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Punitive measures increase misbehaviour
Using punitive measures to deal with childhood and adolescent antisocial behaviour increases the likelihood of future misbehaviour, according to an Australian study, which has emphasised the need for early interventions to address the problem.
The International Youth Development
Study followed almost 6000 children in grades five, seven and nine
in Victoria and in Washington state, US. Questionnaires administered to
the children at baseline and a year later found school suspension for
violence, antisocial behaviour and relational aggression (covert
antisocial behaviour, such as starting rumours about others) increased
the risk of subsequent antisocial behaviour.
A report of the findings, funded by the Federal Government's Criminology
Research Council and co-ordinated by the Murdoch Children's Research
Institute in Melbourne, concluded it was crucial to intervene with these
behaviours before they became entrenched.
Possible responses included action to keep children connected with their
school despite the difficulties they may cause, assisting students to
control their emotions in challenging situations, and fostering
attachment to parents, particularly mothers.
Dr Michael Fasher, a GP in Blacktown in Sydney's western suburbs who has
a special interest in paediatrics, said there was increasing evidence
that supporting families in the first 3-5 years of a child's life could
make a difference in preventing antisocial behaviour. 'GPs are superbly
placed to support families in nurturing their children. It's important
for GPs to embrace behavioural difficulties in children as a legitimate
part of their role,' Dr Fasher said.
'It needs a non-judgmental style of consultation, building on parents' strengths rather than criticising their weaknesses, and engaging them in a partnership rather than relying on a traditional, didactic doctor-patient relationship.'
Tony James
31 August 2005
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U.S. abstinence drive hurts AIDS fight — UN
official
The U.S. government's emphasis on
abstinence-only programs to prevent AIDS is hobbling Africa's battle
against the pandemic by downplaying the role of condoms, a senior U.N.
official said on Monday.
Stephen Lewis, the U.N. secretary general's special envoy for HIV/AIDS
in Africa, said fundamentalist Christian ideology was driving
Washington's AIDS assistance program known as PEPFAR with disastrous
results, including condom shortages in Uganda.
The Bush administration favors prevention programs that focus on
abstinence rather than condom use and has more than doubled funding for
U.S. abstinence-only programs over the past five years.
As part of President George W. Bush's global AIDS plan, the U.S.
government has already budgeted about $8 million this year for
abstinence-only projects in Uganda, human rights groups say.
Activists in both Uganda and the United States say the country is now in
the grip of condom shortage so severe that men are using plastic garbage
bags in an effort to protect themselves.
“There is no question in my mind that the condom crisis in Uganda is
being driven and exacerbated by PEPFAR and by the extreme policies that
the administration in the U.S. is now pursuing in the emphasis on
abstinence,” Lewis told journalists on a teleconference.
“That distortion of the preventive apparatus ... is resulting in great
damage and undoubtedly will cause significant numbers of infections
which should never have occurred.”
Many health experts say condoms are the most effective bulwark against
AIDS.
The Office of the U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator which administers PEPFAR
did not immediately return calls seeking comment. It has rejected
criticism over condom policy in the past, saying it maintains a balanced
approach to prevention.
Uganda had been praised for cutting HIV infection rates to around 6
percent today from 30 percent in the early 1990s, a rare success story
in Africa's battle against the disease.
But President Yoweri Museveni's government has come under criticism for
sidelining its condom policy, a move activists tie to pressure from
Washington through its PEPFAR program.
'People Desperate'
The Ugandan government, which in 2004 recalled free condoms over quality
fears, has failed to provide alternatives — pushing the price of
store-bought condoms up threefold, Ugandan activist Beatrice Were told
the teleconference.
“From this you can see where Uganda is going ... people are desperate
for condoms,” she said.
Uganda's State Minister for Health Mike Makula told the Monitor
newspaper on Monday there was no condom shortage, saying the country had
65 million in stock and had ordered another 80 million for delivery
soon.
