paper draft
Jason Tseng
How's It Going? A Well-Being Mind Project
niplus777@gmail.com
Outline
The study of manic depressive disorder has attained considerable prominence in recent years, but these studies often incline to emphasize on how to help people who already suffer from severe disorder syndromes and on how to make those who suffer less miserable. For people who might suffer from significant mood swings, but the symptoms are not sever enough to be considered as "qualified" manic depressive patient, these studies only address the syndromes as part of the spectrum of manic depressive disorder. From a patient’s view point, these studies are not very helpful because these papers and books were written in particular ways for psychology professions or consultants. It’s also hard to find exactly what is helpful from piles of data that doesn’t focus on the prodromes.
When it comes to seeking help, although there are many self-help books and guides available on the book stores, libraries and internet, not all of them have solid academic supports for what they suggest people to do. In other words, there are many disqualified books and information out there and thus makes finding a reliable one relatively difficult. Even if you found one, the self-help methodologies suggested by those experts are not necessarily easy to keep up with. Either because they are too complicated for average people to understand or too time and labor consuming for their readers to actually implement.
While a lot of efforts were put into helping sever disorder patients to live in a less miserable life, it made me curious that not too many resources mentioned their studies on how to help patients to establish overall better and happier life experiences. It’s understandable that dealing with the syndromes is the main priority when it comes to medication. However, from a patient’s point of view, being less miserable is not necessarily the same thing as being happier. I believe that knowing how to optimize my mind and live in a livable, fulfill life is just as important as knowing how to reduce and cope with the syndromes.
There is another major issue about people who might suffer from mood swings: very possibly they are not even aware of their own problems. It’s not unusual because psychological status is something that we live with in, it’s actually more difficult than it seems to pull one away from the own position and review himself objectively.
My project is about taking a look of these problems in a design and technology perspective. Aiming at helping people who might not know they need help and people who suffer from significant mood swings or manic depressive prodromes. I have no intention to become a shrink or doing project that is purely focus on studying this mental disorder. My intention is to look at what we have now on both (psychology and design) sides, and utilize the contemporary technology to integrate the resources and provide a different perspective of coping with the issues addressed above. Also I would like to help people to review and recognize their emotional status better.
My ultimate goal is not only to find out how to make people who have mood swings less miserable. I am also aiming at boosting people’s understanding of mood swings; finding out how to gain more control of mood swings and mind; and improving the performance of our minds and quality of life.
Keywords: psychology, manic depressive, emotion regulation, bi-polar, design, mood swings, mass communication, narrative strategy, interactive design, self help, self regulation, optimize experience, flow
target audience:
People who might or might not know they are suffering from significant mood swings or prodromes of manic depressive disorder. People have access to internet, television and other mass media. Mostly live in urban environments. Age 15-40.
Prototype
The first question I had: what is the correlation between
Introduction
Why manic depressive prodromes and mood swings?
The reason I picked this topic is simple: I myself often suffer from significant mood swings and it constantly gives me hard times. Sometimes I feel dead depressed and have very low level of self-confident; sometimes I feel extremely energetic and don't need to sleep and hard to concentrate on one subject. Either period could last from few days to few weeks. Both periods have been causing me a lot of energy to deal with. As a designer, I live on a pretty tight schedule and multiple deadlines. Although the emotional problem has constantly tackled me from what I suppose to do and have slowed my work flow down, I didn't think I need to seek help. I thought it's normal to have different emotional statuses in different times, and my condition is not too different from everybody else.
Last year I came to the U.S and became a graduate student at Parsons. The environment around me dramatically changed. The language is totally different, I had no friend around, I spent all I had to came here and don't have income anymore since it's illegal, and all the close friends and love ones are on the other side of the earth. Everything was alien and different. While struggling to adapt to all the differences and challenges, I also found myself being in the longest depression period I ever had. It was then I started to notice that my mood swings have great influence on my mind performances and can cause impacts in my life. After doing some research, I found that my experience is not an unusual case.
