Eating disorders occur when certain damaging patterns of eating take on a life of their own. Starvation diets, pills, juice drinks and other rapid weight-loss techniques are usually the starting point to eating disorders. Women and men have spent decades trying to obtain the perfect body image, whi...

Sexual abuse involves forcing, tricking, bribing, threatening, or pressuring a child into sexual awareness or activity. Sexual abuse when an older or more knowledgeable child or an adult uses a child for sexual pleasure. The abuse often begins gradually and increases over time. It is always the off...

Freedom! What a wonderful concept. One of our most important freedoms is our ability to make choices. When a person takes that freedom away from another person, they can feel violated. An example of this is rape. Rape always involves one person violating another person, by forcing them to have s...

Personality Disorders There are many types of personality disorders and each one has different symptoms and characteristics. Some characteristics are shared by different disorders. People who rebel against their culture or society or who have outbursts and rages or have trouble with social ...

CHILDHOOD DISORDERS 1. Mood Disorders – Major depression, manic depressive disorder (called bipolar disorder) and mania are disorders which cause change in child's mood. Depression is caused by a number of factors from chemical imbalances to environmental influences to genetics. It i...

Bipolar disorders are a class of Axis I mood disorders with severe physical, social, and psychological consequences to the patient, the patient's friends and family, and society as a whole. According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th ed., the lifetime prevalence...

Neurosis (or psychoneurosis) is a mental disorder that causes frequent feelings of anxiety, depression, or other feelings of distress that are not normal to the circumstances of life. This can affect any and all areas of life, whether being everyday activities to relationships. Generally though, the...

Abnormal behavior- This type of behavior can be described as unusual, nonadaptive, labeled as abnormal by society or characterized by cognitive distortion. There are several perceived explanations of such behavior discussed in the chapter. The demonological explanations believed that one would ac...

From the day that we are born, the everyday events that occur in our lives play an important role in the foundation of our memory as well as our physical, mental, and emotional development. Most of us have memories of a good and happy childhood, but unfortunately, that is not the case in all childre...

Alcoholism Alcoholism is a chronic disease caused by a craving for alcohol. People suffering from this illness are referred to as alcoholics. They do not know how to control there drinking problem even when it causes a serious harm to their health and this could lead to medical d...

Sex and Violence on TV Sex and violence have become a very popular part of television and the media these days. The number of dedicated viewers to shows such as Jerry Springer and Alley Mcbeal continue to grow every day. But why is it that people are so traumatized by these types of shows? Is it b...

In a society that has become lenient in sexual activity, and offers ample opportunity for gratification, it is unfathomable that sexual abuse of children occurs. Sexual abuse of children has various manifestations including digital manipulation, masturbation, sodomy, and intercourse. Immediate emo...

Anorexia Nervosa is a form of undernutrition caused by nervous and/or psychological factors. Typically, it is an eating disorder of adolescent girls, but occasionally it occurs in older females, younger children, and males. Anorexia Nervosa patients are preoccupied with food. They collect and read b...

What Is Anorexia? It's got a fancy Latin name: anorexia nervosa, "nervous want of appetite." It's a killer. One in 10 cases ends in death. People with anorexia starve themselves by eating far too little food. Eventually they become dangerously thin -- yet they still see themselves as fat. Peo...

A Closer Look At High Risk Youth It is important not to overreact to isolated incidents. Young people will have problems and will learn, at their own rate, to struggle and deal with them. But it is critical for parents and helping adults to be aware of the factors that put a youth at particular ...

Neurofibromatosis is a disorder affecting the chromosomes of the human body. It is a hereditary disorder affecting the nervous system. The term neurofibromatosis actually refers to two different genetic diseases. The most common type is NF 1, and the less common type is NF 2. Both disorders ar...

"About 1% of the world's population is thought to have some form of bipolar disorder, from mild to severe. Statistically, men and women are equally represented. Approximately 1 in 5 people with bipolar disorder eventually commit suicide. This is 30 times higher than the general population!" B...

Depression is a psychiatric disorder characterized by feelings of worthlessness, guilt, sadness, helplessness, and hopelessness. It is different then normal sadness or grief from the loss of a loved one because it is persistent and severe. Clinical depression has many related symptoms troub...

The crime of forcing another person to submit to sex acts is known as rape. Throughout history many occurrences of rape have occurred usually with men raping women. Why do men rape women? A look at a convicted rapist's personal background may lead us to believe cultural deviance has an effect on me...

The effects of child abuse can be long lasting or maybe even fatal. "The National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect estimates that 2.9 million children are abused or neglected by parents or caretakers each year"("Child Abuse" Encarta). This fact is very disturbing to the many of us that don't k...

One of the strengths of studying eating disorders such as compulsive over-eating or anorexia nervosa from a purely biological perspective is that eating is a biological phenomenon that impacts the body and the mind. Starvation, as observed in non-anorexic subjects that have been forcibly starved, pr...

Barbiturates ABOUT: These drugs act to depress the central nervous system and are often called sleeping pills. They are derived from barbituric acid (C4H4N2O3), a combination of urea and malonic acid. Depressants act as downers, and can slow the body and mind down. There are over 2000 known barbit...

Imagine this: a man who can know the brain and understand the conflict occurring when we encounter anxiety and unhappiness. Mr. Sigmund Freud had this ability. He knew the human brain all too well. Before entering the University of Vienna in 1873, the youthful Sigmund Freud had signs of brilliance a...

SIGMUND FREUD Imagine this: a man who can know the brain and understand the conflict that is occurring when we encounter anxiety and unhappiness. Mr. Sigmund Freud had this ability. He knew the human brain all too well. Before entering the University of Vienna in 1873, the youthful Sigmund ...

PTSD and OCD have some similarities. A person who has PTSD has to go through a severe trauma in order for them to have PTSD, and it affects them because they try not to think or reflect on their trauma. A person with OCD is a little similar too that. However, they have to disregard those compulsiv...