AICAFMHA:
promoting mental health for young Australians
Australian Infant, Child, Adolescent and Family Mental Health Association Ltd
ABN 87 093 479 022


AICAFMHA E-News in Brief Issue # 9.07

News in Brief - Issue # 9.07 (Aug 25, 2009)

AICAFMHA News

There is only a week to go before earlybird registration closes for the 6th National CAMH and Inaugural World COPMI Conferences. Don't miss out on registering at the discount rate! Registrations are positive for the workshops, so make sure you get in early to secure your place. Please note, workshop registration is independent of conference registration. October 26-28 is fast approaching. We look forward to catching up with everyone in Adelaide at this exciting joint event.

The National COPMI Initiative is progressing well with new resources in the pipeline. Don't forget that you can order existing resources, Family Talk and Best for Me and My Baby, online at www.copmi.net.au .

Reports and factsheets from the National Youth Participation Strategy (NYPS) Project are also available to order online. Visit http://www.aicafmha.net.au/youth_participation/index.html for details.

What's On

The Events Calendar keeps you up to date, with what's happening in Australia and around the world.
New Events in our database are listed below.

Event Name: The infant, the family and the modern world: Intervening to promote healthy relationships
Event Dates: Oct 1, 2009 - Oct 3, 2009

Event Name: 6th National Child & Adolescent Mental Health Conference and Inaugural World COPMI Conference - REGISTRATION OPEN
Event Dates: Oct 26, 2009 - Oct 28, 2009

Event Name: 2009 ANZAPPL Annual Congress
Event Dates: Nov 26, 2009 - Nov 29, 2009

Event Name: 18th World Family Therapy Congress
Event Dates: Mar 17, 2010 - Mar 20, 2010

Why not browse through all the Events we have listed and if you have an event coming up email secretary@aicafmha.net.au so we can include it in our Calendar.

Mental Health News

Mother's mental condition affects teenagers (Times of India)

SYDNEY: Teenagers whose mothers have mental health problems are likely to suffer behavioural problems, says a new study.
Using data from the Mater University Study of Pregnancy (MUSP), Belinda Lloyd from the University of Queensland (UQ) studied maternal mental health and its impact on children.
The MUSP is a study of more than 7,000 mothers and their children born at Brisbane's Mater Hospital between 1981-83.
"Children whose mothers experienced mental health problems as their children grew older (during adolescence), had substantially elevated rates of the behavioural and mental health problems measured in the study," Lloyd said.
"Also, children whose mothers experienced recurrent mental health problems were significantly more likely to display behavioural and mental health problems.
"The impact of maternal mental health problems on children was found to vary, with the timing and recurrence of maternal anxiety and depression being important."

Link related to this news item: timesofindia.indiatimes.com/news/health-science/health/Mothers-mental-condition-affects-teenagers/articleshow/4851628.cms

Hospitals defend girl's care (New Zealand Herald)

The parents of a teenage girl who took her own life after repeated attempts to get her into long-term mental health care have complained to the Health and Disability Commissioner about her treatment.
Darius said this week he complained because felt his fears about his daughter's mental health were ignored.
"I believe they misdiagnosed my daughter. I believe [the doctors] made professional errors and they should be held accountable."
Monika's body was found near Orakei, Auckland on February 16. In the year before she died police picked her up from railway lines or motorway overbridges three times.
"It is completely justified. It's not the care she received I am complaining about, it's the care she did not receive."

Link related to this news item: www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10588060

How attitudes diverge in the teenage years (Independent.IE - Ireland)

The transition from childhood to adolescence is often a difficult one for parents and youngsters alike. They move from dependence on the family to engaging with the wider world.
Their affiliation shifts from being family-focused to being peer-focused. Indeed, parents are often troubled and at times angered by the emphasis that young people place on their friends at the expense of family.
While both are sensitive to the opinions that others have of them, this is much more pronounced in girls. Awareness of and attention to the opinion of others is ordinarily a good thing since it allows us to focus on social cues and to navigate various social encounters with sensitivity.
Among children the prevalence of depression is similar in both sexes but once adolescence is reached differences emerge, with depression occurring in a ratio of two to one in females as compared to males.
One possible explanation may rest with the priority that relationships have in the lives of women and that seems to be hardwired into their psychobiology, as evidenced in this study.
When these relationships are fractured, women are thus at greater risk of experiencing an adverse reaction.
So this research is one more step in the direction of understanding the differences between young men and young women in their social development and in their differential propensity to mental-health problems. What seems to be adolescent immaturity is, in fact, programmed into the nervous system.

