martha icon. of course.

[fahye]

What did I learn today?



Bones of the hand, bitches :D

We also had our first ever psychological medicine lecture, which was like coming home and rediscovering all the shiny things you'd forgotten about while you were away, and I got a chocolate frog (the lecturer = very keen on lobbing chocolate frogs across the enormous lecture hall) for knowing why we consider specific phobias of blood & injury to be a separate group to all the other specific phobias.

He also made us watch fifteen minutes of the 1979 original When a Stranger Calls in an earnest, totally non-ironic effort to help us experience a moderate fear reaction. It was great.

So...a good ending to a pretty sucky week, all-in-all. I have absolutely nothing planned for the weekend, so if any Sydneysiders want to kidnap me or go out to lunch or see a movie or something, let me know!

Comments

[apiphile.livejournal.com]

why we consider specific phobias of blood & injury to be a separate group to all the other specific phobias

Care to enlighten the curious but scientifically uneducated few?

[fahye.livejournal.com]

Certainly! It's because with most specific phobias, when the person encounters the object/experience that they are afraid of, there is physiological arousal -- faster heartbeat and breathing, sweaty palms, a flight reaction. Whereas when people have specific phobias of eg. having blood taken, they experience physiological depression, meaning that they can lose proper blood flow to the head and are likely to faint.

*edumacates*

[apiphile.livejournal.com]

Thank you, the edumacation fairy!

Further probing (because Professor Google is rarely coherent) ... do folk know *why* it has the depressive effect?

[fahye.livejournal.com]

*I* don't, which could just be because I've forgotten, or it could be (quite likely -- this is psychiatry after all) that nobody knows! Does Professor Google have any theories?

[apiphile.livejournal.com]

Nothing that Derek "Nearly Failed GCSE Simple Science" Des Anges can understand (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6T0G-4PB0PVY-R&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=81980517d96dfcd41ae74182cda16dc3). :(

I wonder if it's a sympathetic reaction?

EDIT: Oh, this one makes slightly more sense:

Subjects with blood-injection-injury phobia (cases) had higher lifetime histories of fainting and seizures than those without (non-cases). None reported seeking mental health treatment specifically for phobia. Prevalences were lower in the elderly and higher in females and persons with less education. Cases had significantly higher than expected lifetime prevalences of other psychiatric conditions, including marijuana abuse/dependence, major depression, obsessive–compulsive disorder, panic disorder, agoraphobia, social phobia and other simple phobia. Cases and non-cases did not differ with regard to usual health-care settings, regular care for specific medical conditions, numbers of out-patient visits or hospitalizations, or previous general anaesthesia or live births. However, diabetics with blood-injection-injury phobia had higher than expected rates of macrovascular complications.

[genarti]

...Hunh.

Okay, that's just cool.

Strange, but cool!