May 21, 2012 | 08:13
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Sep 03, 2010
Verbatim — Preschool depression, baby names, cholera and ape dating
UCLA faculty members are quoted every day in the national media on a wide range of subjects. Here is a recent selection.
“Mood disorders are scary to acknowledge, and depression is especially scary.”— Mary J. O’Connor, UCLA adjunct professor of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences, said on Aug. 25 in a New York Times Magazine article about preschool-aged children being diagnosed with depression. According to O’Connor, parents react to their children’s diagnosis of depression as something that is devastating, terrifying and permanent.
“If it’s a name with positive associations, it could be helpful, but if it’s somebody who is widely disliked, that tradition isn’t doing [the child] any service.”— Albert Mehrabian, UCLA professor emeritus of psychology and author of "The Baby Name Report Card,” said in Canada's Maclean’s magazine on Aug. 24. The article referred to parents naming children after well-known and powerful predecessors. Not all baby names are created equal, according to Mehrabian.
“He was the original intellectual maverick.”— Dr. Ralph R. Frerichs, professor emeritus of epidemiology at the School of Public Health, said on Sept. 1 in a Scientist article. Frerichs referred to John Snow, an anesthesiologist in the 1850s in London, who attributed the cholera outbreak of the era to transmission of the city’s drinking water.
“They help us imagine what early human ancestors might have been like.”— Joan Silk, professor of anthropology, said in an Aug. 31 Live Science article. The article focused on a study that found male Bonobo apes whose mothers stayed close to them had greater opportunities to mate with females. According to the article, the mothers facilitated their sons’ presence in social circles and chased away rival males. Bonobos shared an evolutionary ancestor with humans and might give researchers a clue to human evolutionary backgrounds, Silk said.
