O-O-O-O- oh oh, Oh my!

In our everyday experience, our senses are always bombarded with a diverse spectrum of color. We might not always appreciate the importance of color even though it is literally everywhere. Aside from that, we might not often consciously realize that one of the first stimuli that we encounter when we eat food is its color. It basically provides us the information about the probable gustatory and olfactory experience that we would have (Zellner & Klautz, 1990).

In relation to that, let's use our imagination for this scene. Our eyes are closed, relishing the comfort of an activity what we would want to refer to as a 'nap.' Then for a moment, we smell something that tickles our senses-- mainly our olfactory sense. The wafting scent is similar to that of an apple pie's. So we pictured an image of an apple pie. By recollection, we can associate its scent to the color of the apple, which is red. This association of colors to the scent that is exposed to us almost happens instantaneously as we are exposed to the variety of food that we would very much likely to dig in.

Demattè, Sanabria, & Spence (2006) have demonstrated how association between food and color occurs. Odorants such as caramel, cucumber, leather lemon, spearmint, and strawberry were used in the experiment. All of which are diluted with 10 diethyl pthalate. The participants were instructed to choose the color (among the randomized color patches that are displayed on the screen) which closely resembles the odor that were presented to them by clicking the left side of the pc mouse that was provided. The results of their study have made it apparent that there is a significant association at least one color to specific odors. For instance, when they presented the cucumber odorant, msot of the responses that they got was that it is closely associated with the green color. Nevertheless, there are still odors in which the colors associated were too many to be consistent. During the presentation of the leather odorant, participants chose brown, gray or green. The experimenters have also seen that there is also some inconsistencies in the color-odor correspondence. For example, the respondents chose the color pink to best represent the odor of strawberry even thought the true color of strawberry is red. The researchers attributed this association to the color of common snacks available almost everywhere (e.g. yogurt, milkshake, lollipop).

Now you can imagine that you have opened your eyes. After indulging yourself with the lip-smacking odor that you have just smelled, you now turn to your side and decide to walk towards the kitchen. You see your mom have just finished preparing her cup of coffee. And upon the mere sight of it, you instantly grimaced. The coffee’s color is a high intensity of black and it already makes you want to puke. Why could this be happening?

There is an increase perception of a flavor’s intensity when the color’s intensity is increased. According to DuBose et al. (1980) as cited by Zellner and Klautz (1990), olfactory cues are more greatly influenced by color as compared to gustatory cues because of the fact that flavor is largely odor.

We can now see how our experience and memory can play a huge role in our tendency to link food to a particular color. When we are greatly exposed to a food that has a consistent color, we store this information and this information would be added to our knowledge that we can use anytime that it is needed. We have also learned that the perceived intensity of flavor is directly proportional to the color intensity of the food. As always, experience-dependent plasticity could explain almost everything that is related to our senses—including this correspondence between color and odor and flavor perception.

REFERENCES:

DuBose, C. N., Cardello, A. V., & Mailer, O. (1980). Effects of colorants and flavorants on identification, perceived flavor intensity, and hedonic quality of fruit-flavored beverages and cake. Journal of Food Science, 45, 1393-1399.

Demattè, L.M., Sanabria, D., & Spence, C. (2006). Cross-modal associations between odors and colors. Chemical Senses, 31, 531–538.

Zellner, D. A. & Kautz, M. A. (1990). Color Affects Perceived Odor Intensity. Human Perception and Performance, 2, 391-397.

(Jeni)

사랑해요 김현중 I love Kim Hyun Joong

I live a double life. If you didn’t know me very well, you wouldn’t think I’d be into KPOP. In fact, a classmate of mine once approached me and said, “My perception of you totally changed after finding out you like kpop. You actually have a life!” - - Huh? What’s that supposed to mean? I have a life outside academics! In fact, it’s the other way around: my addiction for Korean dramas and music have got me so caught up that it’s eating the life out of me, for real! Instead of hanging out with my friends, for example, I’d rather just stay home, stalk and watch Korean dramas! Not just any Korean dramas and news though, just those related with Kim Hyun Joong oppa. Aigoo (Oh my), what to do? You see, ever since last semester, my “love” for this 24-year-old Korean sensation has escalated to idolizing heights I did not expect. I wouldn’t consider myself a true fangirl, as I have never spent for him. However, regularly watching his dramas, reading news about him in the internet, listening to his songs and knowing that he came to the Philippines last August to hold an outreach and afterwards go on vacation was enough for me to shed tears of joy. I fancy him so much it makes me go ‘cuckoo’!

