After initially visiting a school psychologist, adolescents in the United States with a mental disorder often go to seek care from their pediatricians or family doctors. Fewer of them continue their treatment directly with a psychotherapist or doctor specialized in mental disorders. This shows an analysis conducted by scientists at the University of Basel that has just been published in the academic journal PLOS ONE. The results are based on a nationally representative cohort of 6,500 U.S. teenagers.

A considerable number of children and adolescents suffer from a mental disorder at some point of their time in school. In these cases, school psychologists are an important first contact point. However, their ability to provide comprehensive psychotherapeutic treatment directly is limited. Ideally, school psychologists should guide the way through the health care system in order to ensure children get access to adequate mental care from specialists.

But what does the reality look like? Which role do school psychologists play in the trajectory of children and adolescents with mental disorders in the health care system? PD Dr. Marion Tegethoff and her research team from the Faculty of Psychology at the University of Basel tried to answer this question in a research project funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation. They analyzed data from a nationally representative United States cohort of 6,483 students aged 13 to 18.

* Scientists in Ontario and Michigan studied how people deal with trauma

* They found people made more rational decisions if they were detached

* When tackling a problem as an observer, they made a 'better' decision

* But when thinking of their own problem they would make rash judgements

* Study also reveals that people don't necessarily get wiser as they get older

Having problems in life? Then you need to detach from your issues and try to see the world through someone else's eyes.

Research has found the best way to tackle a heartbreaking or personal trauma is to distance yourself and think about the problem in the third person.

During tests, people faced with the idea of a cheating spouse, for example, were more likely to think wisely about the situation, if they considered it as an observer would.

A recent Harris poll revealed that only 33 percent of Americans are very happy. If happiness is a natural state of being, why is this number so low? What is keeping us from being happy? Below are four "happiness roadblocks" that might be inhibiting your bliss.

1. Unfulfilled Expectations

Whether we realize it or not, we all have an underlying set of expectations for life. We have expectations for ourselves: how we should act, how successful we should be. We have expectations for others: how they should act, how they should treat us. We also have expectations for life and how our days should unfold. Some of these expectations are fulfilled, and others are not. That's life, plain and simple.

Having expectations is an important part of life that helps direct the course of our lives and relationships. If we didn't expect ourselves to get up each morning and fulfill our responsibilities, there would likely be an increase of pizza deliveries and online movie streaming! Having expectations for how others should behave and treat us allows us to set boundaries and maintain healthy relationships.

Often, however, these beliefs about how ourselves, others, and life are supposed to be are so ingrained in us that the possibility of failing to meet said expectations is too much to bear. The problem lies in us attaching our personal happiness to the fulfillment of these expectations that are often out of our control, and the difficulty some of us have in accepting unfulfilled expectations. Releasing our tight grip on how we expect people to act and how life should unfold gives us the space to experience life as a journey. Loosening our expectations and control allows us to maintain equilibrium and happiness when things don't go according to our plans.

When Annie Kagan's brother Billy died unexpectedly and began speaking to her from the afterlife, her future took a surprising turn. She recorded her conversations with Billy from the other side and published them in her debut book The Afterlife of Billy Fingers.

When my brother Billy woke me three weeks after he died, describing what was happening to him in the afterlife, I thought maybe I had gone a little crazy. How could my bad-boy brother, who died a tragic death, who had problems with addiction all his life, who didn't live what most people would call a successful life, how could he be sharing secrets about life's greatest mystery from another dimension? But as time passed, my skepticism turned to wonder as Billy taught me all about death.

Over the years, Hollywood has provided many examples of psychopaths. As a result, psychopaths often are identified as scary people who look frightening or have other off-putting characteristics. In reality, a psychopath can be anyone - a neighbor, coworker, or homeless person. Each of these seemingly harmless people may prey continually on others around them.

Practice doesn't make perfect - but meditation might.

Researchers say that however hard some people try, they won't excel at their chosen job, sport or hobby.

This is because the key to perfection lies in the mind.

They have shown that people who rise to the top have 'highly-integrated' brains finely-tuned for creativity.

