Charlotte Blease
www.charlotteblease.com
Charlotte Blease was born in Belfast and studied at University College London (BSc Science Policy and Communication). She returned to Belfast to pursue a Masters in Philosophy and PhD in philosophy of science at Queen’s University (2008). She is an Irish Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow in Philosophy at University College Dublin. Blease is the recipient of a prestigious Royal Irish Academy Mobility Grant to travel to the Program in Placebo Studies at Beth Deaconess Israel Medical Centre, Harvard Medical School in May 2014. In June 2014 she is Principal Organiser and recipient of a Brocher Fondation, Geneva grant to host the world’s first workshop on the ethical consequences of the claim that psychotherapy works by ‘placebo effect’.
Blease's work has appeared in an usually wide range of academic journals and books (including philosophy of science, medical ethics, evolutionary psychology, theoretical psychology). Her work is strongly interdisciplinary and she has single authored over a dozen papers on health related issues. Her main focus is the nature of depression (its causes and treatment). In May 2014 she was winner of the HBES [Human Behavior & Evolution Society] Essay Competition for an essay on the theme "Human Sociality and the Internet".
In April 2014 she gave a TEDx Fulbright Ireland talk entitled 'Hypocritical Oaths: Medicine's Dirty Secrets' at the Smock Alley Theatre, Dublin. She has also been invited to speak at TEDx UCD in June 2014. In June 2012-13 Blease was a winner of the UK-wide New Generation Thinkers competition run by the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council.
Previously, Blease lectured in philosophy at Queen’s University, Belfast and taught philosophy in secondary schools, and outreach centres in Northern Ireland. She also taught school teachers how to teach philosophy (which was a first for all involved). In 2013 she was Research Fellow in Cognitive Science at the Centre for Mind, Brain and Cognitive Evolution, Ruhr University, Germany.
Her research on the clinical use of placebos received attention from The World Tonight on BBC Radio Four, Newsnight on BBC Two. She has written and presented programs on the placebo effect for BBC Radio Three and Arts and Culture for BBC Television [http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/0/22042157] and has been interviewed on Nightwaves on BBC Radio Three and regional BBC stations on numerous occasions.
Blease is regularly invited to talk at literary festivals. In November 2013 she debated the role of cognitive science in medicine on stage at the UK’s annual medical literary festival “Medicine Unboxed” with philosopher Julian Baggini and the President of the Royal College of General Practitioners, Dr. Iona Heath. In November 2012 she gave a talk entitled “The Medicine Game” at BBC Radio 3’s “Free Thinking Festival” at the Sage, Gateshead which was confirmed as the fastest-selling event that year (the programme included talks and interviews with former President of Ireland, Mary Robinson, the authors Philippa Gregory, Colm Toibin, Andrew Marr and Michael Ignatieff . The talk was later broadcast on BBC Radio 3 as a stand-alone program [http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01nphn6]. In September 2014 Blease is an invited speaker at the British Postgraduate Philosophy Association to speak on the importance of interdisciplinary work in medicine (and elsewhere).
Her work has appeared in The Guardian [most recently, http://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2013/nov/04/medical-humanities-doctors-humane ] and The Irish News (where she wrote a two-page feature on the importance of philosophy in children’s education). She had a regular philosophy column in the teaching magazine Term Talk (which was distributed to all 30,000 school teachers in Northern Ireland) and has been interviewed by The Guardian and The Irish Times for her work in promoting and teaching philosophy in schools in Northern Ireland. In 2011 Blease initiated a Queen's University Philosophy Outreach Programme that enabled undergraduates to teach 'Philosophy for Children' in half a dozen local primary schools. The programme is still running in Northern Ireland.
Address: School of Philosophy, University College Dublin
Charlotte Blease was born in Belfast and studied at University College London (BSc Science Policy and Communication). She returned to Belfast to pursue a Masters in Philosophy and PhD in philosophy of science at Queen’s University (2008). She is an Irish Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow in Philosophy at University College Dublin. Blease is the recipient of a prestigious Royal Irish Academy Mobility Grant to travel to the Program in Placebo Studies at Beth Deaconess Israel Medical Centre, Harvard Medical School in May 2014. In June 2014 she is Principal Organiser and recipient of a Brocher Fondation, Geneva grant to host the world’s first workshop on the ethical consequences of the claim that psychotherapy works by ‘placebo effect’.
