Use of LSD and Other Psychedelic Drugs Associated with Fewer Mental Health Problems

Whew. New research has calmed the concerns of many former Dead Heads and psychonauts who likely have been worried that all of those psychedelics they consumed might do strange and unwanted things to their brains. Researchers from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology's (NTNU) Department of Neuroscience (using data from a U.S. health survey) found no link between the use of psychedelic drugs and a range of mental health problems. Instead they found some significant associations between the use of psychedelic drugs and fewer mental health problems.

Wooo hooo dude . . .

Here are a few highlights from the study:

The sample consisted of 130,152 respondents, of which 21,979 (13.4% weighted) reported lifetime use of any psychedelic. Compared to respondents with no lifetime use of any psychedelic, respondents with lifetime use of any psychedelic were more likely to be younger, male, white, Native American, or more than one race, have somewhat higher income and more education, not be married, like to test self by doing risky things, experienced an extremely stressful event, and to have used all classes of illicit drugs.

And this was also very interesting (I took out the stats for ease of reading, but all of these findings were statistically significant):

Lifetime psychedelic use was not significantly associated with any of the mental health treatment variables. Among the specific psychedelics there were a number of significant associations with lower rate of receiving or needing mental health treatment. Lifetime LSD use was significantly associated with a lower rate of outpatient mental health treatment and psychiatric medication prescription. Lifetime psilocybin use was significantly associated with a lower rate of inpatient mental health treatment and psychiatric medication prescription. Lifetime mescaline/peyote use was significantly associated with a lower rate of psychiatric medication prescription and needed but did not receive mental health treatment. Lifetime peyote use was significantly associated with a lower rate of psychiatric medication prescription.

I guess that I would be an outlier here. I used all of the psychedelics as often as I could. BUT I also received mental health counseling on and off for years and was prescribed medication for social anxiety disorder. On the other hand, had I not used psychedelics, I may not have stopped using harder drugs and/or I may have never found myself.

Full Citation:Krebs, TS, Johansen, P-Ø. (2013, Aug 19). Psychedelics and Mental Health: A Population Study. PLoS ONE, 8(8): e63972. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0063972

Here is the summary of the research from Science Daily. Below that is the abstract and a link to the study, which is Open Access. Please notice how the title reflects the fears people have that psychedelics drugs are dangerous, when they are actually the safest drugs around when in pharmaceutical quality.

LSD and Other Psychedelics Not Linked With Mental Health Problems

Aug. 19, 2013 — The use of LSD, magic mushrooms, or peyote does not increase a person's risk of developing mental health problems, according to an analysis of information from more than 130,000 randomly chosen people, including 22,000 people who had used psychedelics at least once.

Researcher Teri Krebs and clinical psychologist Pål-Ørjan Johansen, from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology's (NTNU) Department of Neuroscience, used data from a US national health survey to see what association there was, if any, between psychedelic drug use and mental health problems.

The authors found no link between the use of psychedelic drugs and a range of mental health problems. Instead they found some significant associations between the use of psychedelic drugs and fewer mental health problems.

The results are published in the journal PLOS ONE and are freely available online after 19 August.

Symptoms and mental health treatment considered

The researchers relied on data from the 2001-2004 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, in which participants were asked about mental health treatment and symptoms of a variety of mental health conditions over the past year. The specific symptoms examined were general psychological distress, anxiety disorders, mood disorders, and psychosis.

Armed with this information, Krebs and Johansen were able to examine if there were any associations between psychedelic use and general or specific mental health problems. They found none.

"After adjusting for other risk factors, lifetime use of LSD, psilocybin, mescaline or peyote, or past year use of LSD was not associated with a higher rate of mental health problems or receiving mental health treatment," says Johansen.

Could psychedelics be healthy for you?

The researchers found that lifetime use of psilocybin or mescaline and past year use of LSD were associated with lower rates of serious psychological distress. Lifetime use of LSD was also significantly associated with a lower rate of outpatient mental health treatment and psychiatric medicine prescription.

The design of the study makes it impossible to determine exactly why the researchers found what they found.

"We cannot exclude the possibility that use of psychedelics might have a negative effect on mental health for some individuals or groups, perhaps counterbalanced at a population level by a positive effect on mental health in others," they wrote.

Nevertheless, "recent clinical trials have also failed to find any evidence of any lasting harmful effects of psychedelics," the researchers said, which supports the robustness of the PLOS ONE findings.

In fact, says Krebs, "many people report deeply meaningful experiences and lasting beneficial effects from using psychedelics."

"Other studies have found no evidence of health or social problems among people who had used psychedelics hundreds of times in legally-protected religious ceremonies," adds Johansen.

What's the bottom line on psychedelic use?

Psychedelics are different than most other recreational drugs. Experts agree that psychedelics do not cause addiction or compulsive use, and they are not known to harm the brain.

When evaluating psychedelics, as with any activity, it is important to take an objective view of all the evidence and avoid being biased by anecdotal stories either of harm or benefit, the researchers say.

"Everything has some potential for negative effects, but psychedelic use is overall considered to pose a very low risk to the individual and to society," Johansen says, "Psychedelics can elicit temporary feelings of anxiety and confusion, but accidents leading to serious injury are extremely rare."

"Early speculation that psychedelics might lead to mental health problems was based on a small number of case reports and did not take into account either the widespread use of psychedelics or the not infrequent rate of mental health problems in the general population," Krebs explains.

"Over the past 50 years tens of millions of people have used psychedelics and there just is not much evidence of long-term problems," she concludes.

Both researchers were supported by the Research Council of Norway.

* * * 

Here is the abstract of the article from PLoS ONE - follow the link to red the whole article online or to download the article.

Psychedelics and Mental Health: A Population Study

Teri S. Krebs, Pål-Ørjan Johansen

Abstract

Background

The classical serotonergic psychedelics LSD, psilocybin, mescaline are not known to cause brain damage and are regarded as non-addictive. Clinical studies do not suggest that psychedelics cause long-term mental health problems. Psychedelics have been used in the Americas for thousands of years. Over 30 million people currently living in the US have used LSD, psilocybin, or mescaline. 

Objective

To evaluate the association between the lifetime use of psychedelics and current mental health in the adult population.

Method 

Data drawn from years 2001 to 2004 of the National Survey on Drug Use and Health consisted of 130,152 respondents, randomly selected to be representative of the adult population in the United States. Standardized screening measures for past year mental health included serious psychological distress (K6 scale), mental health treatment (inpatient, outpatient, medication, needed but did not receive), symptoms of eight psychiatric disorders (panic disorder, major depressive episode, mania, social phobia, general anxiety disorder, agoraphobia, posttraumatic stress disorder, and non-affective psychosis), and seven specific symptoms of non-affective psychosis. We calculated weighted odds ratios by multivariate logistic regression controlling for a range of sociodemographic variables, use of illicit drugs, risk taking behavior, and exposure to traumatic events.

Results

21,967 respondents (13.4% weighted) reported lifetime psychedelic use. There were no significant associations between lifetime use of any psychedelics, lifetime use of specific psychedelics (LSD, psilocybin, mescaline, peyote), or past year use of LSD and increased rate of any of the mental health outcomes. Rather, in several cases psychedelic use was associated with lower rate of mental health problems. 

Conclusion

We did not find use of psychedelics to be an independent risk factor for mental health problems.

David Krakauer - Cognitive Ubiquity: The Evolution of Intelligence on Earth

This series of video lectures comes from the Santa Fe Institute's Stanislaw Ulam Memorial Lecture Series (2011 edition). In three lectures, SFI Professor David Krakauer explored the extraordinarily convergent theories from mathematics, physics, computation, and biology describing the emergence of intelligence, and speculates about the future for biological intelligence in a world of distributed thinking machines.

