Loving Someone With a Mental Illness

What is mental illness? Mental illnesses are conditions that affect mood behavior and thinking. It’s challenging to live with a mental illness, and that’s why it’s crucial to have a support system. That way, you feel connected to others and loved. People with mental illness are just like everybody else. Whether it’s anxiety, depression, or bipolar disorder, mental illness is real. They live with mental health conditions that affect them, but they deserve love. Here are some ways that you can love somebody who has a mental illness.

Empathy 

Everybody wants to be understood. Human beings need to feel loved. Part of showing somebody that you care about them is being empathetic. You may not know what they’re going through, but you can still care. People with mental illness experience different challenges such as mood shifts, erratic behavior, and trouble with thinking clearly as a part of their conditions. Depending on your mental illness, it can be extremely challenging to function. That’s why having a support system that is empathetic towards you is essential. If you are living with a mental illness your experiences are valid and you have the right to express yourself to those you love. Knowing that your loved ones care about what you’re going through is comforting. 

Listening 

 It is vital to listen to your loved one who has a mental illness. People with mental health conditions need a sounding board to express their feelings. You don’t have to fix their problems. They are in charge of their life and they need to figure out what coping skills to use to feel better. But you can listen when they express their struggles. It could be tempting to try to fix what they’re going through, but you don’t have to take that burden on. Listen to them and let them know that it’s going to be okay, and you’re there to support them.

Learning 

When it comes to mental illness, there are so many things to learn. You may not understand what your loved one is experiencing, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t educate yourself. Let’s say that your partner lives with borderline personality disorder. Now is the chance to ask questions about what they are experiencing and try to understand. You can also buy books on the condition and read up on it. Part of learning about mental illness is reading and educating yourself. Another aspect is lived experience. You can talk to the person who has the condition and hear what they have to say. You can gain a better understanding of what it’s like to live with a mental illness by listening to your loved one’s experience and asking any questions that you might not know the answers to so you can be supportive.

Ask questions 

One way to learn about mental illness is to ask your loved one questions. You don’t know all the answers, and to be supportive, you need to have a clear understanding of what their condition entails. Ask them questions in a nonjudgmental way. Ask them how you can be supportive and what works for them. You can also communicate that you’re willing to learn, and that is crucial to the relationship. Your loved one will appreciate your willingness to understand their condition, and they will be grateful for the support. 

Communication is key 

It’s essential to communicate your feelings when you have a relationship with somebody who has a mental illness. It’s not just about their experiences, it’s about how you feel as well. A friendship or relationship is a two-way street, and if something is hurting your feelings, it’s important to let that person know. They have a right to their feelings and you have a right to yours. It’s essential to express yourself and tell them what you need in the relationship just as they’re telling you what they need. Another place that you can talk about what it’s like to love somebody with mental illness is therapy. Whether you work with an online therapist or someone in your local area, it’s crucial to express yourself and get the support that you need. Online counseling is an excellent place to express your feelings to a licensed mental health professional. Don’t hesitate to reach out for support if you’re having trouble in your life and need to speak to somebody. Loving somebody with mental illness is not easy, but everybody deserves care no matter what their life circumstances are.

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Cognitive behavioral therapy can heal mental disorders

New research has shown that psychotherapy, particularly cognitive therapy, can lead to changes in the physical make-up of the brain.

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The role of community in treating PTSD in South Africa

Research shows that the environment after a traumatic event may be as crucial as the counselling received to deal with post-traumatic stress.

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The role and qualities of a good mentor

While the rewards of mentorship are real and lasting, helping others grow is not something that motivates everyone. So what does it take to be a good mentor?

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Dysthymia: Could you have high-functioning depression?

For those suffering from high-functioning depression, productivity becomes a kind of camouflage, effectively allowing the illness to hide in plain sight.

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3 Steps to becoming a neuropsychologist in South Africa

Do you yearn to discover the secrets of the body's most complex organ? Then perhaps you should consider becoming a neuropsychologist.

