A social enterprise providing education and information to protect and enhance the mental health of young people
If your teenager heads back to school next year, you might be already thinking about what after-school activities they’re going to do. Footy? Netball? Soccer? Recent research shows that another option — adolescent work experience — can pay big dividends later in life. Many schools and parents push children to engage in excessive after-school activities. [...]
Exhausted after Christmas and the new year? Are you craving a few more hours in bed? Are you a parent whose sleepless children are leaving you a sleep-starved wreck? These days in early January are claimed as the darkest days for sleep deprivation. The modern barometer for such moments - the number of Google searches [...]
Seventeen million babies under the age of one are breathing toxic air, putting their brain development at risk, the UN children's agency has warned. Babies in South Asia were worst affected, with more than 12 million living in areas with pollution six times higher than safe levels. A further four million were at risk in [...]
Mental illness associated with early childhood adversity may be passed from generation to generation, according to a study of adults whose parents evacuated Finland as children during World War II. The study was conducted by researchers at the National Institutes of Health, Uppsala University in Sweden, and Helsinki University in Finland. It appears in JAMA Psychiatry. [...]
Government and industry efforts since 2003 to phase out chemicals used to make non-stick coatings, such as Teflon, have prevented more than 118,000 low-weight births and related brain damage in the United States. This is the main finding of a new report - based on analysis of new mothers' blood samples gathered for a national [...]
Being exposed to abuse or neglect before age five is the strongest predictor of whether a child will be at risk for future mental illness, a study from UNSW Sydney finds. Primary school teachers could detect children at high risk of developing mental disorders soon after they start school, new research at UNSW Sydney suggests. The study [...]
FOR someone who deals in words, more often it’s numbers that stop me in my tracks. The number of weekends I have left to enjoy if I live to 90 — just 2080. The amount a share I’ve been eyeing off has gone up since the end of October when I neglected to buy it [...]
For Melanie Fennell, a British clinical psychologist, self-esteem is a short-hand for the collection of beliefs you have about yourself and the type of person that you are. When our self-esteem is positive then we often believe that we are good enough to manage the challenges we come across at work, with friends or in [...]
A new study has examined the development of mental health problems and resilience among at-risk youth. It may be considered as one of the most common "sleep aids" people employ to help them drift off at night, but according to a recent study, alcohol can actually be a roadblock to good sleep in teenagers. The [...]
A group of researchers say depression would be better treated if it was classified into 12 different disorders. There are calls for a major overhaul of the way depression is diagnosed and treated to better recognise its triggers. A group of international psychologists have challenged the classification of 'major depression' and argue it would be [...]
