Month: April 2019
The Symbol of the Rose in William Faulkner’s a Rose for Emily
A Rose for Emily was written by William Faulkner and is characterized as a Southern Gothic short story. The story takes place in Faulkner's fiction city of Jefferson, Mississippi and we can assume that the plot spans from some time in the 1890's to the 1931 when A Rose for Emily for actually written. The story revolves around the town; specifically, Emily Grierson's house is a main view point and symbol of the story. The townspeople act as the narrators of the story, their rumors and ridicule of Emily and her ways as well as their sympathy for her as time progresses, helps to tell excel the plot. Also, Faulkner's structure of the story is very telling of some traits of Emily. The story has many examples of symbolism as well, including the main character herself. A Rose for Emily also coveys themes of old Southern aristocracy versus the changing North. A Rose for Emily on the surface is a story of an obviously disturbed woman who murders a man rather than marrying him and manages to keep it hidden for decades. Although, it is also a compelling Southern Gothic short story that relays a message of southern insusceptibility to change with the progression of times and unfelt love through symbolism, theme, and structure.
The main character, Emily, is a southern lady who has lived in this great big house that is a reminder of old-South aristocracy. Emily, as well as the house, coveys the message that the old aristocratic South refuses to change. As the story progresses both Emily and her house become paradigms of decay. In this way, the house and Emily are both symbols of a time long passed. Her father is the only person she has been able to learn from, because of this she seems stuck in time. After Emily's father passes away, the house is left to her. This is her only possession and she has no husband and no one to love and hold on to. Emily's inability to change has left her and her house as an eyesore to the rest of the neighborhood that has been upgraded to better suit the times. The houses placement in the middle of such a different era is just as out of place as the values of the time the house represents and Miss Emily adheres to. Further making an example of the theme of tradition against change, Mayor Colonel Sartoris gave Emily a pardon on property taxes and had the rest of the town pay it on the premise that her father had loaned a great deal of money to the town. This was when Emily's father died. Mayor Sartoris is credited in the story as the man who fathered the edict that no Negro woman should appear on the streets without an apron (168). During this time, in 1894, this was socially acceptable and only fed the idea that Emily was to be held a little too high for what they really were (170-71). As time progresses, Emily still refuses to pay taxes to the town even though Colonel Sartoris dies and a few new Mayors are reinstated. Another symbol in A Rose for Emily is Homer Barron. Homer is a Yankee and it is rumored that he is gay. He is a direct representation of the very differing North. His values are vastly different to Emily's and the townspeople even say that she would never go for someone like him.
Perhaps the most notable symbol in A Rose for Emily is the title. There is no actual materialization of a rose in the story, which is very important. A rose typically represents love and compassion and men give women roses to show these emotions. This never materializes in the story because Emily is never shown genuine love, compassion, and affection from a lover. And arguably she is never shown love from her father, he runs away any type of suitor Emily may have had which skews any idea of love she could of thought of. So when she starts seeing Homer she clings to him since she has nothing left to cling to. In Hairoglyphics in Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily"/Reading the Primal Trace, it is also inferred that there may have been some sort of incest type relationship between Emily and her father, which would further explain why Emily is psychologically scarred. A first reading suggests that Miss Emily and Homer achieve an ecstatic perfection that she wants to preserve as a single moment for all timeEmily poisons Homer after the sexual embrace in order to enclose the experience in her memoryas fantasy repetition. This would make sense why she would want to keep Homer to herself as the townspeople forcibly took her father to bury him. However, Homer was gay. This would mean that Emily's rage toward his inability to be sexual with her would cause her to poison him so then she could have relations with Homer's dead body (129).
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The Symbol of the Rose in William Faulkner's A Rose for Emily. (2019, Apr 15).
Retrieved November 5, 2025 , from
https://studydriver.com/2019/04/page/11/
Depression in the Elderly
Abstract
This paper explores four published articles that report on results from
research on how the depression affects the elderly community. One article is a study done on the elderly in a nursing home and the other three provides information on mental health and how people can improve on being more understanding and caring towards the elderly.
Method
Participants
This study was performed in an elderly house in Pristina-Kosovo by European Psychiatary association. There was 86 people living in the house from ages 65-94. They were checked by a psychiarist for depression with the Beck Scale and geriatric depression scale. (F. Drevinja, S. Haxhibequiri)
Assessments and Measures
Many of the residents had symptoms of depression: refusing food, inactivity, and neglcting their health. Many have never been treated for depression. The researchers had difficulty dealing with the residents over the age of seventy due to health issues, dementia. F. Drevinja, S. Haxhibequiri)
Results
The researchers found that life in the elderly home was quite organized and they weren't under-staffed. They had a psychologist, psychiatrist, social worker, nurse, dentist, physiatrists. Although the home had all of these resources for these people, many of the residents were very depressed. Many residents lost hope for the future and lost their confidence as they got older. The researchers found that 5 people of the eighty six people living there which have psychotic symptomatology, while others, over the age of seventy years old have been in need of treatment with antidepressants. (F. Drevinja, S. Haxhibequiri)
Discussion
Depression is the most common and serious mood disorder in the world according to the DSM-5. When dealing with depression in older people, it is found that depression without sadness is most common. Depression in the elderly often stems from issues that seem to be harder to deal with. Due to the added stressors in later life, the DSM-5 states that older people are at a higher risk for suicide. (Taylor, 2014)
The DSM-5 outlines the following to make a diagonosis of depression.
The person must be experiencing five or more of the following symptoms for more then two weeks.
Suicidal Ideation.
Fatigue and loss of energy nearly everyday.
Feelings of hopelessness and worthlessness.
Diminished interest or pleasure in all or almost all activities most of the day, nearly everyday.
Weight loss or weight gain.
If the person in question are feeling an extreme sadness for two weeks or more, it is important to be screened for depression. Once that person gets screened, they can figure out what the next step may be.
There are many options for older adults struggling with depression. Warren Taylor states in his article he states the following examples could help older adults.
Lifestyle changes: The way one lives their life can have an affect on how they act and feel. If someone doesn't take time for themselves. Also, money is a factor in causing stress in a lot of people but more in the elderly. Many other adults have trouble making ends meet since for some people social security and their pension may not be enough. There are bills to be paid and some people just can't afford it. Many people also deal with health issues later in life which can be a factor into them not being able to move around and exercise and work.
Brain Stimulation: Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is the most effective treatment for severely depressed patients, including elderly patients. (Taylor, 2014) ECT should be considered if they are sucidical , if they haven't responded to antidepressants, or if they have a sereve health problem. Current ECT protocols are safe but they have side effects such as confusion and anterograde and retrograde amnesia.
Maintenance therapy: Studies have shown that going to treatment after remission has it's benefits. One study involved older adults with recurrent depression who had a short-term remission with nortriptyline and interpersonal therapy over a period of 16 weeks. Participants were randomly assigned to maintenance therapy with nortriptyline or placebo and to monthly maintenance psychotherapy or no psychotherapy. After three years, relapse rates were significantly lower among persons assigned to continued treatment with nortriptyline alone (43%), nortriptyline and interpersonal therapy (20%), or interpersonal therapy alone (64%) than among persons receiving placebo and no interpersonal therapy. (90%) (Taylor, 2014)
Many people who have been independent their whole lives have trouble with coming to terms with getting older. They are often afraid or ashamed to ask for help. They have trouble coming to terms with the new normal and it plays a huge role in their daily lives. Communicating to someone who may be struggling is the first step for them to figure out how to cope with their new reality.
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Depression in the Elderly. (2019, Apr 15).
Retrieved November 5, 2025 , from
https://studydriver.com/2019/04/page/11/
Symbolism in a Rose for Emily
Did you ever really understood the power of prejudices and gossip in someone's life? The short story A Rose For Emily by William Faulkner, reflects the reality of the life of a southern aristocratic woman, Emily Grierson, who is looked upon as a figure of tradition in an old-fashioned changing society that has her as a subject of criticism and gossip throughout all her life. The story transpires a series of interconnected events including death, the decay of the south, isolation and a search for love that can be shown through literally devices and a Marxist lens to reflect that there are running themes throughout the story. Death of freedom Form of control Death of south after civil after Isolation death of Faulkner utilizes foreshadowing to foretell events that will appear later in the story like the theme of death. The initial use of foreshadowing happens as the beginning of the story introduces the death of Emily Grierson, an event that also is mentioned at the end of the story. The protagonist of a story doesn't usually die at the beginning of the reading, but the author uses this technique to directly make the readers understand the importance of death as it is considered a major theme in the story and almost to prepare them for the multiple deaths later in time. Being death a central theme, it is further symbolized as the powdery dust that coats Miss Emily's house.
For instance, when the men went to Emily's house to attempt to collect her taxes, ... the Negro opened the blinds of one window, they could see that the leather was cracked; and when they sat down, a faint dust rose sluggishly about their thighs, spinning with slow motes in the single sun-ray (Faulkner, 55). Everything around her had dust, it symbolizes death, as it is unmaintained, old, falling apart, reflecting that its useful time is almost done. However, dust is not the only symbol of death in the story. Emily brings a skull and bones into her home when she buys the poison to kill Homer, her lover. This sign on the bottle of arsenic is a bit ironic. The author uses a technique of irony because it is clear to see that Homer will literally be nothing but bones and a skull when the story finishes. The story unfolds in a decaying old Southern house symbolizing a significant theme of the decay of the South which can be related to the major them of death throughout the whole story. The house hasn't been maintained or preserved. It is in fact, decaying and deteriorating. Emily's house has once been white, decorated with cupolas and spires and scrolled balconies in the heavily lightsome style of the seventies, set on what had once been our most select street. But garages and cotton gins had encroached and obliterated even the august names of that neighborhood; only Miss Emily's house was left (Faulkner, 54). (isolation) This house represents a memory from the South considering the new generations are modernizing the town and the old south is becoming the New South. The house is described as being built shortly after the Civil War but has become an eyesore among eyesores (Faulkner, 54).
Another symbol of the decay of the Old South is Emily herself. Alive, Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town (Faulkner, 55). She is a monument representing the past for the townspeople, but as time goes by, the town has new generations, and the perspective of Emily in the eyes of the townspeople also decays. People in the town then ...believed that the Griersons held themselves a little too high for what they really were(Faulkner, 57) Emily experiences an unhappy and tragic life far apart from everyone, which brings the theme of isolation in the story. Her father didn't allow her to have a love life. Her father took her away from everyone who courted her None of the young men were quite good enough for Miss Emily and such(Faulkner, 57). So when her father died, she was left alone and depressed to the point she was in denial of his death. After her father's death she went out very little; after her sweetheart went away, people hardly saw her at all (Faulkner, 56). Her house also symbolizes isolation. Emily's house was where she hid. It represented the past and the place where she was away from the people. She didn't want to belong in any way, even with the mail services. Miss Emily alone refused to let them fasten the metal numbers above her door and attach a mailbox to it. She would not listen to them (IV). She sent Tobe, her negro slave, to do any errands The Negro man went in and out with the market basket, but the front door remained closed (Faulkner, 59).
As Emily searches for love in Homer and he doesn't marry her, she kills him. Homer's skeleton is a symbol of Emily wanting to hold on to the love she had for Homer. Knowing that Homer didn't want to marry her, she killed him to keep him with her, even dead. He was found at Emily's house coated with dust by the townspeople after she passed away. In a secret room, they discovered that Emily killed him with rat poison and kept his body. ''What was left of him, rotted beneath what was left of the nightshirt, had become inextricable from the bed in which he lay; and upon him and upon the pillow beside him lay that even coating of the patient and biding dust'' (Faulkner, 61). This cruel act symbolizes the intense desire she had to have love, regardless of the horrific way she chooses to keep him close to her. She was searching for love and wanted to keep it one way or another. This brings back the feeling of being alone just like when her father died. Social class and isolation were the cause and effect built in the life of Emily Grierson. The Marxist perspective enables one to understand the social conflict in the story. William Faulkner makes a clear division in the social structure between Emily and the rest of the citizens in the town of Jefferson. Miss Emily held the image of a noble lady whose family roots and fame warranted great honor; therefore it is said that she had been a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town (Faulkner, 55).
This social difference placed on her and the town's conflicted obsession with Miss Emily was the major causes why she withdraws herself from the community. She is considered an aristocrat woman in society and is treated like one. The Marxist theory presents proof that social class influences people's interactions and assumptions about others. For instance, when Emily was in denial of her father's death, she kept her father's body inside her house. If any other person, not in such upper-social class as Emily, keeps a dead human in their house will be considered to be insane. When the people found out that Emily kept his dead father's skeleton, they said, We did not say she was crazy then. We believed she had to do that (Faulkner, 57). This reaction from the townspeople after the incident shows the different attitude they had towards Emily's abnormal act. "...It was another link between the gross, teeming world and the high and mighty Griersons" People considered the Grierson family superior and justified every action they had, whether it was right or wrong. Emily's father even though no men were good enough for his daughter due to this rigid social structure expressed by the Marxists perspective. None of the young men were quite good enough for Miss Emily and such (Faulkner, 57). The conflict arises as Emily is prevented a romantic relationship.
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Symbolism in A Rose for Emily. (2019, Apr 15).
Retrieved November 5, 2025 , from
https://studydriver.com/2019/04/page/11/
Substance Abuse and Depression
Emotions like sorrow and hopelessness are a normal part of the universal human experience. There are many cases in which young adults develop depression at a young age, and depression can come in many different forms, such as feelings/emotions and/or actions. It's normal to feel stressed or overwhelmed, but it sometimes leads people to do things that aren't right. What are the impacts of depression and what consequences does it lead to? The impact depression has on individuals is they feel hopeless and even worthless. When people go through terrible scenarios in their lives, for example, losing a loved one, they feel like they don't have a purpose in life. The signs of depression are often unnoticed, but sometimes people start noticing changes in the affected people. The signs are lack of communication, not wanting to engage with others, and not participating in daily activities. Depression also contributes to students not doing well in school and poor attendance (Counseling & Psychological Services). It's difficult for some young adults to focus on schoolwork and do well because they think they aren't capable enough. Having family problems can also lead to depression.
Divorce, drugs and alcohol, deportation, and abuse are some of the major causes of depression. Depression has many consequences, including leading to self harm. Often times self harm is referred to as a mental illness. Researchers say, individuals use methods like cutting themselves with a knife, pull hair out, and pick at wounds to prevent healing (NAMI). Another way depression leads to self harm is stated, eating disorders have the highest mortality rate of any mental illness.(ANAD). Eating disorders are categorized as self harm because, individuals are harming themselves by not giving the body the nutrients it needs in order to survive. One of the common facts that supports that is also the body image, how the person feels about themselves. Sometimes individuals will substitute meals for eating ice or simply not eat at all. Furthermore eating disorders also leads to weight loss, most of the time this means the individual is unhealthy and are trying to lose weight perilously. Depression can affect individuals way of eating, for example eating at a fast rate, eating way too much, not knowing their limit, or forced vomiting after eating. Studies say people feeling depressed abuse the alcohol and drug use to change their mood, not feel guilt, and or despair (PSYCOM).
Due to this common factor that depression leads to is also a big part of self harm. The usage of drugs can be a relief for most individuals, when dealing with depression. When depression is playing a big role in someone's life they need to find the best way out in order to not feel that way anymore. For most people the usage of drugs help them maintain the same effect constantly. Therefore the drug and alcohol addictions individuals have aren't addictions anymore, they are often mostly referred as use disorders(PSYCOM). The ultimate consequence depression has on individuals is committing suicide or having suicidal thoughts. Studies say, with an estimate that up to 60 percent of people who commit suicide have major depression. (verywellmind) Most times the affected people don't say what's going on in their life, they also many be lost in their own thoughts that may lead to overthinking serval things.
Cases that have been shown about individuals that have the mindset of suicide have shown: mood swings that are drastic, risky behaviors or aggressiveness, and deep depression that affects their daily behavior. Suicide has been the biggest type of self- harm people to do to themselves due to depression, also due to non- treatable methods. Despite being given a diagnosis of depression, it is often hard to treat and uncontrollable at times. Depression has many impacts and consequences on people's life. In addition to the impacts that depression has on individuals, the symptoms or signs can go many ways because everyone reacts differently to depression. Depression can lead to feelings of hopelessness or worthlessness, as well as drug or other substance abuse, and self harm including suicide. Although depression has many impacts and consequences, people should be able to treat it the right way and give more attention to those affected with depression.
Works Cited
"Depression." Opposing Viewpoints Online Collection, Gale, 2018. Opposing Viewpoints in Context,https://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/PC3010999281/OVIC?u=forestgr&sid=OVIC&xid=06668022.
Accessed 26 Nov. 2018. Time Management and Procrastination, caps.ucsc.edu/resources/depression.html.
NAMI. NAMI: National Alliance on Mental Illness, www.nami.org/Learn-More/Mental-Health-Conditions/Related-Conditions/Self-harm.
Eating Disorder Statistics National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders. National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders, www.anad.org/education-and-awareness/about-eating-disorders/eating-disorders-statistics/.
Substance Abuse and Depression: A Dangerous Downward-Spiral. PsyCom.net - Mental Health Treatment Resource Since 1986, www.psycom.net/depression-substance-abuse.
Holmes, Leonard. Has the Rate of Suicide in the U.S. Risen? Verywell Mind, Dotdash, www.verywellmind.com/suicide-rates-overstated-in-people-with-depression-2330503.
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Substance Abuse and Depression. (2019, Apr 15).
