A social enterprise providing education and information to protect and enhance the mental health of young people
Flickr Images A teacher’s role has always been much more than simply imparting the fundamental skills of reading, writing and arithmetic. In any one day a teacher might also play the role of counsellor, friend, mediator, life coach, guardian or confidant. Working directly with our future generations of adults, society places a large [...]
Flickr Images The first “gold standard” clinical trial of ketamine for the ongoing treatment of major depression was launched in Sydney on Tuesday and will involve seven research institutions and 200 patients from across Australia and New Zealand. Several pilot studies have examined the effectiveness of ketamine for depression but these have typically [...]
Pixabay Images Once upon a time, the future of mental health treatment was drugs. The advent of Prozac and whole class of similar medication in the 1990s gave doctors an easy option and big pharma easy money. But 20 years on, the problems have not gone away. In fact, mental illness is much more [...]
When bringing up the subject of drug use in Australia, people’s minds often go to ‘the usual suspects’: alcohol, cannabis and ecstasy. These three drugs usually get the most attention, and because of heightened media exposure (currently), methamphetamine (including ice) often gets a mention too. However, Australian’s use of all these drugs is either steady, [...]
Two years ago, Melbourne man Jarrod was aged in his early 30s. From a middle class background, he had been privately educated, achieved a university degree, married and had a daughter. He was an IT executive and worked long hours, but had plenty of friends to spend time with on the weekends. He was also [...]
Most people will encounter alcohol and/or other drugs during the teenage years, either through friends at school, at home with family or through TV or other media channels. Teachers can have a significant influence on young people and the extent to which students feel they are part of a school community. The conversations that teachers [...]
The US military's drug of choice for helping people stay awake while working long hours is finding its way into the 24/7 workplace, researchers warn. Billable hours and the pressure to perform is tempting workers to risk their own health to gain a competitive edge. Leading psychiatrists and drug experts in the US and Australia [...]
In the latest Beckley/Imperial study, we selected 12 people who had experienced depression over an average of 18 years, despite all that modern medicine can offer. Instead of daily medication, we wanted to know if their condition would improve after an “inner journey” on a 25mg dose of the psychedelic drug psilocybin. We also wanted to [...]
http://www.drugs.health.gov.au Ecstasy continues to be a popular drug in Australia. Although recent use (use in the past year) has decreased since 2007, those reporting ever having tried the drug has continued to rise to almost 11% of the Australian population aged 14 years and over. The number of school-based young people who reported recent use of the drug had remained fairly steady for some [...]
After years of debate about the health risks of electronic cigarettes, the federal government on Thursday made it final: They need to be regulated and kept out of the hands of children. The Food and Drug Administration issued sweeping new rules that for the first time extend federal regulatory authority to e-cigarettes, banning their sale to anyone under 18 [...]
