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Mental Health and “Hyper-Media” Context
Scientific Rationale Synopsis
Extract from a
Continuing Medical Education Program by Fabrizio Ciappi and Riccardo Mario Corato
1. Situation
1.1 Hyper-media Context (and weaker human/natural relationships)
1.2 Proliferation of media and messages (over-information)
1.3 Lack of attention/Fall of recall/Confusion (over-communication short-circuit)
1.4 Poor Media contents. (More quantitative than qualitative approach).
Cultural/educational inefficiency and inconsistency of today’s communication.
Facilitating scenarios (School is easy / love and sex are easy / life is easy / health - happiness are easy / No limits / Everything is possible, etc.)
1.5 Lack of time / Real time ( No Past / No Future / No Time ) (Incessant, fast and obsessive reiteration of Information- e.g.: pop music, advertising, sports, etc.)
1.6 Over-simplification of “reality”. When the information is processed under such severe lack of time, it becomes simplistic and therefore may cause and disseminate simplistic representations of “reality” among people (youngsters and adults).
2. Result
2.1 Poor language / thought / learning / language / creative process
(especially among youngsters)
2.2 Lack / Confusion / Uncertainty of Identity
(especially among youngsters)
2.3 Lack / Fall of sense (especially when the barriers of sense are still weak: e.g. adolescence)
2.4 Very poor “Menu” (of solutions/alternatives/possibilities/choices. In essence, poor knowledge)
2.5 Mind’s pollution. Epidemic growth of Psycho-pathologies
(World Health Organization &World Bank Data)
2.6 Individual & Social Damages - No (immediate) Solutions.
3. Remedies
3.1 Create/Implement a realistic strategy for the reduction of the damage at:
3.2 Individual level (pharmacology and psycho-therapy) and
3.3 Social level (“Education as Prevention”- New Learning/Teaching Programmes -
Multimedia “Educational Antibodies” for parental and teachers use – Increase of social and medical research – Public warning campaigns, etc.)
4. Scientific Description
4.1 More than any other complex living organism, human beings live fully immersed in their physical and mental environment and are deeply dependent from their relationship with other beings.
4.2 The result is a very complex (hyper-complex) system that needs to reach, almost constantly, a very sophisticated “homeostatic balance”.
4.3 This balance is so delicate that it may be “disturbed” by any external/internal casual factor.
4.4 Most of the times those casual factors increase the level of anxiety. In certain condition anxiety tends to raise and to evolve into fear.
4.5 Our biological and neural system, in case of fear and panic, reacts as follows:
i. Over production of adrenaline;
ii. Vital functions disorder (temperature, pressure, immune-system, hormones, etc.);
iii. “Digital divide” (0-1, fugue or attack, life or death);
iv. Neural over-excitement / neural communications short-circuit;
v. Paralysis
4.6 Under similar circumstances the system searches a possible solution (exit) within its own “menu” of possibilities (knowledge). If the Menu is “rich” there are consistent probabilities that the system gets out from the problem and re-balances itself, learning from the event and increasing its knowledge and its surviving capabilities.
4.7 In case of a “poor” Menu (lack of identity, poor language, simplification of reality and thought, etc.) the only self-defensive strategy for the system becomes:
i. “downgrading” the problem (disturbing factor) from neo-cortical level (rationale, linguistic, strategic and symbolic centre) to the “deep brain” (area of emotions, memories, sensorial experiences and body’s vital functions);
ii. Therefore the problem becomes “out-of-control” for the system;
iii. The body ceases its production of “adrenaline” (“and/or”) and starts producing “noradrenalin” (“waiting for”) with the relevant somatic risks (blood’s high pressure and mental depression);
iv. The system shows symptoms of behaviour and communication’s disorders (psycho-pathology)
4.8 In conclusion:
For today’s most advanced and respected brain and cognitive scientists it really seems that Education and Learning (richness of sense, memory, identity, language and knowledge) plays a vital role in human beings’ life. Probably more than we ever thought. In this context we believe that Education and Learning represent the real “new frontier” of political and social responsibility.