Retrieved November 5, 2025 , from
https://studydriver.com/2019/04/page/11/
Theory of Depression
Biopsychosocial
Michael Peters was a 50 year old Caucasian resident at the Ed Thompson Veteran's Center, a substance abuse residential rehabilitation facility for Veterans. Michael attended group sessions but didn't contribute to discussions or interact with anyone. He was very quiet and isolated a lot. Michael grew up in Bushwick, Brooklyn. He was the son of a substance abusing mother who had six children with six different men. His childhood was riddled with severe neglect and trauma. It became apparent to neighbors that Michael's mother was unable to take care of the kids, so Michael and two of his siblings were taken in by a friend of the family. He was a single man living alone and he was a father to Michael, the only stable figure in his life. He died when Michael was twelve years old. Michael was forced to go back to living with his mother, and that's when the abuse happened. A man in the neighborhood sexually abused Michael for three years; he would take him to a bar first and get him drunk. In treatment, without the use of alcohol to numb emotional pain, Michael was experiencing intense feelings of guilt and self-criticism. He was very self-critical of things he had done in the past: He was involved in a relationship which produced a child. He abandoned his son out of fear that he would do the same thing to his son that was done to him; that he would touch him the same way that he was touched.
At the age of 19 Michael joined the military in search of a better life. He watched a man collapse and die in basic training. He snapped and was discharged without any grief counseling. After that his drinking and drug use escalated. Michael was married for thirteen years and raised three children. Although at the present he is estranged from his family. His drinking caused him to spiral downward; he was sleeping on friends couches, essentially homeless. He knew he couldn't go on this way and came for treatment.
It was not easy to engage Michael in therapy at first. His tendency to isolate all his life makes him uncomfortable talking to people one “on- one. His low self-esteem and sense of inferiority were magnified by his perception of me being in a higher socio-economic class than him and being more educated. Michael grew up in poverty and had no educational aspirations. The neighborhood in Brooklyn where he lived did not espouse values of education and goal achievement. His mother was not a good role model for him. This added to his fear and anxiety at the beginning of our relationship.
In actuality, we are all very similar. In my own life journey I have also experienced verbal and emotional abuse by my father. In my search for ways of healing I was very fortunate to have found a talented therapist who practiced psychodynamic psychotherapy. He helped me access my anger and express it in a productive way. I was enraged when I realized as an adult, how crazy my father was, and that I had believed everything that he said about me as a child. I had to work so much harder than most people to be a functioning human being in life. This anger was an integral part in my healing trajectory, it helped me find my voice and reclaim my personhood. I have also learned to allow and encourage my kids to express their anger towards me, and not suppress it. The open communication and expression of anger has helped in our relationship.
I was interested in exploring the anger turned inward hypothesis of the psychodynamic theory of depression (Freud 1917). I wanted to find out if this theory has ever been empirically studied and tested. Does unresolved anger really cause depression? Anger has always been looked at as a negative symptom; I wanted to learn how unconscious anger can be surfaced and used constructively as a tool in the healing process of child sexual abuse (CSA) survivors.
Proof of Theory
Scott and Day (1996), studied abuse-related symptoms in survivors of childhood sexual trauma and they found that anger is one of the most prevalent emotional after-effects of childhood sexual abuse. Not surprisingly, Murphy et al. (1988) found that survivors of CSA had substantially more problems dealing with anger than non-abused controls. Interestingly, they also discovered that the correlation of CSA in women with re-victimization was directly mediated by self-blame. This shows that victimized women believe that they do not deserve to be in a loving relationship.
Other studies that I came across tested whether anger directed towards the self is connected with depression: Brody et al. (1999) found more suppressed anger and hostility in individuals recovering from depression than in healthy controls, accompanied by a fear that expressing anger would destroy relationships. Becker & Lesiak (1977) found that the severity of depression directly correlated with repressed anger, guilt, irritability and suspicion in clinic outpatients, but not with outwardly expressed anger. And finally, Kiefer and Wolfersdorf (1998) found that, compared with healthy controls, depressed in-patients had higher levels of inhibited aggression and repressed anger and hostility, but did not express aggression.
Besides depression, repressed anger has also been associated with eating disorders, substance abuse, sleep disorders, anxiety, physical problems such as ulcers, the jaw joint disease and suicide (Blume, 1990). Michael has been suffering from deep and unbearable pain his entire life since the CSA. He told me that he attempted suicide several times in his life, once he tried to hang himself, and the belt snapped. He used alcohol to self-medicate, but it comes with many other problems. Researchers who studied anger experience and symptom formation have also identified extreme guilt and self- tormenting behavior as indicators of repressed anger (Blume, 1990). Michael feels very guilty about abandoning his son and has been tormenting himself his whole life. He has a very low self-esteem. I once asked him, What would you do to this man who abused you if you could find him today? He responded: I would kill him, because I know that he did it to other kids too. For these reasons, I believe Michael would benefit from exploring his repressed anger, reattributing it to the perpetrator and advancing personal growth and power.
Psychoanalytic Model of Depression
Since the beginning of psychoanalytic theorizing, many theorists believed that anger plays a big role in depression (Busch, 2009). I will mention a few of the important theories. The first to contemplate depression as self-directed anger was Karl Abraham (1911). He noticed that depressed patients had a predisposition towards hatred based on their temperament or early life experience. He believed that this excessive anger triggers guilt and anxiety, becomes repressed and projected onto others. As a result, the patient believes that people hate them and they are inferior, which in turn lowers their self-esteem and leads to depression. Subsequently, in 1924, Abraham added to this theory that individuals with depression endure anger and low self-esteem as a result of a traumatic rejection either in childhood or later in life (Busch, 2009). In Freud's (1917) perspective, depression comes from a fantasized or real loss of a person for whom the patient has ambivalent feelings. The patient internalizes an aspect of that person in order to deal with the loss. As a result, the anger directed at that person now becomes directed at the self, identified with that individual. This leads to self-criticism and depression (Busch, 2009).
More recently, Dr. Frederick Busch, a Professor at Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research (Busch et al, 2016) together with Dr. Mary Rudden (Rudden et al, 2003) developed their own psychodynamic model of depression based on theory, research and their clinical experience. They posit that individuals who are prone to depression are very sensitive to rejection or loss; called Narcissistic Vulnerability. This sensitivity develops early in life when a child experiences rejection, disappointment and powerlessness by parents or caregivers, which they perceive as proof of inferiority, unlovability and damage. This sensitivity becomes an integral part of their personality and identity as they grow up, shaping their psychological functioning. All failures, rejections or losses in life are viewed as additional proof of inferiority and damage. Besides feelings of unlovability and inferiority in childhood, rejection and disappointment trigger angry feelings at the perpetrator of these painful experiences. In turn, this anger triggers guilt and activates defense mechanisms intended to shield the needed adult. That is how the anger becomes self-directed, further lowering self-esteem. This completes a full circle of Narcissistic Vulnerability and anger.
The second layer to this theory is another vicious cycle, in which low self-esteem causes a person to compensate for their perceived defects by idealization of the self and others. We idealize our parents and find excuses for their shortcomings. However, these idealized expectations always lead to disappointments and devaluation of the self which further lowers self-esteem.
Defense Mechanisms in Depression
Depressed individuals attempt to manage anger unconsciously and protect the people they care about from angry feelings and fantasies by employing defense mechanisms. However, these defense mechanisms backfire and often exacerbate depression. Defense mechanisms associated with depression are: denial, passive aggression, displacement, reaction formation, projection and identification (Bloch, 1993).
Denial keeps anger and hostility out of consciousness. This intensifies depression because anger becomes directed towards the self and is not used effectively to solve relationship problems. In projection, anger directed at others is denied and reversed as if the anger is being expressed by others directed towards the self. This leads to increased rejection and further lowering in self-esteem. In passive aggression, anger is expressed indirectly by avoiding doing what is expected by others. This causes others to become angry at the individual and worsens relationship problems. In reaction formation, anger is denied and replaced by over-compliance and attempts to help others. However, intrapsychic and interpersonal problems underlying the anger remain unaddressed and this fuels the rage even more. In identification, the person identifies and takes on the image of their abuser or aggressor who has made them feel disempowered. This is why some kids who were abused grow up to be abusers. It gives them feelings of power and being in control but it also makes them feel guilty. Sometimes anger can also be externalized through displacement, usually at subordinates like children. It's easy to yell at children or physically punish them but they become hostile to the parent (Bush, 2016).
Adding to all of this is dissociation. Dissociation is a defense mechanism employed by victims of trauma and sexual abuse, to protect them from the psychological effects of trauma. It unconsciously changes the cognitive framework of a person's reality (Braun, 1998).
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Theory of Depression. (2019, Apr 15).
Retrieved November 5, 2025 , from
https://studydriver.com/2019/04/page/11/
Depression Among African American Youth: a Phenomenological Study
Results
The investigation examination brought about the development of five superordinate subjects that identifies with the encounters of African American adolescents. Every youth involvement of living with sorrow was extraordinary yet related to the other youths’ encounters of living with depression. Then five subjects that framed the substance of the youths’ experience of living with discouragement are, (a) the profundity of sadness, (b) life occasions and encounters as root base, (c) the passionate feeling of self, (d) the survival self, and € the mending of self.
It is vital to take note of that in phenomenological mental examination, the objective is to create subject explanations that mearly catch the mental structures of the experience being researched (Giori 2009, p. 145). Consequently, all the invariant mental structures are considered of equivalent significance what’s more, none is held as increasingly critical. Different subjective investigation, for example, topical examination (Braun and Clark 2006), do appraise the relative importance by count of frequency and predominance, for instance – of person subjects, yet phenomenological examination does not goes for the center structures of the survived subjective/full of felling encounter, no topic or structure is viewed as essential to others. Along these lines, the lead analyst built up the mental portrayals of the center structures and the second analyst audited the information to validate or investigate them. In that way, the last arrangement of super-ordinate subjects (center structures) was created. Theme 1: The Dept of depression: In their endeavor to unmistakably portray the profundity of their encounters with living with gloom, the young people utilized analogies and other enlightening dialect.
For instance, being discouraged is “by and large dead while still alive. “It is described by both passionate and substantial torments. Living with discouragement resembles a “ storm,.” Like “lightning,” like a “streak” (how quick mind-set changes), like “thunder” (cerebral pains). Being discouraged resembles being n the “dull.” It resembles a “sexual transmitted illness (STD) inked to the heart.” The emotions resemble a “clicking bomb” (outrage), a “rollercoaster,” and a “gorilla,” “(seethe), a heart tearing separated,” a “heart not thumping” (dead), a “heart broken,” “ the breeze smacking you,” and “rain” (cring), It is falling into a “down stage” (misery), like a “shoot feeling,” what’s more, being “driven with a engine” (eager). It is “losing self,” and “vitality engrossing” (exhaustion). Being discouraged is being “imperceptible,” “eradicated,” and “assumed control” (crushed). It is being “caught” (no departure). It resembles a “hover” (back what’s more, forward), like being “mixed up in an air pocket” (extraordinary torment). Having an inclination that having drops of torments in one’s body, feelings, and considerations. The young mentioned that there are times of “cheerful” sentiments when despondency is under control. Be that as it may, there is hesitance to encounter “cheerful” affections inspired by a paranoid fear of the “ torment” returning. For the discouraged, to have “upbeat” sentiments powers the acknowledgment of the negative impacts that sadness has or has no one’s life. The acknowledgment drives a look for the importance of one’s misery and for approaches to endure and men.
Theme 2: Life Events and Experiences as Root Base: This topic set up the root base for the rise of the members' enthusiastic stagnation and critical occasions that they saw reasons for their sorrow beginning and degree of their enthusiastic battles. The young people revealed that negative life occasions and encounters regularly prompted the ''kick off'' of their miseries. Depression is inescapable following life occasions and encounters that appear to be especially troublesome, undermining, upsetting, and unmanageable. Depression is frequently situated in the spots of individuals' lives. Remarks made by the youths mirrored that they experienced negative life occasions with regards to the home, school, and network condition that brought about them feeling discouraged. The view of the dimension of worry in the conditions can influence the level of depression. Upsetting home life and encounters elevate the young people's enthusiastic troubles, causing their wretchedness. Their trouble with despondency winds up further when other individuals from the family are experiencing despondency.
A individual battle to grapple with losing critical connections through passings, division, and successive moves additionally develops one's melancholy. Expanded family clashes and analysis, paying little heed to hearing position remarks from others, cause one's sentiments of uselessness, insufficiency, and, eventually, enthusiastic stagnations. Relational connections wind up compromising and requesting and family bolster is dubious. There is a misfortune of trust and a feeling of being detached to others at home. here is additionally an expanded need to offer help to other people to the detriment of oneself, which prompts passionate parentification.
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Depression Among African American Youth: A Phenomenological Study. (2019, Apr 15).
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A Serious Threat of Water Pollution
Water is the most vital element among the natural resources and is critical for the survival of all living organisms including human, food production, and economic development (Raymond, 2016). Today there are many cities in the state of South Carolina that are dealing with polluted water. Water pollution is a serious threat to the well-being of the people and the communities they live in. It doesn't matter what size body of water, all bodies can in some shape be polluted. Over the past three years, South Carolina had to endure hurricanes that produced heavy rainfall and flooding. This paper will discuss a pollution issue that happened, what I would envision as a solution, what am I doing to find a solution to the problem, and if there are any obstacles or resistance to resolving the issue.
The Sociology of Disasters describes the phrase natural disaster as whenever you have experienced an earthquake, flood, hurricane or a storm (Bell, 2016). Something that is out of your control. A natural disaster happens when the climate changes. South Carolina had to endure at least three natural disasters or an Acts of God this year alone mostly because of hurricanes that produced a substantial amount of rainfall. This brought about flooding to different parts of the state. The issue that I will be discussing will be in a nearby city of Conway, South Carolina where a sewage plant which handles about 4 million gallons of sewage a day flooded releasing millions of gallons of raw material in the Waccamaw River. The treatment plant was down for 24 hours before they got it up and running. The Paradigm Shift states that we are more aware now of how industrial material can affect the environment (Bell, 2016). Utility officials and South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control are not sure on the amount of material that was released without being treated.
The town suffered a great deal when hurricane Florence made landfall on the South Carolina coast leaving behind a substantial amount of rainfall. Flooding was the big problem that the residents had to de
al with. The flooding was so bad that had to be warned not to go into the water because of the bacteria, and industrial pollution. DHEC expected the water to be contaminated, but because of the flooding, they had to wait until the water receded. Once the water receded DHEC would run a test to see exactly how much damage was done, and what was going to be needed to help make the water safe again. Many people have never experienced a day that they couldn't drink water or walk outside your home not knowing what in the water, but when you least expected, it happens.
If I had to envision a solution to the problem, it would first to become a part of an organization such as the Environmental Justice Movement to show that I am concern about pollution in our neighborhoods. Then I would make suggestions on buildings better buildings so that they would be able to withstand flooding. Work with engineers to come up with some ideas on building that could be built above flood level. If global climate change is what's causing these acts of god, to take place, then we need to take positive action now to slow the pace of climate change and reduce further global warming. Changing our lifestyle and our behaviors will help reduce the human impact on the environment (Negin, 2018). By reducing your personal contribution to global warming and set an example for others by using less gasoline, natural gas, oil, and electricity (especially electricity generated from coal-fired power plants) in your daily life (Negin, 2018). Renewables energy is another way I think to help with the solution, because if the climate remains stable then we wouldn't have flooding and hurricanes.
I was not a part of helping with a solution to the issue, but by participatory governance, this would allow everyone to help with a solution because you would have citizens and the government working together to make a difference. We must make ourselves aware of what's going on with the environment and not leave it all to the government.
I feel with everyone working together to help with changing the way we do things, then everyone can come together and help the town of Conway restore itself to what it was before hurricane Florence made it devastating impact.
There was resistance in resolving the issue, A flood mitigation canal plan was presented to lawmakers over 10 years ago but was turned down because of cost. Public records show some officials feared the project would cause severe irreversible harm to wetlands, and they also worried the canal would give residents in low-lying areas a false sense of security (Perry, 2018).
The only obstacles in resolving the issue were because of so much flooding volunteers had to wait a week until the water receded before they could start the cleanup. Different state agencies were able to make sure that the contamination was gone, and it was safe for people to go into the water. Several tests had to be run to make sure that all the water was safe.
In conclusion, we all know how critical water is to each of us. Water pollution is a serious threat to the well-being of people and the communities they live in. If you have never given it some thought, now is a good time to think about how natural disasters affect the water in which we use as a major survival tool. By changing our lifestyles and becoming a part of an ecological society then we will become more concern with our environment. The Waccamaw River in Horry County still have a way to go but they are pulling together and making it happen. The government will continue to do what is needed to make the water is cleaned. This will continue to happen if the global climate change continues. Natural disasters are something that we cannot control but we can work on making our environment better. We must work harder in making our environment a better place to live, but first everyone in our communities must commit themselves to make changes.
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Problems of Pollution: Water Pollution
Our names are Heroes of the Sea. We chose that name because our group wants to educate individuals about how the ocean is being polluted. We thought of our favorite superheroes and of course, they are not real but we looked at the impact they made when it came to saving lives. Although we are not flying mutants with superpowers, we still feel like we have a mission, and that mission was to save as many people as possible by fighting against pollution. We did not want to have an acronym like everyone else or come up with a standard boring name so we came up with Heroes of the Sea. We wanted something that would attract people and something that carried a meaning behind it. We made our name easy to remember just in case someone tries to contact us or need us to help with something because we do not want to miss out on anything important because someone forgot our name.