This is his Research Quasi-Statement

My research is concerned with the evolutionary history of information processing mechanisms in biology and culture, with an emphasis on robust information transmission, signaling dynamics and their role in constructing novel, higher level features. The research spans several levels of organization finding analogous processes in genetics, cell biology, microbiology and in organismal behavior and society. At the cellular level I have been interested in molecular processes, which rely on volatile, error-prone, asynchronous, mechanisms, which can be used as a basis for decision making and patterning. I also investigate how signaling interactions at higher levels, including microbial and organismal, are used to coordinate complex life cycles and social systems, and under what conditions we observe the emergence of proto-grammars. Much of this work is motivated by the search for 'noisy-design' principles in biology and culture emerging through evolutionary dynamics that span hierarchical structures. In addition to general principles there is a need to provide an explicit theory of evolutionary history, a theory of memory accounting for those incompressible regularities revealed once the regular components have been subtracted.

Research projects includes work on the molecular logic of signaling pathways, the evolution of genome organization (redundancy, multiple encoding, quantization and compression), robust communication over networks, the evolution of distributed forms of biological information processing, dynamical memory systems, the logic of transmissible regulatory networks (such as virus life cycles) and the many ways in which organisms construct their environments (niche construction). Thinking about niche constructing niches provides us with a new perspective on the major evolutionary transitions.

Many of these areas are characterized by the need to encode heritable information (genetic, epigenetic, auto-catalytic or linguistic) at distinct levels of biological organization, where selection pressures are often independent or in conflict. Furthermore, components are noisy and degrade and interactions are typically diffusively coupled. At each level I ask how information is acquired, stored, transmitted, replicated, transformed and robustly encoded. With collaborators I am engaged in projects applying insights from biological information processing to electronic, engineered systems.

The big question that many of us are asking is what will evolutionary theory look like once it has become integrated with the sciences of adaptive information, and of course, what will these sciences then look like?

I am Professor at SFI, and Chair of the Faculty for the period 2009-2011.

This stuff is a bit geeky, but it's also very cool. Follow the links below to see each of the three videos (or download them from iTunesU with the link provided.

Video: Cognitive ubiquity - The evolution of intelligence on Earth

Sept. 12, 2011 2:35 p.m.

Stanislaw Ulam Memorial Lecture Series

From the formation of the earth from interstellar dust it has taken just under five billion years for matter to be able to speculate about its own origins. But how did intelligence come to be, and what is intelligence anyway?

In three SFI Community Lectures over three nights, SFI Professor David Krakauer explored the extraordinarily convergent theories from mathematics, physics, computation, and biology describing the emergence of intelligence, and speculates about the future for biological intelligence in a world of distributed thinking machines.

Download the lecture videos here via iTunesU.

Watch Part One: "The adversarial quartet" (69 minutes, Tuesday, August 30, 2011) - Starting with our efforts to define and measure order and intelligence, Krakauer surveys key ideas from the history of mathematics, physics, computation, and biology that have extraordinarily converged on very similar explanations for adaptive behavior.

Watch Part Two: "Invasion of the inferential cell" (84 minutes, Wednesday, August 31, 2011) - Krakauer recounts the evolution of life on Earth focusing on the advent of increasingly complex forms of behavior and thought, identifying the common principles of intelligent biological systems.

Watch Part Three: "All watched over by machines of loving grace" (92 minutes, Thursday, September 1, 2011) - Krakauer considers the future of biological intelligence in a world of distributed machine intelligence, where there is a prospect of new cultural mechanisms capable of eclipsing the analytical capabilities of our own species.

SFI’s Ulam Memorial Lecture series is named for Polish mathematician and Manhattan Project contributor Stanislaw Ulam (1909-1984).

The 2011 Ulam Lectures were generously underwritten by the Peters Family Foundation. Support for SFI's 2011 Community Lecture series is provided by Los Alamos National Bank.

• Listen to an interview with Krakauer on KSFR's Radio Cafe (August 30, 2011)
• Read the Santa Fe New Mexican article (August 30, 2011)

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Krakauer's suggested reading list follows:

Part One

• The Universal History of Numbers: From Prehistory to the Invention of the Computer, by Georges Ifrah (2005)
• Who's in Charge? Free Will and the Science of the Brain, by Michael S. Gazzaniga (2011)
• Bright Air, Brilliant Fire: On The Matter Of The Mind, by Gerald M. Edelman (1993)
• I Am a Strange Loop, by Douglas R. Hofstadter (2008)
• The Mismeasure of Man (revised & expanded), by Stephen Jay Gould (paperback - June 17, 1996)

Part Two

• The Symbolic Species: The Co-evolution of Language and the Brain, by Terrence W. Deacon (paperback - April 17, 1998)
• Supersizing the Mind: Embodiment, Action, and Cognitive Extension (Philosophy of Mind), by Andy Clark (hardcover - October 29, 2008)
• Soul Dust: The Magic of Consciousness, by Nicholas Humphrey (hardcover - February 20, 2011)
• Wetware: A Computer in Every Living Cell, by Dennis Bray (paperback - March 1, 2011)

Part Three

• Chess Metaphors: Artificial Intelligence and the Human Mind, by Diego Rasskin-Gutman and Deborah Klosky (hardcover - July 10, 2009)
• The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World, by David Deutsch (hardcover - July 21, 2011)
• The Most Human Human: What Talking with Computers Teaches Us About What It Means to Be Alive, by Brian Christian (hardcover - March 1, 2011)
• You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto (Vintage), by Jaron Lanier (February 8, 2011)
• The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, by Nicholas Carr (June 6, 2011)

Examining Developmental Aspects of Self-Actualization - Age Matters

This study from The Humanistic Psychologist looks at the influence of age on the level of self-actualization. The researchers discovered that on 8 out of the 12 Personal Orientation Inventory (POI) scales, subjects over the age of 36 showed higher levels of self-actualization than subjects under the age of 36.

The results seem to suggest that there is a relationship between one’s age and levels of self-actualization. 

However, is it really as simple as age? I'd be curious to see where the subjects fell on Cook-Greuter's or Kegan's adult-development stage assessments. One can be self-actualizing at 21, or one can be stuck in the consensus trance living a meaningless life at 70. It's not, in my opinion, about age.

What is essentially the introduction to the study is below - follow the link in the title to see the whole article (this is a rather uncommon Open Access article from this publisher). Oh yeah, please excuse the British spellings of many words, but it is their language after all.


Full Citation:
Ivtzan, I, Gardner, HE, Bernard, I, Sekhon, M & Hart, R. (2013, Apr 30). Well-being through Self-Fulfillment: Examining Developmental Aspects of Self-Actualization. The Humanistic Psychologist, 41:2, 119-132, DOI: 10.1080/08873267.2012.712076

Well-being through Self-Fulfillment: Examining Developmental Aspects of Self-Actualization

Itai Ivtzan, Hannah E. Gardner, Izra Bernard, Mandeep Sekhon, and Rona Hart
Department of Psychology, University East London

Abstract

Self-actualization is described as an individual’s expression of their full potential and a desire for self-fulfillment. It is the leading need in Maslow’s hierarchical motivation theory (Maslow, 1943) which does not specify an age range for each level, believing that individuals progress through the hierarchy at different rates. However, he recognises older adults are more likely than young adults to be concerned with higher motivation (Maslow, 1970). Previous work has revealed that people over the age of 36 have a tendency to be concerned with higher motives and people under this age with lower motives (Reiss & Havercamp, 2005). This study looks at the influence of age on the level of self-actualization and discovered that on 8 out of the 12 Personal Orientation Inventory (POI) scales, participants over the age of 36 showed higher levels of self-actualization than participants under the age of 36. These results indicate the relevance of developmental issues in this matter and back up the hypothesis that there is a relationship between one’s age and levels of self-actualization. However, results also showed a degree of overlap of self-actualization scores across age groups, suggesting further research may find other important factors, beyond age, which have a relationship with self-actualization.

