Chronic inflammation is an issue, so intake of anti-inflammatory foods (oily fish, avocados, olive oils will be pleased to know that sleep disturbances can also lead to insulin resistance, weight gain and inflammation Hormonal and inflammatory imbalances can affect brain chemistry, causing mood swings and emotional distress

I was diagnosed with inflammatory bowel disease in 2015. Ulcerative colitis, to be precise, which is a form of IBD that causes severe inflammation in your colon The histology report showed that my bowel was severely distended and inflamed, and they removed the entire Having inflammatory bowel disease is hard — it’s completely different to IBS and is life-threatening. A realisation into how deeply inflammatory bowel disease can affect you; not just physically, but mentally

Signs of chronic inflammation or changes in how different areas of the brain work (some areas showing I am a research psychologist and my PhD focused on depression and inflammation. Next, is our immune system, and more specifically inflammation. The state of chronic, low grade inflammation is one of the biological changes often seen in depression One way suggests that biological vulnerabilities (e.g., increased inflammation) may only lead to the

Whilst most children grew up watching CBBC or Disney Channel on the TV, my dinners were often spent immersed in shows like Criminal Minds and NCIS. Not exactly the most child-friendly shows, but dinner time was mum’s time, as my dad used to work away for long periods. So this was not to be messed with. Exposure to crime-solving produced a fascination that has since shaped my interests. It eventually influenced even my career path, choosing to study Psychology at University. I’m Suvi, a psychology student, currently doing my placement year as a research assistant at the Stress, Psychiatry and Immunity Lab at King’s College London. Even now, everything I watch and read still revolves around the themes of crime and mystery. For those unfamiliar with Criminal Minds , it follows the work of the Behavioural Analysis Unit (BAU) in the FBI, profiling and interviewing people, to catch the offender. Each episode starts with the team building a profile, based on details of the crime scene and victimology, the study of crime victims, which can be used to apprehend the offender. Whilst this formula does sound repetitive, the exploration of human behaviour and profiling is captivating and, although dramatized, provides an insight into the field of forensic psychology. Admittedly, I chose to study GCSE Psychology because I believed those years would give me better insight into what the FBI BAU did relating to psychology. I now know;  that studying GCSE Psychology does not mean you can go profile people and predict things based on them. What does the BAU do? The BAU works has been active for 39 years, and works with investigative analysis and threat assessment, with methods rooted in Forensic, Behavioural, & Investigative Psychology. Forensic Psychology applies psychological concepts to the legal system. A Forensic Psychologist would carry out assessments on the offender to be used in trials. On the other hand, Investigative Psychology applies psychology to the criminal investigative process. It involves offender profiling, an investigative technique where the crime and crime scene are analysed to work out characteristics relating to the offender. This field focuses on attempting to understand criminal behaviour to aid law enforcement. In this article, I’ll discuss two well-known criminal cases, that show how forensic and investigative psychology developed to become what it is now. Jack the Ripper If I mentioned Whitechapel and serial killer, could you guess who I’m talking about? Jack the Ripper  was a serial killer that operated during the late 1800’s, in the Whitechapel region of London. He targeted women who worked or lived in Whitechapel and those who generally worked as prostitutes. The police never really had a solid suspect, because the location of these killings made it incredibly hard to catch the killer. At the time, Whitechapel was an impoverished area, with overcrowding and many slums. It was rife with disease, crime, and poverty, to the point not even the police wanted to go there. There were no consistent sightings of the man seen with these women before their deaths, and any evidence found never pointed to the killer’s identity. There is debate on whether the main 5 victims of the Ripper, were even killed by one man. The modus operandi (MO) is what led police to believe these 5 women were killed by the Ripper. Each victim was severely mutilated and had their internal organs removed. As the number of victims increased, the intensity of mutilation increased. Despite it being unsolved, this case is one of the earliest uses of profiling in a criminal case. The Metropolitan Police reached out  for the consultation of police surgeon, Thomas Bond. Bond was asked to give his opinion on the extent of the killer’s knowledge and skill regarding surgery. At this time, many believed the Ripper had to have some sort of anatomical knowledge of either the human body as a doctor or of an animal as a butcher. But Bond believed  that the killer did not possess any surgical or anatomical knowledge of the human body, nor the technical knowledge a butcher would have. He believed that the killer suffered from attacks of homicidal and erotic mania, based on the severe mutilations. Homicidal mania is an uncontrollable urge to harm or kill others. Erotic mania is an overwhelming obsession with love or sex. Both involve uncontrollable thoughts or behaviours that require help are severe mental health disorders that may require psychiatric intervention. Bond believed that the killer was possibly an eccentric man with an unstable income. To those close to him he may have not seemed “right in the mind”. Here, Bond used his knowledge, and evidence from the autopsies, to predict what kind of person the killer may have been, to guide the Met. But due to limitations at the time – such as the overwhelming number of leads, and the absence of DNA analysis – the Ripper was not caught. The Railway Rapists 100 years later, still in the UK, we’ll look at John Duffy and David Mulcahy , dubbed ‘The Railway Rapists’. This duo was active from 1982-86. Childhood friends, together they raped countless women and killed three. Their initial attack was the rape of a woman in 1982, taking place nearby Hampstead Heath railway station. This was followed by several more attacks, around multiple railway stations. Their MO consisted of the use of a knife to threaten their victims, tying their victims’ hands with string, and operating nearby railway stations. 1985, was when their attacks escalated from rape to murder with the killing of 19-year-old Alison Day. She was raped, strangled and thrown into the River Lea, with cobbles placed in her jacket to let her body sink.   During the police investigation, David Canter, a psychologist, was called in. Canter used the details of the crime to build a profile, to narrow the suspect list. The profile was built using the killer’s patterns, habits, and victimology. Specifically, Canter believed that the killer would be married but childless, have a history of domestic violence, and possibly live around Kilburn.   Duffy was an ex-railway employee and had previously been arrested for other violent offences. Once the Police arrested Duffy and Mulcahy, after Duffy was caught following a woman in a park. , they found of theOf the 17 observations Canter provided, Duffy met 13, proving the profile to be quite accurate. After his work on the ‘Railway Rapists’, Canter went on to develop investigative psychology. This is a field of psychology thatfield draws from psychological concepts, geography, and other social sciences. Unlike forensic psychology, cases worked on will contain unknown suspects, requiring information to be put together to reveal their identity.  Forensic Psychology has evolved to produce a new field that is crucial to criminal investigations. Investigative psychology enhances our ability to link crimes, identify or narrow down suspects, and generate relevant leads. Profiling provides deeper insights into the offender’s characteristics, as the crime can often reveal a lot about the offender: we simply need to know what to look for.   I’ve learnt that understanding these patterns and behaviours can help law enforcement better understand criminals, and improve the effectiveness of criminal investigations. This work provides the police with an effective technique, whereby the evidence doesn’t provide a clear answer.   Hopefully, by the end of this, I’ve encouraged you to give Criminal Minds a watch, and you now understand how much Forensic Psychology has truly progressed in the last 200 years.

