Mental Health

Julia Lewis
12/19/2008

Depression has been on the rise in the United States, with as many as 10% of people suffering at any given time. One in ten people will suffer a depressive episode at least once in their lifetime. It is becoming increasingly common in adolescents, and physicians are more eager than ever to prescribe antidepressants to anyone who shows even mild signs of depression. Prozac Nation chronicles a decade’s worth of suffering of Elizabeth Wurtzel, a young woman in the throes of an atypical depression.

Between the top two most common mental illnesses in the US are anxiety and mood disorders, which includes depression. Often a depressed person will suffer from anxiety, but more often still an anxious person suffers from depression. However, anxiety and depression, while intricately entwined, are not one and the same. This paper aims to explore each and the relationship between the two mental disorders.

Psychologists have debated for many years over whether nature or nurture plays a more important role in determining or causing individual differences in personality and behavior.  Historically, most have supported the idea that nature is the larger factor in determining personality.  Some psychologists even supported the idea of tabula rasa, or the blank slate, which states that humans acquire all or almost all of their behavioral traits from nurture (1).

This semester I read the book Love’s Executioner & Other Tales of Psychotherapy by Irvin D. Yalom a writer who is also a professor of psychiatry at Stanford University.  This book is the non-fiction account of ten patients who have been in therapy with Dr. Yalom over the years.  All of the patients have very different problems but they all experience some kind of personal breakthrough during their therapeutic sessions.  

At times Lowell Handler has been a pot head and a learner, a disruptive student and a teacher, a husband, a son, and a brother. He has traveled around the country, camping where ever he landed for the night, and he has worked closely with Dr. Oliver Sacks, publishing several pieces as both an author and a photographer. He also happens to have Tourette's, although it was not until he was much older that his wild movements and sudden outbursts were diagnosed.

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