A social enterprise providing education and information to protect and enhance the mental health of young people
On the weekend I gave a short talk entitled Father & Son – Side by Side at an event ran by Kids Giving Back. In short, the day involved 30+ fathers with their teenage sons cooking meals and delivering them to people who needed them; women’s shelters, youth refuges, services for homeless people etc. [...]
A healthy diet should include 10 portions of fruit and vegetables a day, doubling the five-a-day official advice, say British health experts. The research, which involved a 12-year study, also found that vegetables were four times healthier than fruit. The study, by University College London, found that eating large quantities of fruit and vegetables significantly [...]
One of the great things about living in a profoundly risk averse society is that we are starting to treat mental health issues with the serious respect they deserve. The downside to this chronic risk aversion is that the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) most recent text revision contains over 300 [...]
You know that NAPLAN is just around the corner each year when the media start trotting out the same old stories about kids being stressed by the tests, teachers teaching to the tests or worse – teachers and students colluding to cheat the tests! This year it will be different ACARA says. Schools [...]
The high rate of maladjustment among affluent adolescents is strikingly counter-intuitive. There is a tacit assumption - even among those most affected - that education and money procure well-being, and that if children falter, they will swiftly get the appropriate services. Education and money may once have served as buffers against distress, but that is [...]
The Mental Stillness program is a simple strategy that is aimed at providing students with a secular, meditation-based skill to enhance resilience and wellbeing. The technique has undergone extensive scientific evaluation in Australia as part of the Meditation Research Programme (previously at the UNSW but now at Sydney University). We have now begun exploring formats [...]
Mental health stigma is a key factor preventing people from accessing the care they need, according to new research from King's College London. The new study, published today in Psychological Medicine, brings together data from 144 studies, including over 90,000 participants worldwide. Approximately 1 in 4 people have a mental health problem, yet in Europe [...]
Under the proposed amendment to the Racial Discrimination Act released by the government today anyone can racially insult or humiliate someone as much as they like. With extraordinarily broad exemptions, it will also be virtually impossible to prosecute anyone who does meet the Government’s extremely high bar for racial vilification and intimidation. It is a [...]
Teaching young women how to face their fears is succeeding in reducing anxiety and depression among Sydney schoolgirls. Macquarie University is tracking 2000 teenage girls for four years to identify which genetic, environmental and cognitive factors influence the development of anxiety and depression, and what works to prevent these conditions. Anxiety and depression are the [...]
Last year, researchers at the Massachusetts Aggression Reduction Centre found that up to 10 per cent of first-year university students had ''falsely posted a cruel remark against themselves, or cyberbullied themselves, during high school''. And this is not the first time that online ''self-harassment'' or ''self-cyberbullying'' has been identified and written about. In 2010, Danah [...]
