Animals and pets

Hello everybody!

Today I’m talking animals. I like animals, like most people but I don’t know if I consider myself an animal lover. I love dogs and wild animals, but I’m a scary person and I fear many animals, I don't like rats, hamsters and all those furry creatures. When I was a kid I had a dog called Rupert (Like Rupert el bacalao xD) and it was the best partner. Now I don’t have any pets because I live in a little flat so I don’t have much space and my sister don’t let me have pets in our apartment.

I don’t like any animal to suffer, and I believe in medical research but I think sometimes it’s necessary use animals for medical research and test. Some animalist are against that but I don’t know how investigators can do their job if they can’t proof it before using new medical techniques and medicaments in humans.

I have never been bitten by a dog o any animal, and I hope that never happens to me. Respect to the question if I think that dogs should be banned o muzzled, my position to that is relative because some people train their dogs to attack and bite to protect their houses and then they leave them loose in parks and in that case I think they have to muzzle their dogs to protect children.

If I could be an animal I’d choose to be any feline. I think they are great, fast, and incredibly beautiful. I like lions because they are fierce, tigers are majestic because of their beautiful fur, and I love cheetahs because are extremely fast.

That’s all, sorry for the extension I hope you like it =) 

My favourite movie ever!

Hi class!

I’m very happy to talk about movies. Cine and movies are very important for me because since I was little I was always related with this. The reason of that is my mother, she is a cinephile. At home we have a lot of movies, in all formats VHS, DVDs, Blu-ray, etc. I think probably my mother has around one thousand movies of all kinds. That’s why I love to watch movies at home.

If you ask me which is my favourite, I’ll  say Quentin Tarantino’s “Pulp Fiction”. I just love this movie, the actors are magnificent, the dialogues, the black humor, music, everything! It’s just perfect. The cast of this movie is amazing, rarely seen a cast as good as this: John Travolta, Samuel L. Jackson, Uma Thurman, Harvey Keitel, Bruce Willis among others. All of them perform wonderful performances. Probably all my life I've seen this movie about fifteen times and everytime I see it I feel the same that I felt the first time I saw it and that’s one of the reasons I love Pulp Fiction.

Would you recommend it? ABSOLUTLY!!! If you have not seen it yet, please go to watch it right now! =)

Mental health: Is Chile a depressed country?

Hi class!

Today I’m posting a summary from an article that I found in Santiago Times. I found this article very interesting for us as psychologists because we have to know what’s going on with mental health in our country.

Chile is one of the least happy OECD nations, according to an index related with quality of life made by OECD, this is a very critical index. A research lead by Universidad de Concepción shows that “around one in tree Chileans will suffer from one form or another of psychiatric problem at some point in their lifetime.”

One of the effects of this problem is that depression reduces years in life because of the illness, this is measured by a metric “disability adjusted life years (DALYS)” this metric considers medical cost. Depression also costs a lot of money to the state. The good news is that now Chile is taking mental health like one of their priorities, and public policies are in that direction, for example the inclusion of depression on AUGE.

If this matter is so important, what can be done? The research by Universidad de Concepción shows that a big part of de psychiatric disorders are developed in adolescence and childhood, for that reason is very important to prevent depression on kids.

Are Chileans more depressed than others? There are a lot of factors involved in mental disorders, considering family history, genes, environment, personality and adverse life events.

http://www.santiagotimes.cl/blogs/161-matthew-owens/26329-mental-health-is-chile-a-depressed-country

My ideal job

Hi everybody! 

On this occasion I’m going to tell you about my ideal job. If you ask me, I have two types of jobs that I have on mind, the first one is my “idealistic” ideal job, and the second one is my “realistic” ideal job. Let me explain to you what I meant. When I talk about idealistic job I’m thinking in those TV shows that exhibit the presenter while is travelling around the world, meeting new people, eating all types of exotical food, knowing about all cultures, that’s my “idealistic” ideal job.

But when I think about what I want to do after I graduate from psychology, I think I’d like to work as a clinical psychologist in an institution or ONG that cares about children. I’m not 100% sure of that, but I love little kids, and it is easier for me to relate to children than adults. I may change my mind before I should choose my practice but at the moment this is the plan that I like the most.

Bye!