A social enterprise providing education and information to protect and enhance the mental health of young people
1. Know the difference between focused awareness and mindful awareness Firstly, we emphasize that mindfulness is more than just calm and concentration. If mindfulness training is to be distinguishable from relaxation or attention training, children need to learn about the mind and develop certain qualities of awareness—like openness, curiosity and care. After stilling the mind using [...]
Building on a well-established knowledge base more than half a century in the making, recent advances in the science of early childhood development and its underlying biology provide a deeper understanding that can inform and improve existing policy and practice, as well as help generate new ways of thinking about solutions. In this important list, [...]
Were you the kid in school who always aimed for an A-plus in every test, often pitting yourself against your classmates? Perhaps you're at university and ever striving for that distinction average. You would probably consider yourself a perfectionist. "Perfectionism works on a continuum. At one end, you have people who aspire and work hard [...]
We know events like childhood trauma cause physiological changes in one’s body. These changes in turn correlate with behavioral changes that manifest themselves as symptoms, and what psychiatry and its DSM-5 do is assign labels to certain clusters and combinations of these symptomatic manifestations, with each label representing and naming an individual and distinct mental [...]
Parents and schools spend a lot of time worrying about how kids measure up academically. Less attention goes to how happy kids are while they’re learning, and what that means for parents and schools. The OECD is trying to change that. New results from its high-profile PISA test, used to measure student achievement among 15-year-olds [...]
Can you answer this question? Which of the following four activities is most popular with children - watching TV, going online, playing sport or reading books? According to Ofcom research carried out last year, ‘going online’ is the correct answer. But perhaps this comes as no surprise at all for many parents coming out of [...]
Australian researchers have contributed to a 7 nation study of the impacts of media violence on youth. The study, just published online in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, used the same research methodology in each of Australia, China, Croatia, Germany, Japan, Romania, and the US. It found that: violent media use was positively and [...]
Having depression is like wearing a dark pair of sunglasses. It starts to color your worldview and suddenly everything can feel very hollow and hopeless. You might find that things which used to bring you joy, now are met with a deep sense of numbness. Your thoughts may begin to get increasingly negative. You might [...]
Toddlers who spend time playing on smartphones and tablets seem to get slightly less sleep than those who do not, say researchers. The study in Scientific Reports suggests every hour spent using a touchscreen each day was linked to 15 minutes less sleep. However, those playing with touchscreens do develop their fine motor skills more [...]
Have you ever wished you could fast-forward your life so you could see if the decisions you’re making will lead to satisfaction and health in the future? In the world of scientific research, the closest you can get to that is by looking at the Harvard Study of Adult Development — a study that has [...]
