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Although a man named “Homer” was accepted in antiquity as the author of the poems, there is no evidence supporting the existence of such an author. By the late 1700s, careful dissection of the Iliad and Odyssey raised doubts about their composition by a single poet. Explore more about the “Homeric question” and the influence of these epics in the infographic below.

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One might think of classicists as the most tradition-bound of humanist scholars, but in fact they were the earliest and most enthusiastic adopters of computing and digital technology in the humanities. Today even classicists who do not work on digital projects use digital projects as tools every day. One reason for this is the large, but defined corpus of classical texts at the field’s core.

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The Unlikely Hero of Room 13B is basically described in one word: INCREDIBLE. Just seriously, wow. This book takes a really honest and relatable look at mental illness (specifically OCD). I got totally sucked in and emotionally tangled within mere pages. It’s only 270-pages and WOAH does it pack a punch. Basically it’s about Adam who […]

When we think of obsessive-compulsive disorder or OCD for short, lots of examples spring to mind. For example, someone who won’t shake your hand, touch a door handle, or borrow your pen without being compelled to wash their hands, all because of a fear of germs. I’m sure many of us are guilty of using the phrase “you’re so OCD” to categorize our friends, family, and colleagues who have obsessive cleaning habits or use their antibacterial hand gel a few too many times a day.

Despite this being a very over-simplified idea of OCD, it’s based on an important and common feature for many sufferers; contact contamination fear. Contact contamination can be described as a feeling of dirtiness or discomfort that is felt in response to physical contact with harmful substances, disease or dirt, which will contaminate the body, most often the hands. Relief can be felt in response to cleansing the contaminated areas, for example through hand washing. Much of the focus by academics in previous literature has been on contact contamination, as well as focus from the media, which surrounds us with examples of contamination fears in OCD through TV series such as Obsessive Compulsive Cleaners and Monk.

However, for some sufferers the feelings of discomfort and dirtiness can also be caused without physical contact with something that is dirty or germy. Instead, feelings of contamination can be triggered by association with a contaminated person who has betrayed or harmed the sufferer in some way, or even by their own thoughts, images or memories. This ‘mental contamination’ leads to an internal sense of dirtiness, rather than being localized to a particular body part, and therefore can’t be cleansed away by hand washing. For example, one patient, “Jenny” started feeling internally dirty after she discovered that her husband had been unfaithful and her marriage broke down. She would feel dirty and wash her hands after touching any of his possessions or speaking to him on the telephone. “Steven” also experienced severe mental contamination that was triggered by intrusive images of harming others. The source of mental contamination is not an external contaminant such as blood or dirt but human interaction. The emotional violations that can cause mental contamination include degradation, humiliation, painful criticism, and betrayal.

There is much less knowledge of mental contamination amongst the public, possibly due to a lack of focus on the topic by professionals, meaning we simply don’t recognize examples or situations in which we might feel mentally contaminated. Similar to the normative experience of contact contamination, there are numerous examples of feeling contaminated without touching something dirty in everyday life, for example the washing away of sins when being Baptized, or when cleansing the body for worship; known as Wudu in Islam. Sins here are referring to an internal type of uncleanliness, which can be provoked without contact, for example through having blasphemous thoughts. Another example is not listening to a song which reminds you of an ex-partner who wronged you, as it makes you feel tarnished inside. Even the phrases we use can be seen as representing a form of mental contamination, for example “dirty money”, “muck up”, and “feel like dirt”. Milder forms of mental contamination are prevalent in society, for example in the course of a bitter divorce, where a wronged person develops feelings of contamination that are evoked by direct contact with the violator or indirect contacts such as memories, images or reminders of the violation.

A lack of knowledge of mental contamination is perhaps also due to it being a harder concept to comprehend than contact contamination. We can all understand the math behind contact contamination; you touch something dirty, your hands become dirty, you wash your hands, the dirt is gone, you feel relief. The process makes logical sense, as the cause is visible. Mental contamination can be seen in the same way, it just doesn’t require a visible cause, and often the cause is associated with a previous psychological or physical violation. Without this visible cause for their problems, the true source of discomfort is often unknown to sufferers. Imagine you’re taking part in an experiment, you’re asked to try on a jumper which was brought from a charity shop, and report your feelings. If you know the jumper is physically clean, you’d probably feel fine, no discomfort, you might even like wearing it. Now, imagine being told that the jumper belonged to a murderer, and suddenly for no explainable reason you aren’t okay with wearing it anymore. You have that disturbing, spine-tingling, and shivery feeling as if the jumper were made of tarantulas. Despite knowing the jumper is physically clean, there’s a cloud of dirtiness hanging over it, and you feel mentally contaminated.

Intrusive thoughts associated with mental contamination are normal, but it is the interpretation of the thoughts that is important in determining whether or not the person will then engage in compulsive washing behaviour. To you or me, these are just weird feelings which are easily forgotten, but to someone with mental contamination they are harmful, and could damage their personality in some way. Take the jumper scenario; a person suffering from mental contamination might worry that somehow they will adopt the negative traits of the murderer through their clothing.