Introduction

What allows people to progress toward advanced stages of self-fulfillment? In a society where an individual’s growth is championed and cultivated, this question is increasingly attracting the interest of both employers and psychologists.

Since the beginning of the twentieth century, psychologists have been developing the idea that human need can be classified into different categories (Johnmarshall, 2008; Langer, 1937; Schaffer, 1953), Maslow’s (1943, 1970) hierarchy of needs is based on the idea that there is distinction between higher and lower motives and that there are “real psychological and operational differences between those needs called ‘higher’ and those called ‘lower’” (Maslow, 1970, p. 97). Compared to lower, more physiological motives (such as hunger and sex), higher motives (such as altruism and morality) emerge at an older age, are less relevant to survival, and are closer to self-actualization.

Maslow’s work on self-actualization stems from that of Carl Jung (1928), who describes the process toward achieving self-realization. This is a state at which our unconscious and conscious combine, to form an integrated personality, a whole “self,” which comes from within, although can be stifled by lack of experience or education.

Like Jung, Maslow argues that human behaviour is driven by needs and goals, and that the pinnacle of self-actualization is qualitatively different to other needs (Maslow, 1962).  Self-actualization can be defined as an individual’s quest to be creative, to grow, to acquire knowledge, and to develop one’s abilities. Self-actualization is enjoyed in its own right and offers intrinsic rewards; it is not pursued for relief as are other needs in the hierarchy. Maslow suggests that even if all other needs are satisfied, there is a fundamental individual quest that “what humans can be, they must be. They must be true to their own nature” (Maslow, 1970, p. 22). Although the form of these needs varies between individuals, it fundamentally rests on prior satisfaction of other needs, on the cognitive capacities for curiosity, and the search for knowledge and truth. Maslow (1962) further states that self-actualization often requires a person to abandon familiar comforts and explore new possibilities. This requires courage, commitment, creativity and the ability to take risks. He observed (1954, 1962) that, as a  by-product of their quest, self-actualizers have deeper and healthier interpersonal relationships than other adults; they respect the autonomy and individuality of others and are able to express genuine empathy. Maslow referred to Gemeinschaftsgefuhl, a word invented by Adler that means an older-brotherly attitude for mankind expressed by self-actualized individuals (Huber, Edwards, & Fleming-Boyton, 2000). Thus, self-actualization not only gives its own reward, but facilitates functional behaviour toward satisfying other needs, such as interpersonal relationships (Heylighen, 1990).

Self-actualization is a natural and dynamic life-long process of growth and potential in a full, clear, selfless experience, with full concentration and absorption (Maslow, 1954). Given this, it is no surprise that self-actualization has been found to relate positively to measures of psychological adjustment and negatively to measures of psychopathology (Bauer, McAdams, & Pals, 2006; Ivtzan & Conneely, 2009; Ivtzan, Chan, Gardner, & Prashkar, 2011; Knapp & Comrey, 1973; Shostrom & Knapp, 1966; Wilkins, Hjelle & Thompson, 1977).

Maslow proposes a simple and intuitively appealing theory of human motivation (Heylighen, 1992), which initially lacked rigorous scientific measurement, and thus scientific interest (Reiss & Havercamp, 2005). However, a number of measurements of self-actualization have developed (see Cillers, Koortzen, & de Beer, 2004, p. 36). By far the most popular has been the Personal Orientation Inventory (POI; Shostrom, 1974a, 1974b), which was endorsed by Maslow (Olczack & Goldman, 1975). The POI measures the values and behaviour related to positive mental health and growth process of psychological optimisation, shown in the self-actualizating person. The POI comprises of 150 two-choice comparative value and behaviour judgements, giving a clearly delineated choice (Knapp, 1976). The items are scored twice, first for two basic scales of personal orientation, inner-directed (I) support and time competence (Tc); and secondly for ten subscales. The items, when combined, are considered to be a manifestation of self-actualization. The POI importantly shows good reliability (Illardi & May, 1968; Klavetter & Mogar, 1967) and validity (Klavetter & Mogar, 1967; Knapp, 1976; Shostrom, 1974a, 1974b), leading Maslow to state that self-actualization as a concept was tantamount to intelligence, in that “self-actualization is what the test tests” (Maslow, 1971, p. 28). Therefore, this test will be used in our study to assess self-actualization.

An interesting talking point is the extent to which self-actualization is linked to age. Maslow (1970) hypothesises that, although there are large individual differences in age of progression through the hierarchy of needs, the peaks of actualization cannot be reached until full maturity is attained:

I am confirming the concept [of self-actualization] very definitely to older people. By the criteria I used, self-actualization does not occur in young people … [they] have not achieved identity, or autonomy, nor have they had enough time to experience an enduring, loyal, post-romantic love relationship, nor have they generally found their calling. (p. 39) 

Human development occurs over time and is strongly influenced by life exposure (Carstensen, 2006; Eysenck, 1975). It seems logical that the relative ambiguity of adolescence, and consequent transitions (e.g., to different residential and social environments), inspire and cultivate increased awareness, a broadening knowledge base of the world and greater creativity in the individual (e.g., Vaughan, 2010).

This idea of age being used to denote the term “development” immediately raises the idea of “change.” A common metaphor used to describe development is “movement”—from one state to another (transition) which implies growth and progression through different stages (Newman & Newman, 2008). It is also frequently linked to a voyage to the fixed point of maturity (individuation, inner-unity). People are seen as making continual progression in a certain order through a series of phases. One popular way of expressing this is expressed by Levinson (1978) whose life stage theory is as follows: Childhood and adolescence (birth–20); Early adulthood (17–45); Adulthood (45–65); and Late adulthood (60+). In his model, each phase has a unique/distinctive and unifying character of learning and is an attempt to build/modify one’s life structure (e.g., around changes in intelligence and the ability to reason). For example, people in the Childhood and Adolescence phase are typically trying to modify and terminate existing relationships with their family, and to appraise and modify the self accordingly (identity formation), whereas people in the latter phases (Late adulthood) are characteristically trying to find an inner balance between the needs of the self and society (mid-life crisis and reassessment).

The lifespan approach to personality argues that life-tasks are culturally determined and dependent on the age groups that devote time and energy to them during a particular life period. These tasks are shared within a given subculture, and represent the issues that are considered “normative” for individuals to address in a given life stage (e.g., Cantor & Kihlstrom, 1987; Ivtzan, 2008). It may be safe to say therefore, that there are typical behaviours or preoccupations found at particular age milestones, some of which are unique to that age group (Fletcher, 1998). Of course, this approach will not be suitable for every individual within a certain group, and it may be that those who self-actualize have an atypical background, being particularly gifted in moral reasoning, for example (Ruf, 2009). Nonetheless, analysis of typical behaviour shown across ages may be fruitful in analysing why the vast majority of studies into self-actualization assess adults.

It may be that the preoccupations of younger people is not conducive to self-actualization. Eron, Huesmann, Bruce, Fischer, and Mermelstein (1983) posit that young people frequently observe stereotypical behaviour. For example, teenagers may be rebellious against authority, aggressive or conformist (Marple, 1933) in order to fit in and be accepted by the “in-group” (Niedzviecki, 2008). This can sometimes be at the expense of their personal beliefs and convictions. Individuals who fail to adhere to these norms may find themselves subjected to victimisation and bullying (Mathiesen, Cash & Hudson, 2004); pressures that are repressive to self-actualizing. Younger people are also characterised by their concern over physical appearance (Purvis, Robinson & Merry, 2006).

Failure to resolve identity issues may be reflected by less than intimate friendship formations—friendships based on self-identity, power and self-esteem. Such relationships lack emotional closeness, a sense of personal liberty and “communion,” characterized by mutual disclosure, social support and harmony (Budgeon, 2006; Erikson, 1950). Buhrmester and Prager (1995) argue that adolescents will only pursue friendships with a focus on intimacy once they have reached pubertal maturation.

