‘Mental Illness Psychosis’ similar to ‘Medical Student Syndrome’
‘People often deal with new information by relating it to themselves. This habit surrounds us in daily life. If you describe an interesting incident to someone, his probable reply is to relate a similar incident about himself. If you describe an interesting psychological phenomenon to students, their frequent reaction is to check it out against their experiences. A familiar illustration of self-reference is the “medical student’s syndrome” of students in abnormal psychology who believe that most psychopathic descriptions fit themselves. Since memory retrieval follows resemblance of the new information to stored information, the self reference process has a built-in “confirmation bias.” When the professor describes a patient with an obsessional fantasy, the student remembers an occasion when he too experienced a compelling fantasy, and he concludes he too is “abnormal,” completely ignoring in his decision the countless days of his life when he was not obsessed with that fantasy.’ [1]
What the paragraph eluded to was the inset of psychosis to the realm of self by the notion of new description and/or self acceptance to the relation of the student’s studies and illness topic. Allowing oneself[student] to induce a mindset of the mental illness based on personal criteria through an act of relational association.
This association bares the existence of what the student reflects himself/herself/themselves ‘to be’ at the time of study. Then the active mental state creates an illusion of said mental psychosis through similarities of the student and the description of the diagnosis. Once triggered the brain accepts the disillusionment as reality thus formulating the case for mental illness. Since mental illness is a mental defect there are plenty of underlying responsibilities for studying psychiatry. Here are a few things that may help prevent such an incident:
Create a detachment from your studies.
Look at the broad aspect of each mental illness study.
Have you been diagnosed with the disorder?
Creating a detachment will assist in studying mental illness. This is only logical to prevent you from allocating a space in your memory to save or reconnect bad memories. You may also want to understand new input may affect the study through an observational eye. There have been case studies where people remember items that never existed through recollection of others.
Looking at the big picture can remind you of the goal of your studies. Understanding oneself is important but realization doesn’t come from books but through experience. Everyone in the world may be a character in your book or you may be a part of something grand. If you get into mental illness studies odds are it is to help out people with mental issues. One who understands mental illness doesn’t necessarily have to have or get mental illness to relate to their patients.
Okay… You are twenty, in college and studying to help the world understand mental illness. At this point you have not been diagnosed with a mental disorder and everything has checked out in previous examinations. Should you get a new psyche evaluation? Well that is up to you but odds are you don’t have the proposed mental illness. Statistically…? We still need someone to run the numbers but it is our worrying nature that makes up a case for mental illness. It is “pretend” and “not real” at the same time so relax and do a keg stand. Then get ready for your studies in the affect of alcohol on the brain.
Sources
Remembering Information Related to One’s Self,Gordon H. Bower and Stephen G. Gilligan,Stanford University, http://www.chss.montclair.edu/psychology/adams/bower-and-gilligan-1979.htm [1]
Influenced by this answer:
Mrs. Thomas
Thomas Flynn – Author of Existentialism
Victor Frankl
Ronald D. Lang
Friedrich Nietzsche
