29 May 2011 Last updated at 03:38Reverse Sad: Why springtime can be bad for depression sufferers
By Stephanie Hegarty BBC World ServiceNot everyone is cheered by spring
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While the arrival of spring heralds a new lease of life and energy for most people, for those suffering from depression the effect can be drastically different.
Harvard psychiatrist John Sharp has done extensive research into the effects that the changing seasons have on our mental health and emotional well-being.
In his book, The Emotional Calendar, Sharp outlines how physical, psychological and socio-cultural factors influence the way we feel.
"Most people do feel an increase in exuberance, energy, optimism, excitement, maybe a restlessness and sleeplessness that can come from what the Americans call spring fever," he told the BBC World Service's Health Check programme.
The three realms"We are exquisitely sensitive to the effect of physical influences on our mood and behaviour."
Dr Sharp breaks the effect of seasons into three big "realms".
The first is the physical realm - factors like light and temperature. Extra hours of sunlight and rising temperatures can increase the levels of serotonin and dopamine in the body - the chemicals responsible for feelings of well-being.
Continue reading the main storyDepression
- One in five people becomes depressed at some point
- The average age for first onset of major depression is 25-29
- Mixed anxiety and depression is the most common mental disorder in Britain
The second realm features cultural events, such as festivals and summer holidays, that give people a positive outlook.
The third is event anniversaries. Whether it is something positive, such as a great achievement, or a negative event, like death and loss, seasonal cues trigger our senses and can cause us to relive these moments year after year.
For most people the first two factors conspire to make us feel more positive in springtime. But as Dr Sharp points out, for those who suffer from depression, spring can have the opposite effect.
"At the same time as most of us are rolling up our sleeves and spending more time outdoors, others struggle with trying to get into that kind of mode, and counter-intuitively, they feel worse."
It is not surprising, then, that in the UK suicide rates are at their highest in spring, peaking in April and May.
"If you're not being carried along with the natural energy of the season it can be really hard," says Dr Sharp.
Negative moodNicolas Werner, a mental health worker from Hove in East Sussex, agrees.
He was diagnosed with depression in 2001 and subsequently with bipolar disorder towards the end of last year.
Charities say there is a dearth of information on depression
"Many people look at spring as new beginnings, something positive. This is a sharp contrast with how people with depression feel and exacerbates the condition.
"Daffodils are out, the sun is shining and people are still feeling terrible."
It is something he feels personally.
"In March when I know we're putting the clocks forward I'm not looking forward to that, so that gives me a negative sort of mindset," he says.
"It is like the winter was an eiderdown or a duvet to hide underneath, but in the long summer hours or daylight hours I felt more exposed."
As the low mood sets in he can feel irritable, has trouble concentrating and has racing, suicidal thoughts. He also loses interest in the things he usually enjoys.
"I'm a book-worm. When I'm feeling ill I lose interest in reading," he says.
This year he was absent from work with illness for almost a month between March and April.
What Werner suffers from is known as reverse Sad (Seasonal Affective Disorder).
Emer O'Neill, of charity Depression Alliance, acknowledges the seriousness of the condition.
She says: "Reverse Sad is rare but this has a lot to do with the fact that so little is written about it. It is not talked about so there are potentially many people out there who have the condition and have not been diagnosed.
Seasonal triggers"There is a dearth of information on depression and this needs to be addressed."
Continue reading the main storyHealth Check
- Health Check is broadcast weekly by the BBC World Service
Books like Dr Sharp's, then, can be an important tool in helping sufferers to see their altering moods in a new light.
And for Werner a similar approach has helped him to deal with his cyclical depression.
Since he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder last year Werner has been observing his own behaviour patterns. He has linked his low mood to an attempt he made to take his own life.
His own observations correlate directly with Sharp's theory that it is not just the physical factors of seasonality but psychological and social factors, too, that affect the way we feel.
This new understanding can help sufferers like Werner. By being aware of certain seasonal triggers he can learn to manage his depression.
"I think I've gotten to the root of it," he says. "So I hope this summer will be different."
But thousands of people who suffer from depression remain undiagonsed in the UK.
"We all have to be careful that the people around us who seem unduly glum are getting support and talking to their doctor or their therapist and not feeling isolated and alone," Sharp affirms.