Blease's work has appeared in an usually wide range of academic journals and books (including philosophy of science, medical ethics, evolutionary psychology, theoretical psychology). Her work is strongly interdisciplinary and she has single authored over a dozen papers on health related issues. Her main focus is the nature of depression (its causes and treatment). In May 2014 she was winner of the HBES [Human Behavior & Evolution Society] Essay Competition for an essay on the theme "Human Sociality and the Internet".
In April 2014 she gave a TEDx Fulbright Ireland talk entitled 'Hypocritical Oaths: Medicine's Dirty Secrets' at the Smock Alley Theatre, Dublin. She has also been invited to speak at TEDx UCD in June 2014. In June 2012-13 Blease was a winner of the UK-wide New Generation Thinkers competition run by the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council.
Previously, Blease lectured in philosophy at Queen’s University, Belfast and taught philosophy in secondary schools, and outreach centres in Northern Ireland. She also taught school teachers how to teach philosophy (which was a first for all involved). In 2013 she was Research Fellow in Cognitive Science at the Centre for Mind, Brain and Cognitive Evolution, Ruhr University, Germany.
Her research on the clinical use of placebos received attention from The World Tonight on BBC Radio Four, Newsnight on BBC Two. She has written and presented programs on the placebo effect for BBC Radio Three and Arts and Culture for BBC Television [http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/0/22042157] and has been interviewed on Nightwaves on BBC Radio Three and regional BBC stations on numerous occasions.
Blease is regularly invited to talk at literary festivals. In November 2013 she debated the role of cognitive science in medicine on stage at the UK’s annual medical literary festival “Medicine Unboxed” with philosopher Julian Baggini and the President of the Royal College of General Practitioners, Dr. Iona Heath. In November 2012 she gave a talk entitled “The Medicine Game” at BBC Radio 3’s “Free Thinking Festival” at the Sage, Gateshead which was confirmed as the fastest-selling event that year (the programme included talks and interviews with former President of Ireland, Mary Robinson, the authors Philippa Gregory, Colm Toibin, Andrew Marr and Michael Ignatieff . The talk was later broadcast on BBC Radio 3 as a stand-alone program [http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01nphn6]. In September 2014 Blease is an invited speaker at the British Postgraduate Philosophy Association to speak on the importance of interdisciplinary work in medicine (and elsewhere).
Her work has appeared in The Guardian [most recently, http://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2013/nov/04/medical-humanities-doctors-humane ] and The Irish News (where she wrote a two-page feature on the importance of philosophy in children’s education). She had a regular philosophy column in the teaching magazine Term Talk (which was distributed to all 30,000 school teachers in Northern Ireland) and has been interviewed by The Guardian and The Irish Times for her work in promoting and teaching philosophy in schools in Northern Ireland. In 2011 Blease initiated a Queen's University Philosophy Outreach Programme that enabled undergraduates to teach 'Philosophy for Children' in half a dozen local primary schools. The programme is still running in Northern Ireland.
Address: School of Philosophy, University College Dublin
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Papers by Charlotte Blease
spending too much time on the social networking site (Selfhout et al., 2009; Kross et al., 2013). Some
social psychologists have denied that Facebook is causally implicated in any such negative affect
(Jelenchick et al., 2013). This article argues that if we want to understand modern mass media and new
social media, we need a better understanding of the (old) psychology bequeathed us by natural selection
(Barkow et al., 2012). Disentangling the relationship between social media and depression using
evolutionary social competition theories of depression, I argue that the mismatch between current social
milieu and the environment of evolutionary adaption affords some predictions about the use of social
media as a trigger for mild depression or dysphoria. I hypothesize that users of Facebook may be more
susceptible to causal triggers for mild depression under the following (specific) circumstances: (a) the
greater the number of ‘friends’ that the user has online; (b) the greater the time that the user spends
reading updates from this wide pool of friends; (c) the user does so regularly; and (d) the content of the
updates tends to a bragging nature. I hypothesize that the frequency and the number of displays of higher
status cues observed by the user may incur the perception of low relative social value among users
(automatically triggering this response). The article concludes with directions for future research on the
behavioral and cognitive effects of social media sites such as Facebook.