Perhaps most pronounced in the teenage psyche is the notion of immediate gratification and extrinsic reward (Leone & Dalton, 1988; i.e., that “X” behaviour is contingent with passing exams or status). This lack of internal drive or motivation is at odds with self-actualizing pursuits.

Young people’s preoccupations may be better understood through Leontiev’s (2007) “Worldview” concept, a system of subjective generalizations about reality, which may place younger individuals at a disadvantage compared to their older counterparts. This system of beliefs contains the knowledge, cultural stereotypes and ideals of the desirable or perfect human being, society and world. By this definition a teenager has insufficient worldly knowledge to know what to strive for, and therefore he/she does not possess the necessary tools to become self-actualized. To compensate for this impoverished knowledge base, information may be obtained from the media, which may act to inform normative roles and behaviour (Hammer & Budge, 1994). The fact that the pre-adult age group are at the early stages of self-discovery makes the possibility of self-actualization very remote. Even though most young adults (university students) may have a better worldview than adolescents, it is not yet adequate. Their concerns revolve around academic success, making new friends and gaining independence from their family (Cantor et al., 1991). Also, students are usually undecided about the career path they will embark upon, and this uncertainty can translate into not knowing what latent capacities need to take surface and be realised.

By contrast, as one gets older, wishes and fears decrease and are replaced by realistic steps to achieving future goals (Lang & Carstensen, 2002). Thus, the preoccupations of the mature population may be more congruent with self-actualizing endeavours. Adulthood may, in a sense, encourage “out of the box thinking,” mediated by life changing social conditions such as marriage, divorce, retirement or the death of a spouse (Jarvis, 2006).

Middle age, a phase of adulthood, is a time of reflection and re-assessment (Huyck, 1993; Lachman, 2004; Shek, 1996). It involves a journey to find the balance between the needs of the self and the needs of society, which may be facilitated by more leisure time and less imposing dictates on daily life. The ability of an individual to integrate into society without losing a sense of who they are can be viewed as a sign of maturity and is a crucial aspect of self-actualization. This period of one’s life may involve a “mid-life crisis” (onset ranging from 35 to 50 years old) which manifests itself as a period of intense self-questioning brought on by the realisation that one might not have accomplished what was once anticipated by this stage in life (Steger, Oishi, & Kashdan, 2009). Individuals experiencing a mid-life crisis are often reported to exhibit some of the following feelings: a search for an unattained dream or goal; a deep sense of remorse for goals not accomplished; an openness to critical feedback (which is strongly at odds with the pre-adult age group); and a need to spend more time alone.

Self-reflection may come later on in one’s lifetime. Feil (1985) proposes that very old people enter a new life stage with a “new life task.” She writes: “They must justify having lived. They must make peace … they express bottled up feelings at last … accept without judging” (Feil, 1985, p. 92). As with middle-aged individuals, life tasks in old age may also prime a person for the quest of self-actualization.

Empirical data based on the administration of the POI supports the idea that the preoccupations of the young are less conducive to self-actualization than the old. High-school samples have been the focus of several investigations utilizing the POI. Mean scores in adult samples tend to be higher; advanced college-student scores are higher than entering college students; and scores from both of these populations are higher than from high-school students (Penelope, 2006; Shostrom, 1974a).

Although Maslow’s (1970) observations of self-actualized people have been regarded as insightful, his studies on motivation theory yielded mixed results. Somewhat contrary to his claim of a positive correlation between age and self-actualization, Mitchell (1984) reported findings that suggest many of the younger generation are “inner-directed”. By contrast, their parents and grand-parents were reportedly higher on the “outer-directed” scale. Cacioppo, Petty, Feinstein, and Jarvis (1996) suggest that cognitive motivation may be a necessary facet of self-actualization and not age as originally held by Maslow. Cognitive motivation is defined by the authors as, “an individual’s tendency to engage in and enjoy effortful cognitive endeavours” (p. 192).

This has led some authors (e.g., Costa & McCrae, 1980; Rutter & Rutter, 1992) to denounce theories concentrating on stages and thereby age-typical behaviours. Such theories imply: “a mechanical predictability that is out of keeping with the dynamics of change, the extent of flux over time and the degree of individual variability that seems to be the case” (Rutter & Rutter, 1992, p. 24). Some individuals experience crises similar to that of mid-life, as early as in their 20s. Some stages in development are missed out and the consequences of this may be that personal growth may occur at different points in life (Baltes, Reese, & Lipsitt, 1980).

Maslow (1970) described how as we develop, self-actualization naturally becomes our most prominent need. This is because after long gratification, basic needs become more independent from their source. For example, an adult who has been love-satisfied is better equipped for independence, and able to deal with loss of love and popularity (Maslow, 1970). This necessarily involves an age of progression, as it requires the basic needs to be met and maintained over a period of time, before focus can be made on self-actualizing behaviours. Reisss and Havercamp (2005) demonstrate clear support for Maslow’s (1954, 1971) findings and claims. They evaluated data from 1,712 participants which were tested with the “Reiss Profile of Fundamental Goals” (Reiss & Havercamp, 1998), a standardized assessment of Maslow’s (1970) catalogue of trait strivings, over the whole of Maslow’s hierarchy to create a list of high and low motives based on the criteria set by Maslow (1970). Motives such as eating, romance (sex), physical exercise and vengeance were combined to form a measure called “lower motivation.” Motives of honour, family and idealism were combined to form a measure called “higher motivation.” Participant data was derived from four age groups: 16–20, 21–35, 36–55 and 56+, as the authors maintained that this method ensured a variety of ages were represented within each group; e.g., that there was not too much clustering of ages toward the young or old section of the age continuum. However, the data analysis conducted on the four age groups collapsed to form two groups: those under the age of 36 and those over. Reiss and Havercamp (2005) rationalized that although Maslow (1970) failed to give a specific age for the attainment of self-actualization, 36 years old was deemed a reasonable estimate for testing his idea. They reasoned that, as required by Maslow (1963), an adult should be sufficiently mature to have gained a significant degree of self-actualization by the age of 36. This is similar to the 35 year old cut off described as the “high noon of life” by Shostrom, Knapp, and Knapp (1976, p. 196). Reiss and Havercamp (2005) maintained that the vast majority of adults under 36 should still be too young and un-established in life to have significantly addressed their optimal needs. The results provided strong support for Maslow’s (1954, 1962, 1970) general notion of human growth (motivations change as adults mature): the lower motives (such as eating and exercise) were found to be prepotent for younger (<36 years old) versus older adults (>36 years old). Conversely, the higher motives (such as honour and idealism) were found to be prepotent for older adults versus younger adults.

The aim of this study is to investigate whether Reiss and Havercamp’s (2005) results, older people’s tendency to be concerned with higher motives and younger people’s tendency to be  preoccupied with lower motives, can be extended whilst retaining their viability. It makes a “thinking leap,” given Reiss and Havercamp’s (2005) findings, hypothesising that older people will be more self-actualized than younger people because self-actualization is the beacon of higher motives.

The affect of age on self-actualization will be investigated and the belief that specific scores on the subscales will significantly correlate with age will be explored. More specifically, older participants (>36 years of age) are expected to score significantly higher on the main scales of the POI than younger participants (<36 years of age).

The Contagion of Being: Derrick Hull at TEDxTeachersCollege

Thomas Derrick Hull was formerly Director of Neuroscience and Learning Design at Candeo (a program for overcoming unwanted sexual behaviors), studied Mind, Brain, and Education at Harvard University, and studied Clinical Psychology at Columbia University.

This is a short but interesting TEDx talk.

