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THIS QUESTIONAIRE “WILL” DETERMINE WHETHER YOU ARE OLD AND DEPRESSED???
Geriatric Depression Scale (short form)
Tools may be copied without permission Instructions: Circle the answer that best describes how you felt over the past week.
Total Score_____
It was discovered that the long 30 question geriatric screening scale was a little confusing to patients so a shorter 15 question test is now administered to determine whether you have geriatric depression. So let’s analyze it.
My first objection is that the questionnaire only covers the prior week and a truly depressed human is depressed over several months and not just one week. Vagueness and inaccurate questioning is my main objection.
The question “have you dropped many of your activities and interests” does not answer the question over how long a period of time did you drop them? If it was over a five year period then this can be normal aging and if over a week’s time then it may be due to a physical accident which incapacitated you. MANY does not quantify the answer since to some humans many means three or more and to others it means 10 or more so losing interest in 3 things may be considered normal and losing interest in 10 things highly abnormal.
What in the world does “EMPTY life” mean? Does it mean that you are doing nothing at all and just eating and sleeping or does empty mean that you feel that your life no longer has an important purpose or goal to pursue? If you are just eating and sleeping then you may have a serious motivation problem but if it is empty because you feel that you have no purpose in life but just to exist then this is just normal aging, especially if your offspring are grown, your spouse has died, and you feel that you have no one to take care of or goals to reach. it’s not a sign of depression.
“OFTEN get bored” does not answer how often a week you get bored and with what you are bored? If you are a channel switcher and get bored watching uninteresting stuff on the TV then you could say that you are often bored or perhaps a hundred times a week. If you get bored cleaning the house, preparing meals, exercising, washing the dishes, listening to the radio, or watching TV then this is just a normal human reaction to doing mundane boring repetitive actions and may not mean that you are depressed.
“Being afraid that something bad is going to happen to you” is normal for old humans who know they can probably die at any minute. The real question to ask is are you obsessed with fear frequently throughout the week or is it just a general fear that you have which maybe just surfaces once or twice a week. If you are obsessed with fear then that is paranoia and not necessarily depression and if you fear for your life or are in fear of falling or in fear of a physical injury then that is normal precaution taking and definitely not a sign of depression. Unanswered is the question of WHAT bad thing do you think is going to happen to you? If there is a list of 5 or 10 bad things which you constantly fear then there may be a serious coping problem but not necessarily depression.
“Often feel helpless” does not differentiate between feeling helpless every time you would have to walk and have to use the wheelchair instead and an obsession of helplessness since you have to spend most of the time in bed due to some handicap or incapacity. Once again WHAT you feel helpless about is a more accurate and important question than just asking about a general helpless feeling. Helplessness is a normal part of aging when your physical and mental abilities are in decline and not necessarily a sign of depression.
“Do you prefer to stay at home and not going out and doing things?” This is a normal desire in the age of the smart phone and internet where you can surf the internet and entertain yourself on the computer. There no longer is a great need to go out and do things so if you prefer to stay at home then this is not necessarily a sign of depression but just a fact of the modern day world.
Feeling that you have “more problems with memory than most” is not a sign of depression but merely stating a fact that you may have the onset of Altzheimers, dementia, or some other mental illness. Not asked is a more important question and that is do your memory problems cause you extreme stress or do you feel that you can handle the disability?
Feeling worthless and hopeless about your situation in life is not a sign of depression but a fact of life for the elderly with little responsibility and geriatric illnesses such as joint and back pains which don’t seem to go away or get any better.
“Thinking that most humans are better off than you” is not an uncommon conclusion, especially if you are on limited social security income with high medical bills and barely making ends meet. Thinking and feeling bad about your situation in life is not a sign of depression but a fact of life which you have to cope with to the best of your ability.
The remaining 6 of the 15 questions try to probe your optimism, happiness, and general satisfaction with life at the present time and are not in any way signs of depression but rather indications that you may not be depressed at all.
My serious objection is also the yes or no format of answering which is extreme behavioral opposites or basically having to say that you always feel that way with a yes or that you never feel that way with a no. Your feelings come and go and have a certain frequency of existence so you can’t say that you always feel worthless, hopeless, fearful, or bored or say that you never feel worthless, hopeless, fearful, or bored. Knowing the frequency of the feelings, their duration, their intensity, and what those feelings are about is important to know accurately and this questionnaire simply does not meet that necessary standard for credibility.
