Paraskevidekatriaphobia: Fear of Friday the 13th

“It’s called paraskevidekatriaphobia: a morbid or irrational fear of Friday the 13th. It's believed that as many as 25 million Americans will change their behavior today because of superstition: They’ll stay away from shopping malls and won't set foot on airplanes. The cost of all this fear comes close to $800 million per day in lost business, according to the Stress Management Center and Phobia Institute in North Carolina.”

The word is derived from three Greek words: paraskevi meaning Friday, dekatrels meaning thirteen and phobia, which means fear. From a mental health perspective, a phobia is an intense irrational fear of objects, events or situations.

Friday the 13th appears to be safer than any other typical Friday according to Dutch researchers with the Center for Insurance Statistics as results show that traffic accidents, fires and thefts seem to be fewer on these superstitious days.

A “Finnish study in 2002 found that women have a 63 percent greater risk of dying in traffic accidents on that date.” It seems the reasoning behind this statistic is that a fear that something bad will happen actually increases the likelihood that a person will crash. The British Medical Journal studied traffic accidents on Friday the 6th versus Friday the 13th and concluded that “The risk of hospital admission as a result of a transport accident may be increased by as much as 52 percent. Staying at home is recommended.”

University of California Professor David Phillips has found no significant increase in deaths on Friday the 13th when analyzing death certificates. He did, however, notice an increase of deaths among Americans of Japanese and Chinese ancestry on the 4th of every month. The number 4 is considered an unlucky number among the Chinese and Japanese as this number sounds almost exactly like the word death in Mandarin, Cantonese and Japanese. “Across the United States, he found 13 percent more Asian American cardiac-related deaths on the fourth than expected. In California, where these populations are concentrated, he discovered 27 percent more deaths“.

If anything people should fear those who are superstitious instead of the superstition itself. Results seem to suggest that it might be best to avoid people with paraskevidekatriaphobia as their fear may be the very cause of their own misfortunes.

Should you be afraid of Friday the 13th?

Friday the 13th

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Military in Dire Need of Mental Health Professionals

The recent tragedy in Fort Hood illustrates the dire need for mental health professionals in the military. “More than two years after the nation's political and military leaders pledged to improve mental-health care, their promises have fallen short at military hospitals around the country, according to mental-health professionals, Army officials, and wounded soldiers and their families.”

This deficiency in staffing escalates all the way the very top where Ellen Embrey can be found temporarily fulfilling the position of assistant secretary of defense for health affairs. Many of her colleagues seem to lack confidence in her ability to improve health care in the military.

In addition, the principal deputy, the deputy for clinical programs and policy, and the chief financial officer post are currently vacant. These vacancies clearly need to be filled as the suicide rate among soldier continues to increase. So far there have been 117 soldiers that have committed suicide this year; already an increase from last year’s total of 103 soldiers.

Despite the clear shortage of appropriate professionals managing the health care in the military, the Pentagon press secretary, Geoff Morrell, insists that more assistance is being offered than ever before. The problem lies in the way in which this help is communicated to those in need.

“Some 34,000 soldiers have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder since 2003, according to the Army surgeon general's office.” The amount of attention given to the mental health of soldiers has certainly increased since the Walter Reed scandal, where a series of allegations against the facility had been made because of unsatisfactory conditions and management.

Since then, the number of mental health professionals are said to have increased as well. According to the Washington Post, “200 behavioral-health personnel are deployed in Iraq and 30 in Afghanistan. The military has also hired 250 additional behavioral-health providers and more than 40 marriage and family therapists in recent months. The Army currently has 408 psychiatrists for its force of 545,000 people.” Walter Reed Army Medical Center, the facility that interned Major Nidal Malik Hasan, has increased their staff by 35% since 2007. That being said, do the numbers add up? Is there sufficient mental health staff available to treat 34,000+ soldiers with PTSD, not to mention the soldiers that may be dealing with other types of mental illness?

Due to such a shortage, many patients are stuck with whatever service they can get. Joe Wilson, a former social worker at Walter Reed, claims that soldiers have no choice but to stick with the psychiatrist they’ve been appointed because a switch could only make matters worse by delaying the determination of whether a soldier should remain in the service or not. This could force patients to keep quiet about poor or unsatisfactory service out of fear they may be deployed.

Not only are patient/doctor relationships somewhat of a dilemma, but many soldiers may have no choice but to accept pharmaceutical treatment because of the persistent shortage of mental health professionals available to treat the military. This leaves most soldiers with post traumatic stress disorder to be treated with medication such as sleeping pills and mood-altering drugs instead of one-on-one therapy.

The wife of an amputee soldier recovering at Walter Reed with traumatic brain injury and PTSD said that mental-health services are so uncoordinated and ineffective that the couple decided to pay for private psychotherapy sessions with a civilian provider at $130 an hour.

The couple sought private treatment elsewhere after spending a few minutes with a Walter Reed psychiatrist, who then referred the soldier to a social worker for treatment.

"It was a joke," said the wife, who asked not be identified because her husband, a sergeant, is still recovering at Walter Reed. "She was a lovely person, but we have a serious problem here and she just didn't get it . . . She essentially directed me to a Web site."

Many soldiers with mental illness may feel ignored in comparison to physically wounded soldiers. Sophia Taylor, a patient at Walter Reed that is currently being processed for dishonorable discharge, claims that amputees get treated, but those with mental illness lack appropriate treatment. “I have a lot of respect for them. But I lost my mind, and I couldn't even get a simple 'thank you for your service.' "

At Walter Reed, a palpable strain on mental-health system

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The Brain Can Distinguish Religion From Fact

Lead author, Sam Harris, professor of psychiatry at the UCLA Staglin Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, and co-lead author, Jonas Kaplan, research assistant professor at the USC's Brain and Creativity Institute, performed the first neuroimaging study to systematically compare religious faith with ordinary cognition.

