eyes wide shut

I want to immediately address two statistically significant findings in these articles:

1) The University of Michigan rocks.
2) Including super-huge portraits of each author in the article negates the fact that their writing is totally discombobulated and way too verbose.

Now, getting to the topic of stimulus control (SC) and stressors and abuses that lead to depression.

The techniques highlighted in the SC article as well as the sleep hygiene handout seemed to express the validity of using this therapy with sleep deprived clients.  I only questioned how the average person would be able to stick to such a regime, or participate it in the first place.  The therapeutic push, however, of suggesting that nothing else has worked so take a stab at this, was fairly convincing to me.  I wish I knew of it when I used to suffer from insomnia in college. But then I worked for Teach For America.  That would be the second most effective cure after SC, I'm sure.

I really enjoyed the Voelker article entitled Stress, Sleep Loss, and Substance Abuse Create Potent Recipe for College Depression not because it was published from Michigan (well, not solely because of that), rather it had a great mix of clinical and neuropsych, as well as social commentary.  In general, our executive functioning allocates specific areas and hormones to address stressors that can rewire the brain to handle stress, but this action takes away from its original function.  Meg commented in assessment yesterday that research appears to advocate less specific function related to one hemisphere only.  This is true, but from what I can recall this summer in neuropsych research, when trauma occurs in one hemisphere, the other hemisphere can compensate for this lack by performing the duties once associated with its other half.  This, understandably, burdens the lone hemisphere, so while there is certainly hemispherical interplay, there will be lessened functioning throughout the entire brain because one is inundated with double the tasks.

In reference to the depression model proposed by Voelker, this makes a world of sense.  People who compensate coping with their psychiatric disorders by overindulging in substances are placing an abundant request on their brains to sort everything out, which likely only further complicates their disorder.  This, coupled with social pressures and economic woes, leads to a lack of sleep, and in more recent cases, extreme violent behavior by those who are just unable to cope with the demands placed on their bodies and minds.

As stated, combing out the various kinks in our lives, i.e. monitoring the amount we eat, drink, sleep, and have time to address our maladaptive thoughts, will act as prevention for the large increase we're seeing in the obesity, substance abuse, insomnia, and depression in college campuses, which are sure to increase as a result of the flailing economy.