CP is a new course with the following goals: to have knowledge on psychopathology/disorders; to know how science and practice of CP interact; and to be able to make a theoretical argument out of scientific literature.
There are 8 non-obligatory lectures (which will be streamed) and 8 obligatory workgroups (you may miss 1 workgroup with a good reason and do some compensatory work), in which you are expected to give a presentation (about 30 minutes total) and write a paper (shorter than 2500 words, see instructions on Blackboard). The exam contains 8 to 10 open questions.
There is a document on Blackboard which shows some chapters you should read before a lecture. However, all the chapters from the books are relevant for the exam (but the chapters used could be a hint on what they think is most important). Watch out for scientific papers, for tables can be quite specific – don’t learn them by heart, these are not very relevant. Percentages are sometimes relevant, but never precise numbers.
Your grade consists of an exam grade (40%, should be at least 5.5), workgroup participation grade (20%, can be any grade) and a paper grade (40%, should be at least 5.5).
Suicide
Suicide and contagion
About 1 million people a year commit suicide worldwide. For example, Dutch writer Joost Zwagerman commited suicide one year ago. He had showed numerous risk factors, such as being severly depressed several times and almost losing his father to suicide (perhaps genetic factors?).
A few examples of risk factors for suicide are prior suicide attempt(s), depression, schizophrenia, economic hardship etc.
About 5 people a day commit suicide in Holland, this number is increasing. Because of the celebrity suicide of Zwagerman last year, there will probably be a lot of attention for this suicide. This is worrysome, because suicide is contagious: hearing about suicide will make some people (mostly people who are already suicidal) commit suicide.
The number of remissions (fallbacks) after two years is higher amongst people with anxiety and people with both anxiety and depression than people with ‘only’ depression.
Antidepressants and losing personality
Kramer, a clinical practitioner, wrote about Prozac: he wrote about patients coming back to their psychiatrist after a depression, not because they have remissions, but because they feel like they lost their personality. ‘I am no longer my self’. This could be a main effect of Prozac.
Typically, depression comes with a lot of anxiety too, which is important to know because anxiety is more chronic. In a treatment, depression reduces first, then neuroticism and extraversion improve a bit later. But the first stage.....read more
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