Our logo depicts what could be a beautiful island dying because of pollution. In the middle, we have a water droplet wearing a cape and mask around his eyes to symbolize the group being all heroes. Since we are dealing with water pollution, the ocean is black because we wanted to exaggerate what pollution is doing to our oceans. Although mostly everything is dying, we wanted to keep a small amount of the island healthy because we wanted to show a community rapidly dying. Also, we wanted the logo to show to people that pollution is taking over our Earth and we need to do something about it. We chose to design an ugly logo on purpose because we wanted to represent how ugly our world looks. Our message to the community is to inform everyone how bad pollution makes our Earth look because some hear about pollution but might not know how much damage it can lead to.
Our group is concerned about water pollution. My group and I are concerned because water pollution not only affects our oceans but it can also affect our environment. It can have significant damage to our environment because beaches are now finding dead dolphins, whales, crabs, etc. because of so many pollutants in the ocean have now killed a percentage of valuable food. According to Effects of Water Pollution, many water bodies near urban areas (cities and towns) are highly polluted. This is the result of both garbage dumped by individuals and dangerous chemicals legally or illegally dumped by manufacturing industries, health centers, schools, and marketplaces. In addition, humans might not be killing marine life directly but slowly by polluting their homes and food like other fishes.
Humans do not know but we are slowly killing ourselves. We are the reason why so many people are diagnosed with cancer, Jaundice, Malaria, and so many more. The chemicals that are thrown into the ocean are sometimes not filtered properly and we are the ones who consume it that carry pesticides in it. In addition, from a The World Counts article, currently, 3,429,553,980 people and counting are currently without access to water most being dragged into the problem because of pollution(The World Counts 1). Pollutants are now affecting our environment and still, people have not done anything about it. That is why the Heroes of the Sea was organized to help envision people's life without pollution and how much difference we can make. Every day that number will keep rising unless we do something about it to help support people who do not have access to water.
Water pollution is slowly taking a toll on not only our environment but humans. For years piled on years, humans have been purposefully been dumping toxic waste into our oceans. Or we would often time let the toxic chemicals flow directly to streams and nearby rivers harming humans who go near it or fishes who will get caught up in the stream. If humans are exposed to these toxic chemicals for long periods of time, then this can result in dangerous health problems, which include hormonal issues, reproductive issues, and damage to our nervous systems and kidneys(Andrew Dilevics 1). Now the problem of pollution has grown and yet no one is concerned about it. Water pollution is a growing issue that is now attacking our slowly
Plastic pollution is important because it is a big issue for us and animals. By swimming in places in the ocean can risk to diseases or illnesses. Although it is rare some bacteria exposure is deadly. According to Health Threats from Polluted Coastal Waters, there's an 86% higher risk of developing any symptoms of illness. This is a problem that we are trying to address everyone. There are problems in the ocean such as chemical spills, plastic, fishnets, etc. This pollution is harming us in many ways because it is killing us slowly by all these chemicals and plastic in the ocean.
We all eat fish or anything that is seafood. We ingest whatever they ate before we ate them. Many of these fish or any sort of seafood have eaten plastic or medication in the ocean. By doing so, it can affect and cause us to side effects from whatever they ate. For example, if the animals have eaten birth control then their symptoms can affect the fish from reproducing and can affect men and women. By men having his breasts possibly getting larger, his testicles might shrink, and his sex drive and amount of facial hair might decrease. And if women digest it and plan on getting pregnant then it would be harder to and can result in acne and excessive hair growth. This is an issue that must be addressed because it is affecting us internally and can cause us to get very sick.
Our solution to protecting our environment is to get the community involved. If we can host public events and get the community involved, we can spread the word about the dangers of pollution. The more we get the word out more people will get concerned and try to help without our assistance. We cannot always rely on the community so the Heroes of the Sea will try our hardest to get in contact with organizations to help us solve the issue we are currently struggling with. Our website is also a big tool to help us out so people can be informed about the danger that pollution is doing to our environment. We will have more information about our goal that we are trying to accomplish. We cannot fight this alone so if we come together we will be able to protect our environment.
We are also thinking to talk about other organizations to reduce plastic with a carton. For example, there is any more plastic bags in grocery stores but paper and we can do that to anything that is plastic but with a carton. It is easier to be recycled and reused. It is a step towards reducing plastic in the sea. One of our other ideas that we came up with is also to encourage adults to go to their nearest disposable bin that accepts unused medicine because the typical person with unused medication would flush it away and it could make its way to our oceans, eaten by the fishes, and if we eat those fishes then the drugs would be recycled back to us. Before we start to convince adults to start using disposable bins, we need to make sure every community has plenty so no one will be left to throw them away. Cities like CVS and Walgreens. Also by giving fire departments unused medicine that we don't use anymore so we dump it in the toilet or someplace else. The fire departments will use them by helping others, etc.
We plan to spread the word about pollution to communities through social media and pass out pamphlets explaining the effects it has on the ocean and land. We plan to reach out to other organizations to help us with our cause. In order to get people to do something about pollution, we will have to show them statistics and pictures of what our land-ocean is becoming due to pollution. We have to convince them that is a very serious problem. Only then will people take action. As a community, we can also use disposal bins, for unused medicine, recycle at home and schools, be creative with trash, throw trash away in proper containers, and purchase reusable water bottles and coffee mugs.
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Importance of Environmental Education
Besides, environment education is one of the most effective ways in combat with the existing water pollution problems. According to Karata A. and Karata E.(2015), environmental education is the process of recognizing values and clarifying concepts in developing one's attitudes to comprehend his or her interrelatedness between human beings and biophysical circumstances, that is, aim to developing the human in the world to be alert and pay attention to the environmental issues and which can work systematically to solve the existing problems and provide precautions to the predicted one by having knowledges, skills, attitudes, motivation and commitment. It is important to educate the people about the impacts if the water on earth is being polluted and there will be a serious issue when the rate of purification activities such as raining process is exceeded by the rate of pollution of the water.
A research carried in Rasht City of Guilan Province by Noorhosseini, Allahyari, Damalas and Moghaddam (2017) showed that overall, 62.7% of the residents had moderate, 20% had high, and 4% had very high environmental awareness which means that the available environmental education is insufficient for the world citizens. Thus, it is essential for the group to participate in the environmental education to instil the civilian of the understanding about the water pollution to create a barrier for the clean water sources from being polluted in every country.
The groups should contribute the relevant information in biology, chemistry, geology and hydrology for the individuals and groups to better analyze the pollution by critical thinking. For examples, the students in university is going to take the subjects pertinent with the environment conservation such as wastewater treatment and recycling methods, the farmers have to possess a good attitude in fertilizing biologically as excessive use of chemical fertilizer may cause negative consequences (Karatas A. and Karatas E.,2015). Parents have to know about the jeopardies of excessive consumption and children will follow their parent's lead to reduce the family consumption of water. Moreover, instructional slideshows, films, presentations, and posters that emphasize the important of conversation of environment ought to be use.
These meaningful educations are focusing to help people develop knowledge and ability to overcome water pollution. In this sense, awareness and vigilance should be targeted for every people no matter old or young with environment education. At this point, local governments have the duty and responsibility for the preservation of water pollution as they are the primary organizations. All the other level of education organizations, NGOs, private and public institutions should work together to build a social neighborhood with strong environmental alertness to reduce the water pollution level. Precaution and conscious provide our future assurance and the perseverance of human being (Karatas A. and Karatas E.,2015).
Beside from water pollution, critical solution can also be developed for other types of environment issues with environmental education as the environmental education purpose to bring the people's attitudes towards the environment to a positive direction. So, this will rise people's alertness and environmental amicably people able to produce radical solution to overcome any kind of environmental problems. Here, environmental education is extremely important for water pollution as it helps people to apply good attitudes when dealing with the issues. Critical thinking, effective determination and decision-making skill can be enhanced by such educations. Hence, to reduce the water pollution level in Earth, environmental education will always be the primarily method as it can provides long-term solutions.
In water, there are many different kinds of chemical substances are considered as pollutants including inorganic ions and complex organic molecules hence these pollutants can be categorised into various classes and each class of these pollutant has its own particular hazards (Sharma, Gulati, Puri,2014). In organic water pollutants, crude oil and various petroleum products may cause severe harmful effect to the aquatic life. There are also chlorinated solvents which are quite persistent and toxic that cannot be seen by naked eye and other organic solvents like ethanol, methyl ketone and acetone that are mostly produce by commercial industries every day. In addition, food processing by-product including fats and grease can pollute the water too.
Large amount of chemical usage including pesticides, insecticides and herbicides in agricultural activities are typically an example of pollutants in water. Whereas the inorganic pollutants are metal and inorganic fertilizers. The metal and their compounds increase health hazards as the organometallic compounds poisoning the water and the health risk is higher. Some of the inorganic pollutants are not poisonous but are still a menace if they are used excessively such as nitrates and phosphates will cause the bloom of algae in surface water which decrease the oxygen level in the water and eventually the aquatic creatures are unable to live on. This phenomenon is termed as eutrophication.
The traditional technologies for water treatment including coagulation-flocculation, filtration and disinfection which deal with the influent water source consist of just naturally existing biological and chemical substances. However, increasing of difficulty in treatment of drinking water in recent years is due to the consequences of urbanization and industrialization which cause the discharge of various kind of toxic chemicals into natural water source. The existence of disinfection-resistant pathogens is a threat in the water treatment since disinfection is the last line of protection in water treatment.
Especially in urbanized nation, it is imperative to improve the technologies for the water treatment plants to hold the requirement for the elimination of complex chemical compound, preserve the drinking water resources from being attack by the pathogen agents. Green chemistry solutions provide the prevention of water pollution in a technically sound and cost-effective way in advance research and development and accomplishment of innovative water treatment technologies (Sharma, Gulati, Puri,2014). The green methodologies tend to process efficiency and consistency, better investment and operation cost savings and less rely on chemicals that results in a environment friendly water treatment.
These improvements will give better quality of treated water and a high degree of persistency by recycling and reuse of the chemicals, waste minimization and less use of energy. Coagulation is one of the process in water treatment that destabilize and aggregate the smaller particles into larger complex compounds. Water waste like colloids, heavy metal and ions are held by electrical charges can be destabilized and aggregated to be separated from the wastewater. Coagulation can be achieved by chemically and electrically. Electrocoagulation introduces an electrical current into an aqueous solution basically with an aluminium and iron anode.
Aluminium is generally the best material in electrocoagulation as it provides trivalent cations and mostly usable in any types of wastewater treatment applications. According to a experiment carried out by Lech, Teresa, Boguslaw, and Marta (2012), electrocoagulation is able to seize more than 99% of various heavy metal cations and capable for microorganism removal from the water. Electrocoagulation provides many advantages such as no addition of coagulation chemicals, low cost in operation compared with traditional water treatment system, much less of sludge production and easy to maintain. Thus, it presents a environment friendly and effectively way for sustainable water reuse.
Traditional coagulation involves the use of chemical coagulant like aluminium and iron salt may produce large volume of sludge with high bound water content which can be hard to be removed and separated. In addition, they are limited to eliminate turbidity and only a portion of natural organic matters (NOM). In this case, enhanced coagulation method is introduced in recent years to remove the disinfection by products that come from the natural organic matter and also eliminates inorganics, small particles and colour causing compounds. In water treatment plant, chemical coagulants is the main arm in removing organic substances and improving the effectiveness of this enhanced coagulation.
Generally, it is an optimized coagulation process with long-practiced techniques to deal with the NOM removal. Several studies and research have been conducted on the low basicity, highly charged polymeric aluminium and ferric salts like polymeric sulphate and polyaluminoferric sulphate.
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Water Pollution in China
River Pollution in China
As humans continue to evolve and technology continues to advance, ecological devastation and climate change have begun to plague planet Earth. A mixture of overindulgence and large discounts addressed to the future have pushed civilization to a place of hostility. Science and fact is no longer the driving force behind environmental decision making, rather economic dividends and the endless journey to financial freedom seemingly determine the health and expiration date of the resource-rich rock we call home. Environmental damage and the ensuing attempts to mitigate that damage is a headline that can be found anywhere around the world in 2018. Degradation of climate is not local to one specific source, rather it is a fast spreading doomsday narrative that people with general awareness for human life have heard about- and even most have begun efforts to stop. With so many climate issues around the world, each with unique causes and effects, it would be near impossible to create a dialogue for all of them at once. For this reason, what follows will be focused on pollution and the effects from pollution on the ever expansive river system of China.
The country of China is the largest in the world by population, at roughly 1.4 billion people-Add in China's relatively large exponential growth function and we are left with a part of the Earth primed for over-population and mass amounts of pollution. Environmental issues are not local to China, the entire globe is dealing with years of environmental neglect, now attempting to solve a problem that might be too large answer. Worldwide pollution awareness has been on the constant rise, yet it seems that in some situations pollution is getting worse. Prof. Webber from the University of Melbourne explains that In China, decades of high economic growth driven by rapid industrialisation were fuelled by a single-minded orientation to development, even at the expense of water quality (2).
A combination of cheap labor and an extremely large labor force makes China a popular country for outsourcing manufacturing. As Prof. Webber alludes to above, China was more than willing to act as a ?pollutant receptacle' if the economic climate was able to be capitalized on. Because we carried out this carelessness for an extended period of time, the road eventually led to what we see in present day China. A country living in excess. Excess in population, excess in waste, and excess in pollution all combine to leave China severely affected. The beautiful natural system of water that flows through the country is undergoing immense change due to this excess. Chinese surface water has gone from contaminated and drinkable, to useless in many parts of China; and is continuing to regress to harmful and hazardous as time passes and pollution levels rise. This devastation is not for lack of policy nor technological advances, which well be discussed at length later, but for attempts at correcting behavior coming much to late.
Chinese water pollution is raging past environmental disrespect into a territory of harming life in China. Water pollution is not regional in China, it is an obstacle to human life all across the country. According to research compiled in a Environmental Pollution textbook, out of 208,000 km of monitored river reaches in China, water quality in 31.4% reaches falls into class IV or worse, and thus is unfit for potable use or human contact( Han, currel Cao, 1225). Essentially, one third of all fresh-water sources in China are not cleared for human contact. A third of the water being polluted is not as hard to fix if the remaining two thirds of water can help sustain life. However, as noted in the above study, another 14.9% of river reaches is inferior to class V, indicating complete loss of potential for all consumptive uses or human contact( Han, currel Cao, 1225). Combining all these statistics we see that almost half the fresh river water is damaged beyond human or animal use.
Pollution levels in China are at an all time high. These levels are not necessarily slowing down and many parts of the country are being accelerated for varying reasons. River pollution is now reaching levels that are having alarming effects on the humans in need of this simple resource. Because of these problems arising, China has made Water records in their country more accessible. As reported by the IPE, a non-profit environmental research group based in Beijing, and a non-profit project by Jeffrey Hays An estimated 980 million of China's 1.3 billion people drink water every day that is partly polluted(Hays, 6). According to this incredible data from the IPE and summed up by Jeffrey, nearly 86 percent of people in China are drinking contaminated water every single day. Images of black-sludgy water and dead fish lining the top of rivers and lakes are normal sights for a large majority of China's population. Access to clean water in rural China is becoming more difficult to attain leaving people with no choice but to consume the highly polluted water.
Policy regarding the river water pollution of China has been rigorously thought through. Finding an optimal remedy for China is not as easy as it would be for other countries. China's large and widespread population makes policy hard to get right and we can see that in some of China's past and current attempts at tackling water pollution.
Bibliograhpy
- Data Services, wwwen.ipe.org.cn/about/DataServices.aspx.
- China Says Progress Made on Water Pollution, but Battle Remains. South China Morning Post, 1 June 2018, www.scmp.com/news/china/policies-politics/article/2148779/china-says-progress-made-water-pollution-battle-remains.
- Currell, Matthew J, and Guoliang Cao. Environmental Pollution. Environmental Pollution, by Dongmei Han, vol. 218, 2016, pp. 1222“1235.
- Hays, Jeffrey. WATER POLLUTION IN CHINA. Facts and Details, 1 Apr. 2014, factsanddetails.com/china/cat10/sub66/item391.html.
- Tingting, Deng, and Toxics campaigner at Greenpeace East Asia. In China, the Water You Drink Is as Dangerous as the Air You Breathe | Deng Tingting. The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 2 June 2017, www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2017/jun/02/china-water-dangerous-pollution-greenpeace.
- Webber, Michael. Tackling China's Water Pollution. Global Water Forum, 17 Oct. 2017, www.globalwaterforum.org/2017/10/09/tackling-chinas-water-pollution/.
CHINESE RIVER WATER POLLUTION
- https://www.globalwaterforum.org/2017/10/09/tackling-chinas-water-pollution/
- https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2017/jun/02/china-water-dangerous-pollution-greenpeace
- https://www.scmp.com/news/china/policies-politics/article/2148779/china-says-progress-made-water-pollution-battle-remains
- https://ac.els-cdn.com/S0269749116310363/1-s2.0-S0269749116310363-main.pdf?_tid=49ce6f18-6a23-4c38-a0ae-a7e63b07da6d&acdnat=1540918735_6dd80222adeb3a1ae3d8e222ac5bab82
- https://wwwen.ipe.org.cn/about/DataServices.aspx
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Groundwater Pollution
Despite being one of the most prominent issues in our world, water pollution is commonly overlooked in our society, particularly groundwater pollution. Even environmental activists can have very little knowledge on how impactful this problem really is, but the fact remains that groundwater pollution is a terrifying reality lurking just beneath our feet. By ignoring this issue, multiple societies hace allowed themselves to pump the pure groundwater full of nitrates and other harmful chemicals. Payal Sampat, a senior researcher at World Watch Institute, puts it best by saying:
Numerous studies have tracked the extent to which our increasing demand on water has made it a resource critical to a degree that even gold and oil have never been. It's the most valuable thing on Earth. Yet, ironically, it's the thing most consistently overlooked, and most widely used as a final resting place for our waste. And, of course, as contamination spreads, the supplies of usable water get tighter still (Payal).