The Contagion of Being: Derrick Hull at TEDxTeachersCollege 

Published on Aug 18, 2013 

In this captivating talk, Derrick Hull discusses the shared experience of being alive. Explaining that thoughts, moods, and feelings are essentially contagious experiences, Hull engagingly cites research from psychology and social science to show the power of becoming a mindfully contagious individual. Derrick Hull is a researcher, writer, and entrepreneur. Derrick is pursuing graduate studies in Clinical Psychology at Teachers College, Columbia University.

The Horse Boy - Autism, Horses, and Mongolian Shamans

When Rupert Isaacson and Kristin Neff (parents of Rowan) reach their limit in caring for their autistic son, having tried medications, diets, and everything else, they seek a more traditional method of healing - horses and shamans.
They journey to Mongolia with Rowan and seek out various shamans for healing, eventually making their way to the Reindeer People (who ride reindeer), where the possibility of a miracle healing is presented to them.

With commentary along the way from Dr. Temple Grandin and Dr. Simon Baron-Cohen, among others, we also learn what it means to have autism and to be non-neurotypical.

How far would you travel to heal someone you love? An intensely personal yet epic spiritual journey, THE HORSE BOY follows one Texas couple and their autistic son as they trek on horseback through Outer Mongolia, in a desperate attempt to treat his condition with shamanic healing. 

A complex condition that can dramatically affect social interaction and communication skills, autism is the fastest-growing developmental disability today. After two-year-old Rowan Isaacson was diagnosed with autism, he ceased speaking, retreated into himself for hours at a time, and often screamed inconsolably for no apparent reason. Rupert Isaacson, a writer and former horse trainer, and his wife Kristin Neff, a psychology professor, sought the best possible medical care for their son. But traditional therapies had little effect. 

 

Then they discovered that Rowan has a profound affinity for animals, particularly horses. When Rupert began to ride with Rowan every day, Rowan began to talk again and engage with the outside world. Was there a place on the planet that combined horses and healing? There was — Mongolia, the country where the horse was first domesticated, and where shamanism is the state religion. What if we were to take Rowan there, thought Rupert, and ride on horseback from shaman to shaman? What would happen? 

THE HORSE BOY is a magical expedition from the wild open steppe to the sacred Lake Sharga. As the family sets off on a quest for a possible cure, Rupert and Kristin find their son is accepted — even treasured — for his differences. By telling one family’s extraordinary story, the film gives a voice to the thousands of families who are living with autism every day. As Rupert and Kristin struggle to make sense of their child’s autism, and find healing for him and themselves in this unlikeliest of places, Rowan makes dramatic leaps forward, astonishing both his parents and himself.

Richard Brown's Course on Consciousness and Its Place in Physical Reality

Richard Brown, who blogs at Philosophy Sucks! and Associate Professor at LaGuardia College, CUNY, recently posted the course outline and readings for a class he taught at LaGuardia that had the theme Cosmology, Consciousness, and Computation.

Aside from one book, his own Terminator and Philosophy: I'll Be Back, Therefore I Am, all of the readings are from online sources, particularly the outstanding Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and YouTube.

Here is his course outline and the links to the readings:

Consciousness and its Place in Physical Reality

Posted on August 17, 2013 by Richard Brown

In the Spring 2013 semester I initiated a new course at LaGuardia that had the theme Cosmology, Consciousness, and Computation. The basic idea was to explore issues relating to physicalism. Intuitively, physicalism is the view that everything that exists is physical but what is the nature of physical reality? The idea I had was to have the course divided into three sections. In the first section we would do a conceptual physics course talking about the development of physics from the ancient world to the present day. Then we would turn to issues about consciousness and mind and where they fit in the physical picture we have so far developed. After that we turn to issues about computation; Is the universe computable? Or perhaps does it instantiate some computation? Is consciousness computational? Are we living in a simulation? Is the universe a hologram?

In my quest to have low cost book options for students I have adopted the Terminator book I co-edited and have supplemented that with readings from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and other online material. The reception to the course was very good and I am really looking forward to doing it a second time in Fall 2013. I have updated the syllabus and, as usual, would welcome any suggestions or feedback.

Week I: Introduction
• →Richard Brown on What is Philosophy? – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySS0bNeWZOg

Week 2: Early Attempts to Understand Mind and Physical Reality
• →Terminator Ch 10: The Nature of Time and the Universe
• Time- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/time/
• Richard Brown on Pre-Socratic Philosophy- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfLgRotdcKI&list=PLfR0qhtOKP6eYkUoW7DH8qdjwEyQnsbPJ&index=2
• Pre-Socratic Philosophy- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/presocratics/
• Ancient Theories of the Soul- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ancient-soul/
• Parmenides- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/parmenides/
• Zeno’s Paradoxes- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/paradox-zeno/
• Ancient Atomism- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/atomism-ancient/
• Democritus- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/democritus/
• Intentionality in Ancient Philosophy- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/intentionality-ancient/
• Time- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/time/

Week 3: Modern Philosophy and Modern Science
• →Terminator Ch 2 –Animal consciousness, Descartes, and Emotions
• Descartes’ Physics- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/descartes-physics/
• Descartes’ Epistemology- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/descartes-epistemology/
• Descartes’ Theory of Ideas- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/descartes-ideas/
• Other Minds- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/other-minds/
• Animal Consciousness- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness-animal/
• Locke on Real Essence- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/real-essence/
• Locke’s Philosophy of Science- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/locke-philosophy-science/
• Newton’s Philosophy- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/newton-philosophy/
• Isaac Newton- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/newton/
• Newton’s Views on Space, Time, and Motion-http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/newton-stm/
• The Contents of Perception- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/perception-contents/
• The Problem of Perception- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/perception-problem/

Week 4: Relativity Physics
• →Terminator Ch 8: paradoxes of time travel
• Einstein for Everyone:http://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/teaching/HPS_0410/chapters/index.html
• Brian Greene’s The Elegant Universe on NOVA-http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/physics/elegant-universe.html#elegant-universe-einstein.html
• Time Travel and Modern Physics- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/time-travel-phys/
• Time Machines- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/time-machine/
• The Equivalence of Mass and Energy- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/equivME/
• The Hole Argument- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/spacetime-holearg/
• David Lewis’ The Paradoxes of Time Travel-http://www.csus.edu/indiv/m/merlinos/Paradoxes%20of%20Time%20Travel.pdf

Week 5: Quantum Mechanics
• Brian Greene’s The Fabric of the Cosmos on NOVA-http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/physics/fabric-of-cosmos.html
• Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics:http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-copenhagen/
• Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics-http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-manyworlds/
• The Uncertainty Principle: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qt-uncertainty/
• Quantum Entanglement and Information: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qt-entangle/
• The Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Argument in Quantum Theory-http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qt-epr/
• Measurement in Quantum Theory: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qt-measurement/
• Quantum Mechanics- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm/
• Richard Feynman on Double Slit Experiment- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUJfjRoxCbk&list=PLfR0qhtOKP6eYkUoW7DH8qdjwEyQnsbPJ&index=3

Week 6: The Nature and Origin of the Universe
• →The Scale of the Universe- http://htwins.net/scale2/
• Hubble Deep Field: http://hubblesite.org/hubble_discoveries/hubble_deep_field/
• Cosmology and Theology- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/cosmology-theology/
• Atheism and Agnosticism- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/atheism-agnosticism/
• Religion and Science- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/religion-science/
• Teleological Arguments for God’s Existence-http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/teleological-arguments/
• Cosmological Argument- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/cosmological-argument/
• The Possible Parallel Universe of Dark Matter-http://discovermagazine.com/2013/julyaug/21-the-possible-parallel-universe-of-dark-matter#.UhDhPRbtaz6

Week 7: The Possibility of Life Beyond Earth
• Life- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/life/
• Molecular Biology- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/molecular-biology/
• Finding Life Beyond Earth- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVzmGaGCqP8

