A social enterprise providing education and information to protect and enhance the mental health of young people
Facebook and Instagram are releasing a new tool to limit how much time people spend on their apps. The announcement follows concerns that excessive social media use can have a negative impact on mental health. Users will now be able to check how much time they've spent scrolling, set a reminder for when they've reach [...]
Psychiatrists have issued a warning over the link between depression and video game addiction, after MRI scans revealed for the first time the potential damage caused to young brains. The images showed the signals between the different parts of gaming addicts’ brains were disrupted, driving them to continue playing but also worsening their depression. The “emotional” [...]
With the spread of photo-editing technology through applications like Snapchat and Facetune, the level of physical "perfection" previously seen only on celebrity or beauty magazines is now all over social media. As these images become the norm, people's perceptions of beauty worldwide are changing, which can take a toll on a person's self-esteem and can [...]
Are you afraid of spiders? You aren't alone. (Well, except when it's just you and the spider.) Across the world, somewhere between 3% and 15% of the population is afraid of something. That's the headline finding in a new review published in The Lancet Psychiatry. But they found so much more. The authors, led by [...]
It happens to the best of us: an inability to concentrate at work, panic in traffic, or thoughts that are too scattered or busy to let us fall asleep. But for others, constant racing thoughts can become an uncomfortable, but consistent, part of everyday life. And mental health professionals want people to know the difference. [...]
Research has long associated poor sleep with an increased risk of depression, but scientists have just identified the neural mechanism responsible for this link – a discovery that could lead to better treatments in the future. Researchers found a strong connection between the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (responsible for short-term memory), the precuneus (linked with ideas [...]
There is something inspiring about young people and their belief in their power to change the world. Where older people talk about changing workplaces or, at a stretch, governments, their younger counterparts have their sights on a much bigger picture. "As a young female leader, I am motivated by service to my community and service [...]
I’m kind of glad there was no social media around when I was a teenager … because I was a jerk. Off the top of my head I can think of half a dozen dumb-arse things I said and did that would have got me chased off the internet today, and no I’m not going [...]
The number of antidepressants prescribed to children in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland has risen over the past three years, figures obtained by BBC's File on 4 reveal. In England, there was a 15% rise. Scotland saw a 10% increase. And in Northern Ireland the number rose by 6%. In total, there were 950,000 prescriptions [...]
Parents today struggle to set screen time guidelines. One big reason is a lack of role models. Grandma doesn't have any tried-and-true sayings about iPad time. This stuff is just too new. But many experts on kids and media are also parents themselves. So when I was interviewing dozens of them for my book The [...]
