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Working Memory - Mental Illness and Domestic Violence

Duration:
30 minutes
First broadcast:
Tuesday 08 December 2009

Should working memory, or our capacity to learn, replace IQ as a more accurate way of measuring intelligence? Dr Tracy Alloway from the University of Stirling and Professor Robert Logie from the University of Edinburgh debate what working memory testing can reveal about future academic success.

Also in the programme, a woman speaks up about the 15 years of domestic violence she endured and its effect on her mental health. Dr Louise Howard describes the links between mental illness and domestic violence and highlights new attempts to educate mental health professionals to address the issue.

And listeners reveal their suggestions for a new name for schizophrenia, and Brian Dillon discusses the English malady, hypochondria.

  • IQ TESTING

    IQ testing has long been a controversial way of measuring intelligence, but now there are claims that there's another, more accurate method of predicting academic success: working memory, or the capacity we have to learn. Dr Tracy Alloway, whose recent experiments showed that testing working memory predicted children's grades more accurately than traditional IQ, speaks up for working memory, while Professor Robert Logie from the University of Edinburgh expresses his concern that relying on any one single measure or score misses the diversity and alterations through time of mental ability.

  • DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

    It's still the case that every week in England and Wales two women are murdered by their partner or ex-partner. And across the UK each year three million women experience violence. This means that a far higher number than that are living with the legacy of that violence and one consequence is mental illness. Meanwhile we know that people who already have a mental health problem are more likely to be the target of violence.

    'All In The Mind' spoke to Kim about her experiences at the hand of her partner. In her case the violence got much worse once she was pregnant.

    Kim finally did leave the abusive relationship and received help and a diagnosis of post traumatic stress disorder. There's been surprisingly little research on the links between domestic violence and mental health problems, but Dr Louise Howard who's a Reader in Women's Mental Health at The Institute of Psychiatry has just published new research in this field.

  • SCHIZOPHRENIA

    Last week's programme discussed whether schizophrenia needs a new name – either to destigmatise the condition or to provide a more scientifically accurate description. We hear from the 'All in The Mind' listeners.

  • HYPOCHONDRIA

    There is no doubt that Glen Gould was a brilliant pianist, but he was also famous for his unusual habits. As well as humming while he played, he performed sitting just 14 inches off the floor, wearing an overcoat and fingerless gloves and hat and scarf – even in summer. He was terrified of getting ill, even going so far as to have his entire body fitted with a plaster cast. He had hypochondria and every time he went to doctors he listed his symptoms in some detail.

    A new book on the lives of hypochondriacs reveals that he is not the only famous person to have been obsessed with illness. There was Marcel Proust writing in his cork-lined room, Charles Darwin and his freezing cold water treatments and the artist, Andy Warhol who was convinced he would die from AIDS. Brian Dillon, the author of 'Tormented Hope: Nine Hypochondriac Lives', told 'All In The Mind' what these people's stories can tell us about the nature of hypochondria.

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