The discovery of mental contamination has large and immediate implications for clinical treatment. Cognitive behavioural therapy can be used to effectively treat mental contamination in OCD patients, by changing the meaning or interpretation of obsessive intrusive thoughts, so that they are no longer seen as harmful. Subsequently, this also reduces the frequency of compulsive washing behaviours. For many OCD sufferers Cognitive Behavioural Therapy provides hope that a life free from the daily interference of mental contamination and compulsions is achievable.

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By Brian L. Odlaug, Samuel R. Chamberlain, and Jon E. Grant

Surprisingly, many of the common mental health conditions in the world also happen to be the least well known. While Obsessive Compulsive Disorder garners attention from international media, with celebrities talking openly about their experiences with the condition, Obsessive Compulsive Related Disorders are far less recognized and receive scant attention.

Obsessive Compulsive Related Disorders include body dysmorphic disorder, tic disorders (including Tourette’s Syndrome), hair pulling disorder, excoriation (skin picking) disorder, hoarding disorder, and hypochondriasis. The clinical course and severity of these disorders varies from person to person yet can often be recognized by common symptoms. One might ask, what makes these “disorders” in need of treatment rather than everyday habits? A “bad habit” becomes a diagnosable disorder when the behavior becomes hard to control, and has a negative impact on an individual’s ability to function: at home, at work, or in the community. These often impairing conditions affect millions of people around the world, but are usually hidden. What can we do to help those suffering in silence?

Promoting screening for Obsessive Compulsive and Related Disorders is of the utmost importance. Society, the media, and healthcare professionals also need to work together to increase awareness of these conditions and provide timely and adequate treatment. The majority of people with these conditions have never sought treatment, and may not even be aware that they have a medically recognized condition that is potentially treatable. Left untreated, Obsessive Compulsive and Related Disorders frequently follow a chronic course, meaning that symptoms often do not improve with time, without intervention. In fact, many people have suffered with the condition for 10, 20, even 30 or more years without clinical recognition. Few other classes of disorders — mental health or otherwise — carry the overall lack of recognition and treatment as these disorders.

Individuals living with these conditions also should be aware of valuable advocacy and support groups that exist worldwide, including the Trichotillomania Learning Center and Tourette’s Syndrome Association in the United States, and OCD Action in the United Kingdom, to name a few.

Bringing these disorders out from the shadows and into the mainstream of mental health and community consciousness can only serve to improve the quality of life for our family members, neighbors and friends.

Five things that you can do to help people who suffer from OCD:

1. Clinicians should screen for Trichotillomania and Excoriation Disorder in all patients, but especially women. Most people will not acknowledge the behavior readily and may not even know that they have a diagnosable and treatable problem.
2. Clinicians should be aware that although anxiety may worsen some of these behaviors, that OCD and the Related Disorders are not simply versions of anxiety and therefore must be treated differently.
3. Due to the potential impairment of OCD, clinicians need to take it seriously and not view it simply as an oddity.
4. Family members should be supportive of someone with OCD and not shame or embarrass the person into stopping the behavior.
5. People with these conditions can help themselves and others as well. Print out articles or information on your condition and show them to family, friends, or even your doctor. They might not know a lot about these disorders either and you can help educate them.

Brian L. Odlaug is a Visiting Researcher at the University of Copenhagen, Department of Public Health. Brian has authored or co-authored over 120 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters, specializing in the areas of addiction, impulse control and obsessive compulsive disorder. Samuel R. Chamberlain is a practicing psychiatrist and Clinical Lecturer at the Department of Psychiatry, University of Cambridge. He has published more than 100 peer-reviewed articles including first-authored papers in Science, the American Journal of Psychiatry, the British Journal of Psychiatry, and others. Jon E. Grant is a Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience at the University of Chicago where he directs the Addictive, Compulsive and Impulsive Disorders Research Program. They are co-authors of Clinical Guide to Obsessive Compulsive and Related Disorders.

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Image Credit: Person washing his hands. Photo by Lars Klintwall Malmqvist. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

The post Living in the shadows of health appeared first on OUPblog.

        

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Cryer's Cross Lisa McMann

Kendall has spent her entire life in Cryer's Cross, Montana. It's a small town of mostly potato farmers (Kendall's family included.) There are 24 people in her high school.

Last spring, Tiffany Quinn disappeared without a trace. This fall, Kendall's boyfriend Nico, is also gone.

Kendall has OCD. Everything must be just so. It also means that all the horrific possibilities of what happened to Tiffany or Nico replay in her head over. and over. and over. and over. and over. and over. and over. and over. and over.

It also means that she knows the smallest details of everything. She knows that Nico was sitting at the same desk that Tiffany sat at last year. Kendall knows that the graffiti carvings that look like they've been there forever? They're new. And they're changing. She hears the voices calling to her.

Thirty five. One hundred. Thirty five. One hundred.

