Why can’t we be happy?

By Nilma Dole

Is it too much to ask to be happy and live a contented life? Due to social stigma, rejection of love, financial debt or just plain depression, a considerable portion of the population thinks that the only way out is by ending their life.The biggest issue is the fact that contemporary media glorifies and projects suicide as a sensationalised factor.

With blaring headlines in newspapers, television showing visually graphic scenes and teledramas depicting how suicides are done with pictures and the information of the events that led to the suicide, it seems that copy-cat suicides are increasing.It is hard to imagine that to contribute to an impending suicide frenzy, an episode of a popular Sri Lankan television drama had a script which depicted deliberate self-poisoning with paracetamol. Jomo Uduman of Sri Lanka Sumithrayo said, “Researchers interviewed patients who attended accident and emergency departments and psychiatric services and found that 20 percent said the program had influenced their decision to take an overdose.

Self-poisoning increased by 17 percent in the week following the broadcast and by 9 percent in the second week.”With suicides explained to a large extent, the how’s the why’s of the suicide isn’t explained accurately but just how they did it. “After the major news headlines of the teenage girls at a leading Colombo school committed suicide about two weeks later, there was a small news item about a village girl committing suicide. Since the news reported a major Colombo girls school, the rural school had no significance and also many didn’t know that it was a copy-cat suicide,” he said.

Research shows that 75 percent of the suicides take place in the rural areas of the country.

By 2008, the suicide rate in the country had come down by over 57 percent from 47/100,000 in 1995 to 20/100,000.

According to him, suicide should not be portrayed as a way of avoiding personal problems such as bankruptcy, failure to pass an examination, or sexual abuse by taking one’s life.

He said, “Reports should take account of the impact of suicide on families and other survivors in terms of both stigma and psychological suffering.”He indicated that glorifying suicide victims as martyrs and objects of public adulation may suggest to susceptible persons that their society honours suicidal behaviour. Instead, the emphasis should be on mourning the person’s death.

Suicide research

For example, a study following the suicide of Nirvana singer Kurt Cobain found there was no overall increase in suicides in his home town Seattle because reporting differentiated strongly between the brilliance of his life achievements and the wastefulness of his death. Uduman said, “Media play a significant role in today’s society. They strongly influence community attitudes, beliefs and behaviour, and play a vital role in politics, economics and social practice.” He said that since media is influential, they play a major role in suicide prevention. International suicide research revealed that when a Hong Kong newspaper reported intricate details of a suicide by burning charcoal in a confined space, there was a dramatic increase in suicides for the next three years. Moreover, in Germany, the television series “Death of a Student” depicted the railway suicide of a young man at the start of each episode. There was a 175 percent rise in railway suicides that occurred in young people in the age group of 15-19 year both during and after the series.

This effect was repeated when the series was shown again some years later.

There is considerable research articles that have been published comparing the significant proportion of media coverage of suicide and found that it can lead to imitative behaviours. Studies in Vienna and Toronto have shown that voluntary restrictions on newspaper reporting of subway suicides resulted in 75 percent decrease in suicides by this method.

Uduman said that most people have thought of suicide from time to time and not all people who die by suicide have mental health problems at the time of death.

Media influence

He said, “A majority of people who kill themselves do have such problems, typically to a serious degree and often undiagnosed but possess feelings of desperation, depression and hopelessness which are more accurate predictors of suicide.” Suicide is the most tragic way of ending one’s life which is a form of escapism from the real world.

Uduman said that when reporting a suicide, there should be a small print on the side that gives a helpline for potential suicide victims.

There are certain types of suicide reporting which is dangerous to be published as it could be a catalyst to influence the behaviour of those trying to commit suicide.

If media coverage assesses the risk factors and identifies sources of help for people with suicidal feelings, then the article will offer some sort of positivism within its negative context.

However, we can’t hold the media to account for influencing suicidal tendencies alone.

As a journalist, I feel that it is the environment in which the suicidal person in relation to those around them who affect the final decision of suicide.

By reading an article on suicide, it would provoke discussion or a debate on whether it is right or wrong.

For example, a sensationalised suicide news could lead to the parents talking about it and educating the child on why it is bad and increase communication and in turn, show the love they have for their child.

It is not possible for parents to detect suicidal tendencies in their children but to be lenient on them and not pressurise them.

Success stories

Be it academia, marriage proposals or just plain abuse, it is important for children to have a happy family environment.

