August 2009

Helping your anxious child

anxious-child1Yesterday we featured a post that looked at Alan E. Kasedin and Carlo Rotella’s article Bullies: They can be stopped but it takes a village

Staying within the theme, (childhood anxiety), today’s post features the updated best-selling classic Helping Your Anxious Child: A Step-by-Step Guide for Parents
A book that guides readers to help a child overcome anxiety and fears. It describes in detail strategies and techniques they can combine into a comprehensive self-help program for a child’s particular needs. From separation anxiety to general anxiety, social anxiety, specific phobia and panic disorder, Helping Your Anxious Child, Second Edition describes the common types of childhood anxiety, how anxiety originates, and options for dealing with the problem, with or without a therapist’s help.
Source: New Harbinger Publications

All about headaches

How to find out if your throbbing head is a hangover or something more serious

headache

Image:Stockxpert

In today’s Guardian Tom Nolan looks at different types of headaches. We all know what it’s like to have a headache. They turn the best of occasions into a form of torture. Four out of five people get tension headaches. One in seven experience migraines. Headaches cost the economy around £1.5bn a year through lost work days. Trouble is, while some causes of headaches are obvious – such as when you’ve had too many glasses of wine the night before – others are more tricky to call. And how can you tell what’s serious and what isn’t? A good starting point is knowing what type of headache you have. link to read continue reading
Source: The Guardian

Back to school , back to bullying

bullyingIts that time of year again, kids are getting ready to go back to school.And as in previous years our psychology practice is preparing for the influx of kids and anxious parents who are dealing with bullying.
Last week in Slate Alan E. Kasedin and Carlo Rotella tackled this very problem. Bullies:They can be stopped but it takes a village

Bullying is linked to everything from school shootings to youth suicide to adult depression and violent crime. School Bullying is nothing new, but psychologists are identifying new ways to prevent it. Dan Olweus, PhD. of Norway is recognised as a pioneer and “founding father of research” on bullying and victimization. His research inspired  Bullying at School: What We Know and What We Can Do (Understanding Children’s Worlds) Olweus found that 15 percent of Norwegian kids say they’ve been involved in bullying “now and then,” a statistic that slides upward in the United States to as high as 25 percent of students reporting they’ve been victims and 20 percent confessing to being bullies.
Olweus developed a program carefully evaluated in research,that involved parents, teachers, and peers throughout Norway which significantly reduced bullying.It has been viewed as a model and adopted in other countries—including the United States, where many schools employ variants of it………link to read original article

Source: Slate

There are many resources to help in identifying and intervening effectively to stop bulling and its consequences. Here are some:

Public Safety Canada on bullying
Centre for Children and Families in the Justice System
KidsHealth on bullying
Bullying.org
The “Code of Silence”
Psychology Matters on bullying

 

same-sex-symbolLesbians, gays and bisexuals are twice as likely as heterosexual men and women to seek help from mental health professionals, according to a new study by the UCLA School of Public Health.

The study, published today in the journal BMC Psychiatry, examines the relationship of gender and sexual orientation to the use of services to treat psychiatric problems such as mental health and alcohol and drug disorders. [continue reading…]