A social enterprise providing education and information to protect and enhance the mental health of young people
Parenting a child with conduct disorder is the loneliest thing I know. Conduct disorder (CD) is a diagnosis given to children who have an ongoing pattern of troubling antisocial behavior. The definitions are all very wordy—but the simple version is that a child who gets this diagnosis might grow up to be a psychopath. When [...]
In a split second, her body would heat up. Her eyesight would start to go, leaving her with tunnel vision. And, if she wasn't careful, she would start to hyperventilate. As she sat in the classroom of her Taranaki high school, 17-year-old Nuutea Itchner's anxiety would render her mute and she would be unable to [...]
Too many people know the suffering of depression firsthand. Approximately one in five experience it at some stage in their life – the figure is even higher in areas afflicted by disaster, trauma or poverty. It would be a lucky person indeed who avoids seeing depression in either themselves or the people they love. So [...]
According to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), 4.4 percent of the population of the United States will have bipolar disorder at one point in their lives. Another 16.2 million, or around 6.7 percent of all U.S. adults, will experience at least one episode of severe depression in their lives. While the precise causes [...]
It took government intervention for Netflix to warn Australian parents about "strong suicide themes" in the first season of 13 Reasons Why. The global streaming giant originally gave the confronting television series an MA15+ rating on the grounds it portrayed strong sex scenes and violence. However, the Classifications Board reviewed the decision and ruled 13 Reasons Why should [...]
Almost half of the poorer mental health we see in teenagers with a disability is due to bullying, our new research shows. If we could stop the high levels of bullying that adolescents with a disability experience, we could make a big difference to their health, learning and wellbeing. So school anti-bullying programs need to [...]
Canberra will not have enough school psychologists to meet the demand of students with mental health issues by the time it has finished hiring in 2020. Last year, the ACT Government committed to employ an additional 20 school psychologists over three years — one of the recommendations made in the Shaddock review, the report launched [...]
Children whose mothers are depressed are themselves at increased risk for depression, anxiety disorder, or other mental-health problems during childhood. New research shows that treating the depression of mothers can significantly alleviate children's depression. There is a lot of evidence that if a mother suffers from clinical depression that her children are at increased risk [...]
In an interview earlier this month, the stars of BBC drama series, Age Before Beauty, criticised programs such as Love island for promoting unrealistic beauty expectations and plastic surgery among younger people. One of the stars of the show, Lisa Riley, expressed concerns that reality TV risked being "treacherous" to young people over body image. [...]
The media frenzy is starting to settle after the tragic suicides of Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain. Some of the coverage, I was happy to see, was sensitive and compassionate, while some was just plain irresponsible, sensationalistic, and full of specific details - all of which can put vulnerable people at risk, and perpetuate misinformation. [...]
