Today I was a student at Yale University. You didn't know I was that smart, did you?
Well, I'm not really. I'd love to be a student of Harvard or Yale, but that's not the case. (At least not currently …) But I was able to watch a lecture on psychology at Yale thanks to a cool new website called Academic Earth, and you can too. This lecture, which lasts 54 minutes, is given by Professor Susan Nolen-Hoeksema. It's called "What Happens When Things Go Wrong: Mental Illness, Part 1".
Here's why this lecture is so interesting to me: Many of those of us who suffer perinatal mood or anxiety disorders arrive at this brave new world of "mental health" for the very first time. In the past, we may havebeen illwithout knowing it, or maybe this is the first episode EVER for us of depression or anxiety or panic or OCD or psychosis. Sitting in a psychiatrist's office being diagnosed can feel pretty scary, considering we have such little information or understanding of what's happening to us. This lecture walks you through what makes a mood disorder like depression or bipolar disorder. She talks about the criteria used to decide whether someone is really suffering from depression or not, and how these illnesses truly impact people. She also covers causes,including genetic predisposition, neurotransmitter functioning and stress, and treatments. You can watch this and realize that what you're going through is a REAL ILLNESS.
One interesting tidbit: Even though the criteria for diagnosis of depression is that someone experiences symptoms for 2 weeks or longer, the average depression episode lasts six months if it goes untreated. Another reason to reach out for help.
Oh, and the website is free and doesn't require registration. You can just open up the lecture, sit back and learn. To watch, click here.
Note: Because of copyright laws you won't be able to see some of the short videos/slides as part of her lecture, but she'll discuss them.