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Our Ten Most Popular Posts Of 2019

By Matthew Warren

It’s been an eventful year at Research Digest: we’ve said goodbye to old staff members and hello to new ones; we’ve commissioned and published numerous guest posts and features, and sent out dozens of newsletters to our subscribers; and we were even finalists for a national science writing award. And through it all, we’ve been delighted that so many readers continue to turn to us to learn about the latest psychological research. So as we take stock before the Christmas break, here’s a look back at our most popular posts of the year:

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10) There Are Sex Differences In The Trajectory Of Depression Symptoms Through Adolescence, With Implications For Treatment And Prevention

It’s well known that children experience more negative moods as they reach their teenage years. But a study published earlier this year found that the exact pattern of these changes differs between males and females.

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9) Researchers Identify Sleep As A Key Reason Why Personality Traits Predict Longevity

Certain personality traits are associated with an increased year-on-year risk of dying — partly because people with particular traits are more or less likely to engage in behaviours like drinking or smoking. Now, it seems that differences in how much sleep people get is also an important part of the relationship between personality and longevity.

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8) Different Kinds Of Loneliness – Having Poor Quality Relationships Is Associated With Greater Distress Than Having Too Few

We often think of loneliness as a binary construct: people are either lonely, or they’re not. But researchers have begun to disentangle different sorts of loneliness, finding that some kinds may have more detrimental effects on our mental health than others.

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7) First Study To Explore What It’s Like To Live With Avoidant Personality Disorder: “Safe When Alone, Yet Lost In Their Aloneness”

Through a series of in-depth interviews with people with avoidant personality disorder — the first study of its kind — psychologists have developed a better understanding of what the disorder is like for those affected.

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6) There Are Some Intriguing Differences Between The USA And Japan In How Emotions Influence Health

Feeling good in an emotional sense can end up benefitting our physical health as well. But what makes people “feel good” varies between different cultures — so, as this study demonstrated, behaviours that increase well-being and physical health in one culture may not have the same effects in another.

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5) Researchers Say Growing Up With A Troubled Or Harsh Father Can Influence Women’s Expectations Of Men, And, In Turn, Their Sexual Behaviour

Daughters’ later relationships are particularly affected by having had a poor-quality father, this study suggested, rather than simply a father who was absent entirely.

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4) Why Do People With Depression Like Listening To Sad Music?

It’s not because depressed people deliberately act in ways that maintain their low mood, as some researchers have controversially suggested. Instead, this study found that people with depression often choose to listen to low-energy tunes because they actually boost their feelings of happiness.

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3) Adults Who Played Pokémon Extensively In Childhood Have A Pokémon-Sensitive Region In Their Visual Cortex

A study that involves Pokémon and brain imaging?! It’ll probably come as no surprise that this one made it into our top three posts of the year.

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2) Researchers Have Investigated “Derailment” (Feeling Disconnected From Your Past Self) As A Cause And Consequence Of Depression

We usually have a stable sense of self, and feel that our present identity is a continuation of our past one, no matter what changes we may have gone through. But what happens when that thread of continuity is disrupted?

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1)  Study Identifies The Most Effective Mental Strategies That People Use To Get Through Aversive Challenges

There are lots of ways people might motivate themselves to make it through that strenuous run or pre-exam cram session — but they don’t all work. Our most popular post of 2019 looked at research into the strategies that are most strongly correlated with success.

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That’s it from us for this year! Thanks for reading, and we’ll be back in January to bring you more psychology, digested.

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Professional coaching: 5 Signs that you were born to coach

Are you the go-to person when someone needs advice? Do people turn to you for your great listening skills? If so, you may be cut out for a career in coaching.

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Thinking About Past Generations Could Help Us Tackle Climate Change

By Emily Reynolds

Rhetoric around climate change often calls on us to think of future generations: if we don’t suffer the effects, then our children and our children’s children will. For some, this sense of obligation could be motivating. But for others, the distant time frame may be a barrier to truly grappling with the issue.