The biggest questions people have when approaching the topic of groundwater pollution are Why does this matter? and Is it really that bad? These questions can be best answered by the Weldon Springs incident from 1980s. In the 1940s, soldiers would clean off nitrates from TNT in the fields of Weldon. Years later in the 1980s, it was found that nitrates were bubbling up in springs branching out miles away from the site, and was relatively undrinkable due to this. After knowing of this incident and the many others like it, it becomes much easier for people to accept that groundwater pollution is something that should be researched properly.
In order to properly delve into the topic, it must first be discussed exactly where the groundwater contaminates come from and how they affect the environment. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the top contaminate in groundwater pollution is sewage. It is easy for people to pass over this factor because it is out of our sight. However, sewage systems often are cracked and allow harmful pollutants to mix with the clean groundwater. Jim Davis, a contaminants taxologist who does research for MarineBio, has looked into this topic. He found that a good portion of sanitation plants do not put the water through a filter thorough enough to remove all of the waste and chemicals before it reaches the environment. Davis quotes, According to the EPA, 40 percent of all waterways in the US do not meet national water quality standards, due in large part, to leaking sewer systems (Davis).
Another one of the biggest contributors are nitrates. This is because nitrates are elements in many other harmful pollutants such as pesticides and fertilizers. In addition to this, home purification systems do not work to filter out nitrates, and even boiling the water increases their affect. The EPA marks it mostly harmless so long as it is 10mg/L in drinking water, but higher rates have been known to harm infants under six months. Some interesting research comes from S.M. Rhind's academic journal "Effects of environmental pollutants on the reproduction and welfare of ruminants". In this journal, Rhind looks into the health risks that come from groundwater pollution. Nitrates that find their way into the earth from pesticides, sewage leaks, and toxic metals, have often been speculated to affect the reproduction system in animals. Rhind proved this theory somewhat true with his experiments on ruminants, or sheep. The nitrates attack the endocrine system, which does play a part in reproduction. However, his experiment also included sewer sludge in the diet of the sheep, and Rhind stresses the need for further, more detailed experiments in the future. He quotes, In these studies, the concentrations of chemicals to which animals were exposed, and the specific mixture of chemicals involved, were not comprehensively defined because this would have been logistically impossible (Rhind).
Toxic metals such a lead and barium also play a large role in groundwater pollution. Many of these metals are natural, and in fact healthy to drink, but others can provide serious health risks. Paul Tchnounwou, a researcher for the National Center for Biotechnology Information, NCBI, gives just a few examples of the effects of extended exposure to these toxic metals when he quotes, These metals are systemic toxicants known to induce adverse health effects in humans, including cardiovascular diseases, developmental abnormalities, neurologic and neurobehavioral disorders, diabetes, hearing loss, hematologic and immunologic disorders, and various types of cancer (Tchounwou). Unlike nitrates, toxic metals can be filtered out of water, but it can be expensive and often more beneficial to connect to another source of water.
Among these pollutants lies another man-made threat to the quality of groundwater, the depletion of natural aquifers. Aquifers are deposits underground where large bodies of groundwater are stored. With the growing population of humans, society has recently begun to well up this underground water as opposed to only drinking surface water. However, this habit has made groundwater pollution even more prominent in our society. Payal quotes, Unlike rivers, which flush themselves into the oceans, aquifers become sinks for pollutants, decade after decade-thus further diminishing the amount of clean water they can yield for human use (Sampat). After depleting an aquifer in Ludhiana, India, the groundwater became so polluted that the well water was undrinkable. It can take an estimated 1,400 years before it may return to normal.
A final question to be asked is How do we fix this issue? It seems as though the first place to start is in the sewage systems and septic tanks. The government funding for these things is severely under what it should be, and in turn results in faulty systems that allow waste to slip through the cracks into what was once drinkable water. The next step would be to stop depleting the natural aquifers for drinking water. Finally, taking the time to test the water supply once a month can be a clear indicator of when the drinking water is unhealthy and in need of treatment. By focusing on slowing down the heavy impact humans have on groundwater pollution, we may be able to make the world a better, healthier place to live.
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A Problem of Water Pollution in Malaysia
What types of sources lead to water pollution in Malaysia?
Malaysia is in a new industrializing phase, and part of this revolution includes a rapid growth of population. With this, there is more water demand, and increased sources of pollutants that likely will trigger aquatic ecosystems. Because of the rapid urban sprawl Malaysia is encountering, the water quality of Malaysia’s streams and rivers are in danger. As the WHO states, “According to Malaysian Environmental Quality Report 2010, the Department of Environment has recorded 20,348 water pollution point sources in 2010 comprising mainly sewage treatment plants (49.27%), manufacturing industries (44.57%), animal farms (3.70%) and agro-based industries (2.46%),” we can conclude that there are more point sources of water pollution as opposed to non-point. Malaysian governments and officials are having an especially hard time trying to locate nonpoint sources, as many middle and low class Malaysians are farmers as a way of income and survival. With ½ of the population’s occupation as farmers, Malaysia has to put more effort into reducing nonpoint sources.
What are some of the major water problems associated with bodies of water in Malaysia?
Polluted water comprises of released modern effluents, sewage, and water. The utilization of this sort of water is a typical practice in farming. “The estimate indicates that more than 50 countries in the world with an area of 20 million hectares are treated with contaminated or partially contaminated water (Ashraf, Maah, Yusoff, & Mehmood, 2010). In developing countries of the world, more than 80 percent of contaminated water has been used for irrigation with only seventy-eight percent of food and safety in urban and semi-urban industrial areas (Mara and Cairncross, 1989),” states Research Gate. Debased water has the two favorable circumstances and weaknesses. The employments of debased water for the impacts of water contamination are various. A few impacts of water contamination are perceived promptly, while others don't show up for a considerable length of time or years.. The human heart and kidneys might be unfavorably influenced when people drink water from Malaysia’s polluted bodies of water.
Other medical issues related with polluted water are poor blood flow, skin sores, retching and harm to the sensory system. The impacts of water contamination are the main source of death for Malaysians. Great wellbeing is something everybody needs, for them, their youngsters and for the more extensive financial and social advantages it conveys to society. It assumes a huge job in the long haul monetary development and reasonable advancement. Malaysian culture has turned out to be progressively urbanized and increasingly included. By supporting contemporary ways of life, air, water, and soil contamination have expanded; Persistent compound toxins have step by step turned out to be summed up and worldwide environmental change presents new dangers to natural wellbeing. These variables are adding to transmittable infections, non communicable illnesses, physiological and neurological disorders.
What are some measures of prevention and reduction Malaysia has implemented to decrease water pollution?
The WHO states that 1 out of every 10 rivers is badly polluted, which totals up to about 473 rivers in Malaysia which have decreasing water quality standards. In response to this, the legislative approach taken in Malaysia was with the 1974 Environmental Quality Act, which states that a report on various “prescribed” activities must be shown to see how the water has been affected by these activities. Among the endorsed exercises or then again extends that can cause water contamination incorporate airplane terminal, lodging, industry, mining, oil, control age, resort and recreational advancement, and waste treatment and transfer offices. For other activities, assessment would likewise be completed in order to evaluate the limit of the territory to get extra contamination stack and the necessity for squander transfer. The Environmental Quality (Sewage and Industrial Effluents)
Regulations 1979 additionally require that composed consent be acquired before the development of any building or completing any work that may result in another wellspring of profluent or release. Also, there have been controls for different industries that have been put into action to reduce water pollution. For example, agro-based industries were “forced to install effective wastewater treatment systems instead of paying the prohibitive effluent-related or pollution fees imposed under the licensing requirements that came into force since 1977. The organic pollutant load dumped into rivers has been greatly reduced by more than 90 percent of the total load generated.”
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How we Can Decrease Water Pollution?
Water pollution is an issue covering the United States that is not taken seriously. Being that water is scarce, only three percent of our country's water is freshwater, which has to be divided by hundreds of thousands of people. Even though water is a renewable resource, pollution makes the water toxic causing it to be useless. Contaminated water will not only harm us, it will damage our environment and multiple other resources we depend on to survive. Humans are the top cause of water pollution and we need to take action to decrease water pollution before it is too late.
Water pollution is when water ways (rivers, lakes, streams, etc.) absorb toxic chemicals and industrial waste. Businesses and cities dispose of their chemicals and waste into water ways which is a main cause of water pollution. These waters don't obtain treatment which allows pollutants to get into the water which then makes the water toxic. Over half of our water in the world is polluted. It is negatively affecting the biotic and abiotic factors in the environment. If contaminated water isn't treated it can hold diseases that are from human and animal waste. Some diseases that people can receive from contaminated water is Cholera, Giardia and others. Then, if the water is consumed by humans it can cause sickness and even death there was over a million deaths from water pollution in 2015, that people have no idea about and that is scary. Water pollution does not only cause diseases but can cause cancer as well and can mess up the brain function if it is bad enough. Water pollution is not something to take lightly and really needs to be addressed more seriously.
Living and Nonliving Factors of Water Pollution.
Not only does water pollution affect living entities but nonliving entities as well. Water pollution can be an immense problem to the ecosystem and can cause species and ecosystems to become endangered. Aquatic animals suffer greatly because they cannot remove themselves from the toxins. Water pollution can cause an algal boom that can produce a various amount of toxins that can harm the sea creatures. This can cause the creatures difficulty to reproduce and even expect low life expectancy. Even if new nutrients appear in the water, it can cause an alga to over grow at a rapid rate which will reduce the oxygen levels in the water that will lead to suffocation of the animals and plants in the area, making it a dead zone. So, what does that have to do with us? If the aquatic animal is not able to reproduce it faults the entire food chain. That animal will then be cut from diets of both mammals and humans. Humans consume fish that are in these water ways so by not eating the contaminated food, we lose a source of protein. Littering is also a factor in water pollution. Throwing away aluminum cans or plastic into water it can injure and even starve animals that live there. Plastics can get caught onto animals or animals can mistake it for food and seriously harm the innocent creature. Recycling can eliminate this problem tremendously.
Non-living things affected negatively by water pollution are the temperature and oxygen content. Sewage affects the oxygen content and causes oxygen levels to decrease which not only hurts us, but animals and plants as well. Temperature is affected when cooling water enters a body of water, it then acts as a heating pollutant which is not healthy and harmful for ecosystems. Soil is another non-living thing that is harmed by water pollution, because groundwater that is contaminated also contaminates the soil it flows through. The soil can lose its nutrients and that will cause plants to not be able to get the nutrients they need, and they will either die or plants will not grow there anymore. Plants are an important aspect to the ecosystem for the animals that only eat plants. If the soil is contaminated and plants cannot grow there then the animals lose that source of food. So overall if the non-living things are contaminated by water pollution it is also hurting the living things as well.
Human Impact on Water Pollution.
Humans are the main cause of water pollution. We need to be more cautious of our actions and where we dispose our waste. Many chemicals and toxins in the water originate from farmers, factories, vehicles, and large industrial cities. When farmers use harmful fertilizers, the fertilizer enters the groundwater and continue on to larger bodies of water. This contaminates the water and anything that uses it. Factory waste also contributes to the problem because of the toxins they put out when operating. Also, oil leaks manage to get into bodies of water as well. Humans are only poisoning themselves because the water they contaminate is not only just in the water ways but also the water they drink on a daily basis. Humans are affecting water pollution negatively and are the main reason water pollution is even a thing.
Plan and Solutions to Water pollution.
Solutions for water pollution can be fairly simple and can help our country and the world astronomically. This issue can be fixed by not littering on land nor water and recycling plastics. Farmers or anyone landscaping should be using non-harmful pesticides and fertilizers. By doing this it will eliminate contaminated water from the water ways. In the Article Soy Hulls: A Water Pollution Solution, it states that sugar cane and corn are two things that can make a foundation to absorb heavy metals from the waters to help have less contamination in them (Marshall, 2007). Another solution to remove water pollution is if the federal government funded programs for people to clean water ways and provide larger cities with more drainage that rejects trash. If the government were to also terminate harmful chemicals from shelves and replace them with environment friendly substitutes. Schools and businesses need to focus on educating their students and employees more on water pollution. They need to enforce recycling, riding bikes instead of taking cars, carpooling, using paper instead of plastic. Minor things will help the environment and water pollution if we all contribute.
Conclusion:
Overall water pollution is a bigger issue in the world enviromentally than anythig else and it should be taken more serously than it is. Without clean water nothing can survive including the people so cleaning the water ways and having cleaner drinking water for the people is something that should be a main priorty to the governement. Water pollution is something that is never discussed between individuals and often people are not educated on how serious the issue is. If individuals knew how much water that is not avliable and how contaiminated it is then people would take better care of the water ways and do what they could to help out. The ultimate outcome of this issue is just to see the government and people trying tol help the water polution and seeing them at leats try to clean up some of the pollution.
References
- Denchak, M. (2018, May 14). Water Pollution: Everything you Need to Know. Retrieved December 3, 2018, from https://www. Nrdc.org/ Finch, N. R. (2016).
- Nutrient Water Quality Trading: A Market-Based Solution to Water Pollution in the Natural State. Arkansas Law Review, 69(3), 839-870. Retrieved December 3, 2018.
- Marshall, W. E. (2007). Agricultural Research. Soy Hull: A Water Pollution Solution,55(2), 23- 23. Retrieved December 5, 2018.
- Pelletrier, O. (2012, December 14). Biotic and Abiotic Factors: Biofilm Illustrations. Retrieved December 3, 2018, from https://www.prezi.com/
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A History of Water Pollution
In developing countries, 70% of industrial wastes are thrown into the water, making it so that it is unsafe for life or drinking. My question is what is the relationship between water pollution and different sources of water? According to Britannica, water pollution is the release of substances into subsurface groundwater or into [different bodies of water] to the point where the substances interfere with the beneficial use of the water or with the natural functioning of ecosystems. Sewage, garbage, stormwater, fertilizer, and other chemicals are just some of the main pollutants of water. My experiment will help figure out what types of water are polluted and will help people become more aware of this problem. They will become more conscious of their daily routines and how it impacts the water around them. Some useful background knowledge on this topic is, the history of polluted water, sources of polluted water and how to prevent it, and the impacts of it on life.
History:
The first topic is history. The history of polluted water goes back centuries. In the 1300s, the Black Death started to spread through Europe. This disease was not caused by the unsanitary conditions, but these conditions provided the perfect environment for this disease to thrive. Most pollution back then was because of people dumping their excrements and trash into rivers. Fast forward to the 1800s and people began to understand how harmful pollution was and tried to set up laws against it. These laws did little or no good. Later, around mid-1850, Chicago set up one of the first sewer systems and other cities followed their example. During the industrial revolution, water became more polluted than ever because of factories starting to dump their waste products it.
In 1969 the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland, Ohio started on fire. Sparks from a train by the oily river ignited it and caused $50,00 worth of damage. The fire reached a height of around five stories and lasted for around 20 - 30 minutes. This had happened many times before since the river was so polluted. This specific fire is important because it contributed to the growing idea that water pollution is a major problem. Congress passed the National Environment Policy Act (NEPA) in 1970. This act established the Environmental Protection Agency, which manages environmental risks and regulates sanitary-specific policies. The Clean Water Act in 1972 made it so that all rivers had to be safe enough to allow people to swim and fish in the water by 1983. But even today, the Environmental News Service (ENS) stated that 40% of rivers are still not safe for these activities. Even though the water pollution problem has gotten better over time, it's still a big problem today. [transition]
Sources of water pollution and how to prevent it:
There are two main types of water pollution sources, point source pollution, and nonpoint source pollution. Point source pollution is a single, identifiable source of pollution, like discharges from a wastewater treatment plant. Chemical and oil spills are also an example of point source pollution. Nonpoint source pollution doesn't come from a specific source. For example, anything that humans dispose of improperly, like a plastic bottle in the garbage. Stormwater, that runs over land picking up trash, dirt, fertilizer, or any other harmful substance on the ground, is another example of nonpoint source pollution. While there are many sources of pollution, there are also ways to try to prevent it. Such as avoiding the use of fertilizers. Fertilizers are one of the main sources of pollution, especially from farms. While fertilizers can be good, they are also very harmful to the environment if they get into the water. Another way to prevent pollution is to be sure not to flush any products down the toilet besides toilet paper. This waste will not break down like toilet paper does and will get into the environment. Make sure that you put trash and excess chemicals where they need to go and don't dump them down the drain. An extra method is to just be conscious of water pollution. This simple habit can make a big difference.
Impacts of polluted water:
Polluted water can be very harmful to human health, especially in undeveloped countries. Some diseases that are caused by polluted water are diarrheal disease, respiratory disease, cancer, neurological disorder, and cardiovascular disease. A study was done by Mehtab Haseena, Muhammad Faheem Malik, Asma Javed, Sidra Arshad, Nayab Asif, Sharon Zulfiqar, and Jaweria Hanif in Pakistan during 2016-2017 found by researching different reliable sources many things about how polluted water affects people's health. They found that people who live in rural areas are more likely to get sick [with the previously mentioned diseases] because their water isn`t usually as clean. This group also found that poorer people are at a greater risk for these diseases because they are more likely to have not-up-to-standards sanitation, hygiene, and water supply.