“That there is a condom shortage in the country is just a rumor by
people who want to spoil the image of this country,” the newspaper
quoted Makula as saying.
But Jodi Jacobson of the U.S.-based Center for Health and Gender Equity
said the about-turn in Uganda's previous policy to promote condoms was
having a real impact — reducing availability of condoms and cutting
consumer confidence in them.
“They are kow-towing to the (U.S.)
fundamentalist right on this issue,” Jacobson said.
The U.N.'s Lewis said the effects of Washington's “obsessive emphasis on
abstinence” were most profound in Uganda, where it resonated with strong
local religious traditions.
But he said the U.S. drive for abstinence was being felt more widely
across Africa and threatened to derail or divert more AIDS-fighting
programs.
“What PEPFAR has done is to have made it possible for a number of
Pentacostal and more fundamentalist churches to pursue the abstinence
agenda,” he said.
“I think the administration and PEPFAR have to come to their senses ...
to impose dogmatic policies is doing great damage to Africa.”
Andrew Quinn
30 August 2005
Source
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Premarital cohabitation runs in family, says
Prof.
According to a recent study conducted at
Ohio State University, daughters tend to imitate the marriage
circumstances of their mother when it comes to living with someone
before marriage.
The study found that women whose mothers cohabitated are 57 percent more
likely than other women to cohabitate before marriage.
“Cohabitation is an interesting question because it has accelerated in
the past ten to fifteen years,” said Prof. David Lichter, policy
analysis and management, director of the Bronfenbrenner Life Course
Center at Cornell. Lichter conducted the study at Ohio State University
with Prof. Zhenchao Qian, sociology, Ohio State and graduate student
Leanna Mellott, also of Ohio State.
Lichter went on to say that 75 percent of
people in the United States will cohabitate before they marry, whether
it is with a significant other or with a friend.
Lichter explained that this study was different from others because most
previous research focused on divorce, rather than on cohabitation. The
results of the study show the “built in momentum for increased
cohabitation in the future.”
Furthermore, Lichter indicated that this study is only the fist step in
uncovering something very important. He said that it is now time to
question what cohabitation means for children.
“Over 40 percent of all cohabitating couples have children,” Lichter
said.
“We don’t know the consequences yet,” said Lichter in reference to the
effects on children.
Lichter began the study because he was interested to see if children
follow the lead of their parents. The study showed that girls do follow
the pattern, but boys do not. Sons are not more likely to cohabitate if
their mothers once lived with a man outside of marriage. So another
question that Lichter now has is, “why the gender difference?”
“One out of seven children who live with
a single parent reside with the mother,” Lichter said.
Oftentimes, a single father is not cohabitating because single fathers
are “much more likely to be living with another adult, such as a
parent,” Lichter said.
According to Lichter, the next step is to look more deeply into the
types of cohabitation. There is serial cohabitation, in which “young
people today go from one cohabitating relationship to the next,” and
then there is another group in which people cohabitate with one person
for a long period of time and eventually get married to that same
person.
Lichter also mentioned that the characteristics of those who cohabitate
are significant.
Children of cohabitating parents share the same risk factors as their
parents, such as economic status, education level and race, which might
be why the pattern is passed down, Lichter said.
The researchers for this study looked at data from the National
Longitudinal Survey of Youth, which is a national survey of men and
women aged 14 to 22 in 1979 who were interviewed annually from 1979 to
1994, and once every two years from 1996 on.
Mellott noted that most mothers in the study gave birth at younger ages
than most mothers. Also, the study included more minorities than the
general population.
However, the researchers still found the
impact of cohabitation to be significant even after taking into account
factors such as economic status, race and education level. The study
also showed that black men are 35 percent less likely than white men to
cohabitate and black women are ninety percent less likely than white
women to cohabitate. Higher education levels correlate with lower levels
of cohabitation, as does frequency of religious service attendance.
Those who attend religious services frequently are linked to lower
levels of cohabitation than those who attend rarely or not at all.
