Word: mentally
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Combined with the culture's incessant encouragement to uncover, treat and neutralize whatever gremlins may lurk behind our brows, this built-in inner blindness can result in a sort of mental hypochondria. We give up on making fine distinctions and simply check ALL OF THE ABOVE. "It can be like medical student's disease," says Wilson, "where we think we have every new disorder." Evidence for this, he says, can be found in the fact that disorders tend to vary over different cultures and over time. In Freud's day, hysteria was all the rage--a problem experienced mostly...
...test the idea that trendy psychological ailments can be as infectious as the flu in a preschool, I logged onto several popular mental-health sites and, using various checklists, tried to determine what, if anything, was wrong with me. I started by screening myself for bipolar disorder, the subject of a TV commercial that had alarmed me with its suggestion that frantic housepainting might indicate an illness. "Some individuals notice that their mood and/or energy levels shift drastically from time to time," read the first line of one Web questionnaire. Did the statement apply to me? It did. I checked...
When I scored myself, I discovered that there's a "moderate likelihood" that I am, in fact, bipolar and a candidate for drugs to moderate mood swings. Further delving yielded more disturbing news. From a feature titled "Does This Sound Like You?" on the National Institute of Mental Health's site ("You get tired easily, yet have trouble sleeping" was one statement that I found particularly relevant), I learned that I may also suffer from generalized anxiety disorder. What don't I have? I'm probably free of social phobia. Sweating and shaking when others look my way doesn...
FETAL ALCOHOL SYNDROME Profound mental retardation caused by maternal alcohol abuse. Studies suggest that 1,200 to 8,800 FAS babies are born in the U.S. every year...
MIDDLE AGE 30-60 yrs. Learning, memory, planning and other complex mental processes become more difficult, and reacting to stimuli takes longer. Plaques and tangles may form in certain brain regions...