MindPeers

Counselling Psychologist

Sampoorna Manosthiti

Head Of Public Relations

Knight of Steel

Creator and Founder of a blog that spreads awareness on mental illnesses and its aspects.

Founder

Blogchatter

Content Creator

I’m a counseling psychologist and writer based out of Hisar, Haryana. Over the last 6 years, I have been working to make mental health easier to understand for laypeople through lectures, seminars, videos, and articles. 

Having fought clinical depression and suicidality during my teenage years, I try to put more emphasis on men’s mental health to help people and men understand what issues they face and how they can be overcome. 

I also enjoy explaining topics related to stats and research. I believe psychologists, before everything else, are scientists and should be well-versed in the scientific method. My aim is to take the fear of stats and research out of psychology students and replace it with confidence and applicable skills. 

I have also shared my experiences with clinical depression for JOSH Talks. You can listen to my story in detail here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BmyzKHJmHA

Reach out to me for help with research in Psychology or content writing for your organization.

Read the headline and I wouldn't blame you for expecting a funnily frivolous complaint from a man seeking divorce. Read the content and you will see a different picture emerge. [LONG POST ALERT]

The story is of a man whose wife brought home stary dogs in their flat, even though the society didn't allow pets. Presence of these dogs led to fights with neighbors. The man was expected to cook for the dogs and clean up after them. He was also expected to support his wife with activism work even though he wasn't comfortable with it. One time, his wife pranked him by accusing him of having an affair on public radio. 

He simply wants a divorce and to live his life in peace. He gets rejections from the court and a misleading headline by one of the most popular newspapers in the country. 

It will be International Men's Day next week. There will be loads of posts asking men to speak up. How do I ask them to do the same when a man seeking a divorce is seen as a punchline even by the media?

Telling men to speak up is easy but putting in the work to actually listen and understand is difficult. I would say I expected better from The Times Of India but I honestly didn't. This is on brand for them. 

Cannot wait for the "Its okay to speak up" articles they'll publish on Wednesday.

Arjun Gupta

Men’s Mental Health | Research & Stats | PhD @ GJU, Hisar

The co-founder of Netflix, Marc Randolph, is a distant relative of Sigmund Freud. 

I do not know what to do with this info and how to process it.

Netflix

Netflix Co-Founder, Entrepreneur, Mentor & Investor

NCAHP has released the curricula for 13 fields right now like Optometry, EMT, Occupational therapy and Applied Psychology. Most of these fields have NEET as an admission criteria but Applied Psychology is NOT one of them. 

Linking the curriculum for Applied Psychology released in April here. Unless they change it in the next few days, I don't see any reason to think NEET will be mandatory for admissions to Psychology from next year.

NCAHP Curriculum

Influencers are criticized for brainwashing their audience, but what if an audience could brainwash the influencer as well? 

This is called "audience capture", a phenomenon where a creator gets captured by an audience into giving them what they want in exchange for more engagement and loyalty. Its brainwashing - but in reverse. 

For example, I once posted a reel where I talked about strengths of qual research. People loved it. They wanted more. In the next reel, I posted the strengths of quant research. People weren't happy. They wanted black and white content. Not multifaceted, complex views. That's how it happens!

To experience the same high, the creator has to do something even more outrageous, more extreme than last time. For this performance, the audience rewards them with a loyal defense, superhigh engagement metrics and the occasional monetary support. 

This is also why you often see very normal creators become more and more extreme over time. 

The creator that started out as an influencer doesn't realize that they are now the one being influenced by their audience. Performing for a void that will abandon them at a moment's notice. 

Have you seen any examples of audience capture in your life?

Google seems hellbent on making your research easier. In the last 3 days, they have made two updates that have made reviewing literature much easier. 

1. Google Scholar AI Labs: 

Remember having to come up with the right keywords for a Scholar search? Scholar Labs makes it easier to search a query using AI. You enter a prompt and receive 10 most prominent results. I have been using this since yesterday and am surprised at how much I didn't know about my own topic. 

2. Scholar PDF Reader: 

A chrome extension that combines the Scholar database with the paper you're reading. Makes it easier to go through papers and find related ones. Yesterday, they updated it to also allow highlighting some sections of the paper. Everything you highlight gets saved to your Scholar Library. 

Please remember that these are ultimately just tools. It comes down to how you use them, but a hammer makes it easier to build a house than having to do it by hand. 

What tools are you using in your research work right now?

There are people in my network who have tried looking for research assistants, or research interns but struggled. They find it difficult to find students with the right skill set. 

At the same time, in my workshops, I have seen loads of students who have a knack for learning and research. They struggle to find the right roles for themselves. 

Is there a way to bridge this gap? Are there any skills in particular that organizations are looking for that students are lacking? Is there a lack of transparency in the hiring process from the organizations? 

Tagging some folks who I know run such projects, where can students be doing better? 

Arjun Kapoor Gunjan Bhutani Vipul Paliwal Pattie Gonsalves Dr Chinu Agrawal, Ph.D

In the response to the young boy's death by suicide in Delhi, there is a repeated call for counselors in every educational institution. I want to take a moment to ask my colleagues who have worked as school counselors about their experiences in the role. 

In conversations, I hear stories of administrative overreach, compromise of ethics and blurred boundaries. Is that your experience too? 

