Question

Pick a current or past news event and offer different explanations for why it happened. Include the different theoretical perspectives presented in chapter one in your answer.

Psychoanalytic Theory, Behaviorism,Humanism, Cultural Psychology and Evolutionary Psychology ( This was what I wrote not understanding the question at that time).

Topic: Increasing Suicide Rate

Just In one week, two great celebrities took their own lives without any explainable reasons that we may know about, first the designer Kate Spade and then the chef and television host on CNN Anthony Bourdain, these are people in our society who we may not think can commit such an act. What is going on? This is an escalating crisis that needs an attention. According to the New York Times; the study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed that some parts of the country have been hit especially hard, state like Montana has the highest rate in the nation, especially among veterans by 20 percent. They want us to believe that one of the main reason for suicide is because of non-gun control, but this is not about gun control, it is about people getting help when they need it. Our governments; federal, states, counties, and community leaders need to do more by getting involve in preventing this issue or else it will become an epidemic. According to Feud, People are fully aware of the forces affecting the behavior; (Weiten p. 7) the unconscious. It is because of the unconscious behavior of mankind, that’s why we have these problems and some people know that they need help mentally, but they can’t get it because of no resources.

Reference: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/09/us/suicide-rates-increasing-bourdain.html

Answer 1

It has been found that nearly 40% of the people visit a doctor within one week of killing themselves. Those that are on the edge do try their bit to seek for help in their own ways, but more depends on the society at large as well, which fails to pick these important cues. More so, we react like this is unbelievable and that you never thought this could happen. Even if this may be partially true, we as a society are not being sensitized enough for the less obvious and more subtle cues. Moreover, the reason for someone’s distress, especially in cases of full blown depression, can never be trivialised. Moreover, scientifically there have been two causes identified for depression in its clinical manifestation. The first is the endogenous type, where depression arises without any evident cause. The second is the exogenous type wherein an obvious and identifiable cause has been responsible to trigger depression. Where earlier, medicines alone were seen as impacting individuals of this nature, with the advent of functional MRI scans (fMRI), we now have proof the opposite is equally true, that changes in thinking cause significant, measurable changes in brain chemistry and functioning. In one study, patients suffering from spider phobia underwent fMRI scanning before and after receiving cognitive behavioral therapy aimed at eliminating their fear of spiders. Scans were then compared to normal subjects without spider phobia. Results showed that brain function in patients with spider phobia before receiving cognitive behavioral therapy were abnormal compared to subjects without spider phobia but then changed to match normal brain patterns after cognitive behavioral therapy. Moreover, from a psychoanalytic view point, the increase in the amount of loneliness today, may have been prevalent due to the lack of interaction between individuals, causing psychological distress. It may also be learned behavior. Most people around are distressed, therefore the ones who are less prone to it also develop the predisposition since observational learning tends to play such an important role in the lives of people.