A social enterprise providing education and information to protect and enhance the mental health of young people
I read an article a week ago in Sydney’s Sunday Telegraph that really hit a nerve. The article reported that ‘Fearful parents are unnecessarily sending pre-schoolers to early learning classes to give them an academic edge,’ and that ‘Some schools and teachers are also contributing to a sense that children are "failing" kindergarten, and becoming [...]
Paul Dillon, author of "Teenagers, Alcohol and Drugs"and Generation Next speaker says that in today's society children are introduced to drugs from an early age; if they have a cough we give then ‘medicine’ for it. So there is no reason why we can’t introduce the idea of drugs at an early age and build [...]
A crime linked to Facebook is reported to police every 40 minutes.Last year, officers logged 12,300 alleged offences involving the vastly popular social networking site.Facebook was referenced in investigations of murder, rape, child sex offences, assault, kidnap, death threats, witness intimidation and fraud. via A Facebook crime every 40 minutes: 12,300 cases are linked to [...]
Babies born at 36 weeks gestation or earlier had double the chance of being admitted to hospital for mental disorders as those born on term, while those born at 32 weeks or earlier had three times the risk, a study found. Previous research had indicated preterm babies were more likely to have behavioural problems at [...]
Dominique Browning discusses the reactions of friends and family to the recent suicide of Mary Richardson Kennedy and some of the common misconceptions about suicidal depression.In particular, she focuses on the sense of surprise some people feel when a loved one commits suicide. In her insightful article, she asks: “Is it possible that friends can [...]
Neuroscience exploded into the education conversation more than 20 years ago, in step with the evolution of personal computers and the rise of the Internet, and policymakers hoped medical discoveries could likewise help doctors and teachers understand the "hard wiring" of the brain. That conception of how the brain works, exacerbated by the difficulty in [...]
How do you sustain an industry that provides a certain standard of product - be it journalism, music, or mainstream movies, or X-rated movies - when more and more consumers are in the habit of downloading content for free? In the world of porn, the answer is: you can't. via How the internet killed porn.
Faced with slowing growth in its advertising business, Facebook is considering throwing open its social network to children, in the hope that their parents will pay for games and other content on the site. The plan is also designed to limit the company's legal risk over the already-widespread use of the site by minors, millions [...]
When psychiatrists, psychologists and other clinicians discuss the use and overuse of computer-based technologies in schoolchildren and young people, it is tempting to assume that there is a near-exclusive focus on the negative, pathological and undesirable aspects of this rapidly evolving domain. Such pop-cultural terms like ‘internet addiction’, ‘cyberbullying’ and ‘sexting’, seen in the media [...]
In last month’s newsletter we looked at how the powerful chemicals that drive stress responses in the mind and body can be very detrimental to young people. Before looking at how to combat stress and at the risk of appearing repetitive it is pertinent to reiterate a few points; Stressors are highly individualistic in nature [...]
