Psychosocial Factors Quotes

There is a myth that homosexuals are 'born that way,' and we are pounded with this idea so thoroughly that many people think that somebody, somewhere, must have proved it.

I read a book recently by a psychiatrist who was able to interview a few serial killers and she had a thesis on how you could figure these people out. And she thinks that there are things that could tell you whether someone has the potential to do that.

We live in a culture that is much happier talking about organic brain disease than about psychic illness because the former suggests that something that is physically wrong in a brain is wholly unrelated to that person's upbringing or experiences in the world, but that is not necessarily true.

We do not know with any of these neuropsychiatric disorders what the ultimate basis is. Let's say you could find that too much of protein X was involved in schizophrenia. Would you then know what schizophrenia is? You would not.

If it is true, for instance, that depression is constituted by low serotonin levels, what still needs to be explained is why particular individuals have low levels of serotonin. This requires a social and political explanation.

I have a master's in psychology, and depression and anxiety are considered to be cyclical.

I am trained as a psychologist, and I think of all human issues in terms of psychology, neuroscience, genetics, and evolutionary theory.

A sense of humor has been linked with longevity. It is a possibility that the mental attitude reflected in a lively sense of humor is an important factor predisposing some people toward long life.

Experts say that children are not born criminals, nor pampered parasites. They are made that way by the environment in which they live.

Depression is not caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain, and it is not cured by medication. Depression may not even be an illness at all. Often, it can be a normal reaction to abnormal situations. Poverty, unemployment, and the loss of loved ones can make people depressed, and these social and situational causes of depression cannot be changed by drugs.

It goes without saying that all mental illnesses are neurologically instantiated. But this says nothing about their causation.

Schizophrenia cannot be understood without understanding despair.

It's important to say that depression has biological underpinnings, and that while medications do not seem to create irreversible changes in the brain, repeated depressive episodes do.

Peptic ulcers became more common in the 20th century at the same time that these theories of Freud and other psychoanalysts became popular. And somehow those meshed, and this tradition emerged that ulcers were caused by stress or turmoil in one's life.

Where does personality end and brain damage begin?

After a century of studying schizophrenia, the cause of the disorder remains unknown.

In reality, serial killers are of average intelligence.

For twenty five hundred years people have been preoccupied with feelings and mental life, but only recently has any interest been shown in a more precise analysis of the role of the environment. Ignorance of that role led in the first place to mental fictions, and it has been perpetuated by the explanatory practices to which they gave rise

Most psychiatrists assume that mental illnesses such as depression are caused by chemical imbalances in the brain, which can be treated by drugs. But most psychotherapy doesn't address the social causation of mental illness either.

I'm not one of these guys who sits around saying, 'Gee, I mean, the person had a strange childhood and that's why he's doing this horrible thing. Poor Jeffrey Dahmer. He's just had a bad childhood and that's why he's eating people.' Wait a second! This person should be removed from the planet.

We have known about the placebo effect for many years. This is a remarkable effect - placebo can cure 30 percent in many cases.