Conclusion:
The extreme vagueness and inaccuracy of this questionnaire in no way can be considered to be an objective evaluation of geriatric depression. Frequency, duration, intensity, and pinpointing what specifically you are talking about is not covered in the questionnaire. It is impossible to tell whether you are even depressed and if you are there is no clue whether you are chronically depressed, severely depressed, normally depressed, or mildly depressed!!!
Is the incidence of depression and medication for it going through the roof? Yes. And the main reason is incompetent psychiatrists doing subjective seat of the pants diagnosis with idiotic questioning which not only appears in print but is even more pronounced and dysfunctional in the psychiatric office environment of personal questioning.
DEVELOPMENT AND VALIDATION OF A GERIATRIC DEPRESSION SCREENING SCALE: A PRELIMINARY REPORT
JEROME A. YESAVAGE, T. L. BRINK Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University of Medicine, Stanford, CA 94305, U.S.A. TERENCE L. ROSE Veteran’s Administration Medical Center, Palo Alto, CA 94304, U.S.A. OWEN LLJM Geriatric Treatment Team, Santa Clara County Mental Health VIRWNIA HUAKC;, MKHA~L ADFY and VON OTTO LEIRER Veteran’s Administration Medical Center, Palo Alto, CA 94304, U.S.A. (Received 25 January 1982; revised 28 June 1982)
THE GERIATRIC DEPRESSION SCALE
Choose the best answer for how you felt over the past week and answer yes or no
Are you basically satisfied with your life?
Have you dropped many of your activities and interests?
Do you feel that your life is empty?
Do you often get bored?
Are you hopeful about the future?
Are you bothered by thoughts you can’t get out of your head?
Are you in good spirits most of the time?
Are you afraid that something bad is going to happen to you?
Do you feel happy most of the time?
Do you often feel helpless?
Do you often get restless and fidgety?
Do you prefer to stay at home, rather than going out and doing new things?
Do you frequently worry about the future?
Do you feel you have more problems with memory than most?
Do you think it is wonderful to be alive now?
Do you often feel downhearted and blue?
Do you feel pretty worthless the way you are now?
Do you worry a lot about the past?
Do you find life very exciting?
Is it hard for you to get started on new projects?
Do you feel full of energy?
Do you feel that your situation is hopeless?
Do you think that most people are better off than you are?
Do you frequently get upset over little things?
Do you frequently feel like crying?
Do you have trouble concentrating?
Do you enjoy getting up in the morning?
Do you prefer to avoid social gatherings?
Is it easy for you to make decisions?
Is your mind as clear as it used to be?
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One way Google destroys or censors old controversial or undesirable community sites is to flood it with pornographic posts thus making users abandon it in droves. I have fled from communities like this in the past and the most recent one is the Thinkers community which probably has too many anti Semitic posts and other controversial posts.
I never approve of many of the controversial postings but what was once a somewhat thought provoking site as a whole is now dying fast and so is the freedom of moral speech or the freedom to view controversial topics as a whole without pornographic crap.
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HOW WISE ARE YOU? TAKE THE TEST HERE
How much do you agree with the following statements on a scale of one to five, with five being ‘I strongly agree’:
1) I enjoy being exposed to diverse viewpoints
2) I have a difficult time keeping friendships
3) It is important that I understand my actions
4) I cannot filter my negative emotions
5) I tend to postpone making major decisions as long as I can
6) Others look to me to help them make choices
Michael L. Thomas
,
Katherine J. Bangen
,
Barton W. Palmer
,
Averria Sirkin Martin
,
Julie A. Avanzino
,
Colin A. Depp
,
Danielle Glorioso
,
Rebecca E. Daly
,
Dilip V. JesteCorrespondence information about the author Dilip V. JesteEmail the author Dilip V. Jeste
Journal of Psychiatric Research
Received: July 3, 2017; Received in revised form: August 29, 2017; Accepted: September 1, 2017; Published online: September 08, 2017
Here is my commentary on this absurd research:
Dictionary definition of wisdom: n. the quality of having experience, knowledge, and good judgment
My definition: Wisdom: n. knowledge which helps to judge accurately what is (true and/or right) and/or (just and/or moral). Unchanging wisdom is wisdom about human nature.
Based on the test questions the subsets or domains that supposedly reflect wisdom are:
Enjoyment of diverse viewpoints,
ability to form friendships easily,
awareness of one’s actions or knowing yourself very well,
being in control of negative emotions or being able to suppress them,
able to make quick decisions,
and a trusting respected personality since many come for advice or guidance.
All of these domains or subsets are qualities of a human with emotional intelligence which can be used for good or bad human purposes. It doesn’t necessarily imply that the human is actually wise too although the probability that such a human is wiser than the norm is probably greater but there is no guarantee of wisdom.