Now, a new study in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin suggests one method to get people thinking about their duty to future generations is to think about the past.

In their new paper, Hanne Watkins from the University of Massachusetts and Geoffrey Goodwin from the University of Pennsylvania suggest that reflecting on the actions of previous generations could cause a greater sense of “intergenerational reciprocity”: thinking about past sacrifices, in other words, could make us more likely to make sacrifices ourselves. At the moment, they argue, key decision makers are faced with a dilemma: their own interests conflict with the interests of future generations. Working out how to increase this intergenerational reciprocity, therefore, could be an important way to influence positive policymaking.

To understand the impact our understanding of the past has on our actions in the future, 200 participants were first asked to respond to a writing prompt, which encouraged them to reflect on either the sacrifices made by previous generations (“which sacrifices made by members of past generations are most important in allowing you to enjoy your current way of life?”) or simply on their fashion choices.

Next, participants were asked to rate how grateful they felt towards past generations on a scale of one to seven, as well as rating how obligated they felt towards future generations. Finally, they rated the importance of twelve social and political issues, including environmental pollution, sustainability and global warming.

As expected, gratitude towards past generations was significantly higher in the group asked to reflect on sacrifice. But so too was obligation to future generations, suggesting that reflection on the past really did have an impact on how people thought about what’s required to make change. However, the two groups didn’t show any differences in the perceived importance of environmental issues.

A second study explored these findings further, asking some participants to reflect on the lack of sacrifices made by past generations. There was also an additional measure at the end of the study, with participants asked if they would be willing to give money or pay more tax to help with environmental issues. In this case, again, reflecting on sacrifice increased gratitude, though there was no significant effect on how willing someone was to give up money for the cause.

And in a final study, some participants were asked to reflect on specific sacrifices — those made during World War II — rather than coming up with their own. Again, participants in the sacrifices condition were more likely to feel more gratitude towards past generations and also reported that the current generation was more “unworthy” and had an easier life. But in this case reflection on sacrifice did not increase obligation towards future generations in any significant sense.

So is thinking about the sacrifices of past generations a sufficient strategy when it comes to encouraging pro-environmental behaviour? Frustratingly, it’s rather difficult to say. While the results of the studies were mixed, overall the team found it did have an impact on our sense of duty towards our descendants. But even if this strategy does increase people’s sense of obligation, this alone may not be enough to change behaviour, as results on donating money seem to indicate.

The question of whose behaviour needs to be changed is also important — although making pro-environmental choice on a day-to-day basis may be a positive foundation for an ethical life, it is key policymakers and influential people who really need to be convinced. For these figures, many of whom have vested interests in decidedly non pro-environmental processes and institutions, shifting opinion may be a little harder.

– Reflecting on Sacrifices Made by Past Generations Increases a Sense of Obligation Towards Future Generations

Emily Reynolds (@rey_z) is a staff writer at BPS Research Digest

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When Thinking About Your Personality, Your Friends’ Brain Activity Is Surprisingly Similar To Your Own

By Emma Young

How well do you know your best friend? New research led by Robert Chavez at the University of Oregon suggests that scans of both your brains might provide the answer. The study, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology: Attitudes and Social Cognition, reveals that the brain activity patterns of people asked to think about what a mutual friend is like can be remarkably similar to those observed in that friend when they think about themselves.

For the round-robin study, the researchers recruited 11 students aged 24-29 who were all friends and spent a lot of time together. Each of the students first rated themselves, as well as each of their friends, on a variety of personality measures, including Big Five personality traits, and self-esteem.

Next came the brain-scanning. While their brains were imaged using fMRI, the participants were given tasks that would later allow the researchers to identify which region of their medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) was most active when they thought about themselves. Then, while still in the scanner, the participants completed the main task, which was similar to the initial one: they had to indicate whether 48 trait adjectives (including sad, lonely, cold, lazy, trustworthy, fashionable, helpful, punctual and nice) applied to themselves and also to each of their friends.