It is now an ethical dictum that patients should be informed by physicians about their diagnosis, prognosis and treatment options. In this paper, I ask: ‘How informed are the ‘informers’ in clinical practice?’ Physicians have a duty to be “well-informed”: patient well-being depends not just in conveying adequate information to patients, it also depends on physicians keeping up-to-date about: (i) popular misunderstandings of illnesses and treatments; and (ii) the importance of patient psychology in affecting prognosis. Taking the case of depression as an entry-point, this paper argues that medical researchers and physicians need to pay serious attention to the explanations given to patients regarding their diagnosis. Studies on lay understanding of depression show that there is a common belief that depression is wholly caused by a “chemical imbalance” (such as “low serotonin”) that can be restored by chemically restorative antidepresssants, a claim that has entered “folk wisdom”. However, these beliefs oversimplify and misrepresent the current scientific understanding of the causes of depression: first, there is consensus in the scientific community that the causes of depression include social as well as psychological triggers (and not just biochemical ones); second, there is significant dissensus in the scientific community over exactly what lower level, biological or biochemical processes are involved in causing depression; third, there is no established consensus about how antidepressants work at a biochemical level; fourth, there is evidence that patients are negatively affected if they believe their depression is wholly explained by (the vague descriptor) of “biochemical imbalance”. I argue that the medical community has a duty, not only to provide patients with adequate information but to be aware of the negative health impact of prevalent oversimplifications – whatever their origins.
"
spending too much time on the social networking site (Selfhout et al., 2009; Kross et al., 2013). Some
social psychologists have denied that Facebook is causally implicated in any such negative affect
(Jelenchick et al., 2013). This article argues that if we want to understand modern mass media and new
social media, we need a better understanding of the (old) psychology bequeathed us by natural selection
(Barkow et al., 2012). Disentangling the relationship between social media and depression using
evolutionary social competition theories of depression, I argue that the mismatch between current social
milieu and the environment of evolutionary adaption affords some predictions about the use of social
media as a trigger for mild depression or dysphoria. I hypothesize that users of Facebook may be more
susceptible to causal triggers for mild depression under the following (specific) circumstances: (a) the
greater the number of ‘friends’ that the user has online; (b) the greater the time that the user spends
reading updates from this wide pool of friends; (c) the user does so regularly; and (d) the content of the
updates tends to a bragging nature. I hypothesize that the frequency and the number of displays of higher
status cues observed by the user may incur the perception of low relative social value among users
(automatically triggering this response). The article concludes with directions for future research on the
behavioral and cognitive effects of social media sites such as Facebook.
It is now an ethical dictum that patients should be informed by physicians about their diagnosis, prognosis and treatment options. In this paper, I ask: ‘How informed are the ‘informers’ in clinical practice?’ Physicians have a duty to be “well-informed”: patient well-being depends not just in conveying adequate information to patients, it also depends on physicians keeping up-to-date about: (i) popular misunderstandings of illnesses and treatments; and (ii) the importance of patient psychology in affecting prognosis. Taking the case of depression as an entry-point, this paper argues that medical researchers and physicians need to pay serious attention to the explanations given to patients regarding their diagnosis. Studies on lay understanding of depression show that there is a common belief that depression is wholly caused by a “chemical imbalance” (such as “low serotonin”) that can be restored by chemically restorative antidepresssants, a claim that has entered “folk wisdom”. However, these beliefs oversimplify and misrepresent the current scientific understanding of the causes of depression: first, there is consensus in the scientific community that the causes of depression include social as well as psychological triggers (and not just biochemical ones); second, there is significant dissensus in the scientific community over exactly what lower level, biological or biochemical processes are involved in causing depression; third, there is no established consensus about how antidepressants work at a biochemical level; fourth, there is evidence that patients are negatively affected if they believe their depression is wholly explained by (the vague descriptor) of “biochemical imbalance”. I argue that the medical community has a duty, not only to provide patients with adequate information but to be aware of the negative health impact of prevalent oversimplifications – whatever their origins.
"