A social enterprise providing education and information to protect and enhance the mental health of young people
Mental health problems affecting young people are the main reason families stay at Ronald McDonald House Orange [RMHO]. The house provides accommodation for families living more than 50 kilometres from Orange who have children being treated at hospitals in Orange. RMHO executive officer Rebecca Walsh said families of children suffering mental health issues made up [...]
Online learning environments have been a game changer for Australian distance educators whose ‘classrooms’ cover thousands of square kilometres, but it’s more than just a case of being able to reach isolated areas. The technology is also allowing teachers to provide one-to-one support and immediate feedback to students who are struggling with issues such as [...]
Every morning, I get up. I shower, brush my teeth, prepare lunch boxes and school uniforms. Then I take my medication. It's an ingrained routine that I could do in my sleep – a streamlined process that ensures everyone's out the door on time and my sanity is in check, my bipolar disorder held at [...]
There was a time when the most popular Halloween costumes were confined to the folk lore of vampire bats and ghosts. This was undoubtedly the popular culture at a time when "horror literature" was based on novels such as Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Bram Stoker's Dracula. Although much of this is still with us in the Trick of Treating of today, [...]
"A washing machine tummy”; “a volcano inside of me” – these are some of the ways young children can describe anxiety and other mental health issues, according to staff at YoungMinds, a mental health charity. In 2016, Childline reported a 15 per cent in suicidal calls, with children as young as 10. There has been a steep [...]
Exposure to traumatic experiences in childhood can have a negative impact on the development of the brain when it’s most vulnerable. Cases of childhood maltreatment are more common than reported; conservative estimates show over 45,000 Australian children were exposed to maltreatment in 2015 and 2016. Adversity in childhood can include experiences such as emotional, physical, and sexual [...]
NSW employers are failing to address the mental health of their workers appropriately, with the construction and scientific industries among the worst performers, a rigorous new benchmarking tool shows. Fewer than one in 10 (8.8 per cent) of the state's workplaces have an integrated and sustained approach to mental health, according to an independent survey [...]
Not all silence on mental health problems is down to stigma. Sometimes it’s difficult to articulate what’s wrong. You can’t talk about mental health without talking about stigma. Personally, I don’t like talking about stigma – the more you talk about something, the more you entrench it. People often cite fear of stigma as the [...]
In past decades, teenagers struggling to deal with their emotions might have coped by taking a razor blade to their forearm or extinguishing cigarettes on their skin. Today’s teens, products of the internet era, have found an additional outlet. Approximately 6% of adolescents between 12 and 17 years old engage in a practice known as [...]
There has been a steep rise in reports of self-harm among girls aged 13 to 16, according to a study of data from GP practices across the UK. The BMJ study, which looked at figures from 2011-2014, said GPs could be getting better at picking up self-harm. But it was likely that rising stress and [...]
