Mental Health & Wellbeing

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 [...]

Iceland ban on violent pornography

As you are probably aware, the world is standing on the precipice of enormous change for women and children. For the first time in modern history, a nation -- Iceland -- has stepped forward to write progressive legislation that limits access to hard-core violent and abusive pornography. Arguing that Iceland has a compelling interest in [...]

A pill popping culture

Alex Wodak was the director of the alcohol and drug service at St Vincent's Hospital until last July, a position he held for more than 30 years. He has seen firsthand the shift towards seeking fast comfort, saying there was much more pressure on populations now compared with 20 years ago and people were turning [...]

Study Finds Genetic Risk Factors Shared by 5 Psychiatric Disorders

The psychiatric illnesses seem very different — schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, autism, major depression and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Yet they share several genetic glitches that can nudge the brain along a path to mental illness, researchers report. Which disease, if any, develops is thought to depend on other genetic or environmental factors. via Study Finds [...]

40% Of High School Students Chronically Disengaged

Too often, strategies that adults use to boost student achievement — such as raising academic standards and giving high-stakes standardized exams — do not address the real reasons why students are disengaged. Even the most dedicated teachers and parents may be sending messages that leave children believing they don’t have what it takes to succeed. [...]

Diggers mimic movies and computer games in combat zone

A senior army commander has blasted the behaviour of some Australian soldiers in Afghanistan, saying they expected to be treated as ''Roman gladiators'' and had an image of war based on movies and computer games. via Blast for 'gladiator' Diggers.

Gaming in Health & Education

If you’ve read enough of my Generation Next articles, you’ll know I’m a big fan of embedding social media and other cutting edge technological advancements into the way in which schools engage kids. So I was very interested to see that Headspace and the Cotton-On Foundation have just released an app for iPhone and Android [...]

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