London McCabe’s mother’s Google searches

London McCabe was a six year old autistic boy when he was killed by his mother when she threw him from a bridge on November 3rd. The mother claimed to have heard voices, setting the stage for an insanity plea. A family member states that they had been trying to get Mrs. McCabe committed for a year but it has also come out that she had been performing internet searches showing she was thinking of a murder before the act.

Mother May Have Planned Son’s Murder

“We do have some information that Ms. McCabe has searched the Internet to actually evaluate or maybe educate herself on the criminal process,” said Michelle Branam, Lincoln County District Attorney. “‘How to restore competency’ was a website that she had searched. She has searched ‘state hospital,’ ‘guilty but insane,’ ‘involuntary commitment;’ ‘not guilty by reason of insanity.’

Also, in Prosecutors: Woman planned to throw son off Yaquina Bay Bridge we hear a family member state that they had been trying to get Mrs. McCabe committed.

London’s uncle, Andy McCabe, told KATU that he didn’t think losing London could hurt any more than it does already, but knowing London’s mother may have been planning his death makes it hurt even more. He said his family had been trying to get her committed to the state hospital all year.

If the latter part is true then, yes, there’s a failure in the system. Clearly there’s a failure when a murder occurs. And we do need to be careful to respect and not stigmatize those with actual mental illness. But these internet searches by Mrs. McCabe do point to a conscious and planned act.

Read More →

A Strange Depression Symptom That Most People Don’t Know

Clinically depressed people can find it hard to tell the difference between their own negative emotions, like anger, guilt and frustration.

This could be part of the reason that depression is so hard to deal with.

It may be helpful for people experiencing depression to be more specific about which negative emotion they are feeling, the research also suggests.

The study’s first author, Dr. Emre Demiralp, explains:

“It is difficult to improve your life without knowing whether you are sad or angry about some aspect of it.

For example, imagine not having a gauge independently indicating the gasoline level of your car.

It would be challenging to know when to stop for gas.

We wanted to investigate whether people with clinical depression had emotional gauges that were informative and whether they experienced emotions with the same level of specificity and differentiation as healthy people.”

Participants in the study — half of whom were experiencing clinical depression — were asked to report their emotions at random intervals over a period of a week.

Each time they reported how they felt across 11 different emotions, 7 negative and 4 positive:

• sad,
• anxious,
• angry,
• frustrated,
• ashamed,
• disgusted,
• guilty,
• happy,
• excited,
• alert,
• and active.

The results, published in the journal Psychological Science, showed that people who were depressed found it difficult to distinguish between negative emotions.

In contrast, non-depressed people were clearer which negative emotions they were experiencing.

For the positive emotions, however, both the depressed and non-depressed participants could distinguish them equally well.

Dr. Demiralp said:

“Our results suggest that being specific about your negative emotions might be good for you.

It might be best to avoid thinking that you are feeling generally bad or unpleasant.

Be specific.

Is it anger, shame, guilt or some other emotion?

This can help you circumvent it and improve your life.

It is one of our overarching goals to investigate approaches for facilitating this kind of emotional intelligence at a large scale in the population.”

Image credit: kygp

Read More →

This Social Media Behaviour Points To Personality Issues

Men who post loads of selfies on social media sites like Facebook are more likely to have narcissistic and psychopathic personality traits, according to a new study.

Those who edit the selfies beforehand scored higher than average on measures of narcissism, the study also found.

Narcissists typically think of themselves as smarter and more attractive than others, while those with psychopathic tendencies tend to be more impulsive and display a lack of concern for the feelings of others.

Dr. Jesse Fox, the study’s lead author said:

“It’s not surprising that men who post a lot of selfies and spend more time editing them are more narcissistic, but this is the first time it has actually been confirmed in a study.

The more interesting finding is that they also score higher on this other anti-social personality trait, psychopathy, and are more prone to self-objectification.”

The research, published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences, doesn’t mean that men who post selfies are necessarily narcissistic psychopaths, but that these traits are higher than average in them 

Read More →

The Mental Quality Which Helps Protect Against Schizophrenia

High IQ could protect against schizophrenia amongst those at genetic risk from developing the condition, a new study finds.

The findings are in stark contrast to the conventional wisdom that those with high intelligence are at increased risk of developing schizophrenia.

The largest study of its kind to date found that intelligence actually had a protective effect.

The study’s lead author, Dr. Kenneth S. Kendler, said:

“If you’re really smart, your genes for schizophrenia don’t have much of a chance of acting.”

Published in the American Journal of Psychiatry, the study was conducted by researchers at Lund University in Sweden and Virginia Commonwealth University

It included data from 1.2 million Swedish males born between 1951 and 1975 whose IQ and any hospitalisations for schizophrenia were tracked over 24 years.

Dr. Kendler explained the results:

“What really predicted risk for schizophrenia is how much you deviate from the predicted IQ that we get from your relatives.

If you’re quite a bit lower, that carries a high risk for schizophrenia.

Not achieving the IQ that you should have based on your genetic constitution and family background seems to most strongly predispose for schizophrenia.”

It may be that factors which reduce intelligence, such as childhood trauma, can also contribute to the risk of schizophrenia.

There was no evidence that, for the most intelligence people, there was a higher risk of schizophrenia:

“The question is, might we see some upward bump at that high level of intelligence where really brilliant people have increased risk for the disease and we show no such trend.”

Read More →