A social enterprise providing education and information to protect and enhance the mental health of young people
The area of the brain that makes us want to mate keeps functioning, no matter how much we drink, meaning that people can still assess how visually-appealing others are, says Dr Amanda Ellison. “We still see others basically as they are,” she said. “There is no imagined physical transformation - just more desire." Dr Ellison, [...]
The placenta of a pregnant woman absorbs more than just nutrition and oxygen, a new study has found. Researchers, from the University of Pennsylvania, found that stress is transmitted to the placenta, altering the levels of a protein that affects brain development in the foetus. The authors of the paper, published online yesterday in the [...]
Recent research suggests that up to 75% of adolescent girls view themselves as overweight or needing to lose weight and around a quarter of our teenagers are experimenting with dangerous dieting behaviour, such as taking laxatives and severely restricting their diets (Hutchings, conference). Australian research suggests that the prevalence of disordered eating behaviours have increased two-fold [...]
Many health professionals argue that a sex-soaked culture is taking an insidious toll on the emotional, psychological and physical wellbeing of children and young adolescents. ''It's not only about other, older children reading messages like that [on the jumpsuit]; it's also about what the parent is doing by placing their child in a sexualised space,'' [...]
Red pens are making students feel blue, according to a US study that recommends teachers refrain from using the colour when marking. In a paper published in The Social Science Journal, sociology professor Richard Dukes and associate professor Heather Albanesi, at the University of Colorado, show the use of a red pen in marking has [...]
Hey, kids, want to be more popular and happier in school? Then just be nicer. That’s what researchers at the University of California discovered during a recent study. The researchers divided more than 400 kids ages 9 to 12 into two groups: One group performed “acts of kindness,” and the other kept track of pleasant [...]
The importance of social support to physiological and psychological health is a critical, yet underutilised resource for people when undergoing cancer care, say researchers from the University of Washington. via Social Networking and Cancer.
Though learning to read proceeds smoothly for most children, as many as one in 10 is estimated to suffer from dyslexia, a constellation of impairments unrelated to intelligence, hearing or vision that make learning to read a struggle. Now, Northwestern University researchers report they have found a biological mechanism that appears to play an important [...]
Teachers - is there something missing in how you are connecting with your students - those kids in Years 5 to 9 who sometimes seem to be in a world of their own? Do they appear to be at times fidgety, uninspired, unsure and at other times loud, challenging and emotional? The 'middle years' period [...]
A couple of weeks ago I attended a lecture at the Sydney Opera House. Speaking was Professor Martin Seligman, the founding father of what has been termed Positive Psychology. His research has led him to devise a model that he has termed the PERMA model for wellbeing. P = Positive Emotions Seligman cites the [...]
