Canadian Undergraduate Perspectives on Medical Assistance in Dying for Mental Illness: Does Psychiatric Illness Type, Age, and Exposure to Information Influence Acceptance of MAiD?

Background and ObjectivesIn 2027, Canadians whose only medical condition is an untreatable mental illness and who otherwise meet all eligibility criteria will be able to request Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD). This study investigates the attitudes of undergraduate students towards widening the scope of MAiD for physical illness for certain psychiatric conditions. We were interested in understanding if age, information, and type of mental illness influenced undergraduates' acceptance or rejection of MAiD for mental illness (MAiD-MI).

Canadian Undergraduates' Perspectives on Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD): A Quantitative Study.

In 2016, Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) became legal in Canada for those suffering a grievous and untreatable medical condition. Currently, it is not available to minors or to those with an untreatable mental illness, although it is likely the scope of MAiD will be widened to include persons with severe and untreatable mental illnesses. However, little is known about the factors predicting acceptance or rejection of MAiD for persons with either a grievous medical condition or an untreatable mental illness.

Unbreakable Resolutions as an Effective Tactic for Self-Control: Lessons From Mahatma Gandhi and a 19th-Century Prussian Prince.

Despite the relative consensus in the self-management literature that personal resolutions are not an effective stand-alone tactic for self-control, some individuals seem capable of using them to exert a remarkable level of control over their behavior. One such individual was Mahatma Gandhi, the famous Indian statesman. Gandhi often used personal resolutions-or "vows"-to commit himself to a range of challenging behaviors, such as extreme diets, sexual abstinence, and fasting.

Did Little Albert actually acquire a conditioned fear of furry animals? What the film evidence tells us.

Watson and Rayner's (1920) attempt to condition a fear of furry animals and objects in an 11-month-old infant is one of the most widely cited studies in psychology. Known as the Little Albert study, it is typically presented as evidence for the role of classical conditioning in fear development. Some critics, however, have noted deficiencies in the study that suggest that little or no fear conditioning actually occurred.

Episodic-like memory in zebrafish.

Episodic-like memory tests often aid in determining an animal's ability to recall the what, where, and which (context) of an event. To date, this type of memory has been demonstrated in humans, wild chacma baboons, corvids (Scrub jays), humming birds, mice, rats, Yucatan minipigs, and cuttlefish. The potential for this type of memory in zebrafish remains unexplored even though they are quickly becoming an essential model organism for the study of a variety of human cognitive and mental disorders.

Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend: food and diet as instigators of bizarre and disturbing dreams.

In the early 1900s, the Dream of the Rarebit Fiend comic strip conveyed how the spicy cheese dish Welsh rarebit leads to bizarre and disturbing dreams. Today, the perception that foods disturb dreaming persists. But apart from case studies, some exploratory surveys, and a few lab studies on how hunger affects dreaming, there is little empirical evidence addressing this topic.

Correcting the record on Watson, Rayner, and Little Albert: Albert Barger as "psychology's lost boy".

In 1920, John B. Watson and Rosalie Rayner attempted to condition a phobia in a young infant named "Albert B." In 2009, Beck, Levinson, and Irons proposed that Little Albert, as he is now known, was actually an infant named Douglas Merritte.

Little Albert's alleged neurological impairment: Watson, Rayner, and historical revision.

In 2012, Fridlund, Beck, Goldie, and Irons (2012) announced that "Little Albert"-the infant that Watson and Rayner used in their 1920 study of conditioned fear (Watson & Rayner, 1920)-was not the healthy child the researchers described him to be, but was neurologically impaired almost from birth. Fridlund et al. also alleged that Watson had committed serious ethical breaches in regard to this research.

Nightmare frequency is related to a propensity for mirror behaviors.

We previously reported that college students who indicated engaging in frequent dream-enacting behaviors also scored high on a new measure of mirror behaviors, which is the propensity to imitate another person's emotions or actions. Since dream-enacting behaviors are frequently the culmination of nightmares, one explanation for the observed relationship is that individuals who frequently display mirror behaviors are also prone to nightmares. We used the Mirror Behavior Questionnaire (MBQ) and self-reported frequencies of nightmares to assess this possibility.

Reversed scototaxis during withdrawal after daily-moderate, but not weekly-binge, administration of ethanol in zebrafish.

Alcohol abuse can lead to severe psychological and physiological damage. Little is known, however, about the relative impact of a small, daily dose of alcohol (daily-moderate schedule) versus a large, once per week dose (weekly-binge schedule). In this study, we examined the effect of each of these schedules on behavioural measures of anxiety in zebrafish (Danio rerio).

Did Freud mislead patients to confabulate memories of abuse? A reply to Gleaves and Hernandez (1999).

Gleaves and Hernandez have argued that skepticism about the validity of Freud's seduction theory, including by Powell and Boer, is largely unjustified. This paper contends that their analysis is in many ways both inaccurate and misleading. For example, we did not, as they implied, reject the possibility that some of Freud's early patients were victims of childhood sexual abuse.

Immediate and delayed incorporations of events into dreams: further replication and implications for dream function.

The incorporation of memories into dreams is characterized by two types of temporal effects: the day-residue effect, involving immediate incorporations of events from the preceding day, and the dream-lag effect, involving incorporations delayed by about a week. This study was designed to replicate these two effects while controlling several prior methodological problems and to provide preliminary information about potential functions of delayed event incorporations. Introductory Psychology students were asked to recall dreams at home for 1 week.

Sleep quality, sleep propensity and academic performance.

We examined associations between measures of sleep propensity on the Epworth Sleepiness Scale, sleep quality on the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index and academic performance by GPA and grades in introductory psychology for 414 students. In the total sample, neither sleep propensity nor sleep quality correlated with GPA or introductory psychology grades. However, among students carrying a full course load, those reporting poor sleep quality performed less well on academic measures than those reporting a better quality of sleep.