causes one to have racing thoughts and extra excitedness. In the depressive state of bipolar disorder, a person may need to use all his or her strength just to get out of bed in the morning. Bipolar disorder would be very tough to live with. You would never know when your mood will be mania or depression. It would be tough to keep a steady job along with good, real friends because when you are depressed you just don't have any ambition to do anything or care.

The most interesting thing I learned in this section is about the depressed brain. When a person is suffering depression, their brand activity slows down and there is less activity present. The left frontal lobe creates positive emotions, and this part of the brain is likely do be inactive during depression. In people with severe depression MRI scans have found that their frontal lobes are seven percent smaller than normal.