The number of variables in these badly defined domains or subsets is almost infinite and there is no chance at all that there will be an accurate correlation between the very vague domains and actual neurobiological experimental results in the brain which are just as badly defined and bounded.
The traditional stereotype of a wise human is one who is trusted and respected to give advice on most of life’s problems. In the modern world you may be very wise in your area of specialty and humans will ask trustingly for advice but in other areas of human behavior the specialist is often not very wise at all.
Having many friends is not necessarily an indication of an ability to form trusting close relationships so this domain is not accurately enough defined as to whether we are talking about close friendships or very casual and distant ones. Wise in forming close or distant relationships? Which is it?
You may be aware of your actions but you may be a very immoral human so that does not make you wise by any stretch of the imagination.
Making quick decisions assumes that they are useful ones and not erroneous ones or mistaken ones. Good not quick decision making is a function of expertise in the area of decision making which may only be a specialty area and not a general wisdom on almost all things about human nature.
You can be in control of your negative emotions and still be deceptive and a clever manipulator of humans so this quality does not necessarily make you wise.
Enjoyment of diverse viewpoints does not make you wise if you just are enjoying the conflict which ensues between humans with opposing points of view. Are they the right or moral viewpoints which you are enjoying or are they wrong and immoral ones also?
Conclusion:
The wisdom test is vague behavioral subsets, boundaries, or domains with too many exceptions to the domains to have any convincing relevance in real life.
The test does not discriminate between the wise moral human and the wise immoral or criminal human so once again the test is incomplete and irrelevant to the wisdom question in the real world.
Wise humans are moral, have integrity, are dependable, competent, and good communicators with empathy. Nowhere in this test are these important variables considered.
The new scale for assessing wisdom is not only stupid but can almost be considered fraudulent professionalism by psychiatric researchers who are forced to publish garbage about human behavior or perish as researchers!!!
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Don’t tell them they can be anything that they want but steer them into good paying professions.
Eating dinner as a family has social and verbal benefits.
Enforce or limit screen time on tablets and cellphones to about an hour for young children and have them engage with the real world of books, playing, etc.
When mothers work outside the home then daughters tend to also hold more responsible jobs when they grow up.
Offspring with greater success tended to do chores as a child.
Offspring who learn delayed gratification or do unpleasant things at home without being instantly rewarded tended to perform better in careers.
Reading to young children and teaching them to read as soon as possible is an aid in better performance in school and elsewhere.
Let them fail and learn from their mistakes on their own builds character.
Let them travel to other locations and to foreign countries if possible since this stimulates a desire to try new things and appreciate different points of view.
What this list does not include is the fundamental fact that if the parents are trustworthy or have integrity, dependability, competence, and good communication skills then their offspring also tend to follow in their footsteps personality wise.
If you want to read the original article in inc.com then click on this link:
Science Says the Most Successful Kids Have Parents Who Do These 9 Things
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The modern secular morality or code is- in nonemergency situations- don’t destroy biodiversity, don’t lie, don’t be inefficient, don’t steal, don’t commit adultery if married, and don’t murder.
Nature is very efficient, but you may wonder why efficiency is stated as a moral imperative and so here are a few examples where it should be applied as a moral or ethical principle.
If you want a good service from anyone then you expect them to be honest with you and you want the service to be done efficiently or at minimum cost in terms of money and time.
If it is a car mechanic then you don’t want him to lie to you but you also want him to be efficient or repair the car as soon as possible, at minimum cost, and competently with good value in the short and long duration.
There is short duration efficiency and long duration efficiency which includes concepts such as quality, durability, and reliability. The question to ask is do you want long duration efficiency or short duration efficiency or medium range efficiency at a reasonable cost? In effect the cheapest price or cost may not be the best price or cost for the long or medium duration.
If it is a medical doctor then you want him to cure you if possible and minimize any pain if there is no cure. You want him to be honest with you but you also want him to do so efficiently by doing a competent job in the least amount of time and at minimum cost to you. If the doctor is trying to hook you on addictive pills with bad side effects just to get you as a permanent customer then he is not doing his job efficiently from your point of view.
If you are a defendant then a lawyer should defend you if you are not guilty and try to minimize the punishment for you if you are guilty. He should not lie to you and he should do so efficiently in the shortest amount of time possible and at minimum cost to you if he is a competent lawyer.
In your personal life if you talk too much, watch too much entertainment, listen to too much music, eat too much, drink too much, argue too much, gamble too much, shop too much, etc. then you are not being very efficient and you probably have severe moral efficiency flaws in your character or personality. You are wasting your valuable time, energy, and money by being inefficient and sometimes grossly so.