It is better to accept people for who they are be in the worse problem in the world rather than getting them to commit suicide.

There have been very good success stories of those who have attempted suicide and are leading happy lives so we should aim to have a healthy mentally-stable society where we are all loved.

What is depression?

The word ‘depression’ is used in many different ways. Everyone can feel sad or blue when bad things happen. However, everyday ‘blues’ or sadness is not depression. People with the ‘blues’ may have a short-term depressed mood but they can manage to cope and soon recover without treatment.

The depression we are talking about is ‘clinical depression’, which lasts for at least two weeks and affects a person’s ability to carry out their work or to have satisfying personal relationships. Clinical depression is a common but serious illness and is often recurrent (that is, people recover but develop another episode later on).

At some point, their life, around one in every five women and one in every ten men suffers from depression. Symptoms of depression if a person is clinically depressed, they would have the following core or typical symptoms for at least two weeks.

* Depressed mood

* Loss of interest and enjoyment

* Reduced energy leading to increased fatiguability and dimished activity

* Reduced concentration and attention

* Ideas of guilt and unworthiness

* Bleak and pessimistic views of the future

* Ideas of acts of self-harm or suicide

* Disturbed sleep

* Diminished appetite

Severity of Depression

Not every person who is depressed has all these symptoms. People who are more severely depressed will have more symptoms than those who are mildly depressed.

1. Mild depressive episode: At least two core symptoms and two other symptoms.

2. Moderate depressive episode: At least two of the core symptoms and at least three(or preferably four) of the other symptoms.

3. Severe depressice episode: All three core symptoms and at least four other symptoms some of which should be of severe intensity. people with mild or moderate depressive episode are considered to have ‘Somatic Syndrome’ if they have at least four or more of the following symptoms:

1. Loss of interest or pleasure in acitivites that are normally enjoyable.

2. Lack of emotional reactivity to normally pleasurable surroundings and events

3. Waking in the morning 2 hours or more before the usual time.

4. Depression worse in the morning

5. Objective evidence of definite psychomotor retardation or agitation

6. Marked loss of apetite

7. Weight loss-5 percent or more of body weight in the past month

8. Marked loss of libido People with severe depression spisode also develop psychotic symptoms such as delusions, hallucinations or depressive stupor.

People may become depressed when something very distressing has happened to them and they cannot do anything to control the situation, such as:

* Break-up of a relationship

* Living in conflict

* Having a baby (10 to 15 percent of women suffer depression shortly after childbirth)

* Loss of a job and difficulty in finding a new one

* Being a victim of crime

* Developing a long-term physical illness

* Caring full-time for someone with a long-term disability

Depression can also result from:

* Side-effects of certain medications or drugs

* Stress of having another problem such as substance abuse, schizophrenia, etc.

* Pre-menstrual changes in hormone levels

Some people will develop depression in a distressing situation, whereas others in the same situation may not. Those most prone to develop depression are:

* People who have previously suffered from depression

* People with a more sensitive emotional nature

* People who have had a difficult childhood (abuse, neglect, strict discipline, etc. over a period of time)

The symptoms of depression are thought to be due to changes in natural brain chemicals called neutro-transmitters.

These chemicals send messages from one nerve cell to another in the brain. When a person becomes depressed, the brain can have less of certain of these chemicals messenger. One of these is serotonin, a mood-regulating brain chemical.

Courtesy: “Sahanaya”, National Council for Mental Health

Exercise at work boosts productivity

Devoting work time to physical activity can lead to higher productivity. This is shown in a study that is being published in Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine.

The study shows that it is possible to use work time for exercise or other health-promoting measures and still attain the same or higher production levels. The same production levels with fewer work hours means greater productivity, while at the same time individuals benefit from better health as a result of the physical activity.

“This increased productivity comes, on the one hand, from people getting more done during the hours they are at work, perhaps because of increased stamina and, on the other hand, from less absenteeism owing to sickness,” says Ulrica von Thiele Schwarz and Henna Hasson, the researchers behind the study in Stockholm.

In the study, two workplaces in dental care were asked to devote 2.5 hours per week to physical activity, distributed across two sessions.

