Mental Health & Wellbeing

Daily stresses take toll on long-term mental health

Emotional responses to the stresses of daily life may predict our long-term mental health, which means getting worked up by everyday irritations can often lead to mood disorders down the line. The research, which appears online in the journal Psychological Science, suggests that maintaining emotional balance is crucial to avoiding severe mental health problems later. [...]

How can 13kg in a week not be enough?

I’ve never really watched much of the Channel 10 show, “The Biggest Loser.” However I’ve seen enough to question how it could be that a contestant who lost 13kg IN A WEEK could be berated by the trainers for not being “fair dinkum.” Questions were raised about his effort in training, his adherence or otherwise [...]

Steubenville Gang Rape Shame

The town of Steubenville sits in a valley on the Ohio River. Like Weirton, just over the river in West Virginia, and many more towns nearby, Steubenville has been hollowed out and shrunk since the steel mills began to close in the 1980s. When the kids finish high school most of them leave for college [...]

Surprising connections between our well-being and giving, getting, and gratitude

"A plethora of research highlights the importance of getting a good night's sleep for physical and psychological well-being, yet in our society, people still seem to take pride in needing, and getting, little sleep," says Amie Gordon of the University of California, Berkeley. "And in the past, research has shown that gratitude promotes good sleep, [...]

Loneliness Is Bad for Your Health

Feeling lonely? New research suggests you might want to reach out. Not only is loneliness an unpleasant condition, it can harm the body's immune system. The new study, presented Saturday (Jan. 19) here at the annual meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, reveals that people who are lonely experience more reactivation of [...]

7 positive parental engagement tips to help kids

'Family-school and community partnerships are re-defining the boundaries and functions of education. They enlarge parental and community capacity; they create conditions in which children learn more effectively. In these ways they take education beyond the school gates'.* The Family-School and Community Partnership Bureau recently commissioned a report into the effects parental engagement on children’s educational [...]

Emotional intelligence: Separating the good from the great?

What defines the difference between an employee and a valued worker, between a supervisor and a superior leader? Some hiring executives and social psychologists — while not all in complete agreement — will say it could be emotional intelligence. The concept of emotional intelligence, a person’s ability to understand and manage his or her own [...]

How Healthy is the Wellbeing of our Youth?

"There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children.” Nelson Mandela A new report released in Canberra on 15 March by the Australian Research Alliance for Children and Youth (ARACY) entitled The Wellbeing of Young Australians, puts Australia’s youth on the middle to lower end [...]

American teens gripped by epidemic that crushes empathy

I believe American teens are in the grips of a psychological epidemic that has eroded much of their capacity to connect with genuine emotion and is, therefore, crushing their empathy. Having watched tens of thousands of YouTube videos with bizarre scenarios unfolding, having Tweeted thousands of senseless missives of no real importance, having watched contrived [...]

A New Way to Address Digital Citizenship in Schools

A new way to address digital citizenship in your school It seems that technology is a constant source of stress for teachers at school. If it’s not the pressure to integrate technology into their teaching, it’s the social issues related to students’ use of site such as Facebook, Tumblr or Formspring and apps such as [...]

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