All this information could help people become more aware of where they're getting their water from and how clean or dirty it is. Water pollution is can also be harmful to other living things. In another study by Melissa Denchak in 2018, who's located in Brooklyn, New York, found out by researching different reputable references, different reasons why pollutants are harmful to living things. By researching, she found out that when chemicals are dumped into the water, it can cause the perfect environment for algae to grow in. This can lead to the suffocation of various plants and animals that rely on the oxygen underwater because the algae are taking it all up. This is known as eutrophication and creates dead zones. This could also produce neurotoxins, which impact other wildlife too. Some chemicals or heavy metals can also get into marine animals' systems if dumped into the water.
This causes them to be unable to reproduce and/or have shorter lifespans. If predators eat animals impacted by these chemicals, they, too, will get these unhealthy materials into their systems and it will have the same effects. Garbage that gets into the water can also be dangerous to aquatic life. Some can strangle or starve animals. Melissa Denchak additionally found that discarded fishing gear harms more than 200 species of marine life per year. Ocean acidification is another big problem. Shellfish and coral especially, have a tough time surviving in these conditions. Shellfish have a harder time building shells. This acid also affects the nervous system of sharks, clownfish, and other water animals. All of this information is significant because it helps get people to realize that pollution is a big problem and needs to be fixed.
Conclusion:
To summarize, water pollution has been around throughout history and is still a big problem today. The Industrial Revolution brought around more pollution in the water and has greatly affected life on Earth and how people view pollution. There are many sources of pollution, like fertilizers and sewage that are detrimental to ecosystems and the environment around them. While there are many sources of water pollution, there are also a lot of ways to prevent this pollution from happening. Such as, not littering, not dumping chemicals into the water, and to be conscious of your daily routine. If you don't do anything to prevent water pollution some of the major impacts that it will have on the environment are as follows. The water will become unsafe for drinking, and the aquatic life living in the water could get sick and die or become unable to reproduce. By drinking unsanitary water, even humans could become ill. This is especially present in developing countries because they usually don't have great water treatment or a good sewage system. If people would just become more aware of what they're doing and how it affects the environment, then maybe, water pollution could become a problem of the past.
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Consequences of Water Pollution
As technology advances over the years, there has been an increasing amount of people using products that are more durable and convenient. Around 1,000,000 plastic bottles [are bought by humans] every minute [and] it is estimated that four trillion plastic bags are used worldwide annually (Earth day 1). However, most products are made out of synthetically made material which are often not able to break down naturally and are not recycled. Only about 23% of bottles [made] are [actually] recycled, only 1% of plastic bags are returned for recycling, [and] Americans throw away 100 billion plastic bags annually [which is] about 307 bags per person (Earth Day 1).
Therefore, discoveries of trash islands, consisted of mainly plastic, have been located in at least three major oceans. This increased amount of trash in our oceans has become a major problem in water pollution that concerns both sea life and humans safety that could be solved with simple solutions such as recycling, volunteering at beach clean ups with friends, or following safe disposal practices.
Trash islands are islands that are composed of discarded matter that have piled greatly from the mainland. They are transported through various ways such as sewers, animals, the environment, and of course, humans. These islands found all over the world could vary by size with the largest being located in the Pacific Ocean referred to as The Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, also known as the Pacific trash vortex, spans waters from the West Coast of North America to Japan. The patch is actually comprised of the Western Garbage Patch, located near Japan, and the Eastern Garbage Patch, located between the U.S. states of Hawaii and California.
Overall, most patches consist of large piles of man made products largely consisted of plastic materials. With this continuation, researchers have estimated that, by the end of this century, ...the surface waters of the ocean could be nearly 150 percent more acidic than they are now (Denchak 2). If not taken care of immediately, ocean waters would be more contaminated causing the ocean to become difficult to sanitate anything exposed to the waters, affecting both sea and human life.
Plastic has become a popular source of material to several areas around the world. They have been incorporated into our daily lives that one does not realise how harmful it can possibly be. For example, take something that is commonly found in households such as a water bottle. People rely on water bottles as a source of containment for liquids. However, people have developed a mindset that once the liquid is gone, the bottle is trash thus forgetting that the water bottle is made out of plastic that is recyclable. Many people have adapted to this mindset that once something is finished, they should automatically throw it away that they forget that there is such a thing as a recycling bin where the bottle should end up instead of the ocean. Americans alone purchase about 50 billion water bottles per year, averaging about 13 bottles per month for every person in the U.S (Earth day 1). This would reveal just how much plastic has become such a necessity to many lives
The trash ending up in our oceans would then cause many sea life to be affected greatly towards a negative direction. At least 100,000 marine animals and 1,000,000 seabirds die every year simply because they have eaten something they shouldn't have (Ocean Crusaders 1). According to the national Geographic, Albatrosses mistake plastic resin pellets for fish eggs and feed them to chicks, which die of starvation or ruptured organs (National Geographic 3). This would only show a few out of the several animal populations in the ocean that are affected, reflecting on how animals are being a main target from water pollution. Especially since animals do not have a voice in asking for help. They are only able to speak for themselves sadly through horrible incidents such as the death of a whale in Thailand. At first, the whale was holding onto life but unfortunately died even through the efforts of vets. However, once the whale was examined for the cause of death, marine officials discovered that the whale had ...80 sopping wet, black plastic bags...pulled from the stomach of a [dead] whale (Raphelson 1).
The whale autopsy reflects how even the largest mammal on the planet is even affected by the trash being thrown into the ocean. Animals are only able to show need for support through such tragedies which humans could prevent by becoming aware of the need to stop the water pollution. If not taken into action, most animals would more than likely be affected and are more than likely have a higher chance of becoming extinct simply because of the mistakes of not picking up after oneself. In addition, the sea life found in the coral reefs are being affected because, more-acidic waters also contribute to the bleaching of coral reefs and make it harder for some types of fish to sense predators and for others to hunt prey (Denchak 3). Coral reefs are an essential habitat towards many animals which means if they are affected, a long chain of affects are implemented on the surrounding animals leading to another way of animal death. Thus, action towards water pollution is needed to be implemented now before it leads to animals not having a habitat for themselves or for its future generations because their homes are either being destroyed or they themselves are being eliminated.
Moreover, animals are not the only living creatures being affected but humans as well. Humans spends lots of time in the ocean as a getaway not realising how unhealthy the water has become. According to the National Survey on Recreation and Environment (NSRE), more than 143 million people in the U.S. [itself with], 61% of the population over the age 16, use surface waters to engage in non-motorized water sports revealing that several people come into contact with the ocean (Beachapedia 1).
Furthermore, it is stated by Raphelson that, "Every minute [there] is the equivalent of a garbage truck full of plastic going into the ocean..." (Raphelson 3). This means that humans are swimming in water that carries several particles of trash debris that are very unsanitary and are more than likely unhealthy for the body. Thus, it leads to human exposure to unknown or harmful chemicals that can lead many to become very ill with at least 1 billion people falling ill because of unsafe waters (NRDC 8). For instance, disease causing microorganisms, called pathogens, are associated with a range of enteric and non-enteric illnesses (Beachapedia 1). These illness would reside in the human intestines causing AGI or in other words acute gastrointestinal illness (Beachapedia 1) causing symptoms such as nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, stomach ache, and fever. This creates serious pain to the human body, preventing many from enjoying or doing everyday things (Beachapedia 1). It is even stated by the UNDESA that, Every year, more people die from unsafe water than from all forms of violence, including war. In 2015 alone, water pollution caused 1.8 million deaths according to the study from The Lancet (NRDC 8).
Hence, showing how critical water pollution has become that human lives are now beginning to be greatly affected. However, ocean water is not only polluted through water or by land but also through airborne sources. An example would be Coal-fired power plants [or] chlorine factories [that] release mercury into the air [that would] eventually settle into the ocean (Thank You Ocean 6). This mercury being released into the environment is a dangerous toxin which then enters the systems of marine organisms and bioaccumulates, or increases, as larger fish eat smaller fish contaminated with mercury (NRDC 7). Consequently, this would lead to the consumption of contaminated fish which would greatly affect humans because mercury can cause serious damage to the brain and nervous system (NRDC 7). Furthermore, edible fish such as tuna and swordfish, often have the highest [concentrations] of mercury, indicating that most humans are presently becoming contaminated through this food source without much knowledge of the negative effects it may have on their bodies (NPR 2). For this reason, doctors recommend limiting the consumption of some types of fish and shellfish in order to limit the amount of mercury consumed into one's body. All inclusive, there is a need to take immediate action in order to prevent any more damage to human health not only for the present generation but for the health for generations to come. Their future greatly depends on the actions we implement now which should be to create a more sanitary ocean for them to be in, eat, and enjoy.
In fact, many people worldwide have begun to notice the importance of protecting our oceans from water pollution. California alone has begun to protect one of its important assets to the state with its coastlines having beach visitors spend over 10 billion dollars each year (Thank You Ocean 8) . California began to monitor and regulate the ocean through a series of volunteer programs that helps clean up the coastlines beaches. It is estimated that around 100 million dollars has been invested in California alone to fund local projects that reduce the amount of trash on the coastlines (Thank You Ocean 8).
In addition, California has passed a bill that eliminates the use of straws helping prevent straws from entering the ocean especially since plastic is of the major items commonly found in the ocean. Although such action is taken, many believe it's unnecessary to ban or prohibit many items or actions implied on the people. This situation could be viewed with the controversy of banning straws in California. It has been stated that if people violated this banned item, there might be federal consequences such as jail time for a waitress or bartender serving someone a straw (San Francisco Chronicle 1). Many view this as unnecessary and cruel punishment for someone who is simply doing their job. Many even note that California should focus more on their ways of handling pollution that is presently in front of them such as the piles of trash that are on sidewalks and roads instead of a little straw.
However, focusing on the smaller problems would help prevent the bigger problems of water pollution. Straws being a product made out of plastic, is one of the main contributors to the present pollution that is at stake. Straws are commonly found in the ocean and in several cases found as a cause of damage towards sea life. An example of this would be of a sea turtle that had a four inch plastic straw stuck completely in his nostril. Two researchers tried to extract the straw only causing a stream of blood to flow out of its nostril (Plastic Pollution Coalition 2). This shows how many people do not view a straw as a harmful device when in reality the sraw, or basically anything thrown into the ocean, is a threat to sea life no matter the size. Even though it may seem like strict laws, these steps are needed to protect our oceans from danger because many do not take the problem seriously until reminded through the law thus not hurting any living creature by preventing any damage from human innovations.
Furthermore, in order to maintain stability of the chemicals being put into the ocean, factories or any source that releases large amounts of pollution should make sure that their waste is being thrown away correctly. This would prevent the ocean from attaining any form of unhealthy chemical to worsen the safety and health of the ocean.
Also, since the air could also be a factor towards water pollution, implementing renewable energy sources in companies, especially large ones, in order to obtain their energy in a more eco friendly way rather than in a manner that pollutes the air and water. For example, solar energy, wind turbines and hydro power are all pollution free methods of obtaining power from the earth's natural resources without harming the earth's existing natural resources to obtain this energy (Whale Facts 5). In addition, people making the switch between harmful chemicals to more eco-friendly chemicals that are little to no harm when they come in contact with water. Additionally, the toxic fumes that can be spread through heavy rainfall into several water systems, should be filtered, rerouted and cleaned before making their way to the atmosphere (Whale Facts 6).
People can help contribute with lessening water pollution through simple everyday tasks. For example, Keep your car well maintained and immediately service it if you notice any oil leaking from the car or Purchase environmentally friendly cleaning products that do not harm the land if they happen to be flushed or emptied into a drain (Whale Facts 7). Also, not letting water run when not in use which would help conserve water that is already safe to being misused. Additionally, recycling cans, bottles, paper, or even other items such as clothes because it would allow the items to either be used once again or to be created into new resources instead of floating trash in the ocean. All together, such changes or solutions can help restore the ocean's safety and sanitation from water pollution for all living creatures on the sea, air, and of course humans.
In conclusion, by becoming more aware of the consequences water pollution has towards life in both sea and land, life can become more safe and prosperous for future years to come. There are several solutions being explored worldwide in order to stop or prevent the water pollution from spreading. Most importantly, there are various simple ways all the people could help to contribute towards helping the ocean become much cleaner such as the examples mentioned because if measures are not taken as soon as possible, many animals, plants, and humans would suffer many consequences such as illness as unfortunately for plants and animals, the brink of extinction.
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Theme of Isolation in William Faulkner’s a Rose for Emily
Human interaction is an absolute necessity for the well being of a human. Despite the damage that can be done when one is hurt by another, the lack of connection is deadly. A gruesome tale that follows miss Emily Grierson in A rose for Emily by William Faulkner where the author utilizes several tools to dissect how extreme isolation and abandonment may lead a person to such horrendous crimes such as necrophilia. In doing so, death and a resistance to modern ideas became another normality in the story which lead to the death of a woman's humanity. All proof of how essential affection is the happiness of a person over all.
The damage caused to a person may be observed in the public's highly judgmental,gossipy,and sometimes hypocritically attitude about her and the inability of a person to build any relationships due to the isolation. Emily Grierson is subject to the scrutiny of her whole town in several points of her life. From the very beginning at her funeral the town's people gave way to several aspects of their home which may explain their society. The first section of the story disseminates that she is part of their oncemost select street and now, her once high class house had become an eyesore among eyesores. This rift that Emily's family had with the townspeople led to their belief that she was an obligation to the town. Like her house and it's unwillingness to be updated Emily soaks in her stubbornness by refusing to pay her taxes. Demonstrating the lack of respect of authority for the new leaders of the town. She treated them with a cold and dry attitude that demanded respect and patience. Emily never cared for the new authorities of the town and even indicated her alienation and isolation when she for the claims confirmation of a person that passed away almost ten years beforehand. The second section divulges into her tense relationship with the town. The town didn't dare confront her about the taxes nor the about the odor coming from her house.A smell that serves as a foreshadow that there is something rotting away in her house, so much so the they decided to secretly spread lime all around her property. And yet, despite all the indications, all the scrutinization, and observations they make of Miss Emily they ironically fail to realise that she is deeply disturbed,criminally insane, and neglect the discovery of the murder until 40 years after.Once again proving that the drift she had with the town remained as deep and wide as before the death of her father. Despite their efforts to get close to her after the death of her father, her cold attitude and rejection of the towns pitty did nothing to better her situation. Only sunk her even deeper into her loneliness, desperation, and madness.
Her father became the trauma that set the foundation to her disturbed mind. The fact that her father was described as this looming figure that scared away any suitors explained why after he died she had kept his body. Her instability was evident when the only reason she let them take her father's body away was due to the fact that they knew he died. Her obsession with death showed how powerless, lonely, and angry she felt towards her father. She is a psychopath driven by her extreme desperation for revenge against her father and her bitterness towards the outside world. Indicating that this is what she wanted until an outsider was let into Emily's world. This short lived happiness was just that. Short lived. Soon their relationship crumbled. Her incapacity to hold an actual relationship with someone is very clear and amplifies her loneliness and the effects of her abandonment. He abandoned her, setting off a trigger in her disturbed soul. When Homer her dashing beau that was often seen with emily around the town after he came to the town and was the center of attention, altered her reality it was as dangerous. This isn't exaggerated when her behavior is further analyzed. He gave her a dose of normal human interaction. Because of her past, she was deprived of this so when he took away, that she sunk into her desperation she decided to keep his company all to herself. Killing him was the only way she understood how to keep that happiness forever. Therefore , the lack of love in her life set the foundation of her instability.
Emily's home is a mirrored image of herself with a bond that ages with her. From her beauty and prestige the house that stood proudly in the most ``select street' as did Emily's beauty. Her purity with the years morphed into a smell of decay. In the same way Emily, once young and full of despair, has been driven into madness through the rotting of the old ways and the birth of a modern era. At the same time, her aging in unison with the house and the servant become part of her distorted view on what is love.A monster was being hidden in a rotting house. And that monster was Emily herself. She constitutes the stubbornness and refusal to change. Insisting in the old ways, in the old agreements, in an old house is the very description of her unawareness of the outside world. This type of difficult lifestyle is driven by the miserable people that know no different than their reality. Why would she alter her views when all she has seen is a town controlled by her oppressing father? This is crucial proof that people would rather wallow in their misery than to change. With a father like hers and a lack of a mother figure there is no chance she is able to be a functional adult. Despite there being no rose manifested in the story, the title introduced it as the idea of love. A rose that is dried up and conserved in the pages of an old book she is, in the same manner conserving Homer's body in his wedding clothes inside the closed off room of the house. As a young girl, suitors lined up and yet she never was allowed the chance to accept the rose of love. This deep despair that she felt when she realized that there is no happy ending , which caused her to drown in madness. The key factor or lack of love is the effects of human warmth that she so desperately needed.
The caliber of her taste in the eye of the town is high, therefore Homer wasn't good enough for her. Emily doesn't care about that; she lets herself be seen with him. She actually stepped out of the house to allow everyone to determine the nature of their relationship. Her father was no longer around to say anything about it. She for that short amount of time was able to free herself from her father's oppression and feel what a normal person feels. This is detrimental to her ability to function as a normal person. Family should be a good support system when everything is going wrong, but for Emily, even that wasn't an option. Her two cousins from Alabama visit her and stay with Miss Emily to assure that her behavior doesn't violate their southern society's strict code of propriety while she and Homer are romantically involved with one another. They didn't come around when her father died and were nowhere to be found as she grew up and yet the only thing they cared about was appearances. Family is supposed to provide support when at home things aren't right. Yet, here they were lacking familial love towards Miss Emily. This proves that they possess similar attitudes as her father despite that they allowed this romance. She was indifferent to this, but the truth is that if she now experienced what true affection was, then she would have recognised her family had none of that for her. This is truly saddening and her familys departure is different than all of the others because she might even have been relieved that they left. Her family saw that she had no one and yet decided to leave anyways, this must have been nothing to her since all of the the other abandonments had dangers aftermath. For instance her father's death lead to her isolation and unconventional behavior.The abandonment of Homer lead to his murder, but she was seemingly passive to her family desertion. So her issues are due to her father's strict rule over her life.
