Mental Health & Wellbeing

No Winners Or Losers?

Over the past few weeks I’ve been speaking at the Generation Next seminars lamenting the fact that in today’s society, it seems every kid needs to get a prize! Indeed I’ve heard of teachers being berated by over-zealous parents because their child didn’t receive a fifth place ribbon. Why do we feel the need to [...]

Harvesting Happiness Instead Of Chasing It

Every day, it seems, we are bombarded with advertisements, memes and well-meaning emails telling us how to “be happy.” Despite this, a new study led by Stanford University reveals that chasing happiness may actually make us less happy. The new research, published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, does, however, point to effective ways [...]

Stop Stressing Me Out

Chatting with a highly stressed work colleague recently, she revealed she’d recently spent thousands on treating the symptoms of stress – from heart palpitations to problems with her digestive system. I was shocked – how have things become so bad young people are suffering from heart problems at work? I thought it would be a [...]

One in 13 US schoolkids takes psych meds

More than 7 percent of American schoolchildren are taking at least one medication for emotional or behavioral difficulties, a new government report shows. Apparently, the medications are working: More than half of the parents said the drugs are helping their children, according to the report. - Serena Gordon   via One in 13 US schoolkids takes [...]

Is Religion Dead in Australia?

In 2012, a WIN-Gallup International poll asked the question, “Irrespective of whether you attend a place of worship or not, would you say you are a religious person, not a religious person or a convinced atheist?” Just 37 percent of Australian respondents said they were religious, 48 percent said not religious, 10 percent were convinced [...]

Casual marijuana use linked to brain abnormalities in students

Young adults who used marijuana only recreationally showed significant abnormalities in two key brain regions that are important in emotion and motivation, scientists report. The study was a collaboration between Northwestern Medicine and Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School. This is the first study to show casual use of marijuana is related to major brain changes. [...]

Arguing May Raise Risk of Death for Middle-age Adults

Arguments may ruin more than just friendships. New research suggests that people who frequently argue with those close to them nearly triple their overall chances of a middle-aged death. A study published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, details how researchers were able to find a direct association between the stressful nature of arguing [...]

Calls for drinking age to be raised to 21

Pressure is mounting for Australian governments to raise the legal drinking age to 21 to protect the health of young people whose brains are still vulnerable to the toxicity of alcohol at 18, leading health experts say. Four professors of mental health and public health have joined a growing list of influential Australians to call [...]

Be Smart – Be Active

As a Health & Physical Education teacher from waaaay back, I’ve always had a passion for PE and seen it as being a vital part of any well-balanced school curriculum. However, it seems to be common practice for schools to reduce the amount of time kids spend doing physical activity as soon as it is [...]

Sexualisation A Danger To Teen Health

In the teenage parties of my youth, there was always a room left in darkness, furnished with armchairs and couches, where couples could retire from the melee to "pash on" in privacy. By midnight, adolescent hormones being what they are, there was barely a spare place left. Reliably, one of those left out of these [...]

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