You might perhaps be tempted to say that stealing is more efficient than earning the money to buy it but that is why there are six secular moral code principles and not just one. Don’t steal is another ethical or moral principle which overrides the efficiency principle so that criminality is not rewarded.
Yes, there are also efficient liars and murderers and they tend to get away with lying and murdering more often than other incompetent liars and murderers. But once again that is why the moral code has don’t lie and don’t murder as a sign of morality or good behavior and these override the efficiency principle which is nature’s golden rule since murdering predators are vital in the overall balance of nature.
Efficiency in it’s purest sense is amoral since it is a principle applicable to good and bad goals and/or behaviors and hopefully collective humanity will continue to apply efficiency to the good rather than the bad goals and/or behaviors.
Efficient humans and organizations such as businesses survive more often than the inefficient ones so efficiency in the pursuit of good is a virtue or a good value to have.
How can you justify turning a basically amoral principle into a moral one? Because it is time to include scientific knowledge about efficiency so fundamental to nature as a major consideration in all our behaviors. If we continue to ignore efficiency in moral or ethical questions then we do so at our peril in the long duration and nature will severely punish human civilization for being grossly inefficient.
There are inefficient humans, governments, educational systems, businesses, organizations, professions, etc. and very few of them are respected and admired by many humans which is as it should be. It is time to discipline all these entities and make them function more efficiently at a great cost savings to all contributors and recipients.
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Click on this link and Enjoy!!!
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Based on the long range predictions for hurricane Irma I have concluded that they are not very good for the American model nor the “superior” European model.
One long range prediction was that Irma would travel up the east coast of Florida along I-95, the next prediction was that the eye of the hurricane would hit Miami. Next the European model predicted that Irma would vertically hit central Florida. What finally happened was that the eye hit Key West, hit Naples, and worked its way up western Florida.
The computer model predictions were also bad when the trajectory of the hurricane hit land masses. The category 4, 3, 2, and 1 predictions were inaccurate with a bias towards high category 4 long range forecasts. When the Cuban coast was hit the hurricane dropped from category 4 to 3 and later went back up to 4. The long range prediction of a category 4 all the way to Tampa was also inaccurate as it headed up western Florida and quickly dropped to a category 3 then 2 then 1.
I am thankful that all that Daytona Beach had to handle was tropical storm conditions since the devastation of Irma across Florida was very large as a whole.
Conclusion: Long range hurricane predictions are inaccurate and so are category long range predictions inaccurate, especially over big land masses.
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Historically dogs and cats were fed from moist table scraps and not overly processed pet food without the natural water content of foods and without the natural balance of nutrients in organic food.
Finally many smart veterinarians have reached the same conclusion that pets should be fed real moist preferably organic food. What will the big pet food companies do now? Probably nothing, and will continue to produce the high profit unhealthy junk food for dogs and cats and maybe will come up with phony research trying to prove there is nothing wrong with dry overly processed pet food.
In the short duration pets and humans can get away with eating and drinking substandard food and drink but in the long duration health is radically affected and future generations suffer from the eating and drinking negligence of the present generation with undesirable health problems of their own.
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I tried to access and possibly buy from Amazon
Jan 1, 2015
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Censorship by an immoral government is the worst kind of censorship because it tries to maintain a good or accepted reputation when it doesn’t deserve that reputation and does so with coercive oppression.
The next form of mass covert censorship is that done by monopoly prone organizations such as Amazon, Facebook, Apple, and Google who desperately would want a reputation of integrity and trustworthiness so they can be respected by a vast majority of its customers. That means that they must try to censor all immoral, incompetent, and criminal elements.
The reality is that big money is increasingly influencing who and what gets promoted and who and what gets censored on the web so many moral organizations and individuals with little money but quality information and/or goods and/or services and/or property get censored on the web along with criminals and politically incorrect viewpoints. You are constantly prominently barraged by ads that you don’t want or don’t need from deep pocket organizations with strong fiduciary relationships with the Big Four mentioned above with Bing a possible 5th contender.
In the foreseeable future cellphones will probably also evolve to much less complex dumb phones and not smart phones which can do almost anything. The complexity of thousands of apps will probably be reduced to simple choices such as type of food, clothing, car, author, etc. and price and all delivered door to door by a handful of companies. Less choice is also a form of censorship and the dream of monopoly prone companies so be on guard against this and promote quality diversity as much as possible.
A wild west kind of internet is unworkable and moral or just behavioral censorship has become a vital necessity. But can you completely trust the morals of companies with monopoly power over you or completely trust the morals of the government with a tendency to favor monied special interests?
