A social enterprise providing education and information to protect and enhance the mental health of young people
A new study partly-sponsored by Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Center has highlighted the prospect that global industrial civilisation could collapse in coming decades due to unsustainable resource exploitation and increasingly unequal wealth distribution. - Nafeez Ahmed via Nasa-funded study: industrial civilisation headed for 'irreversible collapse'? | Nafeez Ahmed | Environment | theguardian.com.
The high rate of maladjustment among affluent adolescents is strikingly counter-intuitive. There is a tacit assumption - even among those most affected - that education and money procure well-being, and that if children falter, they will swiftly get the appropriate services. Education and money may once have served as buffers against distress, but that is [...]
The Mental Stillness program is a simple strategy that is aimed at providing students with a secular, meditation-based skill to enhance resilience and wellbeing. The technique has undergone extensive scientific evaluation in Australia as part of the Meditation Research Programme (previously at the UNSW but now at Sydney University). We have now begun exploring formats [...]
Mental health stigma is a key factor preventing people from accessing the care they need, according to new research from King's College London. The new study, published today in Psychological Medicine, brings together data from 144 studies, including over 90,000 participants worldwide. Approximately 1 in 4 people have a mental health problem, yet in Europe [...]
Under the proposed amendment to the Racial Discrimination Act released by the government today anyone can racially insult or humiliate someone as much as they like. With extraordinarily broad exemptions, it will also be virtually impossible to prosecute anyone who does meet the Government’s extremely high bar for racial vilification and intimidation. It is a [...]
Australians are seen as nothing like the caring, friendly and hospitable mob so often assumed, with an extensive new survey of recent migrants reporting high levels of ethnic or religious discrimination. As the Abbott government prepares to strike down part of the racial discrimination law, the Monash University study has found many migrants regularly fear [...]
Teaching young women how to face their fears is succeeding in reducing anxiety and depression among Sydney schoolgirls. Macquarie University is tracking 2000 teenage girls for four years to identify which genetic, environmental and cognitive factors influence the development of anxiety and depression, and what works to prevent these conditions. Anxiety and depression are the [...]
Last year, researchers at the Massachusetts Aggression Reduction Centre found that up to 10 per cent of first-year university students had ''falsely posted a cruel remark against themselves, or cyberbullied themselves, during high school''. And this is not the first time that online ''self-harassment'' or ''self-cyberbullying'' has been identified and written about. In 2010, Danah [...]
New diagnosis guidelines for autism spectrum disorder (ASD) issued by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) may reduce by almost one third the total number of people being diagnosed, according to new research from Columbia University School of Nursing published in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders. The guidelines, released in May 2013 and the [...]
Yet again, Australia tops the list of happiest countries. I smile wistfully at the news that the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has determined—yet again—that Australia is the happiest country in the developed world. - Roff Smith via First Person: Happiness Is … Being an Aussie.