Week 8: Consciousness in the Physical World?
• Consciousness- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness/
• Representational Theories of Consciousness-http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness-representational/
• Functionalism- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/functionalism/
• The Mind/Brain Identity Theory- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mind-identity/
• Dualism- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/dualism/
• Zombies- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/zombies/

Week 9: Beyond Physicalism?
• Eliminative Materialism- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/materialism-eliminative/
• Folk Psychology as a Theory- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/folkpsych-theory/
• The Philosophy of Neuroscience- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/neuroscience/
• Panpsychism- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/panpsychism/

Week 10: Transhumanism
• →Terminator Ch 4: Extended Mind, Transhumanism
• A History of Transhumanist Thought-http://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/documents/journal_publications/al/nick_bostrom
• Biohackers: A Journey into Cyborg America- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0WIgU7LRcI&list=PLfR0qhtOKP6eYkUoW7DH8qdjwEyQnsbPJ&index=48
• Tim Cannon on Potential Benefits of Sensory Augmentation-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZ1KCpSL51E&list=PLfR0qhtOKP6eYkUoW7DH8qdjwEyQnsbPJ&index=46
• Aubrey de Grey on Defeating Aging- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1FBJGl2c-Y&list=PLfR0qhtOKP6eYkUoW7DH8qdjwEyQnsbPJ&index=17

Week 11: A.I. and The Singularity
• →Terminator Ch 1: A.I., Chinese Room, Transhumanism
• →Terminator Ch 3: Why always with the killing?
• The Chinese Room Argument- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/chinese-room/
• The Turing Test- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/turing-test/
• The Frame Problem- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/frame-problem/
• David Chalmers’ The Singularity: A Philosophical Analysis-http://consc.net/papers/singularity.pdf
• David Chalmers on Simulation and Singularity- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FafHdF_D8gA&list=PLfR0qhtOKP6eYkUoW7DH8qdjwEyQnsbPJ&index=13

Week 12: The Simulation Argument & The Holographic Hypothesis
• Nick Bostrom’s Simulation Argument Website- http://www.simulation-argument.com
• Nick Bostrom on The Simulation Argument- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnl6nY8YKHs&list=PLfR0qhtOKP6eYkUoW7DH8qdjwEyQnsbPJ&index=24
• David Chalmers’ The Matrix as Metaphysics- http://consc.net/papers/matrix.html
• Leonard Susskind on The World as a Hologram- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DIl3Hfh9tY&list=PLfR0qhtOKP6eYkUoW7DH8qdjwEyQnsbPJ&index=16

Curcumin Effective in Treating Depression

According to a statistical analysis performed by Natural News, curcumin (one of the active chemical constituents in turmeric) is the most widely-studied phytochemical in modern science. Existing research suggests that curcumin offers the following biochemical activities:

• Antioxidant Activity
• Anti-inflammatory Activity
• Glutathione Synthesis
• Effects on Biotransformation Enzymes Involved in Carcinogen Metabolism
• Induction of Cell Cycle Arrest and Apoptosis
• Inhibition of Tumor Invasion and Angiogenesis

Based on these functions, research has become common for the effects of curcumin on cancer, Alzheimer's Disease (and other neurodegenerative disorders), cystic fibrosis, inflammatory diseases (including rheumatoid arthritis and osteoarthritis), and a host of other disorders.

As the graphic at the top shows, curcumin activates/deactivates many of the same molecular targets as pharmaceuticals. Here is another graphic showing the classes of targets and specific molecular targets:

Via Collective Evolution, there is new research suggesting that curcumin is as effective as Prozac in treating depression (major depressive disorder). To my knowledge, this was the first study to show this result. But I was wrong - a Google Scholar search turned up several easily accessed studies that examined curcumin as a treatment for depression,

Full text:

• Kulkarni, SK, and Chir, A. (2010, Mar-Apr). An Overview of Curcumin in Neurological Disorders. Indian Journal of Pharmacology Science, 72(2): 149–154. doi: 10.4103/0250-474X.65012
• Kulkarni, SK, Dhir, A, and Akula, KK. (2009). Potentials of Curcumin as an Antidepressant. The Scientific World Journal, 9, 1233–1241. doi: 10.1100/tsw.2009.137

Abstract only:

• Lopresti AL, Hood SD, Drummond PD. (2012, Oct 3). Multiple antidepressant potential modes of action of curcumin: A review of its anti-inflammatory, monoaminergic, antioxidant, immune-modulating and neuroprotective effects. Journal of Psychopharmacology, 26(12):1512-24. doi: 10.1177/0269881112458732
• Kulkarni SK, Bhutani MK, Bishnoi M. (2008, Dec). Antidepressant activity of curcumin: Involvement of serotonin and dopamine system. Psychopharmacology (Berl), 201(3): 435-42. doi: 10.1007/s00213-008-1300-y
• Xu Y, Ku BS, Yao HY, Lin YH, Ma X, Zhang YH, Li XJ. (2005, Jul 25). The effects of curcumin on depressive-like behaviors in mice. European Journal of Pharmacology, 518(1):40-6. doi: 10.1016/j.ejphar.2005.06.002

The original article is behind a pay-wall, but Collective Evolution offered a good summary - the citation and abstract are below the summary.

Study Finds Turmeric Is As Effective As Prozac For Treating Depression

July 31, 2013 by Joe Martino

Researchers with the Department of Pharmacology of Government Medical College in Bhavnagar, Gujarat, India performed a study comparing the effects of turmeric (curcumin) and Prozac (fluoxetine). The randomized and controlled clinical study determined turmeric was as effective as Prozac in treating major depressive disorder. Turmeric treatment was also absent of dangerous side effects often found in Prozac use.

The objectives of the trial was to compare the efficacy and safety of curcumin with fluoxetine (Prozac) in patients with major depressive disorder (MDD). The study observed 60 patients diagnosed with MDD. Patients were randomized in a 1:1:1 ratio for six weeks in an observer-masked treatment using fluoxetine (20 mg) and curcumin (1000 mg) both individually or in combination. To determine the efficacy of each treatment, the main variable used was response rates according to the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale, 17-item version (HAM-D17 ). They also employed a second efficacy variable which examined the mean change in HAM-D17 rating after the six week observation period.

Turmeric is a rhizomatous herbaceous perennial plant of the ginger family. The average person may best recognize turmeric as a spice commonly used in Indian cuisine. The active compound curcumin is known to have a wide range of medicinal benefits including anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, antitumour, antibacterial, and antiviral activities. In India, turmeric has been used for thousands of years as a remedy for stomach and liver ailments. Turmeric can also be used topically to heal sores due to its antimicrobial properties.

According to the study:

We observed that curcumin was well tolerated by all the patients. The proportion of responders as measured by the HAM-D17 scale was higher in the combination group (77.8%) than in the fluoxetine (64.7%) and the curcumin (62.5%) groups; however, these data were not statistically significant (P = 0.58). Interestingly, the mean change in HAM-D17 score at the end of six weeks was comparable in all three groups (P = 0.77). This study provides first clinical evidence that curcumin may be used as an effective and safe modality for treatment in patients with MDD without concurrent suicidal ideation or other psychotic disorders.

This marks the first published study using a randomized and controlled clinical trial which indicates the efficacy of turmeric (curcumin) in treating serious depression. Results show that turmeric is just as effective as Prozac and possibly more effective than other depression drugs on the market. It is important to note the study does not account for the negative effects (side effects) that come with Prozac. Prozac is known to cause suicidal ideation and/or other psychotic disorders, however, these are not present when treating with turmeric. The use of turmeric as a treatment for depression is safer and less taxing on the body when compared to treatment with pharmaceutical drugs. These results are not surprising given the comparison of synthetic treatments vs natural.