Link related to this news item: www.independent.ie/health/latest-news/how-attitudes-diverge-in-the-teenage-years-1849586.html

Today's Parents 'Not To Blame' For Teenage Problem Behavior (ScienceDaily)

(Aug. 2, 2009) ? Poor parenting is not the reason for an increase in problem behaviour amongst teenagers, according to research led by Oxford University.
A team led by Professor Frances Gardner from the Department of Social Policy and Social Work at the University of Oxford found no evidence of a general decline in parenting. Their findings show that differences in parenting according to family structure and income have narrowed over the last 25 years. However, the task of parenting is changing and could be getting increasingly stressful, particularly for some groups.
Parents and teenagers are choosing to spend more quality time together than 25 years ago, with 70 per cent of young people regularly spending time with their mothers in 2006 compared to 62 per cent in 1986. For fathers, the figure had increased from 47 per cent to 52 per cent.
This research follows a Nuffield-funded study in 2004, which identified an increase in both adolescent conduct and emotional problems over the last 25 years.
Despite the rise, this latest study shows that today?s parents are more likely to know where their teenage children are and what they are doing than their 1980s equivalents. The proportion asking what their children were doing has increased from 47 per cent in 1986 to 66 per cent in 2006.

Link related to this news item: www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090801192602.htm

Medical labels are slapped on to rambunctious kids (The Australian)

(Frank Furedi )WHY am I not surprised to discover the number of Australian schoolchildren diagnosed with psychological or emotional disorders is increasing at a dramatic rate?

Because in Australia, as in every Anglo-American society, it is normal to treat the routine troubles of childhood as a mental health issue.

Since the 1980s the manufacture of child-related mental health pathologies has turned into a growth industry. Children's behaviour is constantly portrayed through a psychological label. These days confused and insecure children are likely to be diagnosed as depressed or traumatised.
Virtually any energetic or disruptive youngster can acquire the label of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. If you give your teachers a hard time or argue with adults it is likely you are suffering from oppositional defiant disorder.
If you are a little bit shy you are afflicted with social phobia. And if for some reason you don't like school it is only a matter of time before a mental health professional comes up with the diagnosis of school phobia. The rising number of referrals for school phobia in Britain indicates it is only a matter of time before a mental health professional invents aversion to getting out of bed syndrome. The medicalisation of childhood and of education has assumed alarming dimensions.
In Australia the proportion of students with a disability rose from 2.7 per cent of all Australian students to 6.7 per cent in the past 10 years. In Britain and the US the numbers of children diagnosed with a learning disability has increased year by year since the 1990s.

Link related to this news item: www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25930554-23289,00.html

Films attack mental health stigma

Two films are being launched in cinemas in England and online to challenge the misconception that all sufferers of schizophrenia are violent.

The move comes as a YouGov poll of 2,010 people found that more than a third held this belief.

Campaigners Time to Change said someone was as likely to be hit by lightning as be killed by a mentally ill person.

Link related to this news item: news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8192603.stm

Resources

Involving Children and Young People in Research

A group of top social researchers has put together a new resource to help break down barriers to involving children and young people in research about their lives. 'Involving Children and Young People in Research' is a compendium of papers that seeks to define and address challenges facing researchers within the broader context of changing attitudes toward the right of children and young people to play an active role in the decisions and actions that shape their lives.
The Australian Research Alliance for Children and Youth and the NSW Commission for Children and Young People have partnered to bring together current thinking and evidence from Australian leaders in participatory research. The result is a valuable new resource that provides insight into the ethical and logistical issues faced by researchers who want to actively involve young people in research that impacts on their lives.
Further details at: http://www.kids.nsw.gov.au/kids/resources/news.cfm?itemID=5D5D72579342EB9605F0D446A4D4514D


Conference presentation: Cumulative harm: Recognising the effects of chronic child maltreatment

Cumulative harm: Recognising the effects of chronic child maltreatment (PDF 1.08 MB), by Leah Bromfield. Workshop presentation for the Queensland Child Safety Services Senior Practitioner Forum, 23 June 2009.
http://www.aifs.gov.au/nch/pubs/presentations/2009/cumulativeharm.pdf
Other presentations available at http://www.aifs.gov.au/nch/pubs/presentations/diary

Suicide Call Back Service

Suicide Call Back Service - www.suicidecallbackservice.org.au
The Suicide Call Back Service is a free, nationwide telephone service that offers short to medium term support for people at risk of suicide, their carers, and those bereaved by suicide.

Kids' emotional issues can be predicted

As the first day of school approaches, teachers know that some children will have a difficult time.
But which children will grow out of their problems and which are likely to develop impairing mental health problems by the end of elementary school?

A research team at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health has come up with a screening tool that appears to predict, with startling accuracy, the small percentage of children most likely to benefit from early intervention.
?We wanted to find the longerterm patterns of mental health symptoms of kids who are most likely to develop problems that would impair them so they could be identified very early in school before the problems become entrenched,?? said Dr. Marilyn Essex, leader of the study, which was published in a recent edition of the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry .
?In our study, we did a phenomenal job of picking up those kids very early. Now those findings need to be replicated by others,? she said. The findings, Essex said, might be especially important for children with internalizing symptoms, such as anxiety, because they tend to be overlooked and untreated more often than those who show externalizing symptoms, such as conduct problems.
Read more at http://www.toacorn.com/news/2009-08-06/Health_(and)_Wellness/Kids_emotional_issues_can_be_predicted.html