A social enterprise providing education and information to protect and enhance the mental health of young people
At a school in Perth, a group of teen girls is sitting in a circle, practising breathing techniques. One. Two. Three. Four. "I've only got a couple of minutes with them,'' a school counsellor tells me later. Why? Because if this cohort can't learn to slow-breathe in two minutes, they'll consider they've failed. Failed breathing? [...]
Three years after the worst day of his life, Alpha Cheng picks his words with care. The 31-year old schoolteacher speaks out – sometimes. He talks about what he knows: racism, his friends and what happened to his father. In October 2015, Curtis Cheng was leaving work at Parramatta police station when he was shot [...]
Research published this year suggests one in seven teenagers have sent explicit texts and one in four have received them. It prompted the Australian Medical Association to overhaul its youth outreach program, Dr YES (Youth Education Session), to include more up-to-date information about sexting and health. The program involves medical students visiting high schools for [...]
What drives you to Facebook? News? Games? Feedback on your posts? The chance to meet new friends? If any of these hit home, you might have a Facebook dependency. But that's not necessarily a bad thing, says Amber Ferris, an assistant professor of communication at The University of Akron's Wayne College. Ferris, who studies Facebook [...]
Owen feels compelled to make himself tiny, standing small in the corner with his arms folded while the family watches a movie. And he apologizes — a lot. This summer, as the 12-year old and his little brother Craig, 10, were gathering fallen apples near their home in the Salt Lake suburb, Craig decided to [...]
Do teenagers who frequent Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram and other social media sites perform worse academically? Scientists from Germany have looked into these worries. "Concerns regarding the allegedly disastrous consequences of social networking sites on school performance are unfounded," says Professor Markus Appel, a psychologist who holds the Chair of Media Communication at Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg (JMU) [...]
A comprehensive Australian study examining the global impact of suicide prevention approaches in young people has found that youth-specific interventions conducted in clinical, educational and community settings can be effective in reducing suicide-related behaviour in young people at risk. The review, by researchers at Orygen, the National Centre of Excellence in Youth Mental Health, has [...]
Some 80% of young people will experience a traumatic event by the time they become an adult. Rates of exposure to trauma peak during adolescence. The stress from traumatic events can result in a loss of interest in school, friends, hobbies, and life in general. The types of traumatic events include a wide range of [...]
Developmental pediatricians are telling parents to reconsider the age-old practice of forcing children to hug or kiss members of the extended family when gathering at the holidays. They say doing so takes away the child's autonomy over their own body and sends a message that it's OK for others to demand affection. The Girl Scouts [...]
During a recent date night with my husband, my beloved babysitter let my 4-year-old daughter take a few (unpublished) pictures with a Snapchat filter that added blush and eyelashes while smoothing out her already blemish-free skin. My daughter was transfixed, and started referring to those pictures as “the pretty ones.” My jaw instantly dropped, as [...]
