A social enterprise providing education and information to protect and enhance the mental health of young people
Often masked as a health-kick a new form of the eating disorder, anorexia, is manifesting itself in teenagers. When John and Julie Armstrong's 12-year-old son, Jed, told them that he wanted to get fit in the summer of 2014, neither thought anything of it. A keen footballer, Jed designed a regime of exercise for himself [...]
Positive Psychology has become the ‘buzz’ trend among educators and others who work with children. Living our best life, and helping our youth to find greater joy, purpose, contribution and meaning does sound appealing. But is positive psychology all it’s cracked up to be? Is the evidence base solid enough for us to change entire school wellbeing [...]
Many children find doing tests stressful and experience negative impacts on their wellbeing. Tests lead children to suffer from: lost sleep, absenteeism, stress, fear of failure. Encouraging children with these 7 Steps to Success for Tests can be a great opportunity to teach valuable resiliency skills that can be applied to all areas of life! Understand The Power Of Thinking. Teaching children to understand the difference between helpful and unhelpful thinking (e.g. “I [...]
We are, right now, in the middle of a revolution in our thinking about the developing brain. We have always known it was important to nurture the very young but now we know why. A burgeoning number of new technologies, such as MRI, PET and rainbow [...]
"In a move worth $300 million, mental health services will have their funding renewed for a further 12 months. The announcement made today by Health Minister Sussan Ley follows a campaign by Mental Health Australia, after some mental health services began to shut down, unsure of future funding. Hundreds of contracts were due to end on [...]
A Five Minute Writing Exercise to Help Kids Feel Less Worried and More Confident. There are lots of things we can do to help kids calm themselves. One of the most important - and sometimes forgotten - is to help them come up with some actual words and phrases that they can repeat to themselves in times of [...]
There’s a growing realisation that consumerism and the ability to acquire more and more stuff such as toys, clothes and digital devices might not be doing our kids many favours. Research from around the world suggests the rampant materialism which affects much of the West could be to blame for a generational malaise of low [...]
What is the number one social issue for students across Australia? According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics landmark CensusAtSchool survey, reducing bullying in schools [1]. So how can theatre help students deal with the far-reaching and negative effects of bullying and violence? Storytelling, drama, humour, role playing and music have been used since the beginning of time to [...]
The definition of trust is the firm belief in the reliability, truth or strength of someone or something. Trust is a two-way street. It is incredibly difficult to trust another person if they are not behaviourally or verbally reliable. While your teen may trust that you will provide food, a home, education and clothes, it does not end there. Teens also [...]
How does it make you feel when someone close to you tells you they feel fat? As one of a group of women from around the world who recently joined with Endangered Bodies to ask Facebook to remove the body shaming ‘I feel fat’ and ‘I feel ugly’ status options and emoticons from all versions [...]
