A social enterprise providing education and information to protect and enhance the mental health of young people
While there is increasingly more awareness of the problems resulting from cyberbullying, an often overlooked component of the whole cybersafety issue is internet and online video game addiction. More and more Australian families are being confronted with this very real and, according to all reports, growing problem. Robert (not his real name) sat in a [...]
There are a number of ways in which parents can lessen the effect of peer influence. Possibly one of the more important is for parents to correct the common teenage misperception that ‘all teenagers drink lots of alcohol’. This false belief leads some teenagers to feel they need to drink to excess in order to [...]
Two conferences are being organised by Julie Gale in the coming weeks: Bratz, Britney and Bralettes: The Sexualisation of Childhood Monday 3rd August, 2009 7:00pm for 7:30pm to 9.30pm Melbourne Girls Grammar School, South Yarra. ”From tiny tots to late teens, girls are being preyed on, and damaged, by sexualisation and media messages about weight, [...]
In a study of adolescent medical consultations, adolescent patients were asked whether any of the seven sensitive topics (behavior, mood, getting along with others, their parent's mood, family stresses, sexuality/birth control, and drugs/tobacco/alcohol) were raised by their doctor. Adolescents who were asked about one or more of these sensitive topics were significantly more likely to [...]
A study of 153 individuals that assessed sleep habits and then exposed them to a controlled dose of common cold virus. 88% became infected, but those who averaged less than 7 hours of sleep per night had the highest risk for colds Those with a "sleep efficiency" (ie proportion of time spent in bed actually [...]
Adverse events during childhood have a recognised association with certain psychiatric and medical illnesses. Recently, investigators studied hospitalizations for autoimmune disease in 15,357 adults. Adverse events included physical, emotional, and sexual abuse and household dysfunction, e.g., domestic violence, substance abuse, mental illness, parental divorce, and criminality. Sixty-four percent of adults with autoimmune disease reported at [...]
Research findings have suggested that having an adverse event in childhood increases one’s risk for developing alcohol dependence and that this effect strengthens with a greater number of adverse events. The 2001–2002 National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions, investigators have now examined the contribution of childhood or adolescence adversity to this risk, independent [...]
Almost a million Australian children are being given unfettered access to the Internet, new research released today reveals. The revelations come from Generation Next, a national parenting seminar organisation being supported by anti-depression initiative, beyondblue, and Australian Government-backed youth mental health foundation, Headspace. Their research finds 22 percent of parents of children aged 4-18 [...]
