Teasing about weight and its affect on pre-teens

"We tend to think of adolescence as the time when kids become sensitive about their body image, but our findings suggest that the seeds of body dissatisfaction are actually being sown much earlier," said Timothy D. Nelson.

For the study, Nelson and his colleagues surveyed hundreds of public school students whose average age was 10.8 years. They collected participants' heights and weights and calculated their Body Mass Index, then examined the relationships between weight-related criticism and children's perceptions of themselves.

Their results showed that overweight pre-teens who endured weight-based criticism tended to judge their bodies more harshly and were less satisfied with their body sizes than students who weren't teased about their weight.

Because children who develop such negative views of their bodies are at higher risk for internalizing problems, developing irregular eating behaviors and ongoing victimization, researchers said these results should be a signal for more early identification and intervention efforts at schools.

"There's often a sense that overweight people 'deserve' it, or that if they are continually prodded about their weight, they'll do something about it," said Nelson

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So what do you think?

Do children think about their body weight as much as this study suggests? Are weight-related criticisms found more in groups of girls or boys? Can pre-adolescent taunting really affect children for the rest of their lives?

And what should be done to try and stop this happening in schools?

Are weight issues a problem generated by the media? e.g. super skinny people in magazines and on the tv.
Or are they now being generated by the Health Authority by chastising those who are overweight?

What's your opinion?

Link to Article

The Pain of Discrimination

"In a new study, researchers found that adolescents from Latin American and Asian backgrounds experienced more discrimination than their peers from European backgrounds and that the discrimination came not only from other adolescents but from adults as well. The level of discrimination also impacted these teens' grade-point averages and their health and was associated with depression, distress and lower levels of self-esteem.

601 Teens (equal males and females) kept a daily diary for 2 weeks to record any discriminatory events or comments they experienced. They were also asked to separately record on a four-point scale any physical symptoms, such as headaches, stomach-aches or general pain.

Among the teens in the study, nearly 60% reported experiencing discrimination from other teens, and 63% reported discrimination from adults; 12% reported experiencing discrimination on a daily basis.

The researchers found that teens who reported higher levels of peer or adult discrimination also reported more aches, pains and other symptoms, as well as a lower overall grade-point average. Thus, discrimination may not only tax adolescents' physical and psychological resources but may also affect their ability to achieve in school, the researchers said.

"Discrimination significantly predicted lower GPAs, higher levels of depression, higher levels of distress, lower self-esteem and more physical complaints," Fuligni said. "So the bottom line? Discrimination is harmful."

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This interesting study highlights the link between the personal world, i.e. one's own wellbeing and health, and the social world. This link can be good, in terms of positive interactions and suppport, but, as this study shows, negativity in the social world can create bad results in the personal world.

Although people may think the discrimination is only small, it can mount up on a single individual, much like in the story 'An Inspector Calls' by J.B Preistley, and can manifest itself in a number of physical and psychological problems.

The modern world already seems to be accelerating the number of people that are being diagnosed with depression and ADHD and personality disorders etc, and people are quick to blame the fast paced life and music and videogames. This study is an interesting wake-up call that shows how our interactions with each other, although seemingly harmless, may be commiting more pain than we realise.

Link to article

Three-minute therapy: Speed Dating, 'Speed Shrinking' - what's next?

Claire Prentice writes in The Independent:

Three-minute therapy: Can 'speed shrinking' fix your head in 180 seconds?

Three, two, one...Speed Shrink!" booms a voice over the loudspeaker. Having three minutes to spill your most intimate secrets to a stranger in a crowded room may not sound like everyone's route to good mental health, even in the world capital of psychotherapy. But for today's time – and increasingly cash – poor New Yorkers, it offers a potential quick fix that is hard to resist.

Read the full article: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/features/threeminute-therapy-can-speed-shrinking-fix-your-head-in-180-seconds-1818840.html

What do you think about this as an idea?
Have you ever experiences anything similar in your everyday life?
Is there room for this approach amongst other therapeutic interventions?

Please share your thoughts with us.

Nice Doctors Heal You Faster, And More!!!

I've been waiting for something like this for ages!
When I practised as a Gastroenterologist - I knew my patients had their symptoms disappear and their ulsers healed sooner then others just becourse I was SO NICE with them. :-)))
(Not going to die of modesty as we say it in Russia)...

Anyway - read this article - you'll enjoy it!

"It feels good when someone pays attention to our concerns and our feelings—and it turns out such empathy is good for our health, too.

Researchers at the University Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health report in Family Medicine that patients of doctors who expressed such concern had a cold for one day fewer than patients whose physicians focused on just the facts. In randomized controlled trials the colds of patients assigned to empathetic doctors lasted an average of seven days; those with low empathy docs endured an extra day of cold misery.

The doctors’ empathy also boosted the patients’ immune systems. There was a direct relation between a physician’s empathy level and his or her patient’s level of IL-8, a chemical that summons immune system cells to fight microbial bad guys."

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=nice-doctors-heal-faster