A monster isn't born, it's created. In this disturbing short story A Rose for Emily is the proof that in order for a person to have a healthy morality they must have some sort of connection anything outside of a toxic home. Miss Emily isn't a functional human because she lived in forced isolation all of her life. Inside of her house she lived in extreme despair and loneliness, slowly rotting away without any sort of human connection. The lack of affection became deadly to her and whomever attempted to get close to her. From her authoritarian father, her dashing lover, and finally her sanity all rotted away in her home. Extreme isolation and abandonment may lead a person to such horrendous crimes such as necrophilia due to the fact that going without human contact for too long may literally break a heart.
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Problem of Depression: Effects on People and Children’s
This is really important for me because this is a huge problem that affects a lot of people and childrens, for me being sad its something horrible and I couldn't imagine being sad for most of the days of the week, I want to change the way people feel and try to make them happy and to forget about their problems even if it's only form a moment.
After being at a hospital you can really feel all the tension, sadness from the ones that are sick and also from their relatives, they are going through many difficult things and situations, i've felt it too and it's in that moment that you need someone that makes you laugh and makes you forget about what you are going through. This is why this is relevant for me, I want to be that person, the one that makes people to forget about their problems and make them happy.
This is why I decided to learn about laughter therapy, laugh therapy its an alternative method from medicines and pills. When you laugh you forget about your problems, laughing doesn't costs you and it doesn't has any secondary or negative effects nor as pills, once you start taking pills for depression you become dependent of them and you life isn't completely yours any more.
So I decided to join Contagia Alegria which is an association that uses this method called laughter therapy with children that are in hospitals or in vulnerable situations, they use arteclown to make them happy and show them more about life.
In this program I learned a lot of new thing, i even learn how to make different types of shapes with a balloon just like a clown, I learned more about me and the ways I can help people, helping others is really important for me and with this program I learned more about it and how to help.
Contagia Alegria has change the way I see my own problems and the lives of others, it made me think about all the things I have such as health and made me grateful about them, there are times that you can think that a small problem such as don't having wifi or enough credit to make a call would be the worst that could happen, but while you are thinking about this and about how miserable you are in other part of the world there is someone without a house or without something to eat for the day.
Contagia Alegria is a program from the foundation sor despierto. According to Sosa (2018) so?±ar despierto was founded in mexico in 1998 as a response from the threats that childhood faces.
Contagia Alegria Sor despierto is a trustworthy association because it's a worldwide association which has an official page and people that are responsible about this.
According to Sosa (2018) The people that work there have been capacitated and have a certification also they have been there for a log time so they know what their doing and how to handle the situations.
I know that the other websites I have used are also trustworthy because they are official health pages, that are backed by scientific studies that have been made about this subject. The websites I have used are the Mayo Clinic website, the NIH National Institute of Mental Health and the Cancer Treatment Centers of America.
The history of the problem:
A huge problematic we have this days it's depression, a lot of people think that being sad and being depressed it's the same thing, but they aren't. Occasionally we have all felt sadness or we have had a sad feeling, but this doesn't lasts much and the feeling disappears in a few days. According to the Mayo clinic (1998-2018) someone that suffers from depression has this feelings and sandnes interfering with their daily life.
According to the Mayo Clinic (1998-2018) depression is a mood disorder that causes a persistent feeling of sadness and loss of interest. This affects the way you think feel and behave, it can lead to a variety of emotional and physical problems, people that suffer from depression might even feel as if life isn't worth living.
According to the NIH National Institute of Mental Health (2009) There are many types of depression but the most common are major depression, persistent depressive disorder and distimia.
Major depression consists in being depressed most of the time for most days of the week, feeling worthless of guilty, being with out energy and thoughts of suicide. Persistent depressive disorder this is when this depression lasts for 2 years or longer. And Distimia that also lasts for a long time but this is less serious, still this disorder makes a person no have a normal life. (WebMD, 2005-2018)
According to the Mayo Clinic (1998-2018) its not known exactly what causes depression, but there are a variety of factors that may be involved such as biological differences, brain chemistry, hormones and inherited traits. Also the factors that increase the risk of developing depression are, personality traits such as low self esteem or pessimistic, traumatic or stressful events such as physical or sexual abuse, death of a loved one or difficult relationships, and another risk factor is when that person suffers from a serious or chronic illnesses including cancer chronic pain or a heart disease.
There are a lot of risk factors but also according to the Mayo Clinic (1998-2018) there are also many strategies to prevent it. This strategies include taking steps to control stress, this helps you by increasing your self esteem. Reaching out to family and friends especially in times of crisis, this will help you to calm down and it good to have someone supporting you, and getting a treatment at the earliest sign of a problem, this will prevent the problem from grow.
Depression it's a serious and common disease and most people that suffer from it need to have treatment to get better, a solution for the ones that suffer from depression could be to be treated with pills that are called antidepressants.
According to the national Institute of Mental Health (2009) antidepressants work by calming down the substance of the brain called neurotransmitters, cientifics that studies depression have discovered that antidepressant also help by regulating the mood swings. But this treatment can cause also a lot secondary effects and they can variate depending in the person taking this pills, some effects of antidepressants are headaches, insomnia, sensation of anxiety, nausea, nervousness and sometimes blurry vision. Also patients that take this antidepressants need to follow an special diet because a lot of foods can affect the functioning of this pills.
The other solution to help people who suffer from depression that doesn't involve any pills or medicine its laughter therapy, according to the Cancer Treatments Centers of America (2018) laughter is a natural medicine that lifts our spirits and makes us feel happy, this uses the natural physiological process of laughter to help relieve physical or emotional stress or discomfort.
Today more than ever before, people are turning to humor for therapy and healing. Medical journals have acknowledged that laughter therapy can help improve quality of life for patients with chronic illnesses. Many hospitals now offer laughter therapy programs as a complementary treatment to illness. (Cancer Treatments Centers of America, 2018)
For years, the use of humor has been used in medicine. Surgeons used humor to distract patients from pain as early as the 13th century. Later, in the 20th century, came the scientific study of the effect of humor on physical wellness. Many credit this to Norman Cousins. After years of prolonged pain from a serious illness, Cousins claims to have cured himself with a self-invented regimen of laughter and vitamins. In his 1979 book Anatomy of an Illness, Cousins describes how watching comedic movies helped him recover. (Cancer Treatments Centers of America, 2018)
Many studies have been made about laughter therapy and they have now discovered that this does really work.
Based in all of this, the solucion that I choose is the one of treating patients that suffer from depression with laughter therapy or alternative methods, instead of giving them pills that have a lot of secondary effects and that can take away a part of their lives or of their person and personality.
Thera are a lot of alternative methods to treat depression but in my opinion and in what I have experienced, I really think that laughter therapy it's the one that we should really use, laughter therapy doesn't costs nothing and this does really works.
According to the Cancer Treatments Centers of America (2018), even if sometimes it's difficult to find humor on a difficult situation laughter may help you feel better about the world around you and yourself. When you laugh, you forget everything else, also laughter may induce physical changes and after laughing for only a moment you may feel better for hours.
This is why I really think that laughter therapy could be perfect solution for the ones that are suffering from depression, or even if this is only a temporary feeling of sadness. Laughter therapy it's something really easy to do, even if you are alone or with out a doctor you can try this method yourself.
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The Great Depression
The Great Depression was the events in American history between 1929 and 1938 in which the stock market crashed, banks failed, and unemployment rate was the highest it has ever been in the nation's history. This paper will discuss the causes of the Great Depression, how it affected the lives of people in America, and what the government did to try to pull America out of the Great Depression.
The year 1929 started off with republican Herbert Hoover becoming president replacing Calvin Coolidge who had previously served as president between 1923 and 1929. President Hoover believed in laissez-faire policies and thought that if the market economy was free, capitalism would be able to fix an economic downturn. Based on his economic beliefs, Hoover had lowered the top income tax rate to 24 percent from the previous 25 percent rate, while this may not have been enough to spark the depression, it did little to facilitate the major economic growth that had occurred during the 1920s.
On October 24th, 1929, a day now known as Black Thursday, Stock prices fell 11 percent and throughout the week leading up until October 29th the stock market had fallen a total of 17 percent. A month later the stock market begun to trade sideways, a period when investments are within a tight range and don't get high, between the crashes the week before and the sideways market, investors began to lose faith in the stock market and started selling stocks and pulling money out of the banks which caused wide spread panic. In 1929 there were a total of 650 bank failures, these failures caused the money supply to reduce and made each dollar worth more. With the rise in the value of the dollar, prices fell which reduced revenue for businesses and increased the amount of debt that lenders had to pay back. This caused not only business to file for bankruptcy, but also caused personal bankruptcy across the nation.
In 1930 families in America started to feel the effects of the Great Depression, with businesses failing and the unemployment rate steadily rising, most people found it already difficult to feed themselves and their families. Although times were tough for many people in America, no one had it worse than the farmers along the Mississippi River up to the mid-Atlantic where the worst drought in 300 years, known as the Dust Bowl, would cause massive crop failure. President Hoover felt as though he had to help the people affected by this drought and signed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act. The Smoot-Hawley Tariffs raised taxes on 900 imports, the idea behind the tariffs was to support the farmers affected by the Dust Bowl, but instead of helping farmers and citizens, it caused food prices to increase in a nation that was already suffering.
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The Yellow Wallpaper and a Rose for Emily
According to Elaine Showalter, madness gives women an excuse for expressing anger and hostility. Madness can give women the courage to stand up for themselves in a patriarchal society. Patriarchal is an adjective that describes an area where men have authority and power over women. A patriarchal society consists of men having power over women in society in general as well as in relationships. The word mad can describe a person who is severely mentally ill or out of their minds. Many situations can cause someone to go mad or insane such as isolation, obsession, or loss of control. Although these two short stories have multiple similarities and differences, The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner both explore the idea of women losing themselves to madness caused by the patriarchal society. The pressure of the patriarchal society drives them to isolation, obsession, and then eventually madness.
The Yellow Wallpaper, published in 1892, is the story of a woman whose husband forces her into isolation because he tells her she is sick. Throughout the story, the narrator informs the reader that she is not sick, but by the end of the story, she does become mentally ill. Her madness occurs after the isolation her husband forces her into causes her to become obsessed with the wallpaper. Her husband's control over her life also causes her to become obsessed with breaking free from the power he has over her life. Her obsessions cause her to lose herself to madness as she begins to see things that are not real.
The Yellow Wallpaper shows the reader that the narrator goes mad because of her isolation. Her isolation from the world causes her to become obsessed with the wallpaper that she is surrounded by. Because her husband is convinced that she is sick, the narrator is forced to stay locked inside a house until she shows signs of improvement. The longer this goes on, the crazier she gets as she begins seeing things in the wallpaper. Throughout the story, John says things such as Can you not trust me as a physician when I tell you so? to convince her that he is right about her mental health when he is completely wrong (Gilman 474). His ability to manipulate her into thinking he is right about the so-called illness helps to cause the narrator's madness. The way he manipulates her causes her to resent him, causing her to go mad out of frustration and anger. The way he treats the narrator makes her want to defeat him and the power he holds over her.
The narrator's husband's control over her life takes a very large toll on her sanity. When the narrator starts to lose her mind completely, she begins to believe the wallpaper moves because The woman behind shakes it! (Gilman 476). Since she stays in the room with the yellow wallpaper all day, she stares at it for a very long time, and this causes her to begin to hallucinate things moving and shaking inside of the paper. Her hallucinations of what is behind the paper is a sign of her going mad. She also becomes possessive of the wallpaper as if she does not want to share it with anyone else who is in the house which is the opposite of how she felt in the beginning. She hates how the wallpaper looks and makes her feel in the beginning. Her attachment to the paper shows how she is starting to go mad. The woman she sees inside of the wallpaperis herself, trying to break out of her life (Showalter 5). The version of herself she sees in the wallpaper wants to be free just like she does in her own life, but this version of herself is the crazier side of her or the side the reader sees when she fully goes mad. Her obsession with the wallpaper and the woman she sees inside of it drive her mad. By the end, the narrator has defeated him only by destroying herself (Showalter 5). She breaks the woman out of the wallpaper which is her just allowing the madness to fully consume her. By breaking free from her husband's control, she has driven herself into a state of madness that is beyond repair.
While the narrator in The Yellow Wallpaper goes insane because of her husband's control of her life, A Rose for Emily, published in 1930, shows how a father's rule can do similar damage. A Rose for Emily is about a woman whose father forces her into isolation because he does not believe anyone is worthy enough to be in his daughter's life. Her father dies, leaving her all alone with no one to care for her or make decisions for her and her future. His control over her life causes a lot of damage as she does not have anyone else in her life to take care of her after he passes away. Her father's death causes her to become obsessed with finding someone to fill the hole her father left, so she will not be alone anymore.
In A Rose for Emily, Emily's madness is caused by her father controlling who she allowed into her life. The creation of her madness starts long before her father's death, but his passing causes things to completely spiral for her. The town all knew about the young men her father had driven away (Faulkner 32). Emily's father believed that all the potential suitors who came into her life were not worthy enough for her. No one lived up to his expectations of who Emily needed in her life, so when her father was alive, he was the only person who was really in Emily's life because he pushed everyone else away from her. The isolation from the rest of the world that she experienced did not prepare her for life after her father's death. After he died, Emily went out very little (Faulkner 31). Emily's past and present isolation from the rest of the world causes her to become obsessed with the idea of not being alone anymore. She starts to hate the idea of not being alone anymore so much that she goes to extreme lengths to keep someone trapped in her life.
Because her father controlled and provided for her, Emily does not know how to handle life without him. She has never lived life without someone making every decision for her future. When Homer Barron came into her life, she did not want him to leave her. She could not handle the thought of being alone anymore. She physically wanted someone in her life that would never leave her side. When she died, town members went inside her house and found that The man himself lay in the bed (Faulkner 35). Emily became so obsessed with not wanting to be alone that the obsession drove her to kill Homer. When she killed Homer, there was no way for him to be driven away like all the other potential suitors her father drove off. She kept his body hidden inside her house, so she would not be left by herself again. Emily's obsession with not being left alone drove her so crazy that she ended up murdering someone to keep them trapped in her world.
The Yellow Wallpaper and A Rose for Emily have a few similarities. Both stories are about women who suffered from isolation and obsession that caused madness. They also share the fact that their insanity is caused by the control the patriarchal society has over their lives. Both stories are set in a time where men still had a lot of authority and say over women's lives, futures, and decisions. Both stories end with the women losing their minds because of the anger, frustration, and resentment they kept built up inside for the men in their lives that held them under their control.
Although The Yellow Wallpaper and A Rose for Emily share similarities, they are also still very different from each other. In the first story, the narrator is forced into isolation by her husband who is a doctor. In the second story, Emily is isolated by her father who does not believe any man is good enough to be her husband. Although both stories take place in times where women are still controlled by men, they were written almost forty years apart as The Yellow Wallpaper was written in 1890 and A Rose for Emily was written in 1929. In The Yellow Wallpaper, the narrator becomes obsessed with the yellow paper as well as the hallucinations of the different version of herself she is seeing within the wallpaper. In A Rose for Emily, Emily becomes obsessed with the idea of not being alone. The narrator obsesses over breaking free so much that it drives her insane, and she rips off the wallpaper to free the crazy version of herself. Emily is driven so insane by her obsession of not being alone that she kills her potential suitor, so he cannot decide to leave her all alone. The narrator's obsession with the wallpaper just drove her to break free. However, Emily's obsession with not being lonely in her life anymore drove her to murder.
The Yellow Wallpaper and A Rose for Emily both tell stories of women who go mad because of the patriarchal society, but the ways they go mad are slightly different. Patriarchal describes a situation where men hold power over women. In both main characters' cases, their madness is caused by isolation and obsession. These stories have many similarities such as the fact that men keep them isolated from the rest of the world, and both stories happen in times where men could control women's lives. However, they also have their differences. Gilman wrote The Yellow Wallpaper in 1890 while Faulkner wrote A Rose for Emily in 1929. The narrator becomes obsessed with the wallpaper while Emily becomes obsessed with not being alone in life. The narrator's obsession with being free from her husband's control causes her to go mad and defeat her husband. Emily's obsession with not wanting to be alone causes her to go crazy and kill Homer. The stories relate to each other in very many ways, but it is very clear that there are a lot more differences than similarities.
Works Cited
- Faulkner, William. A Rose for Emily. Literature: Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing. Ed. X.J. Kennedy and Dana Gloria. Pearson Longman. 30-36. Print.
- Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. The Yellow Wallpaper. Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing. Ed. X.J. Kennedy and Dana Gloria. Pearson Longman. 468-478.
- Showalter, Elaine. Killing the Angel in the House: The Autonomy of Women Writers. The Antioch Review 50. 50th Anniversary (1992): 208-220. JSTOR. Web. 9 Dec. 2018.
