A social enterprise providing education and information to protect and enhance the mental health of young people
I read with interest this week an opinion piece in the Sydney Morning Herald by John Weekes, the headmaster of Knox Grammar. He was discussing the concept of Positive Education. Essentially, Positive Education embeds the tenets of Positive Psychology into the curriculum, both explicitly and implicitly.* Weekes says, “Our focus on academic outcomes such as [...]
Like many parents with young children, I wondered how early and how often my young daughter should be on the computer. The advice experts’ offer was both surprising and reassuring. 1) It’s almost never too early. Although the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends no computer usage before age two, by age three many children are [...]
PSYCHOLOGISTS and educators need to go back to the drawing board on cyber-bullying and admit they have little idea what is driving the epidemic among students, a study suggests. And, in a finding that has surprised the researchers, it found cyber-bullying does not appear to have the same roots as traditional bullying. via Cyber-bullies truly [...]
This study contrasts a rash of research suggesting social media and overuse of technology causes depression and can lower self-esteem. Unlike those studies, which focused on people who use mobile technology and social networks to compare themselves to others, the UC Berkeley texting study focused on person-to-person communication, which may account for the divergent results.Instead [...]
Scientists describe how new research has changed our understanding of adolescence which was thought to start with the physical changes to the body around puberty and to be completed when growth stopped in the late teens. Now researchers believe the brain goes on maturing and is not fully developed until at least the age of [...]
At any age friends play an integral part in people’s lives. For young people the forging of friendships is important for their social and mental development. However the process of making and keeping friends is not always easy. Children who feel they do not have friends may become withdrawn, exhibit antisocial behaviour and even become [...]
Why do some teenagers start smoking or experimenting with drugs-while others don't? In the largest imaging study of the human brain ever conducted-involving 1,896 14-year-olds-scientists have discovered a number of previously unknown networks that go a long way toward an answer. Robert Whelan and Hugh Garavan of the University of Vermont, along with a large [...]
27% of 18 to 24 year olds suffer mental health issues* The transition of young people into adults is no doubt an awkward phase for most teenagers. It is a time when they are most vulnerable to mental health issues such as depression, anxiety, eating disorders and addictions. Their understanding of these states of being [...]
For many young players it is the ‘fantasy world’ of the game that attracts them and it is this that they become addicted to; they would rather live in a world of online games than participate in the real world around them. This is especially true of RPG’s (role playing games) where the player morphs [...]