As I search through fan sites, one problem persists: I can’t understand or read Korean! It frustrates me, for example, to go through his drama previews, commercials and music videos (e.g. MBS’ Mischievous Kiss) and not understand a thing! I simply derive what they’re trying to say through their emotions. How I despise language barriers! Why can’t we just have automatic language processors similar to the ones we have for detecting unpalatable foods and pain, huhu.

Unless I give up more time spent for my medical dreams (not like I haven’t been doing that) and invest them in learning Kim Hyun Joong’s language, I highly doubt I’ll be able to speak fluent Korean. The least I can do is search for items about him with English subtitles and use this opportunity to uncover similarities between Korean and English speech. Understanding a language, after all, involves accurately perceiving speech (Goldstein, 2007). And, similar to the atoms of our cells, we start with morphemes and phonemes. While morphemes are the smallest units of meaning in language, phonemes are the smallest units of sound in language¹.

When we were young infants, we had the power to tell the difference between sounds that create all of the speech sounds used in the world’s languages. By the age of 1, however, we unfortunately lose this distinguishing ability (Kuhl, 2000, as cited in Goldstein, 2007). As the experience-dependent plasticity phenomenon suggests, a child loses his ability to tell the difference between sounds if the he doesn’t have experience discriminating them. I wish someone spoke to me in Korean early on. Good news though! Despite the discrepancies in English and Korean phonemes, the following about it were discovered: English /i/ and Korean /i/ completely overlapped, merged Korean mid-front vowels /e e/ overlapped with English /I/ and English /u/ and Korean /u/ overlapped in both vowel height and frontness for children, but only in vowel height for the adults (Baker and Trofimovich, 2005, as cited in Lee & Iverson, 2009). Moreover, seven vowels typically transcribed with the same IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) for both Korean and English were compared by Yang (1996). For vowels /i e e a u o V/, Yang (1996) discovered that (1) English male speakers produced lower F1 values (a linguistic property) for /i u/, but higher for /o/, than Korean speakers while English female speakers produced higher F1 values for /i a u/ than Korean female speakers, but lower for /e/ (2) Both English male and female speakers produced a higher F2 (another linguistic property) for all vowels than Korean speakers except for /a/ in male speakers and for /i e/ in female speakers and (3) The vowel /u/ showed the greatest cross-language difference. These findings are quite challenging to visualize as I don’t exactly know when Koreans actually say the aforementioned vowels. The absence of speech segmentation as I listen to Korean makes it hard for me to realize when they’ve said the vowel.

One thing that helps us tell when one word ends and another begins is knowledge of the meanings of words. In a study by Wang, Ko and Choi (2009), it was discovered that morphological awareness predicted word reading and reading comprehension within both Korean Hangul and English over and above phonemic awareness. This means that knowing the meanings of words based on its morphology is more important than knowing based on phonology (for obvious reasons that there are only a handful of sounds that overlap, as proven by the previous paragraph). In fact, morphological awareness for either Korean or English language may help contribute to word reading for the other language. What’s the result of having this kind of awareness? Well, you can efficiently read both Korean and English.