Monday, 30 May 2011
BBC News - Reverse Sad: Why springtime can be bad for depression sufferers
Cannabis Con Becomes Cannabis Lies | CLEAR
While PM David ‘I demand a private life’ Cameron and his deputy Nick ‘I-dont-care-as-long-as-I keep-my-job’ Clegg ramp up their action against otherwise law abiding UK citizens whose only crime is to grow their own cannabis, new evidence from the United States suggests the reason prohibition is so harshly enforced in the UK is to make way for the pharmaceutical industry. And on the strength of the evidence available to us its hard to deny the probability that this could indeed be true.
It’s an accusation once made of the oil companies who stood to lose so much money if industrial hemp was allowed to be grown and sold on the open market.
It wasn’t, and now the Pacific ocean is filling up with the scrap plastics produced as a by-product of petroleum exploration. And similarly, as a result of heavy interest in the pharmaceutical industry, the cannabis situation in the United Kingdom is now more mixed up and ambiguous than ever before.
Cannabis Conundrum
On the one hand we have a product which is far, far safer than either tobacco or alcohol, yet the UK government insists on sending mini-vans full of tactical police to UK citizens’ homes in the hope of finding just enough cannabis to make a joint, which then justifies the damage caused by gaining entry.The unfortunate citizen has not a foot to stand on. If cannabis exists in the premises, the police have carte blanche to gain entry causing as much damage as is necessary to make the arrest.
Leaving the home-dweller with a repair ‘tax’ which can run to thousands of pounds.
Click here for Scott Paplowski’s story
In the meantime GW Pharmaceuticals runs a cannabis grow operation in the south of England covering hectares of ground with glass, growing over 30,000 cannabis plants per crop.
Cannabis which the Conservative government tells us has no medical worth. So why invest so heavily to grow it if it’s worthless?
The truth is of course it’s far from worthless. It’s worth quite literally billions of dollars a year, which is why the government simply cannot have people growing their own willy-nilly as the revenue hit is too much to even begin to calculate.
Click here for Kathy Reynolds’ story
Medicinal Cannabis in America
In America Obama’s administration has gone one step further. Or rather, 55 steps further as its been announced 55 companies in the US now hold government issued permits to grow medicinal cannabis.
The Drug Enforcement Administration told Legalization Nation in an e-mail last week that 55 unnamed companies now hold licenses to grow cannabis in the United States.
A fact that contradicts the widespread belief that there is only one legal pot farm in America, operated under the DEA for research purposes.
Marinol = $$$$
It appears as if the upswing in federally approved pot farming is about feeding the need of pharmaceutical companies who want to produce a generic version of THC pill Marinol and at least one other cannabis-based pill for a wide variety of new uses.
In other words, if big corporations grow dope with the government and put it in a pill, it’s medicine.
But if you grow it at home or at a city-permitted pot farm and then put it in a vaporizer, it’s a felony.
Read Julie Falco’s story here.
It’s a weird piece of news that comes at a strange and contradictory time for the drug war.
As US attornies send threatening letters to states and cities, including Oakland, warning them against “commercial cultivation” of marijuana, the DEA is quietly handing out licenses for commercial cultivation.
Clearly, governments on both sides of the pond are having a laugh and they’re doing so at your and at my expense.
Civil disobedience in an ugly brute at the best of times but as countless activists have found out it brings news column inches to a cause struggling for publicity amidst the hypocrisy of politics and big business .
For instance, when a single citizen gets his or her home raided by the police, who go on to find perhaps a few grams of cannabis, that citizen can feel very alone without the regularly-preached-to-choir to back them up.
But if 10, or 100 citizens report themselves to the police for growing cannabis in every major town or city, the judicial system would clog up in an instant.
I’m ready to give up my liberty in a bid to expose the hypocrisy of the cannabis situation in the UK and I know of plenty others who are prepared too.
Its time for some action, as other means simply don’t work or are ignored, by the people who YOU voted for.
How does THAT work in a country supposedly run along the lines of a democracy?