The good news for those not naturally blessed is that mediation may help.

The advice from Dr Fred Travis, a US neuroscientist and advocate of Transcendental Meditation, contradicts the widely-held belief that practice will, eventually, make perfect.

We think of psychopaths as killers, alien, outside society. But, says the scientist who has spent his life studying them, you could have one for a colleague, a friend - or a spouse.
There are a few things we take for granted in social interactions with people. We presume that we see the world in roughly the same way, that we all know certain basic facts, that words mean the same things to you as they do to me. And we assume that we have pretty similar ideas of right and wrong.

But for a small - but not that small - subset of the population, things are very different. These people lack remorse and empathy and feel emotion only shallowly. In extreme cases, they might not care whether you live or die. These people are called psychopaths. Some of them are violent criminals, murderers. But by no means all.

Sleep's role in improving memory has been discovered by scientists in the US and China. Using advanced microscopy, researchers witnessed the formation of new connections between the brain's synapses during sleep, proving the key role of sleep in creating memories.

Although it is well known that sleep plays an important role in memory, what actually happens inside the brain was unknown.

Professor Wen-Biao Gan of New York University, told the BBC: "Finding out sleep promotes new connections between neurons is new; nobody knew this before.

"We thought sleep helped, but it could have been other causes, and we show it really helps to make connections and that in sleep the brain is not quiet, it is replaying what happened during the day and it seems quite important for making the connections."

The researchers trained mice to walk on top of a rotating rod - a previously unknown skill. They then looked inside their living brains to see what happened during sleep or sleep deprivation.

Their findings, published in the journal Science, showed that sleeping mice formed significantly more new connections between neurons, proving that they were learning more. Deep sleep, which is when the brain replays the day's activity, was shown to be necessary for memory formation.

Long-term stress causes changes in the brain's white and grey matter which could help explain the link to emotional disorders and anxiety later in life.

In a series of experiments, scientists at UC Berkeley found that chronic stress leads to fewer neurons and more myelin production (Chetty et al., 2014).

Neurons make up the so-called grey matter of the brain; these are used to store and process information.

Myelin, meanwhile, is a fatty white substance which surrounds the connections between neurons - the axons - and which helps information flow around the brain.

We already know that the balance between grey and white matter in the brain is important.

People who have post-traumatic stress disorder, for example, have higher levels of grey matter in comparison to white matter.

It took me 13 years of teaching asana, and over 17 years of practicing it, to finally take a seat for meditation. Until recently, if I managed to sit down to meditate, I felt the irresistible magnetism of the dishes, the inbox, laundry and the cabinet to reorganize. Nothing could make me sit still for more than a few minutes, and on the few occasions I did, I felt fake every time, as though I was missing something. Turns out I'd needed a manual to help me crack the code.

Anodea Judith's Eastern Body, Western Mind is shifting my relationship to, and my navigation of, meditation practice. Given practical details about each energy center (chakra) in the body (note: the word is pronounced with "ch" like "choice," rather than "sh" like "shall"), I've learned to be more specific and purposeful in the meditation seat. I'm learning to locate, in my actual physical body, the places where unresolved confusions have been stored, which activates a ready focus for my breathing when I sit -- in my own time, in my own words: the ultimate empowerment. Most importantly, I'm learning to generate more listening and respect for the closest people in my life -- the ones who'd become accustomed to getting the worst of me, while my students, teachers and friends got the best.

The succinct "takeaway": a level of consistency in my sitting, and therefore my behavior. Now I can be as astute a listener with my mom as I am with a new student detailing an injury. That wasn't always the case. I was misappropriating my compassion away from my family and only toward my students. This made for a hilarious paradox -- lovely, compassionate, generous teacher with her students versus the inattentive, angry, punishing girl with her family. And when my son was turning four last fall, I saw him trying to take it on. He became like a skycap at the airport, old enough to start helping me with my proverbial baggage, and that was so scary to see. He was impatient, mad, screaming "me." I knew I either had to handle that weight myself, or pay dearly for the service he'd try to provide for the rest of my life, taking on the problems of parents as we've all done.