Omo omo omo (Oh my gosh) to be able to finally relate my Korean addition to academics makes me so happy I can cry! 감사합니다 (Kamsamnida, thank you) Sir! 아자아자 화이팅 (Aja aja Hwaiting/FIGHTING)! :D

References:

¹ OLPC Morphemes and Phonemes. (n.d.). Retrieved from the OLPC: http://www.chinese-lessons.com/conversion/morphemesPhonemes.htm

Goldstein, E. B. (2007). Sensation and Perception (7th Eds.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth

Lee, S. & Iverson, G. (2009). Vowel development in English and Korean: Similarities and differences in linguistic and non-linguistic factors. Speech Communication, 51, 684–694. doi:10.1016/j.specom.2009.03.005

Wang, M., Ko, I., & Choi, J. (2009). The importance of morphological awareness in Korean–English biliteracy acquisition. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 34, 132–142. doi:10.1016/j.cedpsych.2008.12.002

Yang, B., 1996. A comparative study of American English and Korean vowels produced by male and female speakers. Journal of Phonetics, 24, 245–261.

The Sound. . . of FOOD

FILIPINOS = FOOD, agree? More often than not, we bond and build relationships over food. Isn’t that the reason why we end up for hours on the dining table? Sometimes, especially when we have balikbayans over, we just wait for the next meal to be served. Time flies when there are so many viands to taste and chismis to catch up with. There’s just no end to this eating craze! As a matter of fact, I remember one of my mom’s friends telling us that we have to find another hobby aside from eating. But what can we do? Eating is so pleasurable, more so if you have family and friends to share them with. That reminds me, Christmas is just around the corner! HO HO HOw timely and delightful to talk about love for food. :D

I don’t know if most of you can relate, but eating has always been a battle I’ve lost to. Being on the heavy side of the scale, I’ve tried controlling myself from eating but it seems like there’s no use escaping – I still give in to my urges. FAIL. Why is food so addicting anyway? Ah, FLAVOR. Yes, flavor. Has it ever occurred to you how we acquire flavor? Is it through the mouth? The smell? Both? Well, here’s a realization: it involves an evaluation by ALL our senses (Crisinel & Spence, 2008). Multisensory interactions take place between taste, smell, touch, vision and audio every time we perceive the flavor of food (Auvray & Spense, 2008). No wonder we’re so drawn to food! We literally invest every part of us to perceive it.

The effects of smell, touch, taste and vision when eating are quite obvious. Just look at the episode when contestants of Survivor Philippines munched on exotic bugs. They closed their nose as the chewed, barfed when they ate something that smelled like poop and expressed their disgust as they felt the hairy legs of the insects. In addition, Filipino consumers presented with images and ambiguously named dishes resulted to maximum positive ratings (Mendoza, Montenegro & Vistal, 2008).

You’re probably thinking of the ambiance in restaurants and how giddy or delightful it makes you feel when the music is just right. When you’re out on a date, for example, doesn’t the atmosphere feel more romantic and conducive to drinking wine when you have a stringed quartet playing for you? What about in Filipino restaurants? Doesn’t it give you that festive feel and make you indulge in their buffets when you have a band serenading your table? More importantly, music matching may also be useful for those patients with impaired gustatory functioning (those who encounter problems with tasting food) (Crisinel & Spence, 2008). Although there is proof that liking background noise was correlated with liking food, it’s just a correlation – no overall effect was seen (Woods, Poliakoff, Lloyd, Kuenzel, Hodson, Gonda, Batchelor, Dikksterhuis & Thomas, 2010). Not to mention the unique food preferences of each individual. But, more than your appetite for eating, how did music influence your perception of flavor?