Mental disorder and mood disorder are international. They are also universal social issues. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, an estimated 26.2 percent of Americans ages 18 and older — about one in four adults — suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder in a given year. Approximately 20.9 million American adults, or about 9.5 percent of the U.S. population age 18 and older in a given year, have a mood disorder. In Taiwan, there are about 700,000; approximately 5% of Taiwan population suffering from bipolar disorder problem. The impacts it causes to the society are substantial. In “cognitive therapy for bipolar disorder"( 1.Dominic H.Lam Steven H.Jones.et al., Cognitive Therap for Bipolar Disorder 1998), the authors mentioned:
People tend to break down at what would be usually be the beginning or early part of their careers, with very few sustaining their chosen line of work. Difficulties with family relationships are common and rates of divorce are high. Social functioning even between episodes tends to be impaired. These factors create a picture of multiple difficulties present throughout the illness.
There are also many researches indicate the high suicide risk among people who have bipolar disorder. Below is a diagram quoted from from Manic Depressive Illness ( 2. Frederick K. Goodwin, Kay Redfield Jamison, S. Nassir Ghaemi. Manic Depressive Illness, Oxford University Press US, 2007), showing that the suicidal tendency among bipolar patients is extremely high.
Consider the significant impact bipolar disorder can cause to the society and the individuals, it is important for us to look at how to help people who suffer from mood swings being aware of their own mental status and monitoring their emotional changes, gaining more control and understanding over their minds better. I believe self monitoring and regulation are essential for preventing a significant number of people from mood swings to serious disorder. Although this is also the view point of almost every study and book, the methodologies provided by the current studies are written in syntax formats and very often are too complicated to follow. Imagine describing the methods of doing self help in 50 pages or even more, I believe that could lose a lot of readers--who might just need the help. Part of my project will be looking at this problem and taking design and technology in and hopefully provide some help.
What are commonly seen manic depressive disorder prodromes?
Before figuring out what kind of help my project can provide to people with mood swings and manic depression, I need to take a look at the nature and degree of the mood changes and the associated features of the problem. First of all, What mood swings can be defined as prodromes?
The word prodrome comes from the Greek word "prodromos" which indicates the forerunner of an event. In medicine prodromes are defined as the early signs and symptoms that herald a full episode.Molnar et al.(1998) defined prodromes as the interval from the time that the first symptoms were recognized to the time when the symptoms reached maximum severity.( 1.Dominic H.Lam Steven H.Jones.et al., Cognitive Therap for Bipolar Disorder 1998). However, it's true that every normal human being has different moods under different situations. So when do we know that our mood swings become a problem? How do we distinguish normal mood changes and probelmatic ones?. Jan Scoot(3. Overcoming Mood Swings, New York University Press,2001) defined problematic mood swings in the follow:
Mood swingthat are particularly problematic usually share some or all of a range of characteristics:
• unpredictable, frenquently flucuating but without obvious precipitans;
• uncontrollable, emotional responses that seem inapproiate reactions to events and are beyond control;
• extreme, with moods always experienced as intense highs or lows;
• excessive, with very frequent ups and downs occurring over many years
• extensive, marked changes of mood that last for a long time
• accompanied by associated changes, in your thoughts, the way you behave, and possibly in the biological systems that impact on day-to-day functioning
• disruptive to lives, causing significant problems for the individual experiencing them and/or for others
The major difference between mood disorders and other forms of mood swings is that mood disorders tend to show a consistent pattern symptoms that occur together whenever a significant mood disturbance occurs. The most common mood disorders are :
• dysthymia( chronic minor depression);
• major depressive disorder
• manic-depressive disorder
Here because of the focus of my project, I will review only the traits of manic depressive disorder. The term manic depression actually emcompasses a number of syndromes characterized by both downswings and upswings.
Individual with Bipolar I disorder experience episodes of major depression and mania. There are two types of mania: euphoric mania and dysphoric mania. Individual with euphoric mania is elated and full of optimism, while individual with dysphoric is high but also irritable, impatient and agitated. People with Bipolar II disorder experience major depressions, less intense highs and cyclothymia( an unstable mood state,with milder ups and downs than those of bipolarI and II disorder). Although some syndromes are less severe than others, mood swings and changes occur in an unpredictable way over many years still cause serious disturbances and difficuties in people's day-to-day lives.