Using all this data, Chavez and co-author, Dylan Wagner at Ohio State University identified, for each participant, a pattern of mPFC activity that occurred when they rated themselves on these traits. They also averaged out the friends’ mPFC patterns when they thought about a specific individual. This gave them one aggregated pattern that they could compare to the individual’s own.

The pair found distinct similarities. When the participants were thinking about one particular friend in the group — let’s call him ‘Person A’ — their aggregated activity pattern was closer to that seen in ‘Person A’ when he thought about himself than to anybody else’s “self” pattern.

The similarity between an individual’s activity pattern and that of their friends related to the initial judgement ratings: the more closely the friends’ initial ratings matched an individual’s self-judgements, the more similar the self/friends brain activity patterns. This may be because participants with particularly close self/friend judgement ratings are better at conveying their personalities to others, the researchers suggest.

The study does have some limitations. Notably, the sample size of 11 is small, although the researchers are at pains in the paper to explain why this was the case. Partly it related to task timing — because of the round robin design, every extra individual included in the study would have extended the time taken to test everybody else. Also, the participants were all young students in a tight-knit social group. The results may or may not extend to other age groups and types of relationships — such as groups of co-workers. It’s also worth bearing in mind that thinking about the personalities of similar friends can influence a person’s judgments of their own personality, which may perhaps have affected the results.

Still, showing that there are these self/friend similarities in mFPC activity does point to all kinds of potentially interesting future studies. For example, one way to explore discrepancies between how a person with anxiety or depression sees themselves versus how others see them could be to look at mPFC activity. Overall, as the researches note, the results “point to a neural mechanism underlying accuracy in interpersonal perception.”

– The neural representation of self is recapitulated in the brains of friends: A round-robin fMRI study

Emma Young (@EmmaELYoung) is a staff writer at BPS Research Digest

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Improving Mental Health Care in Criminal Justice Settings

By Amalia Corby, MS (Senior Legislative and Federal Affairs Officer, APA Advocacy Office)

Did you know that an estimated 15% of men and 30% of women entering the criminal justice system have a serious mental health condition? With more than 2 million people arrested annually, America’s jails and prisons have become the nation’s default mental health care provider. That’s why the American Psychological Association, alongside the National Association of Social Workers and the American Psychiatric Association, are leading a coalition of criminal justice and mental health organizations that have developed consensus recommendations for the 116^th Congress to address mental health care in criminal justice and juvenile justice settings.

Increasingly, U.S. criminal justice systems have become the first responders to individuals with mental illness and substance use disorders. More than ever, jails and prisons are expected to provide appropriate services and treatment to the growing populations they serve. In order to address this crisis, policymakers must increase support for mental health services by providing more training and funding for mental health and substance use disorder treatment in criminal justice systems. But they also must invest in prevention, community-based crisis services, and programs that reduce recidivism.

In the consensus document, we collectively acknowledge the progress made in recent years to address this growing need. We also outline recommendations for continuing progress on issues such as diversion tactics, effective practices during incarceration, workforce development, federal research and coordination, juvenile justice reform, and much more.

Ask your representatives – what are they doing to address mental health in criminal justice settings at the local, state and federal levels? This consensus document’s recommendations are a promising place from which they can start to make change.

We look forward to continuing these efforts in 2020.

To learn more about APA’s advocacy efforts regarding criminal justice, please visit: https://www.apa.org/advocacy/criminal-justice

Image credit: Image by Fifaliana Joy from Pixabay

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Timing Is Crucial For Creating Accurate Police Sketches From Eyewitness Descriptions

By Emma Young

A witness to a crime has to describe the offender’s face in as much detail as they can before they work with a police expert to create a visual likeness — a “facial composite”, sometimes called a photo-fit, or e-fit. But the way this is typically handled in police stations could be reducing the accuracy of these images, according to a new paper published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied.