Another group had the same decrease in work hours but without obligatory exercise, and a third group maintained their usual work hours,40 hours a week.The results showed that all three groups were able to maintain or even increase their production level, in this case the number of patients treated, during the study period compared with the corresponding time the previous year. Those who exercised also reported improvements in self-assessed productivity they perceived that they got more done at work, had a greater work capacity, and were sick less often. Sources: Expertanswer, AlphaGalileo Foundation

Control of fear in the brain decoded

Emotional balance is regulated by molecular factors behind stress response. When healthy people are faced with threatening situations, they react with a suitable behavioural response and do not descend into a state of either panic or indifference, as is the case, for example, with patients who suffer from anxiety.

With the help of genetic studies on mice, scientists from the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry have discovered two opposing neuronal regulatory circuits for the generation and elimination of fear. Both are controlled by the stress-inducing messenger substance corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH) and its type 1 receptor (CRHR1).

The availability of these factors in neurons that release glutamate in brain areas of the limbic system activates a neuronal network which causes anxiety behaviour. Conversely, in dopamine-releasing neurons in the mid-brain, these factors give rise to behaviour that reduces fear. Because disorders of the stress factors may be observed in many patients with affective illnesses, the scientists suspect that the pathological alteration of the CRHR1-dependent regulatory circuits may be at the root of such emotional maladies.

An organism’s response to stress is one of the key strategies essential to its survival in dealing with environmental factors. A balanced emotional reaction is of particular importance here and is subject to a highly complex molecular regulation system.

Corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH), which is released in the brain and places the organism in a state of alert, is a central molecular factor of the stress response. In addition to its effect as a hormonal messenger substance, it also controls the activity of neurons through binding to its receptors.

Many patients with anxiety disorders and depression display an altered hormonal stress response and have increased volumes of CRH in the brain. To investigate the underlying pathological processes, the research team working with Jan Deussing at the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry carried out studies on the mouse model system.

This enabled them to selectively deactivate an important factor, for example the CRH type 1 receptor, in certain cells, and thus establish the locations where the receptor is normally active and identify its function.

Using immunohistochemical methods and a series of transgenic mouse lines, the researchers succeeded in mapping the gene activity of the type 1 CRH receptor in the mouse brain in detail for the first time. Interestingly, a specific activity pattern emerged in different neuron groups which release different neuronal messenger substances. In regions of the forebrain (cortex, hippocampus, thalamus, septum), CRHR1 is detectable in glutamatergic and GABAergic neurons. As the limbic system, these regions are linked and, as the current study shows, trigger fear-inducing behaviour in glutamatergic neurons.

In regions of the midbrain (substantia nigra, ventral tegmental area), CRHR1 arises in dopamine-releasing neurons. The functional examination of the mice gave rise to the fairly sensational discovery that the stress hormone CRH actually reduces fear through its receptors in this part of the brain. These neurons demonstrably trigger the direct release of dopamine in regions of the forebrain and hence cause behaviour that overcomes fear.The opposing effects of the fear-generating and fear-eliminating effect of the CRH/CRHR1 was demonstrated for the first time by this study and prompted the re-evaluation of the use of CRH-receptor antagonists as anxiolytic and antidepressant drugs. The authors speculate that the over-activity of the CRH system in patients with mood disorders is not general but probably limited to certain regulatory circuits in the brain, thus causing imbalanced emotional behaviour.

“The use of CRH-receptor 1 antagonists could be particularly useful in patients in whose one of these systems is out of sync,” says research group leader Jan Deussing.

Sources: Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, AlphaGalileo Foundation.

Women’s memory is sensitive to male voice pitch

Men take note: If you want women to remember, speak to them in a low pitch voice.

Then, depending on what they remember about you, they may or may not rate you as a potential mate.

That’s according to a new study by David Smith and colleagues from the University of Aberdeen in the UK.

Their work shows for the first time that a low masculine voice is important for both mate choice and the accuracy of women’s memory.

In a series of two experiments, Smith and colleagues show that memory in women is sensitive to male voice pitch, a cue important for mate choice because it can indicate genetic quality as well as signal behavioral traits undesirable in a long-term partner.

These could include antisocial traits and lack of emotional warmth for example.

In order to evaluate potential partners, women appear to rely on their memories to rapidly provide information about the attributes and past behavior of potential partners. In the first experiment, 45 women were initially shown an image of a single object while listening to the name of the object spoken either by a high or low pitch male or female manipulated voice.

They were then shown two similar but not identical versions of the object and asked to identify the one they had seen earlier. The women were also asked which voice they preferred.

- MNT