Audition on the perception of food usually focused on the textural properties of food - these include properties such as crispiness and staleness (Auvray & Spense, 2008). Furthermore, background noise affected one’s perception of sounds conveyed from eating food: perceived crunchiness is enhanced in a noisy environment or in environments with high frequencies (>2kHz) (Auvray & Spense, 2008; Woods et al, 2010). Alternatively, food tastes crunchier in background noise (Woods et al, 2010). Similar to how we get inspired by people who are unrelated to us, we now know that sound unrelated to eating can enhance our perception of sound-conveyed food. In addition to sound perception, background noise can alter the reported intensity of gustatory food cues by individuals, namely sweetness, saltiness, bitterness and sourness (Crisinel & Spence, 2008; Woods, et al 2010). While one suggests that these alterations don’t bear any effects on the over-all rate of a food’s flavor (Woods, et al 2010), another does (Crisinel & Spence, 2008). In this case, I would like to expound on the latter. Considering how the former sought biased positive associations with their choice of word “flavoursome”, the latter reminds us of the “genius” that lays in us. Regardless of demographics, there exists a stronger association between lower-pitched sounds and visually presented bitter-tasting foodstuffs and higher-pitched sounds and sour-tasting foodstuffs (Crisinel & Spence, 2008). Unlike the previous studies, Crisinel & Spence (2008) relied on the names of foods alone to come up with their findings. Remember that tastes (bitter and sour most especially) as well as high and low-pitched sounds can signal danger. Just like pain signals, don’t you feel thankful that you already have these automatic screening mechanisms for what to eat and what not to eat?

That said, don’t be surprised if cookbooks started adding songs to their list of ingredients. We’ve given so much attention to making dishes look presentable, why don’t we enhance it with some feel good music as well? We are what we eat. So if you eat food that you especially like (thanks to all our senses), good for you!

References:

Auvray, M. & Spense, C. (2008). The multisensory perception of flavor. Consciousness and Cognition, 17, 1016–1031. doi:10.1016/j.concog.2007.06.005

Crisinel, A. & Spence, C. (2008). Implicit association between basic tastes and pitch. Neuroscience Letters, 464, 39–42. doi:10.1016/j.neulet.2009.08.016

Mendoza, K., Montenegro, B. & Vistal, C. (2008). Bistro Kritiquo: An Experimental Research on the Effects of Semantics and Imagery on Consumer Choice. Unpublished Manuscript, University of the Philippines Diliman, Quezon City, Philippines.

Woods, A., Poliakoff, E., Lloyd, D., Kuenzel, J., Hodson, R., Gonda, H., Batchelor, J., Dikksterhuis, G., & Thomas, A. (2010). Effect of background noise on food perception. Food Quality and Preference. doi:10.1016/j.foodqual.2010.07.003

DATING Tips!!!

(RIZEL)
Dati, nagblog na ako tungkol sa attraction. Sa blog na iyon, nabanggit na na nahahalina ang mga lalaki sa mga babaeng nakasuot ng pula (Elliot and Niesta, 2008). At sabi ni Sir Diwa, bilang reaksiyon dito, may research na rin daw ngayong 2010 na nagsasabing ang mga babae din ay naaattract sa mga lalaking nakasuot ng pula (di ko natanong kung sinong researchers, sorry can’t credit, I’ll ask next time).

So okay, tapos na tayo sa mga paraan kung paano makakaattract ng partner kaya ngayon dumako naman tayo sa mga paraan kung paano makipagdate. Let’s assume na gusto mo si Ate o si Kuya at first date niyo palang ito, paaano kaya magkakaroon ng susunod pang dates? O mas maganda, paano ka kaya niya magugustuhan din? May mga ilang tips na binibigay ang mga Sikolohista ( galing ‘to sa 160 class ko )Narito…

1. Manood kayo ng horror movies! O basta mga pelikulang nakakatakot o nakakagulat. Bakit? Dahil ang arousal na natatanggap ng autonomic ganglia (parasympathetic at sympathetic) ay non-specific at misleading. Ibig sabihin ang takot o excitement na mararamdaman ni crushie habang nanonood ng pelikula ay pwede nyang ma -associate na heightened feelings niya para sa iyo. O diba bongga?

2. Thrilling sports! Tulad ng paliwanag sa horror movies, ang thrilling sports ay nakakapagbigay din ng mga pakikiradam at emosyong maaaring ibaling o icredit natin sa taong kadate natin. Well, ikaw safe ka na kasi gusto mo na siya dati diba? Hahahaha. Sinisiguro mo nalang na mareciprocate niya ang nararamdaman mo. Tomo!!!

