Psychology Moment - Vaccines and Autism

A professor of mine described a disorder that she thinks may explain why some children appear to develop autism after getting vaccinated. I think her argument is very interesting.

Generally speaking, children who develop "autism" after vaccination were developmentally normal prior to that point. When the child shows regression of cognitive and social skills, parents think back to all the things that could have happened to their child and attribute this regression to the vaccine.

My professor thinks these children don't even have autism. In autism, the sympoms are relatively obvious or at least present from birth. Autism doesn't suddenly appear at the age of 3, although that is the age when parents usually bring their child's symptoms to the attention of a doctor.

Another disorder may account for some of these children who appear to get sick after vaccination. It is called Child Disintegrative Disorder. Children who have this disorder develop normally until about the age of 2 or 3. At that point, there is a noticeable loss of social skills, bodily functions, delay of language, and other cognitive abilities. Sound familiar? This is also around the time many children receive the vaccinations that some believe causes autism.

I have never heard of this disorder until last night, much less in the debate about vaccinations and autism. I find it compelling although I'm sure it doesn't explain all of these cases. Some children may actually have autism which WAS present at birth but the parents were in denial and didn't bring their child to a doctor sooner (I've seen this happen, it's very sad). But this is a fresh argument in a stale debate and thought I would share it with you.

Elective Amputation

In class we actually heard about something interesting. This disorder does not yet have an official name but here are the symptoms:

- obsessive desire for amputation of one or more healthy limbs
- may injure self in order to have a legitimate way to amputate limb
- individual has no signs of mental illness
- Three subtypes:
1. Devotees: people who are sexually aroused by amputees
2. Pretenders: People who use wheelchairs or crutches to pretend as if they have an amputation
3. Wannabies: Those who want to actually get an amputation themselves.

This is not related to anorexia, body dysmorphic disorder, or desire for gender reasignment surgery. After the amputation is complete, these individuals are happy about their decision and feel 'complete.' They don't think anything is wrong with their limbs; they just think they weren't supposed to have a limb in the first place.

Most surgeons won't perform elective amputation so some individuals cut their own limbs off or get surgery in other countries like Mexico. A study of 52 people showed that none regretted their decision after they had the amputation.

A large proportion of these people knew they wanted an amputation before the age of 12 and some of them knew right after seeing an amputee for the first time. Some people pretended to be am amputee which eventually got in the way of maintaining a job or having relationships.

I could go on because this is a bizarre and fascinating 'disorder' but I'll just leave you with some links in case youw ant to read more about it:

New York Times article
Body Integrity Identity Disorder
Ethics of elective amputation
Infowars.com

Addictive Disorders

I'm currently taking a course about addictive disorders and am reading an interesting history of drugs and alcohol use. I wanted to share some tidbits that I found most striking.

First, here is an advertisement for laughing gas from 1845 (I don't know how to center text...). Bold emphasis mine:

***************************************************************
A GRAND EXHIBITION OF THE EFFECTS PRODUCED BY INHALING NITROUS OXIDE, EXHILERATING, OR LAUGHING GAS

will be given at Masonic Hall Saturday evening 5pm

30 Gallons of gas will be prepared and administered to all in the audience who desire to inhale it.

Men will be invited from the audience to protect those under the influence of the gas from injuring themselves or others. This course is adopted thatno apprehension of danger may be entertained. Probably no one will attempt to fight.

N.B. The gas will be administered only to gentlemen of the first respectiability. The object is to make the entertainment in every respect, a genteel affair.
***************************************************************

The second thing I found to be unbelievable was an ad in a Sears catalogue from 1897 for a drug kit (retail price $2.75). The kit looks like a large flask. When opened, it contains a reusable syringe and several virals of drugs containing opium, cocaine, and heroin.

What a party the 19th century must have been.

Do You Have CIAS?

So I was talking to my Canadian friend today about how I might sometimes come across as snotty to Americans because I get a bit defensive living in the US. She reassured me: "Dude you're not snotty, you have that newly arrived Canadian in the US thing going on. It will pass, trust me."

We're suggesting a new category be added to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM): Canadians in America Syndrome (CIAS).

