February 28, 2024
by Elizabeth Pratt
Teenagers who grow up in large families have poorer mental health than their peers who grew up in a family with fewer siblings.
Researchers from Ohio State University found that in an analysis of children growing up in the US and China, a larger number of siblings had ramifications for the mental health of teenagers.
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February 27, 2024
by Patricia Tomasi
A new study published in Cities and Health looked at associations between real-time, self-reported adolescent mental health and urban and architectural design concepts. “First, we designed a walking route (1.7km) with seven stops, and quantified the actual spaces according to a number of features of pedestrian and transit oriented design,” study author Leia Minaker told us. “Next, we took 70 kids between nine and 17 years old on a walk, and had them fill out these surveys at each stop.”
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January 16, 2024
by Patricia Tomasi
autistic children in the aftermath of events on October 7th, 2023 in Israel. “Following the unprecedented attacks by Hamas on October 7th, we sought to understand the psychological experience of autistic and non autistic children and their parents,” Dr. Judah Koller of the School of Education at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem told us.
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December 22, 2023
by Elizabeth Pratt
Parents are feeling the pressure this holiday season.
Data from the C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital National Poll on Children’s Health at University of Michigan Health found one in five parents think their children have unrealistic expectations of the holiday, and one in four parents admit they themselves set overly idealistic expectations for the holidays.
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October 31, 2023
by Patricia Tomasi
A new study published in the Lancet looked at autism in England with regard to assessing under-diagnosis in a population-based cohort study of prospectively collected primary care data. “People often think of autism as a childhood condition, and historically, autism has mostly been diagnosed in children,” study author Elizabeth O’Nions told us. “Many autistic adults were not diagnosed when they were children, either because autism didn’t exist as a diagnosis when they were young, or the criteria were narrower, meaning that only a very small number of people were considered to be autistic at the time.”
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October 10, 2023
by Patricia Tomasi
A new study published in the Journal of Immunity looked whether there was a potential link between early life stress and the onset of mental disorders. “Individuals who suffer childhood abuse/neglect are much more likely to develop mental diseases, including depression and schizophrenia,” study author Wok-Suk Chung told us. “Additionally, stress has been shown to elicit a decrease in the number of excitatory synaptic connections in the brain and impair their functions. However, the underlying mechanism by which early life stress induces synaptic and behavioral symptoms later in life have been unclear.”
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September 12, 2023
by Patricia Tomasi
A new study published in the Journal of Child Development looked at infection detection in faces and children's development of pathogen avoidance. “We were interested in understanding whether children ages four to nine years old can avoid and recognize sick faces,” study author Tiffany S. Leung told us. “Previous studies have reported that adults can use faces to recognize when someone is sick and make judgements about whether to approach or avoid them."
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August 29, 2023
by Patricia Tomasi
A new study published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal looked at household food insecurity and health service use for mental and substance use disorders among children and adolescents in Ontario, Canada. “There have been other studies that have shown that food insecurity can lead to behavioural issues among children and adolescents, as well as symptoms of mental health problems,” study author Kelly Anderson told us. “We wanted to examine whether these behaviours and symptoms are translating to clinically significant mental health problems that require contact with the health care system.”
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March 14, 2023
by Patricia Tomasi
A new study published in the Journal of Child Development looked at how caregiver speech can predict the emergence of children’s emotion vocabulary. “We were interested in understanding how children learn words like ‘happy’ or ‘sad’ that label emotional experiences,” study author Mira L. Nencheva told us. “We were curious if the words that surround emotion labels might help children learn their meaning.”
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January 31, 2023
by Patricia Tomasi
A new study published in the Journal of Molecular Psychiatry looked at an autism-associated mutation in human neurons. “In this study, we are trying to understand the mechanism underlying a genetic mutation linked to autism,” Dr. Le Wang, lead author, told us. “Since the gene is involved in the information flow in the brain, we wanted to find out if the genetic mutation leads to abnormal information flow in humans using a human neural model.”
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