This blog offers some information on mental health in universities, including risk factors and protective factors. It also touches on some of the steps universities can take to better safeguard young people’s mental health.
Parents play a huge role in their children’s lives, and, consequently, can play a big role in violence prevention. Positive parenting, through role-modelling, warmth, and responsiveness, nurtures secure attachments where teenagers can learn social and emotional skills from their parents. Engaging in specific conversations about violence – and how to avoid it – is also key.
It’s okay for young people to want to do well at school, whether that’s in exams, sports, or other activities. Setting high targets can be motivating and help some adolescents to realise their potential. But when standards become exceedingly high, it can start to affect a young person’s well-being – particularly if they tend to focus on their mistakes and are self-critical when standards are not met.
School avoidance can have a big impact on young people’s well-being and futures, but change is possible. Sometimes, schools can adapt parts of their programs to address the issues that are making a young person anxious. Some young people require professional support to address anxiety disorders that may underlie school refusal.
Teenagers and adolescents with eating disorders usually over-evaluate their shape and weight. Instead of placing their self-value in different aspects of their identity and personality, all or almost all of their self-worth relates to their body. Behaviours like body checking may reinforce a young person’s distorted beliefs about their own bodies, increase body dissatisfaction, and cause them to place even more self-value in their shape and weight.
While there is no single cause for binge eating disorder, there are several different risk factors that make the development of BED in teens more likely. This blog explores these risk factors and outlines some of the developmental pathways to binge eating disorder. It also outlines the emotional-behavioural cycles that can cause the disorder to persist in young people.
Tiktok is one of the most popular social media platforms among teenagers. In the US, 63% of 13-17 year olds use the site. Tiktok and other forms of social media can have a big impact on the way that young people understand themselves and the world around them.
As parents and caregivers, most of us will face moments when telling the whole truth feels incredibly difficult. Whether it’s explaining the death of a
Emotionally-based school refusal is often associated with anxiety. But there are many emotions and internal experiences that can lead to school refusal. These include separation anxiety, social anxiety, sadness and distress.
Emotional dysregulation develops when a young person’s emotional learning processes are disrupted. This might be because they lack stable environments and relationships that facilitate socio-emotional learning, or because their caregivers aren’t able to role model effective emotional regulation.