If you're worried about confidentiality, you can share your experiences over DMs but its something worth talking about. Will more school counselors change things if those already there aren't allowed to work properly?

[Might make a long form video out of this too]

The British Psychological Society has some decent guidelines on how members are expected to conduct themselves online. They're not very descriptive but they lay down some frameworks that can help you navigate social media content creation without compromising on ethics.

BPS Guidelines for Social Media

It's always easy to criticize the outgroup over the ingroup. As a psychologist, I will find it super easy to list 100 things wrong with other professions, but ask me to list 2 things wrong with psychology or psychologists and I will struggle. 

I will be more careful in my words. I will be more apprehensive in any criticism. 

Ingroups give us a sense of belonging and community. Criticising the ingroup risks being excommunicated from it. 

But criticism is not a bad thing. 

Without criticism, groups are more likely to fall for groupthink or experience risky shift. 

Critcism, discussions, debates and disagreements help groups grow. The question is if you are willing to take the risk, or conversely, if you are willing to take criticism directed at you well.

The more I have known, the more I have realized how much I don't know.

When I understood what the p-value was, I thought now I knew most of what was there to know about statistics for research. 

I dug deeper and Andy Field's book made me realize how powerful regression can be. Then I felt again, that now I know almost everything there is know. 

Currently, I am learning about SEM and network analysis. Now I wonder what else I will find after this. Maybe there is a singular apex concept I can learn that will subsume everything else. Maybe that is just a fantasy. 

All I know is that this is probably going to be a lifelong process.

Hello, I am doing a snap online workshop on men's mental health next Sunday. This will be calibrated towards therapists and early career professionals trying to improve their outcomes in therapy with men. 

Over time, I have observed huge gap between the literature on men's mental health and the practitioners. I hope to bridge the gap a little with this workshop. 

Please DM if you would like to join!

Found in a thesis published in 1978. 

Researchers discovered differences in constellations of symptoms experienced in depression by sex. There's another research hypothesizing that alcoholism might be hiding cases of male depression. All this back in the 1970s by the way. 

My PhD topic is depression in men so I am looking at historic records of how depression has been studied and understood across genders. The literature review chapter will be quite fun. 

[Ref: Spitzform, 1978, DEPRESSION: SEX DIFFERENCES IN EXPRESSION AND RELATIONSHIP TO SEX ROLES.]

More and more reason to believe that the media will happily drive wedges between groups to get a 2% higher click through rate ft. men's mental health. 

I read The Times Of India article on Raghu Ram's views on men's mental health, feminism and high suicide rates in men. It left me frustrated. Why is such an influential person blaming women for suicide rates in men?

Then I watched the podcast from where the clip is taken, understood the context of the conversation, understood the format of the show, and how guests are expected to be while on the show. And things make a lot more sense. 

But that doesn't matter to the folks at TOI. They have succesfully created a pointless debate about who should be 'blamed' for male suicides. 

My friends, you genuinely have no idea how corrupt the media is, and what they are willing to do to make people hate others. Take everything you read with a grain of salt.

The Times Of India

I'm regularly asked," How do I make my guy friends talk?" Listening, good listening can be different for different folks. These differences should be respected.

Wrapped up a small workshop on masculinity and mental health, especially what we keep getting wrong when discussing men's mental health. It was encouraging to see so many therapists share nuance and insights in to how they work with men, while I got to share what empirical evidence has shown to be useful. 

The evidence-practitioner gap ultimately gets bridged when both sides come together for discussions and co-learning. Thank you to everyone who joined!

On the occasion of International Men's Day, I sat down with John Barry from The Centre For Male Psychology to talk about some common myths about men's mental health and how they relate to masculinity. The following is an article shared by Dr. Barry. I hope you find it valuable. 

#mensday #mensmentalhealth

On the occasion of International Men's Day, I sat down with John Barry from The Centre For Male Psychology to talk about some common myths about men's

Open article: Three problematic myths about men's mental health | International Men's Day Special by Arjun Gupta • 4 min read

Three problematic myths about men's mental health | International Men's Day Special

Hi, small follow-up from yesterday. Responses got a bit overwhelming so streamlining them in a single form. 

I am trying to understand the experiences of psychologists who have been working as counselors in schools or college settings. The form is also open to students who have availed counseling services offered to them at an educational institution. 

The responses shared here will be confidential and anonymous throughout. A written or video content piece may be generated from it. Your identity will remain safe throughout. 

Open to both positive and negative experiences to have a balanced view. 

You can fill the form here. 

https://lnkd.in/g9x3Egf6

If you want to make some impact on the ground while learning from some experts in the field, this is your chance! The Punjab government is teaming up with TISS, Mumbai to combat substance misuse in the state. You could play a part in it too!

Registrations will close on 7 December. Take the opportunity that I cannot :')

There are some professions that are seen with a sense of omniscience from the general public. They treat people who follow these professions as all-knowing, all-good entities incapable of doing anything wrong. Medicine is one example. Psychology seems to be another one. IAS could be one more(?)

A client comes in with expectations of some divine knowledge or the perfect perspective that the therapist possesses automatically. Similar to an oracle knowing what ails you, and its treatment before anyone could say a word. 

I have been trying to understand this expectation. Why is it limited to some professions and not all of them? Seems like something psychoanalysts will have deep literature on. Any ideas or thoughts?

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