The anti-depressant market reaches annual profits of about $12 billion. This number is expected to increase to $13.5 billion by 2018. These medications do not help cure depressions but instead mask symptoms and create a life long reliance on them. Utilizing natural treatments coupled with a holistic approach of assessing lifestyle, diet and the root cause of depression is an approach that is much more effective both in cost and curing patients. It is important to keep in mind that the pharmaceutical industry is a business before anything else. We are seeing a growing body of evidence to suggest natural treatments are much safer and effective when treating a variety of diseases, disorders and illnesses. It’s time they get more attention.

Sources:

• http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23832433
• http://www.prweb.com/releases/2018-antidepressant-drugs/market-mdd-ocd-gad-pd/prweb10034006.htm

Full Citation:

Sanmukhani J, Satodia V, Trivedi J, Patel T, Tiwari D, Panchal B, Goel A, Tripathi CB. (2013, Jul 6). Efficacy and Safety of Curcumin in Major Depressive Disorder: A Randomized Controlled Trial. Phytotherapy Research, doi: 10.1002/ptr.5025. [Epub ahead of print]

Efficacy and Safety of Curcumin in Major Depressive Disorder: A Randomized Controlled Trial

Sanmukhani J, Satodia V, Trivedi J, Patel T, Tiwari D, Panchal B, Goel A, Tripathi CB.
Department of Pharmacology, Government Medical College, Bhavnagar, Gujarat, India. 

Abstract 

Curcumin, an active ingredient of Curcuma longa Linn (Zingiberaceae), has shown potential antidepressant-like activity in animal studies. The objectives of this trial were to compare the efficacy and safety of curcumin with fluoxetine in patients with major depressive disorder (MDD). Herein, 60 patients diagnosed with MDD were randomized in a 1:1:1 ratio for six weeks observer-masked treatment with fluoxetine (20 mg) and curcumin (1000 mg) individually or their combination. The primary efficacy variable was response rates according to Hamilton Depression Rating Scale, 17-item version (HAM-D17 ). The secondary efficacy variable was the mean change in HAM-D17 score after six weeks. We observed that curcumin was well tolerated by all the patients. The proportion of responders as measured by the HAM-D17 scale was higher in the combination group (77.8%) than in the fluoxetine (64.7%) and the curcumin (62.5%) groups; however, these data were not statistically significant (P = 0.58). Interestingly, the mean change in HAM-D17 score at the end of six weeks was comparable in all three groups (P = 0.77). This study provides first clinical evidence that curcumin may be used as an effective and safe modality for treatment in patients with MDD without concurrent suicidal ideation or other psychotic disorders.

Fitness News You Can Use - August 15, 2013

Here is a dose of fitness news from FitBits, the news service of Exercise Etc. Take home information: (1) running is not as bad for hips as once thought; (2) eating carbs makes us crave more carbs later; (3) quick intense workouts are gaining in popularity; (4) exercise can modify our DNA in good ways.

FitBits

August 15, 2013

Exercise ETC's Review of exercise-related research

Compiled by Laura Abbott, MS, LMT

Does Running or Walking Increase Your Risk of Needing a Hip Replacement?

Osteoarthritis (OA) is the leading cause of disability in the older adult population affecting between 7-25% of those 55 years and older. It’s also projected to become the fourth most common medical condition in women. While running and high impact activities have often been associated with increased risk of knee trauma and injuries, they do have benefits that may also reduce your risk.

Running reduces body weight (high body weight increases your risk of developing OA), and it may promote cartilage thickening. Researchers in Berkeley California investigated the role of running, walking, and other activities to see if one more so than another decreased the risk of developing OA in the hip and the need for a hip replacement.

Over 70,000 runners and over 14,000 walkers were tracked. Oddly, running was found to significantly reduce OA and hip replacement. The thinking was the reduction of body weight helped take stress off the joint. In addition to promoting weight loss directly, running also reduced the “middle-age weight gain” to only half as much as low mileage runners or walkers.

So, maybe running is not as bad on the joints as once thought. For those who do have issues, make sure your shoes are not worn out and consider running on a soft surface. If running just is not in the cards for you, walking is still a good option and better than doing nothing at all.

Williams, Paul T., "Effects of Running and Walking on Osteoarthritis and Hip Replacement Risk." American College of Sports Medicine, Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, Vol. 45, No. 7, July 2013. Pp. 1292-1297.

*****

Carbs and Food Cravings

We have heard it many times: How much you eat determines weight loss or weight gain, what you eat determines how you feel. Well, what you eat also may contribute to how much you eat which affects weight loss/weight gain. Oh, the vicious cycle.

The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition published a study by Dr. David Ludwig showing that not all calories are created equal based on the effects on brain metabolism. Indeed, some nutrients seem to increase cravings for sugary, high carbohydrate foods. Not everyone will develop these cravings, but controlling them could be a first step in helping those who are battling their weight.

What is that first step? Limit refined carbohydrates and high glycemic foods such as bagels, white rice, juice and soda. Not only did these foods raise blood sugar, but they also elicited "pronounced responses" (cravings) in the areas of the brain related to rewards located in the pleasure center (hypothalamus). When subjects ingested a high-glycemic milkshake, blood sugar not only dropped into the hypoglycemic range, but scans showed more activation in the area of the brain associated with reward and addictive behaviors.

So, while we fitness professionals are always pushing "more exercise, more exercise," maybe we need to take a closer look at nutrition.

Ludwig, Davis S., "Effects of Dietary Glycemic Index on Brain Regions Related to Reward and Craving in Men." The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. June 2013.

*****

The Minimalist Workout

The appeal that you can get fit within a minimal amount of time has taken center stage even at the American College of Sports Medicine conference in Indianapolis last May. But is fit the same as healthy? And do these short workouts help with risk factors such as high blood pressure and cholesterol?

Many of the studies presented at the conference focused on short bursts of strenuous exercise can help with fitness... and maybe health. Some of the guidelines for exercise are just too daunting for some individuals. For example, in 2008 the Department of Health and Human Services came out with the guideline of 150 minutes of exercise. That is five 30-minute sessions per week. Sometimes, we fitness professionals are lucky to get a client to exercise two times per week for 20 minutes, if that. In fact, 80% of Americans do not meet those guidelines.

So, are the improvements we are seeing in these short bursts of exercise because of the intensity, or is it because people who normally would not do anything are trying these workouts? And do they help with risk factor reduction? We just don’t know yet. But at least we are getting some sedentary people moving, and that is pretty darn good.

Reynolds, Gretchen, "The Rise of the Minimalist Workout.” New York Times, June 2013.

*****

Can We Modify our Fat-Cell DNA with Exercise?

A study done at the University of Sweden suggests that we can! Cells in the body - including fat cells - contain DNA, which is where our genetic information is stored. A small group of 23 sedentary men were followed for 6 months, who were asked to exercise 3 times per week without changing their diet or normal daily activities. As expected, the men only exercised an average of 1.8 times per week. However, it was still enough for the researchers to see changes in the DNA.

The methyl groups (molecules that are within the genes) help determine which genes are activated or deactivated. They found that these activations/deactivations were changed in the fat cells when these men exercised. Researchers also found positive changes in genes traditionally linked to Type II diabetes.

This could explain why exercise is so beneficial to certain risk factors, and that yes, we can make positive changes to our health through exercise.

Marie Ellis. "Exercise Can Have An Effect At DNA Level Against Fat Cells." Medical News Today. MediLexicon, Intl., 8 Jul. 2013. Web. 10 Jul. 2013. 

Robert D. Stolorow, Ph.D. - Emotional Dwelling Is More than Empathic Understanding

Robert Stolorow is one of the co-founders of the intersubjective systems theory model of relational psychoanalysis, along with Donna Orange, George Atwood, and Bernard Brandchaft. Among the foundational books written by Stolorow and others in this group are Working Intersubjectively: Contextualism in Psychoanalytic Practice (2001, with Orange and Atwood), Contexts of Being: The Intersubjective Foundations of Psychological Life (2002, with Atwood), and Psychoanalytic Treatment: An Intersubjective Approach (2000, with Atwood and Brandchaft).