May isang experiment na tinatawag na Shaky Bridge Experiment (Duton and Aron, 1974) na nagpapatunay na pwedeng mangyari ang nabanggit ko na sa itaas. Ganito ang nangyari sa Shaky Bridge experiment; may isang magandang girl na nagsusurvey sa taas mismo ng isang hanging wooden bridge! Bongga si ate! So ikaw ang naglalakad sa shaky bridge na ito, sasagot ka ba? magiging interesado ka pa ba sa magiging resulta ng sarbey na sinagutan mo? E paano naman kung sa baba at hindi sa shaky bridge ka na sinarbey ni ate? Sa eksperimentong ito, nakita na mas maraming tumawag upang malaman ang resulta ng sarbey mula sa mga tinanong niya sa shaky bridge kesa sa mga sa baba na tinanong. Bakit? Dahil naassociate nang participants ang “pagkagusto” kay ate sa thrill (o takot) na naramdaman nila nung nasa shaky bridge sila.

3. Oxytocin aerosols. Ang Oxytocin ang neurotransmitter para sa attachment at bonding , ito ang neurotransmitter na may hawak sa pagkagusto natin sa ibang tao o sila sa atin (pero syempre, hindi lang ito ang mga ginagawa ng Oxytocin). Bago lang research study na nagsasabing may mga pabango o aerosols na raw na may Oxytocin na pwedeng i-spray. Pagkatapos, pwede itong malanghap ni crushie at voila!-instant attachment. Sabi ng classmate ko, ginagawa raw ito sa mga speed dating. Hmmm.

4. Delikadong mga sitwasyon. Sa mga action movies (lalo na sa ‘Pinas), karaniwang nagkakainlaban ang leading lady at ang leading man pagkatapos ng isang pagharap sa delikadong sitwasyon tulad ng pagtakas o di kaya’y pakikipagsuntukan sa mga hoodlooms. May koneksiyon ito sa attraction na nabubuo natin sa isang tao sa tuwing tayo ay may inaasahang paparating na kapahamakan (base sa Anticipation shock experiment). Pero ‘wag niyo na siguro niyong gawin to, wag niyo namang ipagdasal na may mangyaring sunog sa sinehan o may mga holdaper na dumating sa pinagdedate-an niyo ni crushie.

Ayan, so may apat na tayong natutunang tips kung pano makipagdate upang makuha natin ang atensiyon, atraksiyon, at “puso” ni crushie. Muli na naman nating napatunayan na hindi lang pang “geeks” ang journal articles, cool sila at NAGAGAMIT. *wink *wink.

P.S. sa 160 class naming kung saan ko nakuha ang lahat ng ito, kung sakali mang may mga mali akong nasabi, please feel free to leave a comment at aayusin natin yan. Salamat!

Elliot, A. & Niesta, D. (2008). Romantic Red: Red Enhances Men’s Attraction to Women. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 95, No. 5, 1150–1164.

Dutton, D. & Aron, A. (1974). Some evidence for heightened sexual attraction under conditions of high anxiety. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 30, 510-517.

160 class lecture and classmates.

GLEE-ful??

Life tastes sweeter because of the presence of sound. Perhaps you might have already been asked a certain question countless of times: if you’re only allowed to choose one sense over the other (either vision or audition), what would you choose and why? Of course, there would be various explanations for the response(s) to the question. And for the purpose of tackling a more specific topic in this blog post, I would just leave the matter of defending your answer to your cognitive structures.

Before I proceed to the next part, let us first define some basic terminologies. What is sound? Sound can be defined in two aspects: the physical and the perceptual. In the former, it pertains to the changes in the pressure that occurs in the air or some other medium while for the latter, sound refers to the experience one attains during the process of hearing (Goldstein, 2010). We hear a myriad of sounds in our everyday living. Naturally, one cannot possibly say that he/she have not taken the chance to appreciate music. The music that we hear may consist of pure tones (e.g. whistling sound) or complex tones (e.g. sounds which are created by musical instruments).