Here is a table I quote from Scott's book, (3. Overcoming Mood Swings, New York University Press, 2001) describing some typical characteristics of depression and mania. To be classified as bipolar I disorder, the symptoms have to be present for at least seven days for mania and fourteen days for major depression. In bipolar spectrum disorder, many of these symptoms occur in a less severe form and for a shorter period of time. Although the definition of manic depressive is clear, for most people to detect prodromes is difficult because how to define the individual's pattern of prodromes very from each person. When it comes to identifying one's depression prodromes, some researches show that close to 30% of patients can't detect their depression episodes. It is also why that I intend to look into this problem on the process of doing my project.
What can design and technology do? What questions do I have?
After reviewing the psychological side briefly, I think there are some issues that I addressed above can be reconsidered in a design perspective:
Self monitoring and regulation: many studies pointed out that this is the essential part of gaining understating and control of the mood swings and manic depressive prodromes, but the current form of doing self regulation is keep the note and compare the pattern manually by the patient. I am wondering what if we can make this part of job easier by the utilizing the strength of technology?
Mass Communication: for those who don’t even know they might have mood swings, I am thinking maybe I can organize the information and
Methodology
early stage prototype: understanding the correlation between emotions and mind-performance
prototype: understanding people's opinions and attitudes toward this issue
precedents and related works
Bibliography
1. Dominic H.Lam Steven H.Jones.et al., Cognitive Therap for Bipolar Disorder 1998
2. Frederick K. Goodwin, Kay Redfield Jamison, S. Nassir Ghaemi. Manic Depressive Illness, Oxford University Press US, 2007
3. Overcoming Mood Swings, New York University Press,2001
4. E. Fuller Torrey, Michael B. Knable, Surviving Manic Depression- A Manual of Bipolar Disorder for Patients. 2005
5. James R. Phelps, Jim Phelps. Why Am I Still Depressed 2005
6. Ksy Redfield Jamison Touch With Fire-Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament. 1993
7. Howard J.Ehrlich The Social Psychology Of Prejudice. 1973
8. Janet B. Ruscher Prejudiced Communication-A Social Psychological Perspective.2001
9. Stephen P.Hinshaw The Mark Of Shame-Stigma of Mental Illness and an Agenda for Change Oxford 2007
10.
How's It Going? A Well-Being Mind Project
niplus777@gmail.com
Outline
The study of manic depressive disorder has attained considerable prominence in recent years, but these studies often incline to emphasize on how to help people who already suffer from severe disorder syndromes and on how to make those who suffer less miserable. For people who might suffer from significant mood swings, but the symptoms are not sever enough to be considered as "qualified" manic depressive patient, these studies only address the syndromes as part of the spectrum of manic depressive disorder. From a patient’s view point, these studies are not very helpful because these papers and books were written in particular ways for psychology professions or consultants. It’s also hard to find exactly what is helpful from piles of data that doesn’t focus on the prodromes.
When it comes to seeking help, although there are many self-help books and guides available on the book stores, libraries and internet, not all of them have solid academic supports for what they suggest people to do. In other words, there are many disqualified books and information out there and thus makes finding a reliable one relatively difficult. Even if you found one, the self-help methodologies suggested by those experts are not necessarily easy to keep up with. Either because they are too complicated for average people to understand or too time and labor consuming for their readers to actually implement.
While a lot of efforts were put into helping sever disorder patients to live in a less miserable life, it made me curious that not too many resources mentioned their studies on how to help patients to establish overall better and happier life experiences. It’s understandable that dealing with the syndromes is the main priority when it comes to medication. However, from a patient’s point of view, being less miserable is not necessarily the same thing as being happier. I believe that knowing how to optimize my mind and live in a livable, fulfill life is just as important as knowing how to reduce and cope with the syndromes.
There is another major issue about people who might suffer from mood swings: very possibly they are not even aware of their own problems. It’s not unusual because psychological status is something that we live with in, it’s actually more difficult than it seems to pull one away from the own position and review himself objectively.
My project is about taking a look of these problems in a design and technology perspective. Aiming at helping people who might not know they need help and people who suffer from significant mood swings or manic depressive prodromes. I have no intention to become a shrink or doing project that is purely focus on studying this mental disorder. My intention is to look at what we have now on both (psychology and design) sides, and utilize the contemporary technology to integrate the resources and provide a different perspective of coping with the issues addressed above. Also I would like to help people to review and recognize their emotional status better.
