A social enterprise providing education and information to protect and enhance the mental health of young people
92% of kids socialise with family and friends online 62 % of kids aged 8 to 17 have had negative experiences online 55% of kids have made friends online* Officially young people have to be 13 years old before they can open an account on the social networking site Facebook, however peer and social pressures are [...]
When it comes to drinking and taking drugs many young people face both social and peer pressures. Their friends might encourage them to drink at parties while social pressures come in many forms. Social pressures can include advertising, seeing the lifestyles of celebrities, or being at a party and seeing people who are drinking or [...]
The Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry recently published a new research paper; Parenting factors associated with reduced adolescent alcohol use: a systematic review of longitudinal studies. Conducted by the Orygen Youth Health Research Centre in Melbourne, they found supporting evidence to suggest parenting choices affect both the age of commencement of alcohol consumption [...]
90% of teenagers have tried alcohol by 15 years of age 20% of teenagers regularly drink at harmful levels A new DVD Your Shout will shortly be introduced into schools around Australia as a teaching aid to help staff discuss the impact drinking has on young people. The DVD features teenagers talking about their experiences [...]
By 2012 the government intends to ensure that all cigarettes sold in Australia are in plain packaging. However the tobacco industry is fighting back in an attempt to block their plans. The big tobacco companies are bank rolling a series of newspaper and television ads for an alliance of small retailers and have hired Melbourne [...]
The recent 63rd United Nations Department of Public Information NGO Conference held in Melbourne focused on improving women and children’s health. “Advancing global health is essential to the Millennium Development Goals, and you are essential to advancing global health,” said Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. The central concern of Mr. Ban’s opening remarks was the need to [...]
Nearly 4 million people nationwide watched the Ben Cousins documentary Such is Life – The troubled times of Ben Cousins. The program detailed his public life as a footballer while leading the secret life of a drug addict. This duplicitous lifestyle finally came to an end when he was arrested in Perth in 2007. Paul [...]
70,000 Australians are reported victims of alcohol related assaults every year 24,000 women are victims of alcohol related domestic violence assaults 20,000 children are victims of alcohol-related child abuse The Alcohol Education and Rehabilitation Foundation (AER Foundation) recently commissioned a new report The Range and Magnitude of Alcohol’s Harm to Others, which has just been [...]
It is expected that by 2012 Australia will be the first country in the world to impose generic packaging on tobacco companies. At the same time there is a push to force tobacco companies to be more up-font about the content of their products. There are growing concerns among anti-tobacco campaigners that menthol is increasingly [...]
The new craze being pitched at teenagers is the i-Dose; an audio file that allegedly induces the same kind of experience as drugs. In fact the binaural MP3 audio files even take their names from drugs including; methamphetamine, cocaine, crack, LSD and Crystal Meth. The files range in strength from the standard ‘heroin’ track to [...]