It is often said that music is the language of emotions. True enough, whenever one feels high (happy) or low (sad), just the sound of music would surely uplift one’s spirit or even increase one’s feeling of happiness (Hunter, Schellenberg, & Schimmack, 2008). And whenever one experiences the feeling of sadness, he/she can either spend repair efforts during a negative mood or maintain the positive mood if he/she is in a state of feeling such (McCrea, 2000). But then again, there is a factor that must be taken into consideration in this statement. Current researchers have contended that there is a difference between persons who have a low self-esteem (LSE) and those who have high self-esteem (HSE). According to Heimpel, Wood, Marshall, &Brown (2002), people who have low self-esteem are less likely to be motivated in mood repairs compared to individuals with HSE. It was proposed by Wood, Heimpel, Manwell, and Whittington (2009) that this seems to be the case because “LSEs feel less deserving of positive affect— happiness, joy, pleasure, and so forth—than do HSEs and that feeling relatively undeserving dampens their motivation to lift themselves out of a sad mood (p. 363).”

Music that has a slower tempo and minor mode tends to be associated with sadness (Hunter Schellenberg, & Schimmack, 2008). So whenever sadness envelopes one’s being and chooses to listen to this type of music, it just highlights that particular emotion. Undeniably, there are times wherein to be fully immersed in the emotions portrayed by a particular song being played in your mp3 player, for example, many individuals turn up the volume to a high level that he/she can no longer hear the sound on the external environment. Involving oneself in listening to high volumes of music would lead to the exposure to leisure noise (Goldstein, 2010). The loudness of the music (which is related to the sound pressure or amplitude) that is included in this kind of activity has been associated with the consequences of having temporary and permanent hearing losses.

So for those who wants to indulge themselves in the abyss of sad songs (emo, screamo, sad love songs, etc), it would just be fine doing so but always remind yourself to play the music in the proper volume (not too loud but can be heard just as much). Music can serve as the gateway to feeling a greater sense of sadness or happiness. Whatever portal you choose, try not to become too distracted by it since anything in excess it bad for us.

Now, let us think again. Do sounds really make our lives sweeter? Or do they make it even bitter? ;)

REFERENCES:

Goldstein, E. B. (2010). Sensation and Perception (8th ed.). Belmont, CA, USA: Wadsworth Publishing.

Heimpel, S. A., Wood, J. V., Marshall, M. A., & Brown, J. D. (2002). Do people with low self-esteem really want to feel better? Self-esteem differences in motivation to repair negative moods. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 82, 128–147.

Hunter, P., Schellenberg, E., & Schimmack, U. (2010). Feelings and perceptions of happiness and sadness induced by music: Similarities, differences, and mixed emotions. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 4(1), 47-56. doi:10.1037/a0016873

McCrea, S. M. (2000). Beyond hedonism: Broadening the scope of affect regulation. Psychological Inquiry, 11, 180–183.

Wood, J.V., Heimpel, S. A., Manwell, L. A., & Whittington, E. J. (2009). This Mood Is Familiar and I Don’t Deserve to Feel Better Anyway: Mechanisms Underlying Self-Esteem Differences in Motivation to Repair Sad Moods. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2, 363–380.

(Jeni)

HELL, no (what NOT to do)

(RIZEL)
"Thou shall not kill" and more importantly thou shall not kill thyself.
Last September 10 we celebrated the World's Suicide Prevention Day and as a way to support the call to prevent suicide all over the globe, I offer this blog to the readers.
In one of the lectures of a major subject in Psychology, my professor cited some symptoms that a person might be suicidal. It's important for us to know these things so that we can have the capacity to know when a friend of ours or maybe a close person to us might be suicidal. We might be able to help them.
Here goes Ma’am Morales’ lecture:
 The behavioral cues include talking about hopelessness and worthlessness
 Talking about “taking a trip” “going away”
 Giving possessions with sentimental value like heirlooms or even simple things like photos and blankies
 Having a plan
 Decreased performance level socially or even at work
 Upsurge of self-destructive behaviors

