A social enterprise providing education and information to protect and enhance the mental health of young people
With grief, sadness is obvious. With trauma, the symptoms can go largely unrecognized because it shows up looking like other problems: frustration; acting out; difficulty concentrating, following directions, or working in a group. Often students are misdiagnosed with anxiety, behavior disorders, or attention disorders rather than understood to have trauma that’s driving those symptoms and [...]
Children under 15 in out-of-home care in regional and remote NSW will receive specialised support through a new outreach program to manage their trauma. The new program, OurSPACE will focus on improving family relationships and strengthening the foster and kinship placements of young people in care, regardless of where they live in NSW and without [...]
One year ago, 13-year-old Shamanii avoided other kids and suffered such severe anxiety she didn't want to go to school. Now, in the words of her mother Alma, Shamanii is "loving school, absolutely loving it". "She’s putting herself out there, auditioning for productions. She’s made a whole lot of new friends." All because of a [...]
New research has revealed a link between the gut and the brain in people with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and established it could be triggered by a traumatic childhood. The exact cause of this common, long-term condition of the digestive system - which is often linked to diet - is not fully understood. However, it [...]
Earlier this year, the World Health Organisation (WHO) listed depression as the leading cause of ill health and disability worldwide. Not lung cancer, obesity or heart disease (on their own, individual fronts), but depression -- a common and serious mood disorder that, today, will reach one in seven Australians alone at some point in their [...]
We know events like childhood trauma cause physiological changes in one’s body. These changes in turn correlate with behavioral changes that manifest themselves as symptoms, and what psychiatry and its DSM-5 do is assign labels to certain clusters and combinations of these symptomatic manifestations, with each label representing and naming an individual and distinct mental [...]
For years the addiction field has said that addictions were caused by genetics. If your father is an addict then you have the gene for it and you will become an addict. We now know that the gene is passed on, but it can be turned off if the child has a good and supportive, [...]
Flickr Images Children who suffer abuse, violence or other trauma at home are more likely to become seriously ill as adults, a report has concluded. The report, the first nationwide study of its kind produced by a public health body in the UK, argues that the reasons are not simply cyclical – that [...]
I was bullied as a kid. That might be hard for you to imagine if you’ve met me in person. As a former representative footy player who stands around 191cm and over 110kg, I don’t come across as your typical ‘victim.’ But I used to dread going to school on a daily basis. Each day [...]
Nathan Mikaere Wallis is part of the Brain Wave Trust, and X Factor Education, Christchurch. He has been a lecturer at the Christchurch College of Education, lecturing in human development, brain development, language and communication and risk and resilience. Nathan has a background of working with children in counselling settings relating to domestic violence, sexual [...]