My ultimate goal is not only to find out how to make people who have mood swings less miserable. I am also aiming at boosting people’s understanding of mood swings; finding out how to gain more control of mood swings and mind; and improving the performance of our minds and quality of life.
Keywords: psychology, manic depressive, emotion regulation, bi-polar, design, mood swings, mass communication, narrative strategy, interactive design, self help, self regulation, optimize experience, flow
target audience:
People who might or might not know they are suffering from significant mood swings or prodromes of manic depressive disorder. People have access to internet, television and other mass media. Mostly live in urban environments. Age 15-40.
Prototype
The first question I had: what is the correlation between
Introduction
Why manic depressive prodromes and mood swings?
The reason I picked this topic is simple: I myself often suffer from significant mood swings and it constantly gives me hard times. Sometimes I feel dead depressed and have very low level of self-confident; sometimes I feel extremely energetic and don't need to sleep and hard to concentrate on one subject. Either period could last from few days to few weeks. Both periods have been causing me a lot of energy to deal with. As a designer, I live on a pretty tight schedule and multiple deadlines. Although the emotional problem has constantly tackled me from what I suppose to do and have slowed my work flow down, I didn't think I need to seek help. I thought it's normal to have different emotional statuses in different times, and my condition is not too different from everybody else.
Last year I came to the U.S and became a graduate student at Parsons. The environment around me dramatically changed. The language is totally different, I had no friend around, I spent all I had to came here and don't have income anymore since it's illegal, and all the close friends and love ones are on the other side of the earth. Everything was alien and different. While struggling to adapt to all the differences and challenges, I also found myself being in the longest depression period I ever had. It was then I started to notice that my mood swings have great influence on my mind performances and can cause impacts in my life. After doing some research, I found that my experience is not an unusual case.
Mental disorder and mood disorder are international. They are also universal social issues. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, an estimated 26.2 percent of Americans ages 18 and older — about one in four adults — suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder in a given year. Approximately 20.9 million American adults, or about 9.5 percent of the U.S. population age 18 and older in a given year, have a mood disorder. In Taiwan, there are about 700,000; approximately 5% of Taiwan population suffering from bipolar disorder problem. The impacts it causes to the society are substantial. In “cognitive therapy for bipolar disorder"( 1.Dominic H.Lam Steven H.Jones.et al., Cognitive Therap for Bipolar Disorder 1998), the authors mentioned:
People tend to break down at what would be usually be the beginning or early part of their careers, with very few sustaining their chosen line of work. Difficulties with family relationships are common and rates of divorce are high. Social functioning even between episodes tends to be impaired. These factors create a picture of multiple difficulties present throughout the illness.
There are also many researches indicate the high suicide risk among people who have bipolar disorder. Below is a diagram quoted from from Manic Depressive Illness ( 2. Frederick K. Goodwin, Kay Redfield Jamison, S. Nassir Ghaemi. Manic Depressive Illness, Oxford University Press US, 2007), showing that the suicidal tendency among bipolar patients is extremely high.
Consider the significant impact bipolar disorder can cause to the society and the individuals, it is important for us to look at how to help people who suffer from mood swings being aware of their own mental status and monitoring their emotional changes, gaining more control and understanding over their minds better. I believe self monitoring and regulation are essential for preventing a significant number of people from mood swings to serious disorder. Although this is also the view point of almost every study and book, the methodologies provided by the current studies are written in syntax formats and very often are too complicated to follow. Imagine describing the methods of doing self help in 50 pages or even more, I believe that could lose a lot of readers--who might just need the help. Part of my project will be looking at this problem and taking design and technology in and hopefully provide some help.
What are commonly seen manic depressive disorder prodromes?
Before figuring out what kind of help my project can provide to people with mood swings and manic depression, I need to take a look at the nature and degree of the mood changes and the associated features of the problem. First of all, What mood swings can be defined as prodromes?