Most of the time, the people vulnerable to suicide are;
 Separated, divorced, widowed
 High and medium SES
 Dentists
 Physicians

Now, it's time to see suicide based on the results of different psychological researches.
Sometimes, it’s hard to know who is a suicidal. This is because they often deny and hide their suicidal thoughts (Cha et.al., 2010). The researchers then devised a way to somehow predict suicidal behaviors even when faced with the dilemma that suicidals often hide these feelings of hurting themselves. In their study wherein they showed participants words including suicide-related words/ stimuli, they concluded that “suicide attempters showed an attentional bias toward suicide-related words relative to neutral words, and this bias was strongest among those who had made a more recent attempt”. This finding can also become a behavioral cue to know who are the people exposed to suicidal risk and as Cha, et.al. (2010) say, this can improve clinical work on suicide-related outcomes.

National crises in different forms can also affect suicide rates and suicide tactics. This was shown by a study done by Fajkic, et.al. (2010) in Bosnia and Herzegovina using records from 1992-1995 after the war. They saw that before the war, adolescent suicides were done by hanging, and was change to firearms after the war. Suicide rates were also founded out to be lower after the war. The researchers suggest a more careful way of handling firearms in households and raising more awareness in suicidal behaviors and risks.
Also, Ventrice et.al., (2010) “suggest that direct exposure to suicidal behavior may leave engrams (memory traces) that increase an individual’s susceptibility to suicidal behavior.”
In addition to these, Kolves (2010) also cited the following in her Editorial entry “Child Suicide, Family Environment and Economic Crisis”;
 Parent-child conflicts
 divorce and stepparent (Pelkonen & Marttunen, 2003; Samm et al., 2010)
 family history of mental heath problems (King, 2009)
 economic my have an impact on recession may have on morbidity (Catalano,2009; Uutela, 2010), mortality (Simms, 2009), and, more specifically, suicide (Gunnell, Platt, & Hawton, 2009)

So what am gonna do with this, you ask? Well, tell your friends about it and of course remember that life is beautiful and suicide is never an option. So if ever this hellweek (or hellsem!) is killing you, please don’t literally, kill yourself. 
References:
Cha, C., Najmi, S., Park, J., Finn, C., & Nock, M. (2010). Attentional Bias Toward Suicide-Related Stimuli Predicts Suicidal Behavior. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, Vol. 119, No. 3, 616–622.
Fajkic, A., Lepara, O., Voracek, M., Kapusta, N., Niederkrotenthaler, T., Sonneck, G., & Dervic, K. Child and Adolescent Suicides in Bosnia and Herzegovina Before and after the War (1992-1995).Crisis 2010; Vol. 31(3):160–164.
Gunnell, D., Platt, S., & Hawton, K. (2009). The economic crisis and suicide. British Medical Journal, 338, 1456–1457.
King, R. A. (2009). Psychodynamic and family aspects of youth suicide. In D.Wasserman&C.Wasserman (Eds.), Oxford textbook of suicidology and suicide prevention. (pp. 643–651). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Catalano, R. (2009). Health, medical care, and economic crisis. New England Journal of Medicine, 360, 749–751.
Pelkonen, M., & Marttunen, M. (2003). Child and adolescent suicide: Epidemiology, risk factors, and approaches to prevention.Pediatric Drugs, 5, 243–265.
Samm, A., Tooding, L.-M., Sisask, M., Kõlves, K.,Aasvee, K.,&Värnik, A. (2010). Suicidal thoughts and depressive feelingsamong Estonian schoolchildren: Effect of family relationship and family structure. European Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 19, 457–468.
Simms, C. (2009). Economic crisis and mortality. International Journal of Clinical Practice, 63, 1119–1122.
Uutela, A. (2010). Economic crisis and mental health. Current Opinion in Psychiatry, 23, 127–130.
Ventrice, D., Valach, L., Reisch, T., Michel, K. (2010). Suicide Attempters’ Memory Traces of Exposure to Suicidal Behavior: A Qualitative Pilot Study, Crisis 2010; Vol. 31(2):93–99.