A social enterprise providing education and information to protect and enhance the mental health of young people
'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 [...]
Focusing on Sydney teen Matthew, who has struggled with an addiction to computer games, this article examines how Australia is doing at treating gaming disorder following its official classification as a disorder by the World Health Organisation. We hear from Andrew Kinch, founder of Game Aware and former problem gamer, whose mission is to put [...]
Australia has invested an extraordinary amount of time and effort into putting in place bullying prevention programs – especially across schools. But what happens when your bully is your own flesh and blood, and lives with you, so you have no escape? Sibling bullying tends to fly under the radar, in large part because many bullies [...]
