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My Diagnosis Experience, Part 2

5 February 2015 /

Some notes for this series; I’m not going to be using any identifying information, so I’ll be referring to each  person involved by a letter+ number to tell them apart, as it does get rather confusing. The colour-coding is also just to keep track.
K1– university counsellor
K2– university wellbeing practitioner
L-   one of my friends, who I needed to bring with me to some meetings. 
C1– first mental health assessor at the community services.
C2– second  assessor at the community services.
C3– final assessor at the community services.

Doctor’s Surgery

One of the services involved in my treatment was my GP’s surgery.I don’t have much to write about this part,  as I chose to avoid them as much as possible. While  they technically knew everything that was going on, because each other service wrote letters to the GP updating them with new developments, this didn’t have any practical use.

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My Diagnosis Experience, Part 1

5 February 2015 /

Some notes for this series; I’m not going to be using any identifying information, so I’ll be referring to each  person involved by a letter+ number to tell them apart, as it does get rather confusing. The colour-coding is also just to keep track.
K1– university counsellor
K2– university wellbeing practitioner
L-   one of my friends, who I needed to bring with me to some meetings. 
C1– first mental health assessor at the community services.
C2– second  assessor at the community services.
C3– third assessor at the community services.

Beginning

Although I’d had mental health difficulties for a long time, since probably age 10, I didn’t see any mental health services until I was 19. Accessing them wasn’t by choice; when a friend needed to take me to A&E, the hospital had to refer me to community services. My friend also booked a GP appointment for me, and contacted my university to see if they could help me. So I went from knowing nothing about mental health services to being seen by three types at once. It was a confusing period of time, because it felt like my only option was to be bounced around from person to person, and do everything they said, even though I wasn’t really sure of what was going on.
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Diagnosing Mental Health: My Experience

5 February 2015 /

One of the things that can stop people looking for help with mental health issues is the uncertainty of not knowing how they are referred and diagnosed, what kind of place they need to go to, or what person they need to see.

This is especially true for people under 18, who may not want to see anyone in case it means involving their families or sacrificing their ability to keep information confidential.

Online communities can answer these questions to an extent, giving some people’s experiences. But these sometimes focus on only the easiest experiences or the worst experiences in getting help.

Personally, my experience was in-between these extremes; some of the services I used were really accessible and useful while others made less sense. Similarly, some of the people I saw were really supportive and helpful, and some weren’t. So I thought I would explain my experience getting support, in case it’s helpful to anyone.

2012-
Part 1 (Uni)
Part 2 (GP)
Part 3/ Part 4(Community Services)

2015-

Part 1-Pottergate Centre Screening
Part 2- GP
Part 3- Community Services

Diagnosing Mental Health Issues: What is Mental Health?

25 January 2015 /

There is currently more published information about mental health than ever before, and it has never been so easy to connect with experts, health workers and charities supporting mental health issues. Yet misinformation, stereotypes and stigma still exist, and often people still don’t know where to turn. The problem isn’t a lack of information, but in communicating what information we currently have, and what we need to have. One of the most basic pieces of information would be a clear description of exactly what people mean when they talk about mental health and mental health issues. Definitions are often expressed differently depending on who the target audience is; articles written for a general audience will often focus on a single problem or dysfunction, while medical articles get more of the complexity across. Here are some examples of different online resources, and their definitions.

Layman’s definitions

Mind: “problems that affect they way you think, feel, or behave”.
Wikipedia: a mental or behavioural pattern or anomaly that causes either suffering or an impaired ability to function in ordinary life (disability), and which is not a developmental or social norm.
BBC Science: symptoms  that go beyond typical responses, and are severe enough to interfere with a person’s ability to function.

Diagnostic Manuals

Now for the big one, the DSM- IV. As you might expect, this is a comprehensive and rigid explanation:

A clinically significant behavioural or psychological syndrome or pattern that occurs in an individual and that is associated with present distress or disability or with a significantly increased risk of suffering death, pain, disability, or an important loss of freedom. [This] must not be merely an expectable and culturally sanctioned response to a particular event.
A manifestation of a behavioural, psychological, or biological dysfunction in the individual. Neither deviant behaviour (e.g., political, religious, or sexual) nor conflicts that are primarily between the individual and society are mental disorders unless the deviance or conflict is a symptom of a dysfunction in the individual, as described above.”

Breaking this down, the DSM requires a mental health condition to be a pattern of symptoms that cause suffering to the person, go beyond culturally normal experiences, and are caused by a biological or psychological difference in that person.

The ICD- 10  definition is a common research basis, striking a good balance between comprehension and simplicity. They define a mental illness as “a clinically recognizable set of symptoms or behaviours associated in most cases with distress and with interference with personal functions.”

From Illness to Wellness

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Diagnosing Mental Health Issues: What is the DSM?

25 January 2015 /

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is the official instruction book for diagnosing and treating mental health conditions in the US. It is used by psychiatrists, medical staff and academic researchers.

The DSM works based on the principle that psychological symptoms can be objectively classified and observed in the same way as physical symptoms, so psychiatric illness can be diagnosed and studied as medical illnesses. Emil Kraepelin, one of the first psychiatrists, pioneered this idea, which is why systems like the DSM are sometimes described as neo-Kraepelinian methods.