At the present rate of cohabitation, one-quarter to one-third of
children today will live with cohabitating parents before they reach the
age of 18.
Lichter, who just joined the Cornell faculty recently from Ohio State
University, will conduct further research under his new role as director
of the Bronfenbrenner Life Course Center.
According to the BLCC website, the Center’s aim is to “promote an
understanding of existing and emerging challenges to the effective
functioning of individuals and families across the life course, and to
identify promising solutions.”
Rachel Nayman
29 August 2005
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School discipline
Exclusion fuels chaos in class, claim children
The ultimate headteachers' sanction of
excluding unruly pupils from school is actually encouraging the worst
offenders to misbehave, a leading academic has warned.
Instead of acting as a punishment for children who consistently
misbehave, it is seen by a hard core as an opportunity to have a few
days off, according to researchers who found that most school pupils see
exclusion as being “utterly ineffective” and in some cases
“counterproductive”.
Academics even claimed that it is increasingly being used by teachers to
give them a break rather than as a means of improving classroom
discipline.
The report, 'Exclusion from school — what does it mean to pupils?',
warns headteachers that the pressure on schools will continue to
increase unless alternative measures, such as mediation sessions, are
used to improve children's behaviour. Although pupils surveyed
acknowledged that exclusion was a serious measure, it did not deter them
from misbehaving.
Gwynedd Lloyd, head of the educational studies department at Edinburgh
University, said: “There are some children who would rather be excluded
than go to school. The thought of a few days off can actually be an
incentive to misbehave. Exclusion does nothing for anybody. It is a
short-term solution.”
The report states: “It should be of
immediate concern to schools that exclusion, a central, long-established
part of the school discipline process, is seen simultaneously as
significant and yet ineffective. There is a need for measured
re-appraisal of the aims and use of this sanction of last resort.”
The research, a combination of one-to-one interviews and focus groups
with 61 children aged between 13 and 16 from four Edinburgh secondary
schools, showed pupils also thought exclusion was being overused. “It
just made me mad,” one male pupil said. “It disnae make you like them
any better,” said another.
The report added: “It is likely that pressures on schools will only
continue to increase unless they seek a much more coherent and
restorative set of relationships between adults and pupils in schools.”
Lloyd said: “There is no easy answer to the problem, but there has to be
more use of mediation techniques, buddy systems and playground pals in
Scotland. Some children who are excluded get a leathering from their
families when they go home and it is these children with a history of
deprivation that tend to get excluded more.
“The Executive is funding trials of these
techniques at selected schools but this research shows that there has to
be more investment in alternatives to exclusion if they are to be
helped.”
Eighty per cent of exclusions in Scotland are for five days or less,
with 61% of pupils being excluded only once. But 19% of pupils are
excluded twice or more, according to official figures, and the number of
exclusions has risen since the Executive dropped its target for lowering
them in November 2003.
Figures show that in 2003-04 there were 38,919 exclusions, a 7% increase
on the previous year. A quarter were due to disobedience, 22% involved
verbal abuse of staff and 14% involved physical abuse of fellow pupils.
Despite the increase, only 176 pupils — about 1% of the total — were
permanently removed from the school register, a fall of 40% on 2002-03.
Professor Pamela Munn, dean of Moray House School of Education, and an
expert on school discipline, said: “These findings echo what
headteachers themselves are saying and that is that most exclusions are
being used to give them and their classes respite from pupils who are
behaving badly. Only 23% of heads and 17% of teachers thought it was
effective for the children concerned in our most recent survey.”
However, Bill McGregor, the general
secretary of the Headteachers Association of Scotland, said the use of
exclusions was more complex. He said: “There are two kinds of pupil who
get excluded: those who do something very bad as a one-off and those for
whom being excluded is a way of life. It is impossible to generalise but
exclusion does offer teachers and the majority of pupils a respite from
the bad behaviour of the few.”
