Understanding the effects of materiality on mental health

SummaryConsensus is growing, in many areas of the humanities and social sciences, that aspects of the material world we live in have causal efficacy on our minds – the major dynamic being the plasticity of the brain linked to the affordances of our bodily engagements with things. The implications of that on how we approach and understand important mental health issues have not been adequately addressed. This paper proposes a material engagement approach to the study of the processes by which different forms of materiality achieve their effects. Focusing on the example of dementia, I propose that a collaboration between archaeology, anthropology, philosophy and psychiatry could help us to fill this gap in our knowledge, allowing us to understand the exact effects of everyday objects, personal possessions and forms of material engagement on people with dementia.

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Why Social Media Is Ruining Your Life

Journal of Intellectual Freedom and Privacy ◽

10.5860/jifp.v4i3.7198 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 4 (3) ◽

pp. 14

Author(s):

Sarah Grace Glover

Keyword(s):

Mental Health ◽

Social Media ◽

Social Networking ◽

Social Networking Sites ◽

Academic Research ◽

Self Esteem ◽

Health Issues ◽

Mental Health Issues ◽

Personal Accounts ◽

The Brain

Katherine Omerod’s Why Social Media Is Ruining Your Life takes a cursory look into social networks and their effects on mental health and day-to-day life. As a fashion blogger who uses Instagram as the main source of her business, Omerod uses both personal accounts and academic research to address current issues and bad behaviors developed through frequent social network use. Omerod’s main argument is that social media exaggerates self-esteem and mental health issues. She discusses how social networking sites such as Facebook and Instagram interact with the brain like an addiction.

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Attachment-Based Treatment of Chronic Medical Disorders: Learning from Stress-Based Mental Health Conditions

Advances in Neurology and Neuroscience ◽

10.33140/an.04.01.02 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 4 (1) ◽

Keyword(s):

Mental Health ◽

Similar Type ◽

Health Conditions ◽

Health Issues ◽

Medical Treatments ◽

Medical Interventions ◽

Mental Health Conditions ◽

Medical Disorders ◽

Mental Health Issues ◽

The Brain

Adaptation to stressful conditions has been considered as a cause of chronic medical disorders for many years. However, the failure of adaptation involved in the genesis of these disorders has never been connected to mental health conditions that have the same adaptation failures to stress. A failure in the type of attachment in which parents help their children adapt to fearful conditions, which involves the hippocampus and amygdala regions in the brain, might be an underlying cause for both chronic medical disorders and mental health conditions. This paper will provide evidence for the underlying continuity of these conditions, as they relate to a similar type of attachment failure, as it impedes successful adaptation to stress. To demonstrate this continuity, case material is provided on patients with both conditions who are given model treatments that resolve each sequentially, indicating that they have a common attachment-based root. The importance of treating patients’ attachment-based deficits for both their medical and mental health issues concurrently supports using alternative, holistic medical strategies and attachment-based psychotherapy, in which the therapist can experience the fear of the patient and then advocate for them to help them resolve their problems for both types of conditions. The importance of using these therapies in treating chronic medical and mental health conditions is strongly supported by this evidence. These interventions are not adjunctive to the medical treatments but are as primary as the medical interventions in developing more pervasive resolution of the conditions.

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