Right, so the order in which my exams occur mean that the psychopharmacology and addiction exam comes after my other one.Basically I'm switching the continuation of the bio revision to a later post and begin to revise for my other psych exam.
Turns out I'm revising a topic on 'Risk and Resilience', and 'adolescence' with 'adulthood to death'
I apologise for how boring this topic is :(
Risk and Resilience
By this I mean any possible risks to development of children and the protective factors that also influence their development.
e.g. A kid who's parent dies may be protected by their other parent continuing with their chores and life (appearing strong in times of struggling) may help the child to quickly get back on their feet after the big loss.
Resilience is the ability to tolerate the struggle through hard times and situation.
Resilience has a co-dependency with Risk, as one has to be at risk to overcoming the risk that time and future times (i.e. build up there resilience).
So the more risk you have will mean you'll have a better resilience.
some risk:
RISK <---------- YOU ----------> RESILIENCE
some more risk:
RISK <------------------ YOU ------------------> RESILIENCE
Failure to build resilience can lead to a poor development.
Risk and young people is a popular topic for our exams.
There are 4 important issues to consider: risk factors, risky behaviour, those at risk, and things or people that pose a risk. Some examples:
Risk factors:
Poverty, war, illness, low school attainment, aggressive neighbourhood, dysfunctional family...
Risky behaviour:
anti-social behaviour, sex, substance abuse, delinquency....
Those at risk:
abused, socially excluded, in police custody, in care (institutional rearing)....
Things and/or people who pose a risk:
anti-social behaviour....
It's clear that some of these ideas cross over from issue to issue.
Risk factors often happen several at a time (e.g. war and illness). The greater number of risks a person is exposed to the greater the likelihood is that it will end poorly.
2+ factors makes it about 4x more likely to have mental health problems.
4+ factors makes it about 10x more likely to have mental health problems.
Risk factors can be from Independent and/or Non-independent factors.
Independent factors are non controllable, while Non-independent factors can be controlled.
These split into further groups can be seen in:
Individual factors:
Poor school attainment
Family factors:
Parental health, stern conflicts
Community factors:
substance misuse, economic disadvantages
The interest of risk and young people is not only because of their cognitive development, but because their risks are intertwined with all four issues and of which many factors overlap.
Are risk behaviours normal features of adolescence?
kids, teenagers etc 'play' with risk factors and risk behaviour, but bad things don't always happen.
BUT some kids with more risks factors give signs of higher resilience VS. (above) more risks = more likely to end in negative outcome! ooh interesting!
THIS IS BECAUSE THERE ARE PROTECTIVE FACTORS TOO! (i.e. resilience factors).
Again split into same groups as earlier:
Individual attributes:
Good intellectual skills, beliefs of drugs
Family attributes:
high family warmth (anyone got a clue how else to put that?)
Community attributes:
Good school, good neighbourhood, good economic stability, has friends
Still take note of which of the above are independent or non-independent (controllable?)
Resilience can be an outcome or a process.
Resilience as an outcome has built up from people experiencing a risk, but have coped through protective factors (self-esteem, good mental health, social competence. This person is probably showing signs of stress, but also good management of everyday tasks.
Resilience as a process us due to adapting to a risk. e.g. a kid has no friends at school, possibly bullied. He/she adapts by taking part in one person activities, and ignores or avoids the bullies. Although in my opinion lame, this is how the kid adapts to the risk to build their resilience.
Quite important to emphasise that each child can react differently (individual differences etc). Most children (btw i probably mean 0-18ish yrs old. when you think people have fully cognitively developed) are able to develop good resilience supposing there aren't loads of risk factors, and they also have protective factors.
As with my crazy arrow diagrams (above) the more threatening a risk the greater the protective factor needs to be.
My notes for some reason say "where risk factors are continuous and severe only majority manage to cope" even though it doesn't really make sense. You would presume that not everyone can cope with constant risks, i.e. the minority. weird.
The most severe risks to children are the chronic or transitional risks, and as such they need greater resilience to those more acute risks. e.g. breaking your spine (chronic) needs a damn brilliant resilience.
Resilience can only develop after having experienced or having been exposed to risk/stress.
Found this video that rounds up everything so far. It still helps to have skimmed the above text.
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THAT SHOULD BE ALL THE COMMON SENSE STUFF OUT THE WAY!
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Next post:
- What the different research looks at
- Some bits of research (I'll read/summarise and leave some links if i can find them online legitimately)
Something fun for your trouble
For thos who already know of cracked.com its a fun website for tracking down outrageous stories, ideas and theories. An article Murwin suggetsed after searching 'awesome' in their database. [Click here please]
And here's some funny cat pics I found from roflcat.com and just a google search:
If you did read, awesome if not, also awesome.
Rob
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