Mental Health & Wellbeing

Teaching Kids How to be Sad

Helping the next generation live with feelings, not pathologise them. Young people in our society are increasingly worried and upset – not about any aspect of their life in particular - but about being worried and upset. This is a relatively new phenomenon. In the 1980s, surveys of teens showed they were worried about school, [...]

How to Relieve Pain Using Psychology: 10 Tips from Research

Some insights on how to relieve pain using psychology, with links to the studies: Clutch some money. Don’t curl up in a ball. Sit up straight. Swear. Laugh. Listen to good music. -  Barking Up The Wrong Tree Source: How to Relieve Pain Using Psychology: 10 Tips From Research | TIME

Let’s Talk about Mental Health

A few years ago, I felt as though my life had collapsed, and I fell into a severe depression. I lost the ability to stand up for myself, I backed away from conflict, I didn't believe in myself and I was afraid of what people thought of me. It was not long before I lost [...]

Helping Students Tackle Bullying: 6 Tips for The Classroom

Bullying remains a troubling issue in our schools. In 2013, one in three Australian children aged 10-11 reported being bullied (Lodge & Baxter, 2013). Children who are bullied at school are at a greater risk of experiencing serious psychological problems later in life (Ronning et al 2009, Rigby 2015). Children who engage in bullying behaviour are more likely to become involved in criminal activities as adults (Ttofi et al. 2012, Rigby, 2015). This far reaching impact is too great for [...]

Eating Disorders: Promoting Health and Wellbeing in your School

Eating disorders are serious mental illnesses that are associated with significant physical complications. Eating disorders not only involve considerable psychological impairment and distress, but they are also associated with major wide-ranging and serious medical complications, which can affect every major organ in the body. Eating disorders occur in both men and women, young and old, [...]

How to Help Young People with Autism Stay on in Education after School

Fewer than one in four young people with autism continue their education after school. Too often, colleges and universities are just not equipped or well-enough prepared to support young people with autism to move into further or higher education. There are also problems with their transition from school. Even where schools do provide support for [...]

The Psychology of Fear

Fear is a survival tactic that is built into our species. You are all familiar with the fight or flight syndrome, and that is where your fear originates. In the early days of mankind, the human body's fight or flight syndrome was meant to protect you from the dangers in your environment. Today, however, your [...]

Lives Grow Longer, and Health Care’s Challenges Change

Getting a blood sugar test at a mobile clinic near a New Delhi slum. Chronic health problems like diabetes are on the rise among India's population, even as there has been success against more immediately life-threatening ailments. Credit Prakash Singh/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images     As illness patterns worldwide shift toward chronic, [...]

The Trouble with Time-Out

Larissa Dann blog post May 2015Photo:Shutterstock Children and discipline - a perennial issue. Discipline (the verb) can mean either ‘to teach’, or ‘to control’ (Gordon, T. 1989).  If we use discipline to control children, then we rely on reward and punishment to change a child’s behaviour. This article questions the use of one of the most commonly used discipline (punishment) techniques - time-out. Many schools, childcare centres and parents rely on time-out to discipline children. What is time-out? Time-out [...]

Lack of Education as Deadly as Smoking: Study Estimates Number of Deaths Attributed to Low Levels of Education

A new study by researchers at the University of Colorado, New York University, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill estimates the number of deaths that can be linked to differences in education, and finds that variation in the risk of death across education levels has widened considerably. The findings, published July 8 [...]

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