Description:
Newly arrived Canadians in the US have a tendency to be very ego protecting. This includes symptoms like:

- Unneccesary discussion of universal health care
- Gratefulness for taxes, speaking ad nauseum about the wonderful things you get from paying taxes
- Mentioning having never seen a medical bill before in your entire life to everyone you come in contact with
- Repeated comparisons of grocery stores and the prices of fast food vs. produce in each country
- Pointing out every Canadian actor and musician as they appear in TV or film to your American friends
- Casually working the "calibre of your education compared to Americans" into conversations
- Remarking upon the lack of Canadian content in American TV and music
- Discussing the differences between portion sizes in Canada and America in restaurants
- Discovering Canadians had accents upon returning home
- Discuss the superiority of Tim Horton's coffee with your friends when drinking any brand of American coffee
- Constantly flash Canadian money in front of Americans and remark a) how pretty it is; b) how you cannot tell denominations of American money apart
- Go out of your way to watch Canadian media i.e., download CBC podcasts
- Constantly mention returning to Canada as if you will only be staying temporarily
- Constantly pointing out the Canadian ways of saying things and refuse to change, i.e., saying 'touque' and refusing to say 'hat'
- Writing all reports using Canadian spelling
- Throw in the parliamentary system into casual conversation and then when Americans admit they don't understand it, you explain it to them and act like it's better
- Saying any of the following:
"Well, we have ketchup chips. They're good"
"Oh my favourite chocolate bar is an AERO. You don't have them here"
"Oh you call this soda? We call this pop. Soda sounds so 1950s"
"Oh, you call those Smarties? In Canada Smarties are chocolate. We call these Rockets."


Signs of Recovery:
- Acknowledgement that there are benefits to private health insurance and wish that there was some middle ground
- Cessation of automatically adding tax to your purchases
- Preference for American brands of some foods
- Appreciation for the lower cost of living even though the lack of taxes = no social support
- Assimilate your language to avoid comments/undue attention i.e., saying 'zee' instead of 'zed'
- Begin to bitch about Canadian airfare and how ridiculous rates are to fly over the border
- Realize that prices in the US are cheaper, especially jeans, and refuse to buy things in Canada
- Move from outrage that you have to have insurance to grateful that you have it through the university

If you or someone else you care about is experiencing symptoms of CIAS, please know that there is hope. For the vast majority of Canadians living in the US, symptoms tend to dissipate within 6 months to three years.

Sexism!

I'm currently reading The Mismeasure of Man by Stephen Jay Gould. It is a refutation of what was written in The Bell Curve and discredits the idea that biology is destiny (i.e., people who are in the lower and upper classes differ biologically from one another). I'm reading a section about how scientists were incredibly biased and consequently skewed their data regarding brain size and weight to support the contention that men are smarter than women, and white people are smarter than all non-white people. Check out this out of control quote by Gustave Le Bon from 1879:

"In the most intelligent races, as among the Parisians, there are a large number of women whose brains are closer in size to those of gorillas than to the most developed male brains. This inferiority is so obvious that no one can contest it for a moment; only its degree is worth discussion. All psychologists who have studied the intelligence of women, as well as poets and novelists, recognize today that they represent the most inferior forms of human evolution and that they are closer to children and savages than to an adult, civilized man. Without doubt there exist some distinguished women, very superior to the average man, but they are as exceptional as the birth of any monstrosity, as, for example, of a gorilla with two heads; consequently, we may neglect them entirely."

That was way harsh.

Mental Health Care in the USA

One benefit about living in the United States is you learn a lot about their health care system. We all know the gist but I'm studying the ins and outs: access to medical coverage, specific policies regarding access to psychotropic medication, and availability of services. It's an ugly scene. Although I have always supported universal health care, it has been possible to further sway me in that direction. Unless you are filthy rich and exceedingly misanthropic, there is no way anyone in Canada should want to have a health care system like the US.

Specifically, mental health services are appallingly bad. How bad? The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) decided to grade US mental health service provisions state by state, and as a country.

Check out the results.

Note that Illinois has improved from an F to a D! Woo!! Also, not one state received an A. USA! USA!

Unfortunately, I suspect that Canada's mental health care system is in similar shape. This is because psychological and psychiatric services have to be paid for either out of pocket (which is virtually unaffordable for many people) or through insurance (which not everyone has). I'll have to look into this further.

Predicting Political Preferences

I came across the results of an interesting psychology study the other day:

When participants were in preschool, they were evaluated on a variety of personality dimensions by their preschool teachers who had been trained in personality assessment. Twenty years after preschool, the researchers asked these now young adults to complete some self-report questionnaires assessing political beliefs.

