Getting Kids Active
How much sport should children do? One hour a week? Two? More? What parents believe their child ought to be doing is greatly influenced by their own experiences of sport, and as a PDHPE teacher I’m only too aware that sport isn’t necessarily everyone’s cup of tea. One of the messages we convey in our [...]
Smokers sabotage mates who want to quit
Jealousy, guilt about their own habit and wanting a smoking "buddy" are among the reasons to wreck other people's quitting attempts.Data collated from 6,300 current and former smokers by Pfizer shows 31 per cent of smokers admit being saboteurs.The study also found that 72 per cent of smokers who have tried to quit think someone [...]
‘Time to consider raising the drinking age’ – top health expert
INCREASING the drinking age is just one tough measure that would help curb random violence, according to a top health expert who says the time for "soft actions" is over. Professor Mike Daube says the US, which has a legal drinking age of 21, shows it can be done and it works, but adds that [...]
Good-Natured Jokes Ease Pain
An amiable joke can be much more effective than darker humor at improving mood, according to recent research from Stanford University. In the study, led by psychologist Andrea Samson and James Gross and published in February in Cognition & Emotion, 40 people in Switzerland and 37 people in the U.S. looked at photographs of upsetting [...]
Gory, erotic images ‘blind’ us
Graphic images that depict violence or eroticism blind us for a split second, according to new research on how the brain processes visual information. The finding could explain why people have a hard time concentrating after seeing a particularly sexy photo, or after witnessing a car crash while driving. Such images emotionally jolt us to [...]
Health benefits of living in a community
People's physical and mental health is significantly greater in those who have links with their neighbours than those without. "In a typical Australian suburb, people who have links with their neighbours have better health than those who do not," said Professor Bush. "The links are often fairly simple - not only knowing your neighbours but [...]
Bully check
In an attempt to address bullying in schools, ClubsNSW are piloting Bully Check. This program involves those who apply for jobs with ClubsNSW in the Murray region, being investigated as to whether or not they were bullies at school. If they were, then ClubsNSW will not employ them. On the surface at least, this seems [...]
Gun violence in America – the scary facts
DID YOU KNOW? In one year on average, almost 100,000 people in America are shot or killed with a gun. In one year, 31,593 people died from gun violence and 66,769 people survived gun injuries (National Center for Injury Prevention and Control (NCIPC)). That includes: 12,179 people murdered and 44,466 people shot in an attack [...]
Parental Stress Linked To Childrens Depression
Children today are more depressed than they were at the height of the Great Depression, researchers say, and second-hand stress is a major culprit.One survey of 1000 children in West Australia, found 35 per cent of the respondents had "too much stress" in their lives and highlighted family conflict as a significant source of this [...]