STABILISE

Disclaimer: It is important to note that STABILISE is a work in progress operated by an educated woman with lived experience with bipolar disorder and computer scientists interested in improving access to practical knowledge, medical professionals, and crisis responders. We are building a mobile application that is designed to track moods and analyse text so help can be provided sooner. For medical advice, please consult your family doctor or a trusted health care practitioner. If you believe you are in need of immediate medical assistance and live in North America, call 911. Otherwise, please reach out to the Lifeline at 988 (by phone or text).

Tag: mindfulness

  • On the Sidelines

    On the Sidelines

    I have been investing a significant amount of thought in my Statement of Interest for grad school applications.

    One version of the truth is that I realized how ill-equipped I was to speak about mental health while building STABILISE without credentials.

    The thing about getting a Masters, specifically in Philosophy, is that it involves specialization. Mental health is a serious concern. It is one thing to read books in your spare time about a specific topic, a complete other to satisfy the requirements that a degree necessitates.

    There are intricacies in the human mind — trip switches and trauma hazards, all of which should be treated with care and applied practical knowledge.

    For instance, I learned about the anterior insula yesterday after reading a Stanford study about a potential cause in the brain for psychosis. The study showed that for those with a rare genetic disease and those who experience psychosis with unknown origin, the anterior insula is responsible for filtering important information about subjective feelings.

    There is a key relationship between the anterior insula and the ventral striatum, which plays a role in reward processing and brings to mind dopamine. This would make sense when considering how antipsychotic drugs, like Abilify, are meant to balance dopamine and serotonin.

    If the anterior insula belongs to the network responsible for interpreting and allocating importance to thoughts and subjective feelings, there is a certain sense of wonder as to why certain falsifiable thoughts pass through and motivate reward-seeking behaviour.

    Is it because those falsifiable thoughts are linked to an adverse childhood experience or event of similar importance? Did substance use have something to do with it? Is there no relation whatsoever and simply a misfiring and mistaken rewiring of a neural pathway in the brain? There is room for error, a probabilistic necessity.

    I am applying to grad school because I enjoy thinking about the relationship between philosophy and psychiatry.

    I wonder if Nesse is right and depression is adaptive because it helps moderate one’s expectations with the world. I wonder if psychosis is adaptive too, and what that adaptive nature would be like written out in the form of a thesis. I know my first impulse is to mention art — not strictly in reference to what can be created with canvas, paint, or material, but expansive enough to include the proof of a theorem.

    Stanford Study: https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2024/04/brain-systems-psychosis.html