Overall, I liked the first 90% of it. It was spooky and tense. I loved how Kendall's OCD was a hinderance and a help. I also love that this book wasn't a book about Kendall's OCD. It was about something else entirely. I love that it's a small town that ISN'T full of quirky characters. The interjections of the desks in between chapters at first was really weird, but at the end added to the scariness. I loved the depiction of how hard small town life can be. With Tiffany and Nico gone, when the new girl Marlena breaks her leg, the soccer season is cancelled because even though it's a co-ed, there are no longer enough people to make a full team.

I'm not sure how I felt about Kendall's relationship with new boy (Marlena's older brother Jacian). On one hand Kendall and Nico were dating because they had been best friends since they were born and it just seemed natural and Jacian makes her heart race... after Nico's disappearance (and not only as her boyfriend, but also her oldest and best friend) it seemed a bit... fast.

My big beef though, is with the end. It's rushed and totally anti-climatic. What was going on was really cool and FREAKY, but how McMann lets the readers know is a let-down. It just falls apart a bit. Which is sad because it had such promise and the majority of the book was SO GOOD.


ALSO, THE COVER. The one at the top of the review is the paperback cover. UGH. It makes it look like a KISSING BOOK. This is not a kissing book. So, it'll disappoint those looking for a kissing book and it won't get picked up by a lot of people because of it. The original hardcover with the spooky desk? SO MUCH BETTER. I think it represents the book much better and will appeal to more readers. Ah well.

Book Provided by... the publisher at a lovely dinner with McMann, at ALA Midwinter a few years ago.

Links to Amazon are an affiliate link. You can help support Biblio File by purchasing any item (not just the one linked to!) through these links. Read my full disclosure statement.

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is an often misunderstood anxiety disorder. It’s treatment of choice, a form of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy known as Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP), is likewise difficult to grasp and properly use in therapy for both consumers and their therapists. This is in part because of the counter-intuitive nature of ERP, as well as the subtle twists and turns that OCD can take during the course of treatment.

Dr. Allen Weg, a licensed psychologist, has perfected the art of storytelling and metaphor use as a way of explaining and employing ERP to his clients in therapy. He utilizes this same technique to train other therapists in the use of ERP for OCD. In this brief, entertaining video, Dr. Weg walks you through 3 of those stories, and introduces you to his book entitled, OCD Treatment Through Storytelling: A strategy for successful therapy, a collection of more than 50 such stories that he has developed over the last 25 years in his work with OCD.

Click here to view the embedded video.

In her forthcoming memoir, Blue Nights, Joan Didion remembers the way her daughter’s (above, left) psychiatric diagnosis kept changing. Manic depression became OCD; OCD became something else, something she can’t remember now, but something that ultimately gave way to many other conditions before “the least programmatic of her doctors settled on one that actually seemed to apply”: borderline personality disorder.

Diagnosis never seems to lead to a cure, Didion observes, only an enforced debility. But as with a psychiatric evaluation of herself conducted in 1968 and excerpted in The White Album (and quoted in part below), Didion sees and reflects on the truths of the assessment even as she ponders it at arm’s length.

I’ll have much more to say about her new book when it’s out in November, but this paradoxical blend of skepticism, acceptance, and astringent detachment in matters pertaining to psychology and its insights and connection to the culture, has always characterized Didion’s writing. It’s one of the reasons I’m so drawn to her work.

In the title essay of The White Album, the one that begins with the famous line “We tell ourselves stories in order the live,” she recalls “a time when I began to doubt the premises of all the stories I had ever told myself, a common condition, but one I found troubling.” She continues:

I was supposed to have a script, and had mislaid it. I was supposed to hear cues, and no longer did. I was meant to know the plot but all I knew was what I saw: flash pictures in variable sequence, images with no “meaning” beyond their temporary arrangement, not a movie but a cutting-room experience. In what would probably be the mid-point of my life I wanted still to believe in narrative and in the narrative’s intelligibility, but to know that one could change the sense with every cut was to begin to perceive the experience as rather more electrical than ethical…

Another flash cut:

In June of this year patient experienced an attack of vertigo, nausea, and a feeling that she was going to pass out… The Rorschach record is interpreted as describing a personality in process of deterioration with abundant signs of failing defenses and increasing inability of the ego to mediate the world of reality and to cope with normal stress… Emotionally, patient has alienated herself almost entirely from the world of other human beings. Her fantasy life appears to have been virtually completely preempted by primitive, regressive libidinal preoccupations many of which are distorted and bizarre… In a technical sense basic affective controls appear to be intact but it is equally clear that they are insecurely and tenuously maintained for the present by a variety of defense mechanisms including intellectualization, obsessive-compulsive devices, projection, reaction-formation, and somatization, all of which now seem inadequate to their task of controlling or containing an underlying psyhotic process and are therefore in process of failure. The content of patient’s responses is highly unconventional and frequently bizarre, filled with sexual and anatomical preoccupations, and basic reality contact is obviously and seriously impaired at times. In quality and level of sophistical patients responses are characteristic of those of individuals of high average or superior intelligence but she is now functioning intellectually in impaired fashion at barely average level. Patient’s th