Sunday, 29 May 2011
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Entrepreneur Narayan of Dexetra - On their latest product offering, Friday, which can make a smart phone actually “smart”! | YourStory.in
Entrepreneur Narayan of Dexetra - On their latest product offering, Friday, which can make a smart phone actually “smart”!
( 2 Votes )Read : 758 times
Tell us about Dexetra
Dexetra is a product startup that primarily works on the mobility domain. By combining the power of phones and the cloud, we are building an interesting product that gives a personal answering engine to the users. Called Friday, it can talk about you, your patterns and your life.
What is your market differentiator?
The major pillars of today’s smartphone users are communication, multimedia, gaming and social networking. We are bringing in a new pillar called “Self-discovery”, which is about helping you find answers about yourself, and managing your life better.
How did the idea for your startup come about? Have you fund raise to startup?
Friday is currently in Alpha phase, and is being tested by a crowd of invited users across the globe. To reach this stage it took us over a year. Dexetra with the team 7 has been boot strapped and self-funded for this period. We hope to launch Friday in the market by July and would be expecting revenues few months from there on.
Tell us about your background
By qualification I am a Computer Science Engineer, and had worked with Bosch for around 3 years before starting Dexetra SS Ltd. But even otherwise I have been a tech enthusiast, and have been creating applications since school days. Thanks to my dad, who was also a part of the industry, employed at CDAC, I had a chance to play with computers and gadgets as a young boy!
Let us know about the tie-ups that you have.
Since we launched Friday Alpha, we have got a lot of media attention and reviews from various portals like GigaOM, thenextweb, AndroidPolice, Android Guys and many others. We have also been receiving a lot of feedbacks and a wave of positive responses from the users of Friday app, both in the Android Market and across the social media. We look forward to keep up the momentum going to the commercial launch.
Where do you see your start up five years from now?
We are trying to build a platform here with Friday. A platform that could aggregate and map information from various streams, and this information could be of help in decision-making and customizing user experience across different applications.
What is your revenue model?
We are looking at a freemium model. Where in we are not forcing the users to pay for the service, at the same time we don’t cripple the product to the free users. We give a complete product for the users, which could make them, talk about Friday and evangelize the product.
As an entrepreneur, what are your joys? What are the challenges?
Entrepreneurship is an acquired taste, and the joy is the journey itself. From a curated environment of an MNC to a freedom of a self-owned enterprise, the switch was very hard. There are a lot of dimensions to take care of, at the same time we have to stick to some policies and stick to them as there is no one imposing it on you. We generously borrowed practices and culture from our previous jobs and took the best out of it. Managing finances is another major challenge, and much of the credit goes to my CFO, Binil Antony. Another major challenge was keeping distractions at bay, with new technologies and products sweeping the mobility domain, we had to work hard to keep focused on Friday and not to stray away from it.
How big is your team? Tell me a little bit about your team. Are you looking at hiring?
Our team consists of young techies who have been working with various MNCs before Dexetra happened. Each of them have their own areas of expertise, including UX designer, Cloud designer, Network administrator, System Architect, Marketing-sales and so on. We started with a team of 7 with 5 techies and 2 non-techies (manager, marketing & sales). Since then we have expanded to 11 members. Being a product startup we don’t hire in bulk, though we have some openings for specialist posts like UX Architect, UX designer etc.
Let us know about your expansion plans.
Though India is not far behind at the smartphone consumer market size, currently the meat of the market is the USA and the UK. So we are trying to make a presence in those markets, Friday would grow into a platform which third parties can tap into and provide customized services on. We are also trying to build an intelligent, intuitive and self-adapting UI Layer on top of the Android platform that would make smartphone usage simpler and faster, by understanding user preferences and likes.
Anything else that you want to tell us?
While we were building Friday we also dedicated some time in building smaller apps to learn how the market responds and behaves to free-paid-ad based apps. We have also explored different smartphone platforms including Android, iOS, Windows Phone7, Symbian, Blackberry and Bada. With these we have earned a customer base of over 1.5 lakhs across 140 countries. We are also first phase winners of the Bada Developer Challenge.
We at YourStory.in wish Dexetra good luck as Friday will soon go Beta! What do think about this product idea? Check out http://www.dexetra.com and let us know what you think. Please write to us at feedback@yourstory.in
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