Andrzej Missala

 Last week I red an article tittled "Five ways boredom could be changing your behavior, for better or worse". The text was written by Wijnand Van Tilburg. The article is about the impact of boredom on our behaviour. On the one hand, boredom may seem rather trivial experience, a privilege of people who have a lot of time. On the other hand, scientist proved through various experiments that boredom can be both good and negative. The author of the text showed five changes wich you can experience: impulsiveness, worse mental health, aggression, looking for new things and finding meaning in life. Boredom is an emotional state that makes us change our behavior to be positive, such as looking for new things, learning new things, finding meaning in life, or negative, self-destructive, bad for us and our surroundings. It depends on the person and their situation. https://theconversation.com/five-ways-boredom-could-be-changing-your-behaviour-for-better-or-worse-155784

 Recently, I read an interesting article wrote by Barbara Jacquelyn Sahakian, Christelle Langley, Fei Li and Jianfeng Feng entitled "How the pandemic may damage children's social intelligence". The text is about the negative effects of the lack of contact of younger children with their peers and the elderly. Usually children learn fast and develop skills such as sharing, conflict solving and empathy at a rapid pace. Before pandemia many children used to attend toddler groups or nursery before they started school. So even if they had no siblings, their emotional and social cognition could develop. I learned that social cognitive development begins in the first year of life, when children begin to develop “theory of mind”, which means understanding what others are thinking, which continues through age five. That is why contact with other people is so important at this age. U nfortunately during the COVID-19 lockdowns, many opportunities for social learning have been lost. S...

  Recently I read an interesting article entitled "Narcissistic leaders: even children fall for their superficial charms" by Eddie Brummelman. The text tells about the problem of narcissism among children and leaders. I had some knowledge of Narcissism before, because I am interested in psychology and mental disorders. However, thanks to this article, I learned a lot of new things. Interestingly, narcissism develops already in early childhood. From the age of seven, there are stable differences between children in their levels of narcissism. As adult narcissists, they often appear as leaders in groups. The psychologists decided to check whether the same is happening among children. They conducted an experiment. The researchers recruited a group of 332 children aged 7 to 14. They assessed their level of narcissism and then asked the children to write down the names of their classmates whom they saw as "the true leader". It turned out that as many as 98% of the select...

Capgras syndrome is a mental disorder characterized by a presence of specific delusions. Patients believe that people from their environment, mainly family members, neighbors or even pets, have been replaced by identically looking aliens, and sometimes by robots or extraterrestrials. They cannot logically explain the reason for the replacement and their belief cannot be dissuaded in any way. Interestingly, patients do not try to look for replaced persons, nor they are even curious about what happened to them. Usually they focus on activities aimed at exposing the "impostor". They may also behave very aggressively towards the imaginary double, and they can even attempt to annihilate him. On the other hand, other patients may show fear of the allegedly changed person. Over time, the disease may progress and deepen delusions. Then sick persons may claim that someone or something replaced their personal belongings at night in order to look identical. If there is an animal in th...

  Let me introduce you a lycanthropy disorder. In this case patients believe that they are not human beings but animals. Therefore, they exhibit the behaviours characteristic for a given animal. Patients are the most often convinced that they have turned into a wolf, although sometimes they think that they are other animals, including a dog, a frog, a cat, a horse, a tiger, or even a boa snake. Lycanthropy is a very rare type of delusion, but when it occurs, all symptoms are very specific. They include belief that you are the animal, inability to look critically at this type of delusion and a lack of rational reflection. Patients try to present evidence of their animality. They imitate animals, useing typical for them movements, as well as sounds and noises, for example they howl like a wolf. They manifest fangs and claws. Lycanthropy is very often a symptom of schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or severe depression. According to doctors an important factor contributing lycanthropy ma...

Ekbom's syndrome, also called parasitic insanity, is an example of a hypochondriac delusional disorder. The sick persons believe in the presence of parasites in the skin and complain of symptoms such as burning and itching. Other symptoms of Ekbom's syndrome include the sensation of biting the epidermis by worms and visual hallucinations, for example seeing insects on the skin.  Sick persons try to get rid of them at all costs. They scratch the skin, using insecticides, use washing and cleaning procedures. As a result there are secondary skin problems, among others: wounds, seeking help from dermatologists and insect control specialists. There are many possible causes of parasitic insanity. The etiology of the disorder has not been discovered. However, it can be seen that Ekbom's syndrome is associated with various mental or somatic disorders such as schizophrenia, organic brain diseases such as Alzheimer's disease, the usage of psychoactive substances such as amphetami...

 Cotard's syndrome is a very serious and rare disease, which symptoms  are very characteristic and easy to notice. A person suffering from Cotard syndrome is convinced of his own death, that's why it's called a 'walking corpse syndrom'. A characteristic symptom of Cotard's syndrome are delusions associated with patients' death in life. They are convinced that their internal organs putrefy , their bodies rots, and worms feed on them. Other symptoms include: anxiety, low sensitivity and an awareness of pain. Among the people affected by that disorder, there are also people who are convinced of their immortality. There is also an apathy and a lack of reaction to external stimuli such as taste, sound or smell. The sick person has very specific movements, which are similar to the movements of movie "zombie". Another characteristic symptoms of Cotard's syndrome are patients' belief that some of their organs vanish in their bodies and that there i...