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A Rose for Emily: Plot Overview
In section one the creator discusses when Emily Grierson's dad had passed away and the entire neighborhood went to her home and clarifies how nobody had truly been in that home for a long time. What's more, the town of Jefferson was an exceptionally decent neighborhood brimming with mystique however Emily's home was the just a home in Jefferson in recognition of it. Colonel Sartoris was the town's old mayor and had made Emily quit making her pay her taxes directly after her Father had passed on due in light of the fact that that Mr. Grierson had helped the town with cash. The new townspeople of Jefferson who were currently in charge needed Emily to keep making her pay taxes yet Emily rejected and did not give the Leading body of Councilmen a chance to motivate her to keep making payments on government expenses and revealed to her Negro worker Tobe to escort them out.
Section 2 - The author in section two goes back to a time 30 years ago when there was a strong smell coming from her home and many people of the town Jefferson were complaining about this to the Mayor. Things were getting difficult for Emily and her father had just died and also the person she loved had abandoned her the people from Jefferson believed that was who she would marry. People continue to complain about the horrible odor and Judge Steven who was the mayor of the town at the time comes up with a plan to fix this and they use lemon juice around her house to get rid of the odor and a couple of days pass and the bad smell goes away a little bit. The town of Jefferson always felt that the Griersons thought they were better than everyone else. Emily's father would scare off any man due to the fact they were not good enough for her to marry them. Then one day after many women from the town of jefferson visit Emily because of her father's death Mr. Griersons. Emily was so hurt about her father's death and doesn't want to accept the fact he is dead and she keeps the body after three days she gives up the body for burial.
Section 3 - In section three the author talks about Emily and gets really sick and is in so much suffrage after just dealing with her father's death. In the summer right after Emily's father died the town paved sidewalks under the command of northerner Homer Barron. Soon Homer Barron is very noticed and becomes a famous person that's well known in the town of jefferson and takes Emily every sunday afternoon on buggy rides and the people in the town notice and start to feel sorry for Emily. The town of Jefferson feels that Emily is leaving her family legacy and is falling for the man beneath her station. Emily then goes to the drug store to obtain poison called arsenic and it's the law to state why you are using this and Emily states no reason and arrives to her house as rat poison.
Section 4 - Many people in Jefferson are anxious that Emily bought poison and they think she might use it to commit suicide. Her relationship with Homer doesn't look like it's going to well and the women of Jefferson think Emily should speak to the Baptist Minister. When the Minister visits Emily never speaks of what went on and insists that he will never go back to the home of Emily. The wife of the Minister writes to Emily's two relative cousins in Alabama, who arrive for an extended stay. Because Emily orders a silver toilet set monogrammed with Homer's initials talk of the couple's marriage resumes. Homer, absent from town, is believed to be preparing for Emily's move to the North or avoiding Emily's intrusive relatives and Homer is one day seen going into emily's house but never seen again. Later Emily grows obese and old with gray hair although she teaches children china painting she still doesn't go out much and is a very isolated person. Then Emily dies at age seventy-four and her servant is the only person seen going in and out the house.
Section 5 - So when Emily dies they set he in the private room in her home and women and townspeople and her two cousins go to her funeral. After a long time the door that has been closed for forty years is opened up by the people of Jefferson. As the people of Jefferson enter they see many things for a wedding as if it was postponed. Then laid out on the bed is Homer Barron's body that is just decomposing and the townspeople were so surprised to see this behind the door they just opened. They notice that the pillow next to the dead body had seem like if someone was laying right next to it and a bunch of Emily's gray hair is is on the pillow.
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Life during the Great Depression
Imagine losing all your money in a blink of an eye after it being flowing into your pocket rapidly in the last period and then you either have to depend on others or sell what you have and stand in long lines for food.This is what happened to average families during the greatest economic downturn in the history of the U.S. Before the great depression the U.S was advancing exponentially during what was called the Roaring Twenties (Ellen Parson,2002). The introduction of electricity and installment payment made average citizens capable of owning products they couldn't afford such as fridges, radios, microwaves etc (John Lake, 2018). But all of this changed in what was called Black Tuesday were the stock market crashed and the worst economic crisis in history started(Sloan Lynch, 2018). The effects of the great depression were devastating on politics, social aspects of the community and more importantly the economy of the Land of the free that lead to the government intervention into economic and social affairs of the country.
The roaring twenties were the years before the great depression from 1920 to 1929, it was an era of flourishing and advancement and also changes in the Americans mindset. The national wealth of the United state became more than double its value from 1920 to 1929. The introduction of electricity to American homes was a major change in the life of the average life of an American citizen. Radios became the way of communication and news broadcast. Average families were able to afford electrical products that they couldn't afford using installment payment. Installment payment was introduced by stock buyers who used the same method to buy their stocks.The downpayment of product could be as little as 10% of its price .(John Lake, 2018)
The cultural change during the roaring twenties was of a massive impact to the culture of the U.S. The Harlem Renaissance played a major role of changing the music, art and theatre aspects of the American culture forever. Other symbols that characterized the Roaring twenties was The New Lady who was a young lady with bobbed hair and short skirts who drank and smoked and was more sexually free than other ladies according to (History.com Editors,2010). In conclusion, people were living in luxury during the 1920s; watching baseball games and listening to Jazz(Ellen Parson,2002) (Kathleen Harris,2016).
However, this joy didn't last long.On the 29th of October 1929, that black Tuesday, when the stock market crashed and billions of dollars were lost. The New York stock exchange trading floor was filled with traders on that night, 16 million shares were lost and billions of dollars vanished through the air (picture in photo essay by: Carry Nelson n.d). Investors were abe to buy through margin purchase. A margin purchase allows an investor to borrow money, typically as much as 75% of the purchase price, to buy a greater amount of stock. (Ushistory.org, n.d.) The cause of the market crash was mainly due to the investors belief that if a stock is going to sell,they will be willing to pay more for it so they rise its value (Ushistory.org, n.d.). But when they feel thats its price may fall they will try to sell it and when all investors try to sell at once no one will buy ad the market value will decrease and that's exactly what happened (Ushistory.org, n.d.). This panic sell began on Thursday October 24th 1929 and continued and by the end of the day on the Black Tuesday panic has erupted and stocks were being sold for even less value and in 10 weeks time the stock market value halved. (Ushistory.org, n.d.)
This market was blamed to be the incentive of the great depression yet it was more of a symptom of it.It shaked the American economic confidence and made an end to the loans America extended over European countries that were recovering from World War 1.(abc-clio,2018) The stock market crash, bank failures and business practises all lead to the great depression (Sloan Lynch, 2018)The worst economic disaster in the history of the US.The Great Depression lasted roughly 12 years and was ended by World War 2. It devastated the American economy and produced financial hardships for millions of people.(abc-clio,2018)
Everyday life changed for every class during the great depression. More than a quarter of the population became jobless and had no income. That was about 15 million people were out of work(KIMBERLY AMADEO, 2018). A third of the children couldn't attend public schools as schools didn't have the budget to open (Sloan Lynch, 2018). Most of the people who didn't lose their job had either their wages reduced or their schedules became part time schedules. Unemployed men and homeless people had to go to soap kitchens and Hoovervilles(were name after president Herbert Hoover, Hoovervilles were shanty houses built for homeless people) to get meals and shelters.(abc-clio,2018)(Sloan Lynch, 2018)
During the Great Depression, half of the banks failed and by 1933 4,000 banks have failed.Even big banks run out of business as when people knew the banks used their money on investing in the stock market they were shocked and they ran to take money from banks.
Jack Bates,one of the survivors of the great depression, says: farmers had no money during the depression. He also says his father was a dentist and when some farmers came to his clinic they had to pay with the products of their farm like chicken, eggs,ducks and geese.(Adam Bird,2012)
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Suicide and Depression Among Black Males
Roughly three hundred years ago, more than twelve million Africans were stolen from their country and robbed of their jewels with the intentions of being enslaved in the New World. The New World consisted of the Americas and the Caribbean. During the tracherous journey, only about ten million survived. Slaves were forced onto ships to be transported to another country where many diseases were contracted due to the very poor and unhealthy conditions. They suffered from mental and physical abuse. Those who died during the two month or longer journey, were thrown overboard to be fed to the sharks.
Men were seprerated from women and children being held below deck meaning they would be cramped together with little to no space to move, along with leg irons to keep them from trying to escape. As far as women and children, they were sometimes kept on deck which often would result in sexual abuse from the Europeans. They were only fed twice a day and those who refused, were fed forcefully. Upon arrival, captives would be covered in palm oil to disguise wounds and sore contracted while being on board. The voyage was so traumatizing and atrocious, that captives would either just die or commit suicide, those who rejected orders were punished, and others decided to just submit to the given orders to keep some type of dignity. The reason for specifically targeting Africans was because of how healthy and able bodied they were.
In contrast to Native Americans, Africans possessed the immunity to diseases such as malaria and smallpox. Bringing Africans to the New World meant they would be forced to work long hours of the day doing a variety of work. They would pick crops on the plantations, work as craft workers, making guns, coopers, etc. and some were to do domestic duties such as servants, nurses and cooks. This created a horrific system that made the Europeans a huge profit while slaves were tortured, with no pay for their hard labor. The system was so dehumanizing, africans were also sold and auctioned off to other slave owners, children were taken away from their mothers, and wives were disgracefully taken away from their husbands which meant there was a very minute chance of the families ever seeing one another again.
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Comparing William Faulkner’s Short Stories: a Rose for Emily and Dry September
Three key components connect William Faulkner's two short stories "A Rose for Emily" and "Dry September": sex, passing, and ladies (King 203). Organizing his two stories against a scenery of clich?© characters and a southern code of respect, Faulkner purposely retains essential points of interest, parts ordered occasions, and breakers the past with the present to infer the character's demonstration and inspiration.
The characters in Faulkner's southern culture are drawn from three social levels: the privileged people, the townspeople, and the Negroes (Volpe 15). In "A Rose for Emily," Faulkner portrays Miss Emily Grierson in streaming, enlightening sentences. Once a "slim figure in white," the last descendent of a once in the past well-to-do blue-blooded family develops into a "little, chubby lady dressed in dark, with a thin gold anchor diving to her abdomen and vanishing into her belt, inclining toward a midnight stick with a discolored gold head" (Faulkner, Literature 25-27). In spite of her reduced budgetary status, Miss Emily displays her blue-blooded attitude via conveying her head high "as though she requested like never before the acknowledgment of her pride as the last Grierson" (28). In a similarly clear way, Faulkner paints a composed picture of Miss Minnie Cooper in "Dry September." He depicts her as an old maid "of agreeable individuals - not the best in Jefferson, but rather sufficient individuals" and "still on the slim side of normal looking, with a splendid faintly worn down way and dress (Faulkner, Reader 520). Cleanth Brooks sheds impressive understanding on Faulkner's perspective of ladies. He takes note of that Faulkner's ladies are "the source and sustainer of uprightness and furthermore a prime wellspring of fiendishness. She can be either, in light of the fact that she is, as man isn't, generally a little past great and wickedness. With her intense characteristic drives and her sense for the solid and individual, she doesn't have to obsess about her choices" (Brooks, Faulkner 33). The activities of the two fundamental characters, Miss Emily and Miss Minnie, separately, in "A Rose for Emily" and "Dry September," substantiate Brooks' speculation. After Miss Emily, a mainstay of ideals in the public arena, kills her lover, Homer Barron, she lays down with his body for quite a few years, apparently without regret. Additionally, Miss Minnie shows no indications of regret about impelling the bits of gossip which prompted the demise of Will Mayes. Miss Minnie's associates trait her hysterics as indications of anguish rather than exotic delight because of the recharged enthusiasm of the townspeople. Miss Emily and Miss Minnie are at the same time upright and unjust; two ladies blameless who cover their transgressions behind a southern code of respect and gallantry. A code dependent on appearance as opposed to truth. Early southern culture set extraordinary accentuation on a lady's virtue. An unmarried lady was seen as unadulterated, immaculate, flawless. The 'gentler sex' supported this picture by expecting an ostensibly delicate yet created appearance. Be that as it may, this exterior of delicacy disguises an iron-willed quality, once in a while equipped for dangerous acts. Southern culture ensured this picture, making it workable for a lady to submit demonstrations of enthusiasm without regret. Faulkner looks at the elements of ladies in southern culture with streaming, clear sentences.
In direct examination of the composed representation of southern ladies, Faulkner's generalizations of the southern men incorporate nondescript Negroes and drab whites. Tobe, Miss Emily's old dark hireling, in "A Rose for Emily" is subservient, yet immovable to the white society. He opens entryways, concedes guests, and shops for Miss Emily, yet never talks about her to the inquisitive townspeople. The dark injured individual, Will Mayes, in "Dry September," surrenders, meekly arguing for answers, after a short physical battle with the white crowd. Interestingly, the clich?© southern white male is either aloof and limited like the city specialists managing Miss Emily or compelling and furious like John McLendon, who drives the rankled crowd against Will Mayes.
Faulkner additionally represents southern culture by catching "the moderate southern drawl of the Southern Negro, the tone of the rednecks' discourse designs, and the more refined tones and lingual authority of the informed townspeople" without diverting the peruser's consideration with overstated word usage or language structure (Volpe 44-45). In a moderate southern drawl, Will Mayes begs his attackers, "What all of you going to do with me, Mr. John? I ain't done nothing...." (Faulkner, Reader 523-524). The tone and exchange of the Negroes are not the same as the unpleasant discussion of the rednecks who utilize 'Nigger' without thought and the delicate, asking tones of Miss Minnie's female sidekicks as they ask, "Do you feel solid enough to go out? When you have had room schedule-wise to get over the stun, you should disclose to us what occurred. What he said and did; everything" (525).
In spite of the fact that Faulkner utilizes streaming depictions, generalizations, and unmistakable discourse examples to make the significant characters in Jefferson, Mississippi, he deliberately abstains from entering the brains of his characters right when they settle on their choices. The demonstration and inspiration is just suggested (Brooks, Modern 9). The discolored monogramed latrine things recommend Homer is in the ghastly marriage chamber, and maybe harmed by Miss Emily's before buy of arsenic. To recommend Miss Emily shared the marriage bed a "long strand of iron-silver hair" is lifted from the second pad (Faulkner, Literature 30-31). Also, in "Dry September," Miss Minnie's inspiration to charge Will Mayes in not unmistakably expressed. In any case, her thought process is suggested. As a maturing old maid, "the relaxing men did not pursue her with their eyes any longer" (Faulkner, Reader 522). After the homicide, Miss Minnie feels a sexy joy when the "young fellows relaxing in the entryway tipped their caps and pursued with their eyes the movement of her hips and legs when she passed (526). Furthermore, the passing of Will Mayes is inferred, not graphically appeared. Henry Hawkshaw sees just four individuals, rather than five, come back from the surrendered block furnace.
The two short stories share another similitude: the logical procedure of in media res. The work shows up amidst the story, and the portrayal streams forward and backward so as to set up inspiration and activities of the fundamental characters. In "A Rose for Emily," the account "moves in reverse in three stages, and forward in ten," lastly comes back to the present to speculate Miss Emily's thought processes and activities in the demise of Homer Barron (Reed 99). Starting at Miss Emily's memorial service when she was 74 years of age, the portrayal coolly reviews a moderately aged Miss Emily contending about the assessment obligation and denying Colonel Sartoris' demise. The portrayal ventures back thirty years to the episode about the smell, and still further back so as to 1894 when Miss Emily denies her dad's passing, forward to her romance with Homer Barron, and proceeds forward to her memorial service, with a retrogressive look at the requirement for Miss Emily to cover government obligations. Faulkner utilizes the method of in medias res in "Dry September." The article pursues the opening scene in the hairstyling parlor. After the horde structures to rebuff Will Mayes the focal point of the story movements to Miss Minnie. Anticipation works before Faulkner uncovers dubious intentions in Miss Minnie's conduct. Faulkner's utilization of in medias res makes an air of riddle by hiding crucial pieces of information.
All through the two short stories, Faulkner gives the fundamental signs by "dividing sequential time, comparing accounts of the past with accounts of the present, in this manner uncovering the impact of the past on the present. Occasions of the past figure out what happens in the present. No demonstration, no thinking is secluded in time" (Volpe 30). Past occasions in Miss Emily's life bolster her resulting activities. She precludes the passing from claiming her dad, framing an establishment of validity for her later disavowal of Homer Barron's demise. The past wires with the present. Miss Emily's conduct with the second era of city specialists reflects her conduct with the past age. They are "vanquished, steed and foot, similarly as she had vanquished their dads thirty years previously (Faulkner, Literature 26). Thus, in "Dry September," the past wires with the present when Miss Minnie makes the doubt of being assaulted by Will Mayes as she had completed one year sooner about another man. As Faulkner watched, "the past isn't dead. It isn't even past" (qtd. in Kazin 28).
On a more extensive scale, racial issues bond the occasions of the past with the present. For quite a long time, "the white man unquestioningly acknowledges his regular prevalence over the Negro as his normal appropriate to utilize him" and "the Negro keeps on tolerating the job appointed to him" (Volpe 23, 36). Henry Hawkshaw, albeit persuaded of the dark man's blamelessness, deserts Will Mayes after the crowd structures to rebuff the uninvolved, accommodating Negro, in this manner affirming Faulkner's own perspectives on human instinct and racial issues: "It is a dismal critique on human instinct that is substantially less demanding, less difficult, and significantly more fun and fervor to be against something you can see, similar to dark skin, than to be for something you can just put stock in as a guideline, similar to equity and reasonableness" (Faulkner, Letters 395). Quite a few years after the fact, society has rolled out couple of improvements. Loathe violations are on the ascent. Violations of enthusiasm keep on happening. The past breakers with the present.
