Mental Health & Wellbeing

Putting Profits Before Health

Can you remember watching Jamie’s School Dinners and being horrified at what UK and US schools were serving up to kids on a daily basis? Can you remember shaking your head in disbelief as school principals, canteen supervisors and local administrators continually argued that healthy food wasn’t financially viable in a school setting? I mean, [...]

Even Happiness Has a Downside

The United Nations hosted a "High Level Meeting on Happiness and Well-being" in New York this week. The confab's point was that judging the success of societies solely by material measures such as Gross National Product fails to capture everything that goes into a life well-lived. True enough, but I do wonder how accurate a [...]

Antidepressants ‘could be a risk to unborn babies’

The risk posed by some popular antidepressants in early pregnancy is not worth taking for women with mild to moderate depression, an expert has warned. Professor Stephen Pilling says evidence suggests SSRIs can double the risk of a child being born with a heart defect. The drugs have been used by up to one in [...]

Commissioner opens Generation Next seminar to support youth

On Friday 30 May, NSW Mental Health Commissioner, John Feneley addressed teachers, nurses, social workers, police and mental health professionals as he officially opened the Sydney Generation Next seminar. Held at the Sydney Town Hall, the Generation Next seminar saw more than 1000 professionals from across multiple disciplines come together to learn how to support [...]

The Neuroscience Of Emoticons

Our brains might be adapting to an emoticon-filled world by processing them differently. Today emoticons are so pervasive that behavioral science has taken an active interest in how people use them. Among the evidence (recently surveyedby Roni Jacobson at the great new Science of Usblog), we find that women use more emoticons than men, that using [...]

How Should ‘Technology Addiction’ Be Treated?

Dr. Wang explains that the first step is to identify triggers for excessive Internet, social media or technology use - such as boredom or stress. Next, learned automatic responses - such as using the smartphone to relieve anxiety - are challenged and reversed. "At a deeper level, exploring their thoughts and beliefs about anxiety and [...]

This Is the Equation for Happiness

Researchers at University College London were able to create an equation that could accurately predict the happiness of over 18,000 people, according to a new study. First, the researchers had 26 participants complete decisionmaking tasks in which their choices either led to monetary gains or losses. The researchers used fMRI imaging to measure their brain [...]

Work stress raises type 2 diabetes risk by 45 per cent

High amounts of work related stress have been shown to raise the risk of type 2 diabetes by 45% in a study of over 5,000 people. The research was carried out by researchers from the Helmholtz Zentrum München in Germany. 5,337 people, without type 2 diabetes at the start of the study period, were picked from the MONICA-KORA cohort [...]

Australian Students Lack Skills To Cope With Life’s Problems

More than half of Australian students lack the skills to deal with life's difficulties, a survey has found, with many citing depression, stress and a lack of confidence. The study of more than 16,000 students in years 4 through to 12 by Resilient Youth Australia, a not-for-profit organisation promoting the mental health of young people, [...]

Stress, the Brain and the Neuroscience of Success

In the last 10 years, a new field of neuroscience has mapped the mental zone that can literally change the brain to quiet an overly active stress response system and simultaneously pave the way for higher brain networks to perform at optimum. The more we function from this mental zone, the less we stress, and [...]

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