But McGregor insisted that headteachers retain the right to exclude
difficult pupils. “If teachers do not have the power to exclude pupils
then children will ride roughshod over them.”
An Executive spokesman said projects were taking place in North
Lanarkshire, the Highlands and Fife to help disruptive pupils take
responsibility for their actions, understand the consequences of their
behaviour and apologise to other children. He said: “We have always made
it clear that exclusion should be a last resort. But it is up to
headteachers how they discipline children in their schools.”
Arthur Macmillan
28 August 2005
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Nervousness, worry may predict suicide
attempt
New York (Reuters Health) — Men and women who describe themselves as nervous or anxious seem to be more likely than their calmer counterparts to be hospitalized at some point for a suicide attempt, according to a study involving adults in Sweden.
“Health personnel should pay attention to
patient anxiety in their diagnostic procedures, especially among men,”
study co-author Dr. Mans Rosen, of the Swedish National Board of Health
and Welfare in Stockholm, told Reuters Health. “Self-perceived anxiety
is a rather good predictor of premature mortality and severe morbidity.”
In Sweden, the proportion of people reporting nervousness, uneasiness
and anxiety jumped to 22 percent in 2001-2002, up from 12 percent in
1988-1989, according to a national survey of living conditions.
“We do not know if the prevalence of anxiety has increased to the same
extent in other countries as in Sweden,” according to Rosen, “but if
this is the case ... this is an alarm signal for society indicating that
tougher and more stressful demands on citizens may create more serious
health problems in the future.” Previous studies suggest that
self-reported psychological state may predict a person's risk of death
and ill health.
Rosen and co-author Dr. Gunilla Ringback Weitoft analyzed survey
responses from a total of 34,511 men and women aged 16 to 74 years who
participated in national surveys conducted in 1980-1981, 1988-1989 and
1995-1996.
Almost 14 percent of women reported experiencing “light” problems with
nervousness, anxiety, and uneasiness and nearly 4 percent said their
problems were “severe” in comparison to 7 percent and 2 percent of men,
respectively.
Altogether, study participants who reported experiencing nervousness,
anxiety and uneasiness had an increased risk for later suicide attempt
and psychiatric disease, the researchers report in the Journal of
Epidemiology and Community Health.
Men who reported severe problems with worries and anxiety were more than
9 times as likely to be hospitalized for a suicide attempt as men
unaffected by such problems, even after the researchers took into
consideration any longstanding illness. Women with similarly severe
nervousness, uneasiness and anxiety had a three-fold increased risk of a
suicide attempt.
The risk of suicide attempt grew even stronger with time, such that for
men in particular, nervousness and anxiety was associated with a 15-fold
increased risk of attempted suicide during the 10-year follow-up period.
In fact, severe nervousness or anxiety problems among men more strongly
predicted their risk of death from all causes in a 5- or 10-year time
frame than did smoking or longstanding illness, the researchers note.
Among women, however, longstanding illness, rather than negative
emotions, was the factor that most increased their risk of suicide
attempt, death from all causes, or inpatient care.
Still, in light of the findings, Rosen said: “If you have a family
member, a friend or a work companion who often feels nervousness and
anxiety you should take their worries seriously and in some cases
suggest to them to contact medical care for further investigations.”
Source: Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, 2005.
Charnicia E. Huggins
22 August 2005
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One in six Belgian teens guilty of abusing
parents
Almost one out of every six Belgian
technical and vocational secondary school students is violent towards
their parents, with emotional abuse the most common form of violence.
The claim was made by Brussels Free University academic Kim Van
Langenhove who surveyed 479 youths for her thesis. A survey in 2004 of
students from TSO technical schools also gave a similar result.
Van Langenhove surveyed youths aged 13 to 19 in TSO or BSO vocational
schools over emotional blackmail and emotional and physical violence
against their parents.
Some 15 percent admitted they used violence against their parents and
emotional abuse was the most common form (about 13 percent).
A smaller percentage said they used physical violence or emotional
blackmail against their parents, newspaper 'De Standaard'
reported on Monday.
