Wellness

05 Wednesday Jul 2023

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Wellness is not the mere absence of disease. It is a proactive, preventive approach designed to achieve optimum levels of health, social and emotional functioning. Wellness can also be defined as an active process through which you become aware of and make choices toward a more successful existence.

The definition of Wellness is: NOUN
1. mental and physical soundness: physical well-being, especially when maintained or achieved through good diet and regular exercise.

A wellness-oriented lifestyle encourages you to adopt habits and behaviors that promote better health and an improved quality of life. It also involves the recognition that you have physical, psychological, social, and spiritual needs, with each dimension being necessary for optimal levels of functioning.

Wellness is a positive approach to living – an approach that emphasizes the whole person. It is the integration of the body, mind, and spirit; and the appreciation that everything you do, think, feel, and believe has an impact on your state of health.

Since lifestyle has been found to be the single most important factor determining your pattern of general health, it is important that you be educated to “take charge” of your daily life and to set healthy lifestyle goals. The choices you make have a dominant influence on your health ad wellness. The secret is not in medical care, but consistent self- care. While traditional medicine concentrates on alleviating or curing disease, the wellness approach encourages you to take personal responsibility for your well-being.

Remember, Wellness is an active process of becoming aware of and making choices toward a healthy and fulfilling life.

“…a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” – The World Health Organization

Homelessness

24 Saturday Jun 2023

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Homelessness is the state of lacking stable, safe, and functional housing. It can include living on the streets, sleeping in doorways, or staying with friends or relatives.
Homelessness can be caused by social factors like poverty, unemployment, and a lack of affordable housing. People can also become homeless after leaving prison, care, or the army with no home to go to.
In the United States, there are four categories of homelessness:
Transitional homelessness
Episodic homelessness
Chronic homelessness
Hidden homelessness

Does Animal-Assisted Therapy Help Adolescents With Psychiatric Problems?

21 Wednesday Jun 2023

Posted by in Dance Movement Therapy

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Can animal-assisted therapy help adolescents who are in hospital because of an acute psychiatric crisis? A randomized controlled trial investigates.

The study, conducted by a team of researchers led by M.C. Stefanini of the University of Florence, randomly allocated patients to either an animal-assisted therapy intervention or no intervention. Both groups continued to receive psychiatric treatment as usual, and those treating them did not know which group they were in. The results are very promising.

The intervention group had better school attendance, higher levels of global functioning, and spent less time in the hospital compared to the control group. “One possible explanation for this success is the role of the animal as a catalyst in the therapeutic process,” the researchers write. “Animals may represent a valid help in therapeutic contexts thanks to their ability to catalyze social interactions and to create a more relaxed environment.”   MORE HERE

Being Disturbed About Being Disturbed

07 Wednesday Jun 2023

Posted by in Coping Skills

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Isn’t it bad enough to be disturbed about events? Now you find out you can even be disturbed about being disturbed about the event.

A person is so afraid to ride in an elevator, that they develop a phobia about it. Soon, not only anxious about elevators, they worry about anxiety about elevators. “Something is drastically wrong with me,” they think; “Maybe I’m going crazy.” “I should not be so anxious about elevators that I can’t use them; that’s an awful problem; I can’t stand to have this fear; I must certainly be inadequate.” “I know I’m losing control; soon I’ll bet I won’t be able to take care of myself at all; I’ll wind up in a mental hospital.”

Can you see how they are not only fearful of elevators, but down on themselves for being afraid of them? In this case there are two A-B-C sets:

  • Activating event A1: Elevator ride
  • Irrational belief B1: “I couldn’t stand to be trapped forever.”
  • Emotional consequence C1: Anxiety (about being trapped).
  • Activating event A2: Anxiety at C1 (about being trapped).
  • Irrational belief B2: “I should not be anxious about elevators.”
  • Emotional consequence C2: “I’m crazy.” Anxiety (about the anxiety).

We might find it more efficient to work on the secondary set of A-B-C’s first. Once the person can think differently (more rationally) about having an emotional reaction, they may be more able to concentrate on working through the first set of A-B-C’s.

Do you also have a few sets of secondary A-B-C’s that prevent you from making progress?

Social Leaky Media

04 Sunday Jun 2023

Posted by in Data hack, Social Media

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Facebook has been involved in eight data breaches since its launch in 2004. The most famous breach was the Cambridge Analytica scandal, where the company sold the data of 87 million users.
In 2021, Facebook acknowledged a data leak that exposed the personal information of approximately half a billion users. The data included names, birthdays, locations, and phone numbers. Facebook said the leak stemmed from a security problem in 2019 that they had since fixed. They denied any wrongdoing, saying that the data was scraped from publicly available information on the site.
Facebook parent company Meta Platforms agreed to pay $725 million in settlement in a lawsuit seeking damages for allowing third parties, including Cambridge Analytica, access to user data. Facebook users who had an active account at any point between May 2007 and December 2022 can apply to receive a piece of the settlement.

Instagram has had several data breaches in recent years, including:
In August 2020, an unsecured database containing 235 million profiles from Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube was discovered.
In January 2021, a data leak exposed scraped data on 214 million social media accounts.
In September 2022, Irish regulators fined Instagram €405m for data privacy violations.
Instagram was accused of processing children’s privacy data for business accounts and on a user registration platform. Earlier, teen users’ (aged between 13 and 17) accounts were made ‘public’ by default, and they were easily targeted by ads and hacking methods.

Twitter had a data breach in November 2021 that was caused by a vulnerability in Twitter’s software. The vulnerability allowed hackers to learn if an email address or phone number was associated with an existing account. The vulnerability was first flagged to Twitter in January 2022. Twitter fixed the flaw on January 13, 2022.
The breach involved tricking a piece of software linked to Twitter called an API (application programming interface) into revealing hidden details about accounts. Hackers were able to submit an email address or phone number to Twitter’s systems to reveal the username associated with that phone number or email address.
At the end of 2022, there were reports that hackers were selling data stolen from 400 million Twitter users. Researchers now say that a widely circulated trove of email addresses linked to about 200 million users is likely a refined version of the larger trove with duplicate entries removed.

Sources: Wired, Firewall Times, CNN, Verge.