The rise of a celebrity-fuelled "therapy culture" is damaging a generation of children, according to new book.
An increase in reality TV programmes, self-help guides and confessional autobiographies is leaving young people feeling increasingly "vulnerable" and unable to cope with normal pressure, it was claimed.
Kathryn Ecclestone, professor of education at Birmingham University, said the trend had been driven by New Labour which had "responded to popular concerns about emotional vulnerability and unhappiness" by rewriting the way education is delivered in schools, colleges and universities.
Growing numbers of parents are turning to drugs for a "quick fix" solution to their children's mental disorders, figures show.
Sami Timimi, consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist in the NHS and a visiting professor at Lincoln University, said the trend underlined the "McDonaldisation" of childhood mental health.
He said that, like fast food, the medical industry fed on "peoples' desire for instant satisfaction and a quick fix".
More children were taking medication to deal with emotional difficulties, anxiety, eating disorders and behavioural problems with little evidence of improvements, he said.
Children are being treated as "mini-adults" by society, according to an academic.
Richard House, from Roehampton University's Research Centre for Therapeutic Education, criticised the Government's "nappy curriculum" for under-fives.
Under the Early Years Foundation Stage Framework, children are supposed to hit 69 learning targets by the time they start full-time education.
But Dr House, who co-edited the book Childhood, Wellbeing and a Therapeutic Ethos, said it was "robbing children more and more of their right to a childhood relatively free of adult anxieties, preoccupations, and intrusions".
Biddy Youell, head of child psychotherapy at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust, said that children's development could be stunted unless they were given the opportunity to play and be playful at an early age.
Research from a new study reaffirms the importance of proper vitamin D levels to a healthy heart.
Researchers at Intermountain Medical Center in Utah found that low levels of vitamin D significantly increase the risk for stroke, heart disease and death.
The study followed 27,686 people age 50 and older with no history of cardiovascular disease. The participants were divided into three groups based on their vitamin D levels of normal, low or very low.
After just a year, those with very low levels were 77 percent more likely to die, 45 percent more likely to develop coronary artery disease and 78 percent more likely to have a stroke compared to those with normal vitamin D levels.
A new study shows that trauma patients without health insurance are twice as likely to die in the hospital as those with insurance, according to the Associated Press.
Doctors and health experts, who thought emergency room treatment was fair and unprejudiced, were shocked to hear the news from the Harvard University researchers.
"This is another drop in a sea of evidence that the uninsured fare much worse in their health in the United States," said senior author Dr. Atul Gawande, a Harvard surgeon and medical journalist.
Published in the November issue of Archives of Surgery, the study is just in time to add fuel to the debate in Congress over extending health insurance coverage to the millions of uninsured in America.
© Getty
Patients with heart disease who practised Transcendental Meditation cut their chances of a heart attack, stroke and death by half, compared with non-meditating patients, the first study of its kind has found.
Stress is a major factor in heart disease and meditation experts say the technique can help control it.
Transcendental Meditation, practised by the Beatles and based on an ancient tradition of enlightenment in India, involves sitting quietly and concentrating to focus the mind inwards by silently repeating a mantra. The practice is said to induce inner peace by allowing thoughts to flow in and out of the mind.
Comment: One of the most effective breathing techniques to aid in these results can be found
here.
Viruses are well known for attacking humans and animals, but some viruses instead attack bacteria. Texas A&M University researchers are exploring how hungry viruses, armed with transformer-like weapons, attack bacteria, which may aid in the treatment of bacterial infections.
The Texas A&M researchers' work is published in the renowned journal Nature Structural & Molecular Biology.
The attackers are called phages, or bacteriophages, meaning eaters of bacteria.
The word bacteriophage is derived from the Greek phagein, meaning eater of bacteria.
"The phages first attach to the bacteria and then inject their DNA," says Sun Qingan, coauthor of the article and a doctoral student at Texas A&M. "Then they reproduce inside the cell cytoplasm."
Sleep deprivation adversely affects automatic, accurate responses and can lead to potentially devastating errors, a finding of particular concern among firefighters, police officers, soldiers and others who work in a sleep-deprived state, University of Texas at Austin researchers say.
Psychology professors Todd Maddox and David Schnyer found moderate sleep deprivation causes some people to shift from a faster and more accurate process of information categorization (information-integration) to a more controlled, explicit process (rule-based), resulting in negative effects on performance.
The researchers examined sleep deprivation effects on information-integration, a cognitive operation that relies heavily on implicit split-second, gut-feeling decisions.
"It's important to understand this domain of procedural learning because information-integration - the fast and accurate strategy - is critical in situations when solders need to make split-second decisions about whether a potential target is an enemy soldier, a civilian or one of their own," Maddox said.
Ann Cooper & Kate Adamick
GristTue, 17 Nov 2009 14:46 UTC
Crap: it’s what’s for school lunch. But does it have to be?
Not long ago or far away, there was a great and mighty kingdom that was the envy of all other kingdoms in the world. The kingdom was home to two groups of people, the Big People and the Little People. The Big People had many jobs and responsibilities, but foremost among these was their unalterable duty to care for the well being of the Little People above all else. The Little People had only one responsibility, to follow the advice of the Big People so that they, too, could grow up to be Big.
For many, many years, the Big People diligently watched over the Little People and looked out for their interests, while the Little People followed their examples and grew strong. The kingdom thrived and prospered.
Several studies have shown that lipid peroxidation stimulates collagen production in fibroblasts and hepatic stellate cells (HSC), and plays an important role in the development of liver fibrosis. Hepatoprotective effects of green tea against carbon tetrachloride, cholestasis and alcohol induced liver fibrosis were reported in many studies. However, the hepatoprotective effect of green tea in dimethylnitrosamine (DMN)-induced models has not been studied.
A research article published on November 7, 2009 in the World Journal of Gastroenterology addresses this question. The research team, led by Prof. Hong-Yon Cho from Korea University examined the protective effect of green tea extract (GT) on hepatic fibrosis in a rat HSC line and in a rat model of DMN-induced hepatic fibrosis.
The results showed GT administration prevented the development of hepatic fibrosis in the rat model of DMN-induced liver fibrosis. These results were confirmed both by liver histology and by quantitative measurement of hepatic hydroxyproline content, a marker of liver collagen deposition. Accordingly, inhibition of proliferation, reduced collagen deposition, and type 1 collagen expression were observed in activated HSC-T6 cells following GT treatment. These results imply that GT reduced the proliferation of activated HSC and down regulated the collagen content and expression of collagen type 1, thereby ameliorating hepatic fibrosis.
Comment: One of the most effective breathing techniques to aid in these results can be found here.