There have been concerns that the process of describing facial features might create a so-called “verbal overshadowing” that interferes with the visual memories of the offender. Recent work had suggested that waiting half an hour before starting on the composite should allow this predicted over-shadowing to fade away, and so make for a better composite. However, the new research, led by Charity Brown at the University of Leeds, has found that in more real-world situations, a delay actually makes things worse.

In the first of three studies, the team split 96 participants who reported being totally unfamiliar with the UK TV soap EastEnders into eight different experimental conditions. Each participant watched a brief video clip that featured two of a total of 12 actors from the programme. They were asked to focus either on the content of the conversation (to simulate the kind of incidental facial information that an eyewitness might gather when they don’t realise that they are actually witnessing a crime) or to focus on the faces.

 Either four to six hours or two days later, these participants were asked to verbally describe one of these faces — to report on the shape and colour of the eyes, nose, forehead, and so on. Then there was either a delay of half an hour, or no delay, before each participant worked with Laura Nelson at Lancashire Constabulary Headquarters on a facial composite. (Nelson had no idea which particular actors each participant had seen).

Another group who were familiar with EastEnders were given the composite images to identify. A separate group also rated how similar each composite was to photographs of the actors.

The results were clear. There was only one experimental condition that produced worse likenesses than the others: when the descriptions were given two days after viewing the clip and there was a 30 minute delay before work started on the composite. Unfortunately, this is also the closest to real-world conditions in police investigations, the team notes. Facial descriptions are often not collected until a few days (at least) after a crime, and it’s not uncommon for witnesses to be offered a break before starting on the composite.

Two days after seeing a face, witnesses’ facial descriptions tend to be less full but more accurate than descriptions given four to six hours afterwards (perhaps because they’ve had more time to process which facial features were most striking, the team suggests). But a half-hour delay immediately after giving the verbal descriptions seems to then impair their access to details of their recalled descriptions that would otherwise contribute to a better facial likeness, the team writes.

This effect held whether Nelson used the “holistic” facial likeness approach, common in the UK, in which an initial face is tweaked until it fits the witness’s memory of the offender, or the system in which a facial composite is built up from selected constituent features. (Whichever method is used, verbal descriptions are always gathered first.)

“The results have real-world but counterintuitive implications for witnesses who construct a face 1 to 2 days after a crime,” the researchers conclude. “After having recalled a face to a practitioner, an appreciable delay (here, 30 min) should be avoided before starting face construction”.

– Reevaluating the Role of Verbalization of Faces for Composite Production: Descriptions of Offenders Matter!

Emma Young (@EmmaELYoung) is a staff writer at BPS Research Digest

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Blue Spaces And Whale Wisdom: The Week’s Best Psychology Links

Our weekly round-up of the best psychology coverage from elsewhere on the web

Thinking of your sadness as a person — à la the Pixar movie Inside Out — can make you feel less sad. That’s according to a recent study which highlights the benefits of putting some distance between yourself and your emotions, reports Elle Hunt at The Guardian — though the strategy can backfire when it comes to positive emotions like happiness.

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We’ve previously written about the psychological benefits of spending time in green spaces — but what about “blue” spaces? At Undark, Jenny Roe looks at the — admittedly limited — research into the potential for water bodies to also boost our well-being.

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“Many researchers say they now see social priming not so much as a way to sway people’s unconscious behaviour, but as an object lesson in how shaky statistical methods fooled scientists into publishing irreproducible results.” At Nature, Tom Chivers takes stock of the embattled field of social priming, and asks where it can go from here.

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Our grandparents pass on all kinds of wisdom and knowledge to us — and in that respect, killer whales may not be that different.  Researchers have found that killer whales have better survival rates when their grandmas are around, reports Eva Frederick at Science, probably because the older whales have superior knowledge about where to forage for food.

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As the days get colder and darker, many of us long for a lie-in. So why don’t we just change our working hours? Research suggests that our sleep needs change in winter, writes Laurie Clarke at Wired, leaving our body clocks out of sync with the demands of school and work.

