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Article
Reviewed: Adults Matter: Protecting Children from the Negative Impacts of
Bullying
Authors: NICOLA A. CONNERS-BURROW, DANYA L. JOHNSON, LEANNE
WHITESIDE-MANSELL, LORRAINE McKELVEY, AND REGINA A. GARGUS
This article examined the impact that parents and teachers can have on children who partake in bullying. More specifically this article looked at bullying in rural America South. This article classified children into one of four groups; victims, pure bullies, bully-victim (children who are both a bully and a victim) and those not involved at all.
The authors found that when parental support was high, bully and bully-victim depression was less severe. The results were the same when teacher support was high and parental support was low. When both parental and teacher involvement were low, these children suffered from clinical levels of depression. Surprisingly, the children with highest levels of depression, both before and after social supports present, were those who were not the pure victims, but those who were classified as the bully-victim.
On average, 65% of people struggling with depression report some type of physical pain that they also struggle with, and those individuals who report pain issues tend to have poorer treatment outcomes than those struggling with only issues of depression or issues of pain alone. Many people with depression and pain issues seek care from their primary care physicians and struggle with following through on treatment recommendations for both pain and depression.
Preliminary research shows that using Interpersonal Psychotherapy approaches tailored for individuals with both chronic pain and depression has promising results. Interpersonal Psychotherapy focuses on improving social support, communication style, and relationships to improve symptoms of depression. Treatment focuses on understanding important relationships (including those with medical providers) and improving communication skills with those individuals. Additionally, treatment focuses on setting goals for managing pain such as identifying and interrupting pain triggers, pacing activity level, and using exercise or relaxation activities. The therapist also works with the individual to identify things that are blocking the person from meeting their goals and communicating effectively.
If you or someone you know are struggling with both pain and depression, please contact us to find out how we can help tailor a treatment plan to meet your needs. We look forward to working with you, your doctors, and the important people in your life to learn strategies to managing your issues of pain and feelings of depression.
Adapted from the following article:
Interpersonal Psychotherapy for Co-occurring Depression and Chronic Pain
Authors:
Ellen L. Poleshuck, Stephanie A. Gamble, Natalie Cort, Debra Hoffman-King, Beth Cerrito, Luis A. Rosario-McCabe, and Donna E. Giles
Journal:
Professional Psychology: Research and Practice 2010, Vol. 41, No. 4, 312-318
Girls and women have made dramatic strides toward gender equality in the United States. Role models and opportunities for girls in science, technology, and sports exist today that were not available 50 years ago. Despite these advances, results from a new study show that teenage girls from diverse ethnic and economic backgrounds continue to experience sexism. The findings are from a study of 600 girls between the ages of 12 and 18 from California and Georgia. The girls were Latina (49%), White (23%), African American (9 %), Asian American (7.5%), and multi-ethnic or other (7.5%), and came from a variety of socio-economic backgrounds. The study, the first to examine social and individual influences on girls’ personal experiences of sexism, was carried out by researchers at the University of California Santa Cruz and the University of Kentucky. It appears in the May/June 2008 issue of the journal Child Development.
Obesity is a well known risk factor for certain physical health problems, but a new study suggests that heavy adults also have higher rates of psychiatric disorders.
Using data from a national health survey of more than 40,000 Americans, researchers found that obese adults were up to twice as likely to suffer from depression, anxiety and other mental health conditions as normal-weight adults.
In addition, even moderately overweight people had elevated rates of anxiety disorders, the study found.
Although children as young as 5 can be diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), few research studies have looked at treatments specifically geared toward young children with this disorder. Now, a new study from the Bradley Hasbro Children’s Research Center provides some of the first evidence-based data on a successful intervention for early childhood OCD. According to the study’s findings, published in the May issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, children with OCD between the ages of 5 and 8 may benefit from a form of psychotherapy, known as family-based cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), that is uniquely tailored to the child’s developmental needs and family context. The overall focus of family-based CBT is to provide both child and parents with a set of tools to help them understand, manage and reduce OCD symptoms. “If left untreated, early childhood OCD can severely disrupt and impair a child’s development and functioning and can extend into adulthood. Despite this risk, clinicians do not have a proven treatment model for these young children,” says lead author Jennifer B. Freeman, Ph.D., of the Bradley Hasbro Children’s Research Center and an assistant professor of psychiatry/human behavior (research) at The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University.
New research appearing in the May issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, suggests that being put in a low-power role may impair a person’s basic cognitive functioning and thus, their ability to get ahead.
Does playing violent video games make players aggressive? It is a question that has taxed researchers, sociologists, and regulators ever since the first console was plugged into a TV and the first shots fired in a shoot 'em up game.
Perhaps no period of life is more fraught with obsessive worries about popularity, social hierarchies and reputations than that treacherous, three-year period known as middle school. The social anxieties of adolescence have driven plotlines from "The Wonder Years" to "Hannah Montana" where teens and pre-teens spend entire hours and episodes agonizing over what their peers think. Figuring out whether you'll end up being a cool prom king or queen bee--or the kid who eats alone in the cafeteria--is an integral part of becoming a teenager. Turns out, it doesn't necessarily matter. Whether or not your high class voted you "most popular," teenagers who perceive themselves as well liked are just as socially successful over time as the kids who actually are part of the in-crowd, according to a new study in the May-June issue of Child Development. In fact, the overlap between the kids who believe they're popular and those who are deemed popular by their peers is pretty small. "Certainly there's a subset that feels good about themselves and is also popular, but that isn't the majority," says Kathleen Boykin McElhaney, a research associate in psychology at University of Virginia who conducted the study. Her findings add to a growing body of research suggesting that our perception of how we fit into the social world is just as important--if not more important--than our real-life position in the social world. The researchers asked 164 students at a public middle school to tackle a nerve-wracking question: how well liked were they among their class? McElhaney gauged the students' popularity within the class with assessments from the teenagers' peers, asking them who they would "most like to spend time with on a Saturday night." She also had close friends rate the subjects' aggression and hostility, saying whether statements like "is mean to others" applied to the teen in question. The study began with a group of 13-year-olds; McElhaney checked back in with them a year later to gauge whether each teen was doing better or worse socially. "We were measuring their aggression and hostility, along with a peer rating of whether people want to hang out with the teen," she explains. Half of her finding wasn't particularly surprising: the popular kids fare great socially, with their peers becoming more interested in hanging out with them over the year. But the teenagers who felt good about their place on the social ladder did just as well; they became less hostile and their peers became more interested in spending Saturday night with them even if they weren't ranked as particularly well liked. "If you're popular, sure, you do well, but the same is true if you felt that you were socially accepted," says McElhaney. "And if you look at both of those effects together--popularity and self-perceived social acceptance, we found that either one was OK." The one group of teenagers who did not fare well socially were those who did not perceive themselves as well liked and were not ranked as popular by their peers. These kids were viewed as more hostile toward their peers as the year went on and they were less sought out by their classmates over time. "They're not at all on the radar screen," says McElhaney. "They don't see themselves as accepted and that's where it's most problematic, when you don't have either that popularity or sense that you're well liked."
approximately 905,000 U.S. children were victims of maltreatment that was substantiated by state and local child protective services (CPS) agencies (1).* Approximately 19% of child maltreatment fatalities occurred among infants (i.e., persons aged <1 year) (1), and homicide statistics suggest that fatality risk might be greatest in the first week of life (2).
