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Showing posts from March, 2024
  Wellbeing Duck: Have They Rejected Your PIP Claim? You Should Fight Back!  Days ago everyone in the UK with disabling mental health problems were recently struck bellow the belt by the tax dodger, Rishi Sunak!  A denied PIP claim for a significant mental health condition can turn your world upside down and leave you feeling gutted or accused. People need their support, especially if you have taken the advice of professionals such as disability employment officers, counselors, community psychiatric nurses or maybe even your own psychiatrist, who might have recommended you to not work.  Well, now those politicians who give themselves nice payrises and claim huge expenses have just made things tougher and have done a U-turn on many individuals living with mood and anxiety based mental illnesses. The solution here is to be strong and patient. Draw in your support circles and fight for your rightful PIP award; it might be financially better for you in the end. This guide aims to equip you

Should Psychiatry Use the Term: Personality Disorder?

Should We Replace the Collective Term 'Personality Disorder' with Something More Sensitive?  Years ago, when I was a student mental health nurse, I wrote an article for an NHS magazine called Mental Health Practice. It was an opinion piece, reflecting on how careful we should be when labelling a condition as a personality disorder, because, the meaning carries connotations directed at ones sense of identity. It is counter-intuitive given how invalidation itself significantly impacts on people living with these diagnoses. The name of this condition acts like an ongoing trigger of the condition: We can, for example, argue, that borderline personality disorder, alone, is infact, confining a person to their disorder. When a trained psychiatrist labels someone, and, someone who (like everyone) will have their own personality, will feel an unkind impact. Immediately, upon diagnosis, their personality is sort of stamped 'out of order,' you could expect a person might feel fraz

The Great TikTok Tizwas: Banishing Byte-Sized Videos

The Great TikTok Tizwas: Banishing Byte-Sized Videos Remember that plastic charm bracelet fad? Every kid wanted one of those overly priced rainbow looms, which they used to weave plastic rubber bands into constructs, shaping almost anything. I saw teddy bears that looked inbred, as well as Winnie the Pooh, puppy dogs and Mickey Mouse, more often than not, they had the same intrafamilial qualities. My kids would've stabbed me in my sleep if I got rid of their creations! Well, the latest homogenous trend, TikTok, is facing banishment. Most of this blog, is based on my opinion, informed only by biased news channels, but I will say, it's so unfair for TikTok users; because they're forced to consider what could happen to their content, followers and income. I think the US Government clearly want the app to make line dancing videos and we Brits want it because we have bugger all else . It seems they put some news out to test the waters, see who'll kick-off first, this really

One Mammoth Task

Are We Really Bringing Back Woolly Mammoths? Why?  Buckle up, science nerds! I want to take you into a crazy world with resurrected woolly mammoths!! Forget how Richard Attenbourough genetically tweeked those velociraptors; this is a real life prehistoric furry elephant! Today, our actual boffins (that's British for scientists) are trying to un-extinct them. Mind you, do bare in mind, this isn't Hollywood with instant results.  Companies such as Colossal Biosciences have a fancy tool called CRISPR (think 'crisper,' not 'cheese and onion') that they use to edit the DNA of Asian elephants, the closest living relatives to the mammoths. Don't you think it's reminiscent of Jurasic park scientists combining frog and dinosaur DNA?  It sounds simple, right? Wrong. Imagine piecing together a recipe from an old vellum manuscript, buried for 2500 years in a giant ice cube. A mammoth task and a potential recipe for disaster! Scientists are always so meticulous in th

Falling in Love with a Chatbot?!

The Charm of the Chatbot: is it Sapiosexuality? Why People Fall for Intelligence, and Why it's Endearing We've all heard the stories: someone develops a deep emotional connection with something strange like a car, an inflatable human, but today, it can be a chatbot. At least with a chatbot they tap into a fundamental human need—connection. One man from Carolina married his AI, well sorta, it's not legal, so he concocted a makeshift gesture to express his commitment. To be fair these perceived relations can't centre around any seduction from the AI's own desire. It is hard to imagine being chatted up by Bing, after innocently prompting it for an explanation as to what Meatloaf could not precisely 'do' in that bloody song. The real seductive power is the user himself, endeared by the enduring service and patience of a machine. The chatbot reflects our interests back to us in a way to satisfy us. How do sapiosexuals fare here? Please drop me a comment if you kn