Mental Health & Wellbeing

Science or Sales? The Evidence and Application of Brain Training Games

Over the past 5 years, computerized cognitive training (CT) programs have made a huge splash in the digital wellness market. These programs, usually consisting of small computer games, have capitalized on recent research that demonstrates a previously unrecognized degree of neuroplasticity, or cognitive flexibility, in the brain. Currently, research is moderately supportive of CT. In [...]

Science Says Stress Is Contagious

A study from the Max Planck Institute for Cognitive and Brain Sciences and the Technische Universität Dresden found that even being around a stressed person, be it a loved one or a stranger, has the power to make someone stressed in a physically quantifiable way. - Laura Stampler via Science Says Stress Is Contagious | TIME.com.

What pop culture gets wrong about eating disorders

It’s true that bulimia happens among ballet dancers and beauty queens, and other people whose bodies are their livelihoods. But the reality of bulimia and other eating disorders that involve purging – through vomiting, overexercise, or laxative abuse – is that many people suffering from them don’t look like ballerinas or pageant contestants. Many women [...]

Newspaper reporting of suicide linked with some suicide clusters

Heightened newspaper coverage after a suicide might have a significant impact on the initiation of some teenage suicide clusters, according to new research published in The Lancet Psychiatry journal. The study reveals that the content of media reports is also important, with more prominent stories (ie, published on the front page) and those that describe [...]

A Personal Tale Of Being Bullied

I was bullied as a kid. That might be hard for you to imagine if you’ve met me in person. As a former representative footy player who stands around 191cm and over 110kg, I don’t come across as your typical ‘victim.’ But I used to dread going to school on a daily basis. Each day [...]

Scientists unmask a piece in the puzzle of how the inheritance of traumas is mediated

The phenomenon has long been known in psychology: traumatic experiences can induce behavioural disorders that are passed down from one generation to the next. It is only recently that scientists have begun to understand the physiological processes underlying hereditary trauma. "There are diseases such as bipolar disorder, that run in families but can't be traced [...]

Wandering mind not a happy mind

People spend 46.9 percent of their waking hours thinking about something other than what they’re doing, and this mind-wandering typically makes them unhappy. So says a study that used an iPhone Web app to gather 250,000 data points on subjects’ thoughts, feelings, and actions as they went about their lives. The research, by psychologists Matthew [...]

The Dark World of Paedophilia Exposed

Melinda Tankard-Reist The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, the recent sentencing of Daniel Morcombe’s killer along with the imprisonment last week of former television star Robert Hughes after being found guilty of nine sex offense against three underage girls, have all heightened public attention on the scourge of child sexual assault. [...]

Kids Must Stress Less

More kids in childcare, higher rates of divorce, greater pressure in classrooms and busy schedules that are comparable to those of adults. Are our Australian kids stressed out? Tom used to be a stressed kid. “Just before his fifth birthday, he started developing separation anxiety. If I left even for a minute, he would get [...]

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