Archive for category: MindWell

 What can we do to heal from the events at UCLA on June 1? Our student body and facultyare already stretching themselves thin as we close out the final days of the Spring term and head into finals week. Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Waugh, and Chancellor Block have publicized the availability of help for students at Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS; 310-825-0768), and for staff and faculty at the Staff and Faculty Counseling Center (SFCC; 310-794-0245), and campus healing spaces have been organized.

Students and community members hold up LED lights at vigil for Professor William Klug. Image from UCLA Newsroom

A vigil organized by the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science thatis open to campus and community will take place at 4 p.m. today in the UCLA Court of Sciences. We will post notices of upcoming special events related to this crisis on the Healthy Campus Initiative website as these become known. You may also review many other resources to support resilience and emotional well-being (healthy.ucla.edu/pod/mindwell).

Moving forward as a community, we need to recognize first that each of us experienced theevents differently, and we should expect a range of responses. Many on campus and in thesurrounding areas may have felt threatened, and those off campus watching the events unfold were alarmed. Not everyone will experience traumatic psychological responses, although many will. It is very important to know that there is no “right way” to cope. Some mayexperience distress in the immediate aftermath that can abate relatively quickly, while othersexperience symptoms that persist over time. These responses do not necessarily correlatewith how close you were to the event or how many people you knew who were there. Trauma exposure can impact our functioning, leading to thoughts and uncomfortable feelings that maynot go away immediately.

Some may find it helpful to express emotions. Talking about one’s fear, distress, and associated physical symptoms, may be healing. We can help one another by reaching out and offering support, and we can help ourselves by actively seeking connections to our friends and families. Listen to others without judgement and spend time with close others. We should anticipate that some members of our community will need more help, and help is available.

If you or someone you know needs it, please do whatever you can to learn about the effects of trauma and how we can guide others to take advantage of the resources (For students: http://www.studentincrisis.ucla.edu; For staff and faculty: https://www.chr.ucla.edu/behavioral-intervention-team).

We hope to move forward in closer empathic connection to one another, and invite you to share your ideas to help us enhance resilience (Email us at MindWell@ucla.edu). Through shared action, we can build a future where such tragedies become less common.

Robert M Bilder, Tennenbaum Professor of Psychiatry & Biobehavioral Sciences and Psychology, David Geffen School of Medicine and College of Letters & Science at UCLA. On behalf of the Mind Well pod, UCLA Healthy Campus Initiative

By: Carolanne Link, UCLA Undergraduate Student

Recently, I had one of those days where I prioritized homework above sleep. I was in my fourth straight hour of chemistry homework when I made myself laugh. How? Well, while doing an extensive calculation, I picked up my cellphone and started typing into that. I only realized my phone was not in fact my calculator when I couldn’t find operations on the keypad. I chuckled, picking up my calculator and spending the next two minutes typing the calculations in, only to realize that I had never turned the calculator on.

At this point my chuckling started to give way to a bit of worry about my inattention. I’m sure some of you are smirking, imagining this scenario and/or commiserating with this tale while remembering something similar you’ve done. It’s a common “college-esque” incident; students joke about all-nighters, late-night cramming, and, in my case, “binge-homeworking.”

But the problem with this is that we caffeine-infused go-getters brush over how our self-induced sleep deprivation affects our long-term learning. Within 48 hours of my homework binge, I couldn’t have told you what half those problems were about, or how I solved them.

When my TA went over some similar examples during my discussion later that week, some of it came rushing back. Mostly, though, it hit me that if I had gotten these problems on a test or quiz, I would have drawn a giant blank – regardless of how well I did on the homework set! After the shock and internal horror faded a bit, I considered the fact that this was probably the topic of many scientific studies.

A quick search yielded a 13-page report on the “Neurocognitive Consequences of Sleep Deprivation.” I found out from this study that there are three types of sleep deprivation: 1) Partial sleep deprivation = less than 7 hours of sleep every 24 hours, 2) Short-term sleep deprivation = no sleep for an extended period less than or equal to 45 hours, and 3) Long-term sleep deprivation = no sleep for more than 45 hours.

What really grabbed my attention was the following: “When all three measures [mood, cognitive performance, and motor functions] are collapsed together, the mean functional level of any sleep-deprived individual is estimated to be comparable to the 9th percentile of non-sleep deprived subjects. Interestingly, mood and cognition were found to be more affected by partial sleep-deprivation than total sleep deprivation.”

In non-academic speak, this basically translates to two things:

1) If you deprive yourself of sleep, you’re likely to be functioning worse than 90% of the people who actually got a full night’s sleep.
2) Consistently not getting a full night’s sleep can be even worse for you than large binges of deprivation!

Therefore, please don’t be like me and all the other college zombies around! Otherwise, you might find yourself mistaking your phone for your calculator too, and perhaps at a more dire moment than I did. Heed my warning my dear peers, and always prioritize a good night’s sleep.

By: David B. Baron, M.D.

I’m having a particularly stressful week. So I thought I’d take advantage of the opportunity to focus this column on one of the top three reasons people come to see a doctor: feeling  “stressed.”