Another case of combination with the over a wide span of time is the southern code of respect. The gallant code, made by whimsical figment instead of by the real world, secured a lady's notoriety. Faulkner looks at the tricky southern code of respect in his two short stories. To secure Miss Emily's notoriety, the townspeople ask for family supervision as she is pursued by Homer Barron, however acknowledge without inquiry that "he was not a wedding man" (Faulkner, Literature 29).
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The Treatment of PTSD on Veterans
Post-traumatic stress disorder also known as PTSD is a physiological condition caused by exposure to traumatic events in a human's life experience. This condition is mostly diagnosed to those recognized as veterans. They have lived their life to serve but experience life's most traumatic events while doing their job. For example, have you ever had a bomb or many shots fired towards you while trying to save someone else's life, well they have, so any thing that triggers that can affect their whole life.
Post-traumatic stress disorder affects veterans in many ways and it leaves them scarred with flashbacks from the event or events that traumatized them. According to one of the veterans returning from war said the following, The first time I experienced what I now understand to be post-traumatic stress disorder, I was in a subway station in New York City, and I'd just come back from two months in Afghanistan I was on assignment to write a profile of Massoud, who fought a desperate resistance against the Taliban until they assassinated him two days before 9/11. At one point during my trip we were on a frontline position that his forces had just taken over from the Taliban, by the time I got home, though, I wasn't thinking about that or any of the other horrific things we'd seen; I mentally buried all of it until one day, a few months later, when I went into the subway. Suddenly I found myself backed up against a metal support column, absolutely convinced I was going to die.
There were too many people on the platform, the trains were coming into the station too fast, the lights were too bright, the world was too loud. I couldn't quite explain what was wrong, but I was far more scared than I'd ever been in Afghanistan. I stood there with my back to the column until I couldn't take it anymore, I had no idea that what I'd just experienced had anything to do with combat; I just thought I was going crazy. (Jonathan Franzen, pg 86) Post-traumatic stress disorder affects your behavior that is agitation where they are flooded with some sort of nervous excitement and anxiety, irritability, hostility, hypervigilance, self-destructive behavior, or social isolation. Then there is the Psychological side which includes flashback, fear, severe anxiety, or mistrust. It affects their Mood, loss of interest or pleasure in activities, guilt, or loneliness. And then is also often followed by insomnia or nightmares, emotional detachment or unwanted thoughts.
These are the most common effects that post-traumatic stress disorder has on veterans and it can come in a various amount of intensity and then that causes for different types of treatment. The effects of post-traumatic stress disorder include the re-experiencing of the traumatic event that the victim experienced, it varies from having mental flashbacks, intrusive memories or bad dreams and this has a detrimental effect on the mentality of the victim. The other form of re-experiencing is physical memories; at times the body remembers what the mind forgot or the mind may just have shut down due to the intensity of the traumatic experience. Post-traumatic stress disorder doesn't just affect veterans but it affects their families too. They experience withdrawals from their friends and families and their loved ones don't always understand why they do what they do.
Another post-traumatic stress disorder victim stated the following: I had classic short-term post-traumatic stress disorder. From an evolutionary perspective, it's exactly the response you want to have when your life is in danger: you want to be vigilant, you want to react to strange noises, you want to sleep lightly and wake easily, you want to have flashbacks that remind you of the danger, and you want to be, by turns, anxious and depressed. Anxiety keeps you ready to fight, and depression keeps you from being too active and putting yourself at greater risk. This is the universal human adaptation to danger that is common to other mammals as well. It may be unpleasant, but it's preferable to getting eaten. (Because post-traumatic stress disorder is so adaptive, many have begun leaving the word disorder out of the term to avoid stigmatizing a basically healthy reaction.) (Barbara Krasner, pg147) Post-traumatic stress disorder is a completely natural response to danger and it is unavoidable in the short term but it usually gets better in the long term.
Around twenty percent of people who are exposed to a traumatic event get chronic post-traumatic stress disorder which usually ends up affecting the victim long term. Rape is a very traumatic experience to the victim but studies show that forty-seven percent of rape survivors have been able to recover enough to continue living their lives normally. Although combat can be very traumatic it is generally less traumatic than rape. Combat is mixed with positive experiences that are attached to the negative experiences that caused the victim to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder and it is hard to separate the positive experiences from the negative experiences which in turn makes it easier to recover from. There for the therapy for rape and combat victims are also different just because with rape victims they usually don't have a part from the experience that they would like to retain where for combat vitamins they would want to keep some of the memories that come with their experience.
According to David Marlowe that did a survey about the gulf war , combat veterans said that killing or even the witnessing of killing a enemy soldier was more traumatic that being self-wounded, but the most traumatic experience would be witnessing the killing of one of your friends in a war and they are usually harder to recover from and it triggers severe cases of post-traumatic stress disorder. Even though these experiences are traumatizing roughly eighty percent of victims recover from the events, although the victims recover from their traumatic experiences they never forget the memories of the experience. Treatment is very essential to all post-traumatic stress disorder victims but the treatment varies from all victims due to the different intensities of traumatic events. Traumatic event victims usually deal with a group of problems including, nightmares, intrusive memories, irritability, insomnia, hypervigilance, and emotional detachment. victims dealing with those Post Traumatic Stress Disorder symptoms show changes in their social, emotional, and physical well-being. They find it difficult to continue with their normal lives and they find it hard to interact with their family and friends who do not understand what they are going through.
Treatments have been making use and intergrading the use of high tech into the therapy sessions and the intergrading of virtual reality are becoming more common in these therapy's, The belief in the therapeutic power of confronting the source of one's anxieties and fears is as old as the practice of psychotherapy itself. New technology, however, has given this a decidedly modern twist. While it's easy to recreate the feared situation in therapy with a patient with a fear of heights or elevators, creating an opportunity for veterans to confront and gain mastery over their battlefield experiences has not been. Researchers at Emory University and the Georgia Institute of Technology were the first to create a Virtual Vietnam to treat veterans with PTSD. Over the years, they have developed this technology to create a 360-degree digital environment complete with the sights and sounds of a Middle East conflict zone, including gunfire noises, radio chatter, and aircraft flyovers. A vibrating chair can even mimic the feeling of distant explosions or Humvee driving, all within the safe confines of the therapy office.
During these treatment sessions, veterans are able to engage their senses in a more modulated, controlled, and secure way while gaining insights and new perspectives through talking about their experiences. This work has demonstrated some early and promising results from simple phobias to PTSD, including in some who had failed to respond to other treatments based on imaginal exposure. Virtual reality programs have been adapted for use with survivors of the World Trade Center or other terrorist attacks and even for motor vehicle accidents. Tetris: Forget Angry Birds, Tetris was the original addictive digital time-suck. Oxford University researchers claim that the colorful puzzle block game can serve as a "cognitive vaccine" against intrusive traumatic memories. In a series of experiments, researchers exposed non-clinical volunteers to graphic and traumatic film scenes. After the film, volunteers were assigned to either play Tetris, complete a Pub Quiz video game, or do nothing and asked to record any intrusive memories of the film images occurring to them throughout the week.
Participants who played Tetris had significantly fewer intrusive memories than those who did not. The researchers propose that the visuospatial task of fitting Tetris blocks into incessantly growing piles uses up the brain's visual resources and interferes with its ability to encode visual trauma memories that are the building blocks of symptomatic re-experiencing and flashbacks. Before you dust off that old Nintendo Game Boy, note that the findings are preliminary, without independent replication yet, and based on healthy undergrad volunteers exposed to video clips instead of actual trauma survivors. Still, this innovative and intriguing line of research points to the possibility of simple and proactive approaches to preventing or reducing PTSD development. Currently, there are only two FDA-approved medications for the treatment of PTSD [sertraline (Zoloft) and paroxetine (Paxil)]. The evidence on the effectiveness of these anti-depressant medications and other medications used "off-label" for PTSD-related symptoms is limited and the medications often come with problematic side effects that many users find disagreeable.
Instead, researchers are rounding up some unusual suspects and looking at new uses for some already well-known drugs. D-cycloserine (DCS): DCS is a broad-spectrum antibiotic which has been used in clinical trials to improve learning in rats and humans. DCS helps activate NMDA receptors in the brain which are associated with learning and memory formation. DCS-treated rats are able to learn fear extinction more quickly, taking far fewer trials to stop being afraid of a non-harmful stimulus (e.g. a flashing light) that they had once been taught to fear (by pairing the light with a loud noise, for example). While stress responses in traumatic situations such as combat are appropriate and even adaptive, the problem with PTSD is that extremely heightened fear responses continue to occur in non-life threatening situations (such as in a noisy restaurant or when a loud truck drives by).
Exposure to non-threatening but anxiety-provoking situations offers a chance to regulate these fear responses, and DCS may accelerate this process. When used with therapeutic exposure sessions or virtual reality exposure, DCS seems to enhance treatment effectiveness for phobias and panic disorder and may do the same for PTSD (though very preliminary results are uncertain). MDMA: On the streets it's known as Ecstasy, but in the research lab it's known as 3,4-Methylenedioxymethamphetamine, or MDMA. This illegal recreational psychedelic party drug associated with raves and mind-numbing trance music is believed by some to have potential therapeutic benefits. After years of campaigning, researchers from the Medical University of South Carolina and the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies in California got the FDA and DEA to approve a small pilot clinical trial of MDMA administration for treatment resistant PTSD sufferers. Under close clinical monitoring and in conjunction with intensive psychotherapeutic engagement, 20 participants were randomized to two administrations of either MDMA or placebo.
While the trial was extremely small and the results anything but conclusive, 83% of the MDMA group exhibited substantial treatment response compared to 25% in the placebo group. Distress tolerance therapies: One major aspect that differentiates PTSD from other normative reactions to traumatic experiences is the presence of emotional detachment/numbing/dissociation. The body's emotional system seems to log off or anesthetize in an effort to cope with the overwhelming stress of traumatic events. Unfortunately, this shutting down can cause drastic consequences for everyday functioning. Therapies like Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, or Mindfulness approaches focus on reducing emotional avoidance, tolerating distressing affects, and engaging in life with full, focused and controlled attention and acceptance. Interpersonal and family therapies: While a number of standard PTSD psychotherapies prioritize exposure methods, some individuals are reluctant to undergo re-experiencing approaches or are turned off by such treatments. Not all psychotherapy for PTSD needs to be trauma-focused, however.
Like most problems, PTSD occurs in a social context and comes with unique interpersonal costs and challenges. PTSD symptoms are related to intimate relationship troubles, relational detachment, and even interpersonal aggression. Social support is a strong buffer against the development of PTSD symptoms following a trauma, and couples and family-oriented interventions help individuals engage and enlist their families and social supports in recovery.
These treatments can help rewrite dysfunctional family scripts and engender trust, agency, and security. Present-centered approaches focus on current adaptations to symptomatic problems while interpersonal therapy works on adapting to problematic role transitions following traumatic events or interpersonal role disputes with significant others at work or at home. The effectiveness of these approaches illustrates that problematic trauma reactions can be managed with less of a focus on the traumatic past and more of an eye toward interpersonal adaptation and post-traumatic growth.
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Opioid Crisis in Veterans
The opioid crisis has become one of the most overwhelming and relevant issue of our time. It is estimated that 13.5 million people take opioids globally (WHO, 2017). Nationally, ninety one American deaths per day, for the last fifteen years, are due to opioids (Centers for Disease Control [CDC], 2017). In our state of South Carolina, in 2016, five hundred and fifty people died as a result of opioid overdoses. (SCDHEC, 2017). The statistics of the opioid addiction are alarming and the rates are increasing due to opioid medications being over prescribed by pharmaceutical professionals. Behavioral and environmental risk factors also are playing a role in addiction taking over, which can include family, friends, school, living situation, the abuse of other drugs, and chronic pain.
Although this issue affects many age groups, and races, we have decided to focus on the target population of the military and veterans. When veterans return back home after serving our country they suffer from mental and physical chronic pain. Most veterans battle chronic post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and traumatic brain injury (TBI) and seek medical help from professionals who prescribe opioid drugs. According to
Barbara Goldberg, fifteen percent of U.S. military rely on opioids following deployment, compared to four percent of the general population (Goldberg, 2017). Through our research we hope to provide a better understand of why veterans are a target population of the opioid epidemic, what the risk factors are contributing to their high statistics, and how we can begin to use best practices to overcome the problem at stake. Therefore our research question stands: Why is the opioid crisis so severe in veterans of the armed forces and how can we begin to start them on the road to recovery?
The opioid crisis has become a more prevalent issue just recently in the last 20 years when drugs such as oxycontin were approved as a safe pain pill to be taken when prescribed by doctors. Our question is aimed at why do opioids pose such a threat to veterans. We want to try and understand why doctors in veterans hospitals are continuing to prescribe these addictive medications knowing that the United States has an opioid crisis right now. The question we are answering is extremely important in finding a solution due to the fact that these veterans are fighting for our lives overseas and when they come back we are not fighting for them. They represent a population that is underserved when it comes to being treated for disorders like PTSD and injuries resulting from war. These veterans choose to take and become dependant on these drugs for many reasons. Boulder Crest Retreat is a place veterans of war can attend at no cost to start a road to recovery, the Institute was formed to develop, deliver, study and scale Posttraumatic Growth-based solutions to struggle “ including trauma, PTSD, anxiety, depression and suicidality (Press Release Newswire, 2018).
By attending these retreats they can start bettering themselves before they turn to prescription drugs for help. According to a publication written by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, there has been a zero tolerance policy that has been enforced since 1982. This policy can become a problem once they are finished with their time in the armed forces because they have no tolerance for any drugs being prescribed, meaning any drug can become addictive. We feel that by implementing a change invoking solution to the care of these veterans, it will lower the statistics of using prescription drugs. There are many other sources that mention opioid issues in the military or even after, and some even speak about changes and steps to recovering properly for these veterans. However, by approaching this question of Why is the opioid crisis so severe in veterans of the armed forces and how can we begin to start them on the road to recovery? we can try to combine all of the knowledge we have found and address the question using many different areas of the crisis, including business, mental issues, physical issues, health care accessibility and overall adequate care.
The length that the opioid crisis has stretched is far beyond what most of us realize. After veterans have spent so many years fighting for our country, they come back home to fight another issue: the opioid crisis. Everyday, the opioid crisis kills roughly one hundred Americans and veterans are twice as likely to die from an overdose than civilians, a Department of Veterans Affairs study showed (Centerstone). A large amount of prescribed medications for the military are opioids and for any pain management opioids are the first go to. A study performed in 2014 concluded that 40% of the American military has chronic pain and 15% of those individuals use opioids to combat it (Providers Clinical Support System, 2017).
Unfortunately, these numbers continue to rise. Research done at the University of Texas provided interesting information into the trends of the opioid crisis (Kazanis et al., 2018). In 2011, there was a decrease in both civilian and veterans populations, but more so among veterans. Between 2011 and 2013 there were continuous declines and largely in part due to policies put in place by the Department of Defense (DoD). A minor part of the decline can be attributed to changes in the veteran population and amount of opioids prescribed. The DoD has been working to lower the rate of opioid prescriptions and when the prescriptions are necessary, they are trying to prevent the misuse. According to the Army Times, many are working diligently to combat pain that soldiers experience early on (Curthoys, 2018).
Through being proactive, they can reduce the amount of opioid misuse and at the same time address issues that soldiers experience. Majority of soldiers return home with a whole host of issues. Cpl. Darin Adams returned home with back pain, an injury that had never been addressed when it occurred (Schumaker & Almendrala). Now, back in America he has to deal with the pain every day and uses opioids to combat it. Another study was performed after 9/11 in 2013 showed how vicious the opioid cycle has become. Joel, injured by a bomb, was prescribed any pill that he asked for even though he showed signs of addiction. He stated that he could get almost 500 pills at a time without anyone questioning it. This was standard protocol for many years until officials started looking into the doctors. More education was put in place and other measures were considered before going straight to pills. While the DoD is aware of the dangers that this crisis is inflicting upon the military population, much still has to be done to completely eradicate this problem.
The opioid crisis in our military and veterans is too large to be ignored. These men and women are fighting to keep us safe and ensure our rights, but the fight for them is far from over once they return home. Our project is geared to find the source of the opioid problem in the military and offer alternatives. One alternative to opioids that has been introduced has been the use of acupuncture for pain. According to a study conducted by the Military Healthcare System, findings of this study were consistent with physician-provided efforts to control pain, and top diagnoses were similar between active- and nonactive-duty beneficiaries. These data are in line with meta-analyses showing that acupuncture was more effective than placebo for addressing pain conditions, including headache, knee and back pain, neck disorders, and peripheral osteoarthritis (Madsen, 2018).
This study is just one example that there are alternatives to opioids that we are simply ignoring. Other alternatives, according to Military Medicine, include prescription monitoring programs, sole provider programs, and quality of care metrics (Sharpe, 2014). These alternatives provide a multitude of benefits. While monetary benefits are important to the success of a project, we are more focused on the social benefits. Military members struggle to live normal lives when they come home due to an addiction that they were prescribed. With the alternatives to opioids described above, we believe that current military members and veterans have a chance to end their addictions to opioids. The benefits of reducing opioid use range from quality time with family and friends, increased overall health, and even financial benefits.
While our alternatives are not free, they are a much healthier and safer option. We hope that, with the reduction in opioid use, that service members and veterans will be able to return to who they were before they were addicted. These benefits will not be immediate, but with support and time, will be worth it.
Cite this page
Opioid Crisis In Veterans. (2019, Apr 15).
Retrieved November 5, 2025 , from
https://studydriver.com/2019/04/page/11/