Stolorow's blog at Psychology Today, from which this post is shared, is Feeling, Relating, Existing: On Emotion and the Human Dimension. This is the bio given at PT:

Robert D. Stolorow, Ph.D., Ph.D. is a Founding Faculty Member at the Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis, Los Angeles, and at the Institute for the Psychoanalytic Study of Subjectivity, New York City. He is the author of World, Affectivity, Trauma: Heidegger and Post-Cartesian Psychoanalysis (Routledge, 2011) and Trauma and Human Existence: Autobiographical, Psychoanalytic, and Philosophical Reflections (Routledge, 2007) and coauthor of eight other books. He received the Distinguished Scientific Award from the Division of Psychoanalysis of the American Psychological Association in 1995, the Haskell Norman Prize for Excellence in Psychoanalysis from the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis in 2011, and the Hans W. Loewald Memorial Award from the International Forum for Psychoanalytic Education in 2012.

In this post, Stolorow clarifies the differences between empathy, as first proposed by Heinz Kohut in his Self Psychology model, and the "phenomenological contextualism" proposed in the intersubjective systems model.

Undergoing the Situation

Emotional dwelling is more than empathic understanding

Published on August 10, 2013 by Robert D. Stolorow, Ph.D. in Feeling, Relating, Existing

“The person with understanding does not know and judge as one who stands apart and unaffected; but rather, as one united by a specific bond with the other, he thinks with the other and undergoes the situation with him.”—Hans-Georg Gadamer

Traditional notions of therapeutic empathy have been pervaded by the Cartesian doctrine of the isolated mind. This doctrine bifurcates the subjective world of the person into outer and inner regions, reifies and absolutizes the resulting separation between the two, and pictures the mind as an objective entity that takes its place among other objects, a “thinking thing” that has an inside with contents and looks out on an external world from which it is essentially estranged. Within this metaphysical vision, human beings can encounter each other only as thinking subjects, and something like empathic immersion—what psychoanalytic innovator Heinz Kohut famously called vicarious introspection—is required to bridge the ontological gap separating their isolated minds from one another. In a post-Cartesian philosophical world, no such bridging is required, as we are all always already connected with one another in virtue of our common humanity (including our common finitude and existential vulnerability) and our co-disclosive relation to a common world.

Kohut’s and others’ contention that a therapist’s empathic immersions can be neutral and objective is especially saturated with Cartesian assumptions. One isolated mind, the therapist, enters the subjective world of another isolated mind, the patient. With his or her own psychological world virtually left outside, the therapist gazes directly upon the patient’s inner experience with pure and preconceptionless eyes. From my vantage point, this doctrine of immaculate perception (Nietzsche) entails a denial of the inherently intersubjective nature of analytic understanding, to which the therapist’s subjectivity makes an ongoing, unavertable, and indispensable contribution.

The framework of phenomenological contextualism developed by my collaborators and me embraces the hermeneutical axiom that all human thought involves interpretation and that therefore our understanding of anything is always from a perspective shaped and limited by the historicity of our own organizing principles—by the fabric of preconceptions that the philosopher Gadamer called prejudice. The claim that all analytic understanding is interpretive means that there are no decontextualized absolutes and universals, no neutral or objective analysts, no immaculate perceptions, no God’s-eye views of anything or anyone—and thus no empathic immersions in another’s experiences. This contextualist sensibility keeps our horizons open to multiple, relationally expanded possibilities of meaning. Analytic understanding is thus seen as forming and evolving within a dialogical context.

From my vantage point, therapeutic inquiry is a dialogical process in which each participant, in varying degrees and at different times, engages in reflection upon three interrelated domains—the meanings organizing one’s own experience, the meanings organizing the other’s experience, and the dynamic intersubjective system constituted by these interacting worlds of meaning. Furthermore, in this dialogical process each participant (far from entering the other’s subjective world and leaving his or her own outside) continually draws on his or her own experiential world in search of analogues for the possible meanings governing the other’s experiences. Empathic (-introspective) understanding is thus grasped as an emergent property of a dialogical system, rather than as a privileged possession of an isolated mind.

But now I want to push the relational envelope even further and radicalize what I have said so far. There is something disengaged in the traditional conceptions of therapeutic empathy. Kohut was aware of this, and in his last lecture before he died, he characterized empathy as a value-neutral investigative activity that could even be used for malevolent purposes. He suggested that the Nazis’ practice of putting sirens on the bombs they dropped on London demonstrated an exquisite empathic understanding of the terror that would be evoked in those on the ground who heard them.

Recently, I have been moving toward a more active, relationally engaged form of therapeutic comportment that I call emotional dwelling. In dwelling, one does not merely seek to understand the other’s emotional pain from the other’s perspective. One does that, but much more. In dwelling, one leans into the other’s emotional pain and participates in it, perhaps with aid of one’s own analogous experiences of pain. I have found that this active, engaged, participatory comportment is especially important in the therapeutic approach to emotional trauma. The language that one uses to address another’s experience of emotional trauma meets the trauma head-on, articulating the unbearable and the unendurable, saying the unsayable, unmitigated by any efforts to soothe, comfort, encourage, or reassure—such efforts invariably being experienced by the other as a shunning or turning away from his or her traumatized state. Let me give a couple of examples of emotional dwelling and the sort of language it employs from my own personal life.

In the immediate aftermath of my late wife Dede’s death in February 1991, my soul brother and collaborator of 4 decades, George Atwood, was the only person among my friends and family members who was capable of dwelling with me in the magnitude of my emotional devastation. He said, in his inimitable way, “You are a destroyed human being. You are on a train to nowhere.” George lost his mother when he was 8 years old, and I think his dwelling in and integrating his own experience of traumatic loss enabled him to be an understanding home for mine. He knew that offering me encouraging platitudes would be a form of emotional distancing that would just create a wall between us.

My father suffered a terrible trauma when he was 10 years old. He was sitting in class, the kid sitting in front of him was horsing around, the teacher threw a book at the kid, the kid ducked, and the book took my dad’s eye out on the spot. For the rest of his life, he lived in terror of blindness—a terror that I remember pervaded our household when I was growing up. Sixty years after that terrible trauma, he was to have cataract surgery on his remaining eye, and his optic nerve was vulnerable to being knocked out in virtue of the glaucoma medication he had been using for decades. When I went to see him just prior to the surgery, I found him in a massively (re)traumatized state—terrified, fragmented, disorganized, and deeply ashamed of the state he was in. Family members tried to offer him reassurance: “I’m sure it will be fine.” Really? Such platitudes only demonstrated to him that no one wanted to be close to him in his traumatized state. Having gone through my own experience of devastating trauma, I knew what he needed instead. I said, “Dad, you have been terrified of blindness for nearly your entire life, and there’s a good chance that this surgery will blind you! You are going to be a fucking maniac until you find out whether the surgery blinds you! You’re going to be psychotic; you’re going to be climbing the walls!” In response to my dwelling with his terror, my dad came together right before my eyes and, as was our custom, we had a couple of martinis together. The surgery was successful and did not blind him.

If we are to be an understanding relational home for a traumatized person, we must tolerate, even draw upon, our own existential vulnerabilities so that we can dwell unflinchingly with his or her unbearable and recurring emotional pain. When we dwell with others’ unendurable pain, their shattered emotional worlds are enabled to shine with a kind of sacredness that calls forth an understanding and caring engagement within which traumatized states can be gradually transformed into bearable painful feelings. Emotional pain and existential vulnerability that find a hospitable relational home can be seamlessly and constitutively integrated into whom one experiences oneself as being.

Copyright Robert Stolorow