The study has demonstrated that our brains respond differently to religious and nonreligious statements, however the information seems to get processed in the same brain regions. In other words, our judgement on the truthfulness of religious statements occurs within the same brain regions, despite whether we believe or not.

The study included 30 adult subjects, in which half were devout Christians and the remaining half were non-believers. All subjects judged the reliability of religious and non-religious statements while undergoing three functional MRI (fMRI) scans. The statements used were certain to generate agreement in both groups.

The ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC), a brain region said to be involved with reward and judgements of self-relevance, showed increased activity when evaluating statements related to beliefs in God, the Virgin Birth and ordinary facts.

However, religious thought appears to be more associated with areas of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex that govern emotion, self-representation and cognitive conflict in both believers and nonbelievers.

Conversely, our thoughts about ordinary facts seem more reliant upon areas associated with memory retrieval. This study helps to illustrate that no matter how much or how often religion is forced upon us, our brains still believe that religion is not based on factual knowledge.

Interestingly, “activity in the brain's anterior cingulate cortex, an area associated with cognitive conflict and uncertainty, suggested that both believers and nonbelievers experienced greater uncertainty when evaluating religious statements.”

This research suggests that one day it may be possible to distinguish religious belief versus disbelief via neuroimaging techniques. “These results may have many areas of application — ranging from the neuropsychology of religion, to the use of 'belief-detection' as a surrogate for 'lie-detection,' to understanding how the practice of science itself, and truth-claims generally, emerge from the biology of the human brain." In addition, this type of research could shed new light on the study of cult behaviours.

Where Religious Belief And Disbelief Meet

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GUEST POST: ADHD: Recognizing it, Controversy

ADHD is an extremely common disorder that is characterized by difficulty paying attention, distractibility and hyperactivity. And some say it's even more common than previously thought. For one, it's now believed to be common in adults - not just children - and that a diagnosis of ADHD doesn't always have all the symptoms commonly associated with it.

That means you don't have to be hyperactive to have ADHD, though what you have would then be characterized by ADD, or Attention Deficit Disorder, not Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder.

It turns out there are several types of ADHD each with its own criteria. There's the typical hyperactive form and then the inattentive form, characterized by poor attention. And then there's the combined form, which has both. That puts the total at three, but some have argued for the existence of six different types.

There are good and bad aspects to this wider approach. On the one hand, it means that effected adults will greater understand what's going on in their life and potentially get access to treatment. On the other, it's part of a trend that increasingly makes normal human experiences into mental disorders.

After all, it's only human to occasionally feel restless, unable to focus, or distractible. And despite claims of some ADHD proponents, there's still no real test for ADHD like there is for Diabetes. There are diagnostic lists, but ultimately no black and white physical signs of the condition.

Yet there is research being done into this, and the signs seem to be that there is some evidence on a neural level for ADHD. Importantly, ADHD is genetic, meaning it runs in families.

Treatment for ADHD is no simple matter. Although the medications seem to be safe, they are potent stimulants, all of which have been used as street drug. Adderall, for instance, is also popular as "speed." While medications work most of the time, especially when combined with supportive therapy, it's not clear what that means.

Stimulant medications are, after all, also used by college studies to cram for tests. Some say that they would help anyone focus and be less impulsive. Proponents respond that stimulants seem to have a paradoxical calming effect on people with ADHD. Instead of making them hyperactive and energetic, stimulants might calm them down and help them be focused.

Ultimately, everyone is a little ADD. Just like everyone is occasionally a little depressed, a little anxious. It's when the symptoms are serious that treatment is called for.

By line:
Author David Gurevich is a entrepreneur with a love for biology. You can catch him at his site, Health and Life, a Medical Blog where he talks about subjects like Comparing Zoloft vs Prozac.

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Sensitivity to Physical Pain Linked To Social Rejection

Psychologists at UCLA have concluded, in the August 14th online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, that there is a genetic link between sensitivity to physical pain and social rejection. A gene that regulates the mu-opioid receptors in the brain that alleviates physical pain also kills the pain of social rejection.

“Their study indicates that variation in the mu-opioid receptor gene (OPRM1), often associated with physical pain, is related to how much social pain a person feels in response to social rejection. People with a rare form of the gene are more sensitive to rejection and experience more brain evidence of distress in response to rejection than those with the more common form.”

Researchers examined the responses of 122 participants from self-report surveys on sensitivity to social rejection, after having collected and assessed their saliva to determine which OPRM1 gene they possessed. At the same time, 31 of the participants were examined through functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while playing a virtual game of catch. They were told that they were tossing a ball back and forth with 2 other players who were also hooked up on fMRI machines; however the other players were computer generated. Eventually the computer players stopped tossing the ball to the subject.

"What we found is that individuals with the rare form of the OPRM1 gene, who were shown in previous work to be more sensitive to physical pain, also reported higher levels of rejection sensitivity and showed greater activity in social pain–related regions of the brain — the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex and anterior insula — in response to being excluded," said Naomi Eisenberger, co-author and UCLA assistant professor of psychology and director of UCLA's Social and Affective Neuroscience Laboratory.

Baldwin Way, a UCLA postdoctoral scholar and the lead author, states that the findings of this study suggest that feelings of social rejection may occur in the same neural connections that are alleviated by pain killers such as morphine.

Could such findings help to explain the complexities of addiction and lead to the development of more promising treatment options?

Genetic Link Between Physical Pain And Social Rejection Found

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