In Kraepelin’s time (1883), people were diagnosed haphazardly, based on their most obvious symptoms. Most doctors also believed in Unitary Psychosis, the idea that all symptoms of mental illness were variants of one overall illness. Kraepelin instead looked for syndromes – patterns and trajectories of symptoms. He wrote an encyclopaedia of psychiatry which contained case histories and trajectories of specific syndromes and also promoted his diagnostic system.

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Review | Destiny

21 November 2014 /

Two Thursdays ago, we felt invincible.

Our 6-man fireteam blitzed through the Vault of Glass in an hour, successfully enacting strategies honed over the past few weeks. Everyone knew their role and position in every challenge. More than that, we knew to stick together. We worked as one unit: spotting Oracles and broadcasting their location, looking after players rendered blind by screen effects, and synchronising our attacks to take bosses down as smoothly as possible.

It was frantic yet controlled; challenging but not overwhelming. It was some of the most fun on Xbox Live I’ve ever had, and a reminder of why I took the leap into multiplayer games.

Judging Destiny based on nights like that, it would be one of my favourite games of all time.  It encompasses so many things I enjoy in gaming; true co-operation and teamwork; challenging but just-achievable goals; customisable skills and weapons, and a great multiplayer mode. These all combine to make a compellingly playable and engaging experience.

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The Psychology of Freemium Gaming: DLC Edition

26 September 2014 /

To read the next article in this series, please download the “DLC Edition Blog Post Pack”…

Digital distribution and expansion packs have been around for a surprisingly long time: the Atari 2600’s GameLine (1983) let people download games via their phone lines, while the Genesis’ SegaChannel (1994) offered a subscription to play games through cable lines, like dial-up proto-xbox-live. Total Annihilation (1997) was the first PC game to gain an expansion pack.

Like many gaming nerds, I don’t have a problem with DLC, Expansion Packs, or even freemium games. The part I have a problem with is when it seems like developers and marketers are designing a game based on what suits their pockets rather than their players. Sometimes, these things work pretty well together. Joke DLCs like Skyrim’s Horse Armour and services like the Xbox Live Avatar Marketplace are technically completely useless. However, they are entirely optional, and the players who spend money on these things are providing money that can be used to develop other services for lower-cost. Voluntary money sinks designed purely for fun aren’t my thing, but they have a purpose and a fanbase.

Games designed in an exploitative way, lying about their “play for free” status, or using psychological manipulation to make people feel like they have to pay in order to maintain their progress? That’s where profit overtakes propriety, and that’s where the negativity should be aimed.

Microtransactions are a newer avenue of digital distribution. In a sense, they are a logical extension of expansion packs- if someone only wants more of one specific aspect of the game, it is more efficient to offer every available extra separately, so people can choose what parts of the game they want more of. This idea itself isn’t problematic, but the culture of microtransactions and freemium gaming grew so rapidly due to the influx of social media games and mobile games that it raced ahead of its critics. Trying to regulate what is fair in freemium is like trying to safety-check fireworks on Bonfire Night- there’s no way everything can be checked in time.

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Game Optimisation, Part 2: AMD vs NVIDIA

22 September 2014 /

If you missed the first post, which was an overview of the different levels of optimisation a game can have, then you can find it here:

99% of all graphics cards are made by the duopoly of AMD or NVIDIA (NV). As well as controlling graphics hardware, both companies have expanded into software, creating a middle layer that goes between the graphics card hardware and the games software. Both companies have a similar box of tricks, and I’ll explain a little of what they both offer.

While they are similar in many regards, the major difference at the moment is how much influence the company can have both after a game is released and, more importantly, on the development process of a game. Current graphics card poster child Watch_Dogs is the game in focus today.

NVIDIA’s armoury:

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The Psychology of Freemium Gaming: Economics and Exponential Growth

12 September 2014 /

Have some bonus XP for reaching the second stage of the series! You are now Level 2.

The game of the day here is Mafia City, a business management game created by 68games. In Mafia City, the aim is to create a Mafia character and grow from a petty criminal to a master of the city.

The campaign of MC didn’t get off to the best start for me, as it initially consisted of a lot of handholding. Single-action commands, bright flashy “click here” arrows, continual rewards, you name it. My main reason for continuing in the campaign was the sense of achievement I got from succeeding at the practically failure-proof early missions, which produced so much XP that I reached level 20 on my second day.

For completing the first paragraph, you receive 50XP.

Photos from www.wpcentral.com

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The Psychology of Freemium Gaming

10 September 2014 /

Time for some cross-disciplinary nerdiness today! And also for the next few weeks, as today is the beginning of series on the mechanics, and psychology of freemium games.

Before we begin, I’ll explain some of the terms I’ll need to use in the series:

Freemium: a business model where the basic product is provided for free, but upgrades and customisation is charged.

Mechanics: the separate working components of how exactly button presses are translated into action and gameplay, that fit together in a game. For example, the speed at which characters run, the delay between pressing an attack button and starting the attack, or the radius of where a sword swing will connect with an opponent, are all choices of mechanics.

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