Ultimately common morality must be impulsive to be effective so the solution lies in indoctrinating the younger generation with a workable universal worldwide secular moral code which can be applied by almost everyone without religious beliefs. A moral citizenry will demand a moral leadership and it will be a revolution from the bottom up if those in power desire it to be so top down also. Search my blog or publications if you are interested and want some details about this universal worldwide secular moral code.
A moral code that is just efficiently rules over impulsive human nature and minimizes the need for surveillance cameras in every nook and cranny of society.
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A president is merely a figurehead of a political system and theoretically should be a good leader of the nation as a whole. Trump has an authoritarian combative style which is unique in American politics which historically has largely been an exercise in collaboration and compromise with the leadership of both parties and a fairly good relationship with the press or mass media.
Trump is at a great disadvantage because he has historically attacked both the establishment Republicans and Democrats and the establishment media and will probably continue to do so in the future also. The establishment is basically against him and competent administrators are afraid to work under him because they fear their reputation will be sullied by the flawed Trump reputation or that they will be fired if they don’t have a yes man attitude to everything Trump wants to do.
The turnover in the Trump administration is mind boggling and it feels like this will continue on into the foreseeable future.
Trying to lead an unwilling divided Republican party is hard enough but leading a nation without some cooperation from the Democrats and mass media seems like mission impossible.
Insubordination to many of Trump’s ideas and goals and personality is what is fundamental in this presidency and it seems that it will not get much better in the near future. Trump may last four years in office if he is a quick learner and miraculously overcomes his present handicaps. Another possibility is that the handicaps may eventually get accepted as handicaps that we can or we have to live with.
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Michael Schneider summarized the two year Google study of exceptional teams.
Google Spent 2 Years Studying 180 Teams. The Most Successful Ones Shared These 5 Traits
The listed important key characteristic traits are really open to considerable debate.
Dependability seems to be an important key but it is more complex a characteristic then just doing work in a timely efficient way. In order for a team to be dependable the group or team members must be competent and smart hard workers. The leadership too has to be exceptional and that means that the management has integrity, is trustworthy, has emotional intelligence, provides good feedback, coaches well, and is good at making the right decisions. All these additional key characteristics are those of a good manager which an exceptional team must have.
Structure and clarity is another key characteristic and that is a leadership skill which means organizing a team with minimal overlapping responsibilities and clearly defining the goals which the team must achieve. Good personnel choices and coordinating diverse skill sets to achieve a greater goal in unison is a function of good planning by the leadership and successful follow through by the team. Structure and clarity is really management making good decisions.
Meaning should imply that the work has personal significance to each member which is another way of saying that each team member has been clearly assigned a task or tasks to do which are an integral or important part of the ultimate goal or goals to be achieved. In effect team members feel that they are making significant contributions to the success of the combined team efforts. Meaning is really a vague poorly defined word which seems to imply that some teams are given meaningless tasks to do which could broadly be considered to be make work assignments.
Impact is a feeling by group members that they are contributing to the general good of the company. Impact is also a vaguely defined characteristic and seems to imply that exceptional teams are given very important tasks to do which greatly affect the bottom line of the company and some teams are given relatively unimportant tasks which don’t significantly impact the general good or bottom line of the company. Both meaning and impact are very subjective characteristics of exceptional teams and are more dependent on the importance of the assigned tasks rather than dependent on the characteristics of team leadership and team members.
Psychological safety is a work environment which encourages the sharing of opinions and ideas with a freedom to be vulnerable and ask questions. It is leadership which encourages both good and bad feedback from and among team members. Participatory interaction is encouraged rather than a standoffish authoritarian demeanor with minimum interaction. It appears that workers are more satisfied and dedicated to their work if they feel that they can be interacting contributing participants rather than just cogs in an authoritarian machine.
Conclusion:
An exceptional team by definition has greater impact on the organization so it is also probably doing more meaningful work so these two are really not key characteristics of an exceptional team. Psychological safety is just management providing good feedback in a minimally authoritarian style of leadership. Structure and clarity grows out of good decision making by the team leadership.
They key characteristic of an exceptional team is dependable or competent, smart and hard working team members. The other key characteristics are good leadership skills and I have listed 6 of them which were mentioned in another research project done by Google to determine what exceptional leadership skills it tries to instill in it’s managers.
There is really no mystery what an exceptional team is. It is exceptional team managers and exceptional team members. List the most important characteristics of both and you have 7 key characteristics of an exceptional team. Yes, you might ask why only 7 and the deeper you probe the more you may come up with by explaining the 7 in greater detail.
uldissprogis 