Even when our lives appear fine from the outside, locked within can be a world of quiet suffering, leading some to the decision to end their life. At TEDYou, JD Schramm asks us to break the silence surrounding suicide and suicide attempts, and to create much-needed resources to help people who reclaim their life after escaping death. Resources: http://t.co/wsNrY9C
Source: TED
Questions have been raised about the social impact of widespread use of social networking sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, and Twitter. Do these technologies isolate people and truncate their relationships? Or are there benefits associated with being connected to others in this way? The Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project decided to examine social networking sites in a survey that explored people’s overall social networks and how use of these technologies is related to trust, tolerance, social support, and community and political engagement.
This new report finds that Facebook users are more trusting, have more close friends, are more politically engaged, and get more support from their friends. Additionally, Facebook helps revive “dormant” ties with lost connections—the highest proportion of Facebook friends is high school classmates. [continue reading…]
World Elder Abuse Awareness Day involves activities to bring greater recognition of mistreatment of older adults wherever they live throughout the world, and to highlight the need for appropriate action. It is intended to give abuse and neglect of older adults a global relevance that will sustain and move prevention efforts for-ward throughout the whole year and years to come.
Throughout the world, abuse and neglect of older adults largely remains under-recognized, or treated as an unspoken problem. No community or country in the world is immune from this social problem.
Abuse and neglect of older adults is a complex and multi-faceted problem. Elder abuse encompasses many different types of harms and can occur in domestic, community or institutional settings.
Raising awareness of elder abuse is a challenge. The issue requires complex, mul-tiple and integrated responses from a very wide range of sources at individual, institutional, societal and global levels.
The United Nations has noted that the world needs a global response to the problem, one which focuses on protecting the rights of older persons.
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