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The run-up to Christmas is apparently also peak break-up season — but how do you know whether it’s time to call it quits on your relationship? Veronica Lamarche explores the psychology of breaking up at The Conversation.

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The way that psychologists choose to test hypotheses and analyse data can profoundly affect their findings, a fact that can go some way to explaining the field’s reproducibility crisis. This has been clearly shown in a new study, in which 13 different research teams were given the same five hypotheses to test in whatever way they wanted. The results were equivocal, with evidence both for and against the hypotheses, reports Christie Aschwanden at Wired, demonstrating the pitfalls of relying on just a single study for evidence. 

Compiled by Matthew Warren (@MattbWarren), Editor of BPS Research Digest

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The distinct differences between coaching and mentoring

While the terms “coaching” and “mentoring” are often used interchangeably, there are in fact some quite distinct differences between the two.

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The More We See Fake News, The More Likely We Are To Share It

By Emily Reynolds

Over the last few years, so-called “fake news” — purposefully untrue misinformation spread online — has become more and more of a concern. From extensive media coverage of the issue to government committees being set up for its investigation, fake news is at the top of the agenda — and more often than we’d like, on top of our newsfeeds.

But how does exposure to misinformation impact the way we respond to it? A new study, published in Psychological Science, suggests that the more we see it, the more we’re likely to spread it. And considering the fact that fake news is more likely to go viral than real news, this could have worrying implications.

Research has found that previously encountered information feels more “fluent” — in other words, we find it easier to process. This, in turn, gives it a “ring of truthfulness”, write Daniel Effron from London Business School and Medha Raj from the University of Southern California: repeated information feels true, even as we simultaneously acknowledge it’s not. And, the pair predicted, because our intuitions often drive our moral judgements, we may feel it less unethical to share frequently encountered misinformation, even if we know it’s false, simply because it has this “feeling” of truth.

To test their hypothesis, the team surveyed 138 men and women from the US. Participants, who identified with a range of political affiliations, were first presented with six real-life fake news headlines, half of which appealed to Republicans (for example “Election Night: Hillary Was Drunk, Got Physical With Mook and Podesta”) and half to Democrats (e.g. “Pennsylvania Federal Court Grants Legal Authority to REMOVE TRUMP After Russian Meddling”).

Participants were shown the headlines four times, each time rating how interesting, funny, or well-written they were. After a distractor task, participants were shown a message clearly stating that what they were about to see was fake, and were again shown the familiar headlines as well as six they hadn’t already seen.

They were then asked to rate the headlines across a number of measures — how unethical or acceptable it would be to publish the headline, how likely they would be to like or share it, post a negative comment or block the person who posted it, and how accurate they felt the headline was.

The results suggested that familiarity did have an impact. Headlines previously seen by participants were rated as less unethical to publish, and were significantly more likely to be liked and shared than new headlines; participants were also less likely to block or unfollow people who had shared previously seen fake news.

This probably wasn’t down to misplaced belief in the news, either: participants did not rate previously seen headlines as more accurate than new ones. A second experiment, on 800 participants, found that even seeing the same headline just once before was enough to produce similar results, and a third found that asking participants to “take their time” and “deliberate” over their choices had little effect. In a final experiment, participants were told they could share headlines with others about to take part in a similar study — and again, they were more likely to actively share familiar headlines.

With fake news proliferating on the feeds of billions of people across the world, the findings have important implications. And they could also have an impact on how we deal with fake news. Many efforts to stop fake news rely on fact checking — trying to inform readers that what they’ve seen is not true, and giving a more factual account of what’s actually going on. But with results here suggesting that knowing something is false has little impact on likelihood of sharing, new angles may need to be considered.

It seems unlikely that we’re going to stop fake news any time soon — especially during periods of political upheaval. But understanding how — and why — we respond to it the way we do may help tackle its spread.

– Misinformation and Morality: Encountering Fake-News Headlines Makes Them Seem Less Unethical to Publish and Share

Emily Reynolds (@rey_z) is a staff writer at BPS Research Digest

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