Children who were described by their teachers 20 years previously as being easily offended, indecisive, fearful, and rigid were more likely to be politically conservative in their twenties. Children who had been described as being self-reliant, energetic, somewhat dominating, and relatively undercontrolled in preschool grew up to be more liberal.

Memory Like A Sieve

Some of you may have noticed that I have some difficulty with memory...maybe. I just read this brief New York Times article on why people tend to forget jokes and why it is difficult to remember things when anxious. Although the article doesn't encompass the full spectrum of my memory deficits, it starts to explain a few things. Enjoy:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/17/science/17angi.html?th&emc=th

* The link might not work because you may need a password...let me know if this happens (if you care)

Early views of homosexuality

For one of my papers I have to review the history of sexual orientation research. Here is how the author of one book from the 1960s summarized the research on lesbians:



"A homosexual female has been characterized by a firm adipose tissue, deficient fat at the shoulders and at the girdle, firm muscles, excess hair on the chest, back and lower extremities, a tendency to masculine distribution of the public hair and a small uterus and over-or underdevelopment of the labia and clitoris. There is also a tendency toward a shorter trunk, a contracted pelvis, underdevelopment of the breasts, excessive hair on the face, and a low pitched voice."

Psychology Moment

I'm reading about psychotic disorders from a somewhat out-of-date textbook. While the content is generally factually accurate, the wording is sometimes a little...un-PC, which is amusing to me. One example is the description of Delusion Disorder which is a nonbizarre delusion (i.e., involving situations that occur in real like, such as being followed, poisoned, loved at a distance, etc) of at least 1 month's duration.

One of the subtypes of Delusion Disorder is Erotomanic type: delusions that another person, usually of higher status, is in love with the individual.

Here is the description of who usually develops this subtype:

Patients with erotomania frequently show certain characteristics: They are generally unattractive women in low-level jobs who lead withdrawn, lonely lives, are single, and have few sexual contacts.

Who rounded up all these patients, then rated them on attractiveness, compared those attractiveness scores to the general population, and then published the results? Also, it is my contention that the majority of men suffer from low-grade erotomania - studies have shown that men tend to sexualize social interactions moreso than women and tend to assume women are more interested in them than is actually the case. Funny though.

*poof*

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*poof*

Psychology Moment

Today I ventured out to a coffee shop patio to read my personality disorders book as it was FINALLY warm outside! (30C). The server looked baffled when I ordered a hot tea, but who knows what drafts are lurking under the shade of an umbrella...

Anyway, I was reading about histrionic personality disorder and came upon an interesting blurb that I wanted to share. First, a lesson:

Some features of histrionic PD include:

* a need to be the center of attention
* inappropriate sexually seductive behaviour
* rapid shifting of emotions
* using physical appearance to draw attention to the self
* self-dramatization/exaggerated emotionality

It probably comes as no surprise that more women than men are diagnosed with this disorder. Why? Maybe this has something to do with it:

The word 'histrionic' is related to the idea of 'hysteria'. The Greeks believed hysteria was caused by [I shit you not] a 'wandering uterus that could become detached, tour the body, and settle in the brain, thus producing the behavioural excesses such as wild emotion and female lust.' In fact, the modern surgical procedure of removing a woman's uterus is called a 'hysterectomy', not a uterusectomy or uterectomy [or whatever].

From a feminist perspective, hysteria/histrionic PD embodies a stereotype of women and reinforces the male belief that women are nuts or freak out over seemingly innocuous comments or unintended oversights. This has ramifications for future disorders added to the DSM - ie: the proposed 'premenstrual dysphoric disorder' which is the idea that women's menstrual cycles cause psychological problems. On the flip side, is there a psychological disorder related to having a penis? I quote my textbook:

"Although many would admit to emotional and behavioural changes related to their period, women might also argue that these changes occupy only a few days a month, whereas a penis distorts behavior most of he time. Strangely, history holds no such wandering member that might become detached, take up residence in the brain, and distort perception in order to explain antisocial behaviour among males."

I've read that more people are beginning to think that histrionic and antisocial PD are actually two sides of the same coin. The reason for the different names could be a reflection of the biases of the men who made up this stuff to begin with.

Let the smart-alecky comments begin :P