Psychology

The notion of learning through observation dates back to the later Middle Ages when master craftsmen employed apprentices to train in their trade. However, it is not until the 1970s when Albert Bandura, an American psychologist, developed a theory of how we learn to perform a behaviour through observation, what is known …

The status quo of Generation Z Immediate gratification may be the modus operandi of the generation affectionately referred to as Generation Z – teenagers – born on the heels of the Millennials. They have an application (app) for everything, and social media blurs the connections between reality, conformity, and possibly intimacy …

Most of us fear an object of a situation. For example, I fear tools such as drills and blenders because the noise they make reminds me of an accident I had a few years back with a food processor. It also scares me when large crowds gather for events such as …

How can you tell whether you have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD)? The straight answer is that if your life is governed by obsessions and/or compulsions that are having a debilitating effect on your ability to function on a daily basis then you might have OCD. While the actual content of …

Depression has been defined as ‘the plague of the 21st century’. This is more than a catchy phrase chosen to convey how spread this mental disorder is and the fact that is spares no one. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), depression affects about 350 million people around the world. However, this figure …

What is Illness Anxiety Disorder? In Illness Anxiety Disorder (IAD), previously known as hypochondriasis, the individual develops an excessive worry about any physical or psychological symptoms experienced albeit in the absence of a diagnosed health condition. The anxiety experienced is so pervasive that it interferes with the individual’s ability to function adequately and it’s …

While we are all familiar with the meaning of the word ‘anxiety’ and we are likely to have experienced a certain degree of anxiety at some point in our life, it’s important to distinguish between healthy and unhealthy anxiety. Healthy anxiety is experienced before a meaningful event in life such as a job …

Feeling anxious before a challenging event such as a job interview, a presentation or an exam is very common and considered normal. However, anxiety is generally viewed as ‘bad’ and as an indicator that the person is not coping with the task at hand. This article aims to debunk this myth …

If you type the word ‘stress’ in the google search engine, it returns about 519,000,000 results, making stress a more frequent word than ‘mum’ which bears about 203,000,000 results! On one hand, it is true that a lot of people experience stress on a daily basis and this affects their work or school performance, …

The connection between physical and mental health is no news! As early as the second century AD, the Roman poet Juvenal advocated “mens sana in corpore sano”, meaning “a healthy mind in a healthy body”. While this Latin quote is well-known, its veracity has only been established in the past few decades …