But we need research to help us find out… Inflammation In the early stages of my career, I focussed on However sometimes, when there is too much inflammation, this can disrupt the very processes that carry Heart disease is known to be an inflammatory condition and long-term inflammation in the body can potentially We now know that individuals who have both inflammation and depression tend to be those who are less overview of antidepressant properties of ketamine as well as its effects on inflammation.

A third is that Spring is a time when inflammation increases as plants release pollen, and there have long been associations between mood disorders and inflammation.

For instance, inflammation is a mechanism that has recently drawn interest in psychiatry. As I explained in my previous blog, inflammation is an indication that the immune system (that is a defence Inflammation has been studied in the context of depression, and in particular in treatment-resistant that only those patients with increased (above 3 mg/L) C-reactive protein (CRP), that is, a marker of inflammation We detected sex-specific roles of inflammatory biomarkers in predicting treatment response.

doses of EPA and DHA, first in patients and then in lab-grown neurones, to help clarify how they reduce inflammation have been using this experimental model for years as it perfectly mimics inflammation in the brain of the breakdown of EPA and DHA in the body could be targeted as a mechanism to reduce depression and inflammation disorders, such as depression, where at least a sub-group of patients often have chronic levels of inflammation There is an ever-growing interest in the links between the immune system, inflammation, and depression

, like C-reactive protein (CRP) and pro-inflammatory cytokines. While inflammation is an important component of immune responses, chronic inflammation is associated While elevated inflammation might help fight off infections faster in the short term, chronic social Indeed, systemic discrimination and racism can lead to chronic inflammation and accelerated biological emotions between the US and Japan can shape biological responses to these emotions, with generally lower inflammation

We found that IL-6 and TNF-α, which are two pro-inflammatory cytokines which drive inflammation (essentially This is particularly interesting as it hints that there may be an activation of specific pathways of inflammation

Now a little bit about depression in the context of inflammation, since this was what primarily ignited Over the past few decades, clinical studies have shown that increased systemic inflammation (measured As the activity of the endocannabinoid system increases, it reduces inflammation. inflammation. I was curious and the questions I asked myself were whether increased systemic inflammation increased

our understanding of the biology of depression, and especially on the role of the immune system and inflammation In some people, depression might be related to a chronic inflammatory response to stress, involving both like all other disorders: not just in the mind, not just in the brain, but in the whole body, with inflammation Second, new anti-inflammatory treatment strategies, targeting inflammation through medications, nutritional lifestyle changes, are currently been developed for the specific subgroup of patients with increased inflammation