formal journalsim- Bad moods and psychological approaches.

                        Being in a bad mood is possibly one of the worst things on this earth. Everything and everyone appears to be against you, and you want to do is curl up in a ball and die. I’m sure everyone, despite how perfect their lives look, has unavoidably been in this situation at some point, and the strange thing is, that the majority of the time the reason why you’re feeling so low isn’t actually even clear.

                What I would like to do is explore the causes and effectors of ‘feeling blue’ using psychological methods. I will try to refrain from the psychological jargon, by keeping at simple as I possibly can. The theories that I will describe are also backed up by real life studies, so I promise you, that i am not just making up facts. However I will add my input into this piece.

                Basically there are three different theories into ‘the way people think’ the first being Biological, this theory predicts that bad moods, negative thinking and depression are some form of bodily malfunction. This malfunction could either be in the nervous system, this resulting in a chemical imbalance or the wrong type/amount of neurones being released in to the blood steam (serotonin dopamine). Or could be due to neuroanatomical factors (neuroanatomy being the formation and structure of the brain) For instance, in the Texas bell tower shooting, Charles Whitman was a perfectly normal man prior to his catastrophic carnage. However, one day he woke up, killed his family, took a sniper rifle, sat at the top of a bell tower, and maliciously killed 14 and wounded 31 people. During the rampage he was shot dead, interestingly the biopsy of his body, revealed a large tumour on his brain. As Charles’s mass homicide was completely spontaneous and uncharacterised, it was believed that the tumour interrupted his ‘normal’ thinking and changed his behaviours, causing the massacre of events.

               
 The second theory suggests that thinking is purely a psychodynamic process, meaning that moods and ways of thinking are either Cognitive or Behavioural. There are many approaches to each of these, but to keep it short, Cognitive approaches predict that the brain functions in a machine like manor, each individual brain functioning uniquely, some having a more positive outlook and others more negative. This is where the terms ‘optimistic’ and ‘pessimistic’ apply. Many people are constantly looking at the bad things in their lives, and focus solely on the negative, hence the fact they become depressed. Other people stay happy no matter what, instead of over-analysing the bad bits, they think of the positive to counteract the negative tone. ‘The glass is half full’ rather than ‘The glass is half empty’ this way of thinking is much healthier, and results in a happier person.

Unfortunately, there are more pessimistic people than optimistic, and this negative thinking, can in a way be almost contagious, have you ever noticed how one person can walk in to the room in a bad mood, making every other person slowly sink in to the mood with them? This is said to be because of Behavioural psychology. Behavioural psychology claims that everything a human being says and does is learnt from another human, and that past experience determines actions carried out by and individual. Have you noticed how people’s personalities can vary depending on which kind of people they have been spending time with? This is basically because new morals and actions are learnt from the social group they are in. The Social Learning theory goes into detail of this behaviour; however it would be too long winded for me to describe in this short blog.

So to treat a biological malfunction, we use medicines such as anti-depressants. In this case it isn’t really a self-inflicted, and the psychological disorder could be down to something like genetics. However a psychodynamic or behavioural disorder could easily be self-treated. So the next time you are feeling down, theoretically with enough will power, you could think yourself out of the bad mood. In extreme cases assistance of a therapist may be required, but I believe if everyone just actually took the time to think about things from a different perspective, it would nip it at the bud, by doing so i predict that much fewer cases of chronic depression would develop.



White boys with axes.

White boys with axes.                            Short opinion test article.

               

So not last night but the night before, my friend’s dad (the manager of the Co-op Bolton) was innocently sweeping outside of the shop, when he was attacked by a group of 18-20 year old males. They ordered him to hand over his keys; he hesitated and was struck over the head by an axe.

A fucking axe! What kind of human being has the nerve to hit a complete stranger, potentially killing them, with an axe? The world is such a barbaric place, and it sickens me to think that people so young already have such a cold, violent mind set. The worst thing is that the bastards didn’t get caught. They were masked, hence the fact why “the C.C.T.V footage was insufficient.” So these people are still out living their lives consequence free.

In my opinion these dole dossing plebs should be hunted down. For all they know the man they axed could be dead, and I highly doubt it bothers them. They evidently didn’t stop to think “this man could be somebodies husband, a father, maybe a grandfather” so for them to have any form of remorse would be impossible.

The thing that I don’t understand is that these days minute things such as parking in non-designated areas are immediately picked up on, there are traffic wardens patrolling the streets inspecting almost every vehicle. But yet there are homo-sidle yobs repeatedly offending with not a care in the world, located all over the country. It’s as if the police are just used to this kind of thing happening, and the generally have no determination to go out there and arrest these extremely hazardous beings.

It is common knowledge that when a group of people get away with something like that without any form of punishment, they are defiantly going to re-offend. But not just attack one man, maybe two or three? Maybe there are children present, the possibilities are endless, but what I just want to get across is the fact that an innocent man’s life was nearly unexpectedly taken from him, and nothing what so ever has been done about it.



Transformation of the Generation.

Test blog document on Freelance Journalism

It was my daily bus journey home a couple of days ago, when I went into deep thought about the young generation of human beings. What the heck happened?

So a group of 12-13 year old girls ran up the isle of the bus, whilst dropping money and announcing how much of a ‘nob head’ the bus driver was. It was a freezing cold day by the way; however this did not deter the girls from wearing tiny denim hot pants revealing their buttocks. Their petite pre-teen bodies were coated in a cheap, unbelievably streaky layer of tan, and faces plastered in clementine coloured make-up. With their already provocative appearance I was alarmed.

                 A couple of minutes later I couldn’t help but eaves drop in on the disgusting conversations they were having. In only a snippet of the conversation I caught, there was mention of sex, drugs, alcohol and how one of them ‘was in love’ with her boyfriend. They spoke about how much they were excited to start secondary school the next year- indicating their age, however spoke of the most perverse things. I was generally gob smacked.

Here are just some of the things I heard;

 ‘before we got in the cinema we had loads of them packets of shots that Jack brought out, I were legless’

‘Shannon got fingered off him as well that night’

                I’m sure I speak for any decent parent of an adolescent when I say; this is completely and utterly WRONG. At no point should a 12 year old girl be ‘legless’ from doing shots on a Saturday night. At no point should she be dressed like a hooker, and at no point should she be having sexual intercourse in dangerous environments being highly under the influence of alcohol.

In fact I’m pretty sure that when I was 12 I didn’t even know that half of the acts mentioned in that vulgar conversation existed, never mind participated in them!

But who is to blame? Majority say the parents, and in many ways they are right. But there are of course many other factors which aren’t put in to account.

 What ever happened to being ‘lady like?’ I don’t know about you, but I was always taught to be polite when I was a child, and it was drilled Into my head that I didn’t need make-up as I didn’t need it. Which is correct. No 12 year old should be covering their young, still developing skin in thick, oily, yucky make-up. It’s just silly, and how on earth their mothers let them walk out of the door looking like they did is beyond me.

……. To be continued.