A social enterprise providing education and information to protect and enhance the mental health of young people
Melinda Tankard-Reist The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, the recent sentencing of Daniel Morcombe’s killer along with the imprisonment last week of former television star Robert Hughes after being found guilty of nine sex offense against three underage girls, have all heightened public attention on the scourge of child sexual assault. [...]
More kids in childcare, higher rates of divorce, greater pressure in classrooms and busy schedules that are comparable to those of adults. Are our Australian kids stressed out? Tom used to be a stressed kid. “Just before his fifth birthday, he started developing separation anxiety. If I left even for a minute, he would get [...]
Four out of five children born in non-English-speaking countries have experienced racism in school at least once a month. Deakin University researcher Naomi Priest presented these findings - from a survey of children at five primary schools and four high schools in Victoria - to the Australian Institute of Family Studies. Dr Priest said being [...]
We are having the wrong debate about the Racial Discrimination Act. Rather than moving to water it down, we should be investigating how the Act might be strengthened in order to reduce the public health burden of racism. This argument is made below by Deakin University academics, Dr Naomi Priest, a Senior Research Fellow in [...]
If you’re confused by food labels, you’re not alone. But don’t hold your breath for an at-a-glance food labelling system that tells you how much salt, fat and sugar each product contains. Australia’s proposed “health star rating” labelling scheme was put on hold in February, following pressure from the food industry. And it’s unclear whether [...]
Frank Furedi, professor of sociology at the University of Kent, warned that "society has become increasingly drawn towards using medication as a substitute for authoritative teaching and child-rearing". He added that he believes that we are going through a "cultural redefinition of some of the normal problems of childhood." So when does being a naughty [...]
On the weekend I gave a short talk entitled Father & Son – Side by Side at an event ran by Kids Giving Back. In short, the day involved 30+ fathers with their teenage sons cooking meals and delivering them to people who needed them; women’s shelters, youth refuges, services for homeless people etc. [...]
One of the great things about living in a profoundly risk averse society is that we are starting to treat mental health issues with the serious respect they deserve. The downside to this chronic risk aversion is that the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) most recent text revision contains over 300 [...]
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 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 [...]
