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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.” [More]

Children who read for pleasure experience better mental health during adolescence as well as superior performance in cognitive tests. Research published in Psychological Medicine found that roughly 12 hours of reading per week was the perfect amount associated with an improvement in brain structure. [More]

A recent study looked at paternal and maternal psychiatric history and risk of preterm and early term birth. It was a nation-wide study using Swedish registers. “It has been known for some time that women who are clinically anxious or depressed are more likely to deliver a child prematurely,” study author Michael E. Silverman told us. “Indeed, considerable evidence now exists showing a relationship between various psychiatric illnesses and the likelihood of delivering a premature infant.” [More]

People who frequently watch YouTube have elevated levels of depression, anxiety and loneliness. Researchers from the Australian Institute for Suicide Research and Prevention found that the most widely used streaming platform had both positive and negative impacts on the mental health of users. [More]

A new study published in the European Journal of Social Psychology looked at how the mindset of birth predicts birth outcomes. “Broadly speaking, the study is about the role of psychology in childbirth,” study author Lisa Hoffman told us. “We were interested whether psychological factors may have an effect on birth outcomes and whether, in turn, psychological factors (e.g., postpartum well-being, postpartum depression) may be predicted by birth.” [More]

The number of children and adolescents visiting the emergency department for attempted suicide and suicide ideation rose sharply during the pandemic. Research publish in The Lancet Psychiatry found that while pediatric emergency department visits decreased overall during the pandemic, suicide related visits among youth rose by 22%. [More]

March is traumatic brain injury (TBI) awareness month. Armenian-American triathlete Kristin Abello, was struck by a car in 2002, while on a training run in Houston in preparation for a marathon. As a result, she sustained a TBI and other physical traumas. The initial consensus was that she wasn’t going to survive, but she did and the road to recovery was extremely difficult, including her choice to carry a high risk pregnancy. She’s now giving back, as an advocate, philanthropist and author on a mission to help others with TBI. [More]

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.” [More]

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.” [More]

Teenagers with positive psychological assets like optimism and feeling loved are more likely to reach their 20s and 30s in good cardiometabolic health. A study published in the Journal of the American Heart Association found that teens who felt happy, optimistic, had good self-esteem, felt loved and felt a sense of belonging had better cardiometabolic health later in life compared to their peers without these positive psychological assets. [More]