A social enterprise providing education and information to protect and enhance the mental health of young people
In the age of instant information, globe-spanning viral videos and the world wide web, can a thoroughly wired country become a porn-free zone? Authorities in Iceland want to find out. The government of the North Atlantic nation is drafting plans to ban pornography, in print and online, in an attempt to protect children from a [...]
I believe sexualisation is a deeper and more lifelong issue, perhaps even endemic - and harmful - to gender relations throughout history. Objectification of women was at the core of the feminist struggle. But today, from a completely different quarter, the nature of sexuality for all of us is being modified. For example, boys are [...]
Australians love a drink, and some see no problem at all with drinking to excess. But now doctors, police and paramedics have called "time", warning that alcohol-fuelled violence has reached crisis levels. "We are not facing a crisis, we're in a crisis. It's occurring right now." Read the statistics and it's hard to argue with [...]
An ancient warning system in the brain fails to fire in older people making them especially vulnerable to fraud, finds a US study. The brain region called the anterior insula is activated when young adults look at pictures of untrustworthy faces, but fails to respond when older adults see the pictures, reports Professor Shelley Taylor [...]
If we needed any more reason to believe that social media is doing almost exactly the opposite of what it set out to – making us less instead of more social and more instead of less fragmented – here’s a good one. A new study finds that there’s another element to social media’s growing list [...]
A team of Boston and European scientists have found evidence for a “female protective effect” in autism that could explain why boys are at far greater risk for the disorder than girls. For years, it’s been known that boys are disproportionately affected by autism spectrum disorders, outnumbering girls four to one. What has never been [...]
Children and adolescents who watch a lot of television are more likely to become involved in antisocial and criminal behaviour as adults, a University of Otago study indicates. One of the study co-authors, Associate Prof Bob Hancox, said the research showed the issue of excessive television watching needed to be ''taken seriously''. Researchers found the [...]
Helicopter parents, stop hovering: it’s officially not good for your kids — especially if they’re already grown. A new study in the Journal of Child and Family Studies found that being overly involved in your grown-up kids’ lives can do more harm than good. The research was conducted by the same scientists who showed last [...]
''Ana'' is not a real person but an identity, adopted as self, friend and foe, the embodiment of anorexia. Her speech is the self-talk and self-hate that typifies a condition that is all about internalising how you look - or think you look - on the outside, and clinging to the conviction that salvation [...]
A new study shows that children who are exposed to bullying during childhood are at increased risk of psychiatric disorders in adulthood, regardless of whether they are victims or perpetrators. Professor William E. Copeland of Duke University Medical Center and Professor Dieter Wolke of the University of Warwick led a team in examining whether bullying [...]