The word prodrome comes from the Greek word "prodromos" which indicates the forerunner of an event. In medicine prodromes are defined as the early signs and symptoms that herald a full episode.Molnar et al.(1998) defined prodromes as the interval from the time that the first symptoms were recognized to the time when the symptoms reached maximum severity.( 1.Dominic H.Lam Steven H.Jones.et al., Cognitive Therap for Bipolar Disorder 1998). However, it's true that every normal human being has different moods under different situations. So when do we know that our mood swings become a problem? How do we distinguish normal mood changes and probelmatic ones?. Jan Scoot(3. Overcoming Mood Swings, New York University Press,2001) defined problematic mood swings in the follow:
Mood swingthat are particularly problematic usually share some or all of a range of characteristics:
• unpredictable, frenquently flucuating but without obvious precipitans;
• uncontrollable, emotional responses that seem inapproiate reactions to events and are beyond control;
• extreme, with moods always experienced as intense highs or lows;
• excessive, with very frequent ups and downs occurring over many years
• extensive, marked changes of mood that last for a long time
• accompanied by associated changes, in your thoughts, the way you behave, and possibly in the biological systems that impact on day-to-day functioning
• disruptive to lives, causing significant problems for the individual experiencing them and/or for others
The major difference between mood disorders and other forms of mood swings is that mood disorders tend to show a consistent pattern symptoms that occur together whenever a significant mood disturbance occurs. The most common mood disorders are :
• dysthymia( chronic minor depression);
• major depressive disorder
• manic-depressive disorder
Here because of the focus of my project, I will review only the traits of manic depressive disorder. The term manic depression actually emcompasses a number of syndromes characterized by both downswings and upswings.
Individual with Bipolar I disorder experience episodes of major depression and mania. There are two types of mania: euphoric mania and dysphoric mania. Individual with euphoric mania is elated and full of optimism, while individual with dysphoric is high but also irritable, impatient and agitated. People with Bipolar II disorder experience major depressions, less intense highs and cyclothymia( an unstable mood state,with milder ups and downs than those of bipolarI and II disorder). Although some syndromes are less severe than others, mood swings and changes occur in an unpredictable way over many years still cause serious disturbances and difficuties in people's day-to-day lives.
Here is a table I quote from Scott's book, (3. Overcoming Mood Swings, New York University Press, 2001) describing some typical characteristics of depression and mania. To be classified as bipolar I disorder, the symptoms have to be present for at least seven days for mania and fourteen days for major depression. In bipolar spectrum disorder, many of these symptoms occur in a less severe form and for a shorter period of time. Although the definition of manic depressive is clear, for most people to detect prodromes is difficult because how to define the individual's pattern of prodromes very from each person. When it comes to identifying one's depression prodromes, some researches show that close to 30% of patients can't detect their depression episodes. It is also why that I intend to look into this problem on the process of doing my project.
What can design and technology do? What questions do I have?
After reviewing the psychological side briefly, I think there are some issues that I addressed above can be reconsidered in a design perspective:
Self monitoring and regulation: many studies pointed out that this is the essential part of gaining understating and control of the mood swings and manic depressive prodromes, but the current form of doing self regulation is keep the note and compare the pattern manually by the patient. I am wondering what if we can make this part of job easier by the utilizing the strength of technology?
Mass Communication: for those who don’t even know they might have mood swings, I am thinking maybe I can organize the information and
Methodology
early stage prototype: understanding the correlation between emotions and mind-performance
prototype: understanding people's opinions and attitudes toward this issue
precedents and related works
Bibliography
1. Dominic H.Lam Steven H.Jones.et al., Cognitive Therap for Bipolar Disorder 1998
2. Frederick K. Goodwin, Kay Redfield Jamison, S. Nassir Ghaemi. Manic Depressive Illness, Oxford University Press US, 2007
3. Overcoming Mood Swings, New York University Press,2001
4. E. Fuller Torrey, Michael B. Knable, Surviving Manic Depression- A Manual of Bipolar Disorder for Patients. 2005
5. James R. Phelps, Jim Phelps. Why Am I Still Depressed 2005
6. Ksy Redfield Jamison Touch With Fire-Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament. 1993
7. Howard J.Ehrlich The Social Psychology Of Prejudice. 1973
8. Janet B. Ruscher Prejudiced Communication-A Social Psychological Perspective.2001
9. Stephen P.Hinshaw The Mark Of Shame-Stigma of Mental Illness and an Agenda for Change Oxford 2007
10.
Comments