Are we prepared to prevent youth depression?

In this blog, Jasmin Wertz considers a systematic review, which aimed to establish whether there is evidence to support the implementation and dissemination of programs to prevent childhood and adolescent depression.

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Smoking bans linked to healthier outcomes for children

In this co-authored blog, Victoria Simms and Jennifer Hanratty consider a recent systematic review, which aimed to assess the effectiveness of the introduction of smoke-free legislation on child health outcomes.

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Helping young people with psychosis return to work: early intervention services need to do more

Stephen Wood summarises a recent cluster RCT of vocational rehabilitation in early psychosis, which finds that early intervention services need to do more to help young people with psychosis return to work.

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Face-to-face psychotherapy for chronic pain in children and adolescents: Cochrane review calls for better primary research

Lisa Burscheidt summarises a recent Cochrane review of psychotherapy for chronic pain in children and adolescents, which concludes that psychological therapies should be considered as a treatment, but better primary studies are needed to help steer pain management decisions.

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Antidepressants, safety warnings and suicide risk in young people

Andrew Shepherd reviews the recent controversial BMJ study that suggests the FDA black box warning about antidepressant use in young people, may have inadvertently caused an increase in suicidal behaviour. He finds it’s not quite that clear cut.

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Bullying and cyberbullying increase the risk of suicidal ideation and suicide attempts in adolescents

Bullying is just not good for you.  Here on Mental Elf, we’ve already picked some great examples of studies demonstrating this.  André blogged about how bullied children are more likely to develop psychosis, and how bullies are at higher risk for teen pregnancy, and not so long ago, I told you how Wolke et al demonstrated that [read the full story…]

Approximately 1 in 6 children develop PTSD after trauma exposure

How many children develop Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) after a traumatic experience such as an assault, a car crash, war or disaster? William Yule, one of the godfathers of child traumatic stress research, once pointed out that rates reported in separate studies varied from 0 to 100%. So what is on average the rate [read the full story…]

New evidence on antidepressants and suicide risk in children and young people

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is unfortunately a relatively common condition in children and adolescents.  Depression is estimated to affect 2% of pre-pubertal children and 5-8% of adolescents (Son et al, 2000). As you might expect, depression has a significant negative impact on the development, functioning and risk for suicide in individuals affected, as well as [read the full story…]

Longer adolescent duration of worry and low mood predicts problems in adulthood: suggests early intervention important

Adolescent mental health problems are the cause of deep distress to hundreds of thousands of teenagers in the UK. Young Minds estimates that 850,000 children and young people in the UK have a diagnosed mental health problem, and many more may be suffering in silence.  Statistics on how likely it is that an adolescent with [read the full story…]