A social enterprise providing education and information to protect and enhance the mental health of young people
Having your child end up in prison must be close to the ultimate fear for any parent. So it's natural that when the author of this article started running anger management groups with violent offenders in prison, she wanted to know how to help her sons avoid the same fate. Some of the things she [...]
With all the emphasis on academic performance now being placed on young people, it can be easy for emotional learning to fall by the wayside. We might, if prompted, agree that we want our kids (or students, or the kids we work with) to be kind, but how much action do we take to make [...]
'MDMA is the drug of the moment', with a marked spike in young people expressing concern for their peers who are using an 'unprecedented' amount of this and other drugs, according to drug researcher and educator Paul Dillon. At a recent coronial inquest into NSW music festival deaths, Dillon stated that the lack of early [...]
Adolescence is a period of immense physical and emotional vulnerability. For most of us vulnerability has negative connotations – we see it as a weakness and something we should try to avoid. Vulnerability is defined as being easily hurt, influenced or attacked, so it makes sense that we try to avoid it at all costs! [...]
Watch - How much screen-time is okay for kids? - SBS Insight: Screens in Schools - Is social media bad for us? Listen Maggie Dent talks to digital wellbeing expert Dr Kristy Goodwin to find out how we can best raise our kids in the digital age. Go to podcast >> Read - Five Tips to Tame [...]
One of the most frustrating things about mood is that, even for just one individual, there's no one coping mechanism that's guaranteed to improve your outlook all the time. That's why it's so important to have a few different strategies to call on. Initially you might have to try a range of different things to [...]
Amelia Morris, a young woman who grew up in country Victoria, has recently told the Royal Commission into Victoria's Mental Health System about the lack of services and care she experienced when struggling with mental illness as a teenager. When she first began to experience suicidal thoughts and feelings at age sixteen, she sought help [...]
We’re much more likely to be hanging out on social media than at the watercooler these days. But just because we’re no longer face-to-face when we chat, doesn’t mean our communication is completely disembodied. Over the last three decades, psychologists, linguists, and anthropologists, along with researchers from other traditions, have come together to understand how [...]
The NSW inquest into recent drug deaths at music festivals is due to start this week. So focus is turning to how to make music festivals safer by reducing drug-related incidents. We know that prohibition doesn’t work to reduce either harms or drug use. But what does? How do drugs cause harm? Most illicit drugs [...]
Education Minister James Merlino has announced a ban on mobile phone use in all Victorian public schools, effective from term one of 2020. The ban aims to counteract several effects of mobile phone use which schools have been struggling with. The most concerning is cyberbullying, which has been steadily increasing in Australian schools and in [...]
