A social enterprise providing education and information to protect and enhance the mental health of young people
A team of European researchers has found evidence that suggests that human consciousness is a state where the neural network that makes up the brain operates at an optimal degree of connectedness. In their paper published in Journal of the Royal Society Interface, the team describes their study of the human brain using volunteers undergoing fMRI [...]
\Weasel words and unpublished data are hiding the extent of antidepressant harms to children and adolescents, including a likely doubling of aggression and suicidality, researchers suggest. - Rada Rouse Source: True antidepressant harms to kids being hidden | 6minutes Image from Unsplash
The University of Michigan's Monitoring the Future Study (MTF), an annual survey tracking teen drug abuse among 40,000 8th-, 10th,- and 12th- graders, shows some positive inroads and encouraging news in substance abuse among American youth.Use of several illicit drugs – including MDMA (known as Ecstasy or Molly), heroin, amphetamines and synthetic marijuana – showed [...]
Andrew Rios’s seizures began when he was 5 months old and only got worse. At 18 months, when an epilepsy medication resulted in violent behavior, he was prescribed the antipsychotic Risperdal, a drug typically used to treat schizophrenia and bipolar disorder in adults, and rarely used for children as young as 5 years. When Andrew screamed in his sleep and seemed to interact [...]
PARIS - People who suffer from psychosis are about three times more likely to be smokers, but scientists have long scratched their heads over which one leads to the other. On Friday, research published in The Lancet Psychiatry suggested daily tobacco use, already known to cause cancer and stroke, may be also be a contributor [...]
Mission Australia Each year we encourage Australians aged 15-19 to ‘speak up’ about the issues that really concern them through Australia’s largest online youth survey. In 2015 we had nearly 19,000 respondents. We strive for an accurate representation of our nation’s youth. Among those who take part are young people who are in [...]
Before attending a skittles parties, teenagers raid their parent's medicine cabinets and get their hands on as much medication as they can. At the party, they pool the prescription and over-the-counter drugs they've gathered into a communal bowl. Partygoers then take handfuls of pills, often with alcohol to get high. The parties, also known as [...]
Ka-Ching! Pokie Nation - a new explosive documentary to air on the ABC - exposes how the seemingly innocuous pokie machines at your local pub are programmed for addiction They're rigged, they are everywhere and are as addictive as crack cocaine - but that's exactly what poker machines have been designed to do, [...]
stokpic, Photo: Ed Gregory Australians lose A$20 billion on gambling every year, $11 billion of which goes on poker machines in pubs and clubs. Why, then, are pokies so attractive? And why do we spend so much on them? Ubiquity is one reason. The high intensity – the rapid speed of operation and [...]
brainscape.com Placebos are drugs or other sources of treatment that are physically and pharmacologically inert, without any direct therapeutic effects. The neurobiological mechanisms of the placebo effect remain a matter of great research interest. The placebo response is a set of complex psycho-neurobiological mechanisms; it is believed that verbal suggestions and conditioning cues [...]