Well, if you are reading this article then you live in the real world and stress is simply a part of that reality.  What’s the cause? It may be the increasingly rapid pace at which we live, a lost sense of connectedness to our families, friends, neighbors and communities (despite the hyper-connectivity of social media and erosion of personal privacy), or a the lack of control we feel over everything from traffic to terrorism, cars to computers, the price of gas to the gridlock in our government. That’s aside from the individual trials and tribulations we each must face in when we lose a loved one, graduate from school, change jobs, partners or homes.  But the end result is the same; it all affects our peace of mind, and ultimately our health.  Everything from back pain to high blood pressure, insomnia to depression, headaches, asthma, diabetes, esophageal reflux and stomach ulcers may be caused by and/or aggravated by stress.

I am not licensed or likely to be able tell you how to eliminate stress in your life.  Nor should that necessarily be the goal, since what challenges us often offers us opportunities to grow, innovate, and evolve as individuals and as a society.  But to paraphrase an old expression, whatever doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger if you cope with the stress adaptively.  Unfortunately, I all too often see people doing exactly the OPPOSITE of what a reasonable, intelligent person might suggest to a friend who is struggling with undue stress in their life. What I generally recommend is to try to eat regular meals and a nutritionally balanced diet, do some vigorous exercise most days of the week, get enough sleep, avoid alcohol, smoking and drugs, try meditation, yoga, journaling, or therapy, and consider seeking help from a doctor or therapist if you need it.  Instead, many people seem to quit going to gym, eat more fast food and junk, drink more, smoke more, sleep less, dabble in drugs, hide problems from friends and family, stop going to their houses of worship and refuse to see a therapist or try something new that might give them an hour or two of peace and quiet contemplation or just plain fun and release. That’s what I call “maladaptive coping.”

Whether or not it’s “human nature” to wallow in the misery, lick your wounds, drown your sorrows, stuff your feelings, sweep it under the rug (take your pick of common formulas for making matters worse) or try to ignore the problems and hope they’ll go away, the results of these types of maladaptive coping are pretty predictably unpleasant and unproductive.

So, think about whether the habits you have and the choices you make are actually CONTRIBUTING to your stress, or helping to alleviate it. There are many more ways than just the ones I’ve mentioned to keep you more balanced, resilient, healthy and growing, even in the face of an unpredictable world in which we’re all struggling to get by. It often takes only incremental, small changes practiced consistently to protect and improve your health in a hurry.  That shouldn’t stress you out too much.

This article also appeared in the Daily Bruin. 

By: David Taylor, MD

Would you agree that movies reflect society’s perceptions of mental illness?  Naturally there are many types of films and not every blockbuster, rom-com or documentary is going to have the same kinds of in-depth character development.  But in general, the portrayal of mental illness in film is often thought to reflect society’s perceptions, biases and stigmas of those suffering from diseases of the mind.

For example, Hitchcock’s classic thriller ‘Psycho’ (1960) perpetuates the myth that equates insanity with a deranged and murderous psychopath.  At the time the film was released, mental illness was a poorly understood and frightening phenomenon suitable for a dramatic movie.  In fact, the audience was so naive about the topic that, to minimize confusion, the movie concludes with a psychiatrist’s lengthy epilogue detailing the psychic origins of the main character’s pathology.  The film’s title alone is a derogatory jab at those who suffer from mental illness.  (However, in fairness to the director, I suppose an alternate title such as “Norman Bates – A Story of a Man with a Complicated Relationship with His Mother” might not have worked well either.)

Almost 50 years later, mental illness has achieved a cultural prominence that was unimaginable just a few generations earlier.  Diagnoses are better understood, treatments are more available, and society is more tolerant of diversity.  For example, ’A Beautiful Mind’ (2001) is the inspiring life story of a Princeton mathematician who won a Noble Prize despite his impairments from schizophrenia.  In ‘Lars and the Real Girl’ (2007), we find a compassionate depiction of mental illness in which the main character is embraced by family, friends and community despite his unusual and awkward delusions.

One of the most interesting observations about movies and mental illness is that each has the power to affect the other.  In other words, just as our beliefs about mental illness can influence movies, the movies can also influence the beliefs of those with mental illness.  For example, ‘The Truman Show’ (1998) imagined an artificial world where everyone — except for one unknowing individual — is portrayed by actors for a hyper-reality TV series.  Although the plot sounds farfetched, last year the New Yorker magazine (“Unreality Star”, Sept 16, 2013) profiled NYU psychiatrist Joel Gold who evaluated nearly 50 patients whose delusional beliefs mimicked the movie.  Dr. Gold even coined the term, Truman Show delusion, for an individual who “believes that he is being filmed, and that the films are being broadcast for the entertainment of others.”

The extraordinary ability of movies to both mirror and transform our beliefs makes them a valuable teaching tool.  Since 2012, I have taught a Fiat Lux freshman seminar called ‘Mental Illness and the Movies’ which explores the portrayal of mental illnesses in popular film.  Of course, movies are rarely designed to be faithful representations of reality and often include inaccurate portrayals of mental illness that perpetuate stigma.  Themes of violent insanity, incompetent physicians or abusive staff can reinforce the prejudices and discrimination against individuals with mental illness.  Through ‘cinemeducation’ this class provides a much needed opportunity to correct these misrepresentations, gain a better understanding of mental illness, and appreciate the wide diversity of individuals in our society.