Van Langenhove said emotional abuse
involved blame or shouting matches designed to hurt parents, while
emotional blackmail involved a youth using threats in order to obtain
something.
The clinical psychologist also said parental abuse usually indicates
there are problems within the family and that it is not only the problem
of the youth.
“It can be that there is not enough talking in the family and the abuse
becomes a manner of communicating,” Van Langenhove said.
“Another example is a situation in which the father is often absent and
the mother seeks too much support from her children so that they become
overburdened”.
Parental abuse appears to occur in all sectors of the population and in
all family forms, especially families that are intact. However, Van
Langenhove also said further study was necessary.
The phenomenon of parental abuse is also found across all age groups and
girls commit it as much as boys do. Mothers are more often the victims.
Parental abuse is less common among Islamic families.
Abused parents are usually ashamed to
admit the problem in public and if they do broach the subject, they
often encounter a lack of understanding. The responsibility is
frequently turned back onto themselves.
“It is thus important that the taboo over this form of violence is
broken. That is the first step.
Parents will then be more quickly inclined to seek help,” Van Langenhove
said.
22 August 2005
___
ADHD haunts children into adulthood, study
shows
The problems of untreated
attention-deficit disorder don't end when kids grow up. Young adults who
had ADHD are more likely than their peers to get fired, to shun birth
control and become parents by age 21 and to have higher credit card debt
and less savings, according to a 13-year study reported over the
weekend. Although estimates vary, many children with ADHD go on to have
it as adults, says psychologist Mariellen Fischer of the Medical College
of Wisconsin in Milwaukee. Government figures show that about 1 out of
20 adults have ADHD.
Fischer released her study with co-author
Russell Barkley at the American Psychological Association meeting here.
They followed 147 children with ADHD by age 7, comparing them with 76
neighbor children who didn't have the disorder. Most ADHD children took
medication for a couple of years, but few were being treated by their
early 20s, Fischer says.
Adults who had ADHD as kids started having sex a year earlier than
classmates. About a third dropped out of high school, compared with none
of the neighbor kids, Fischer says. And 1 out of 3 had become parents by
their early 20s vs.1 in 25 of the classmates. They had less than half
the savings of young adults they had grown up with and more debt. Yet
researchers don't know whether ADHD alone causes these ill effects.
Though ADHD is genetic, there has been much less research on it in
adults than children. Mothers of ADHD children are 24 times as likely as
the average woman to have it, and fathers' odds are 5 times higher than
average, says psychologist Andrea Chronis of the University of Maryland.
Her research, believed the first to focus on how mothers with ADHD do as parents, studied 70 families with elementary-school-age children. The women often weren't very involved with their children; they didn't give praise or show affection regularly, and discipline was inconsistent, Chronis says. Most of their children also had ADHD, and these parenting practices could worsen the problem, she adds.
Because attention-deficit disorder runs in families, perhaps doctors should suggest that parents of children with the disorder also get checked for it, Chronis says.
Marilyn Elias
21 August 2008
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New program aims at early detection, treatment of psychosis in
adolescents, young adults
Schizophrenia treatment
A new program to open in Chapel Hill this September is aimed at providing early treatment to adolescents and young adults who have experienced psychosis for the first time.
The new program, called OASIS (Outreach
and Support Intervention Services), was developed by the Department of
Psychiatry at the UNC School of Medicine. OASIS is unique in the United
States in its emphasis on tailoring early identification and treatment
to young people and their families at the start of a psychotic disorder.
The program was developed by a multidisciplinary team at UNC — Dr. Diana
O. Perkins, a professor in the UNC School of Medicine and director of
the Schizophrenia Treatment and Evaluation Program (STEP) at UNC Health
Care, Dr. David Penn, associate professor of Psychology, and Bebe Smith,
director of outpatient services at STEP.
“Schizophrenia doesn't have to be a disabling illness. The intention of
our program is to help young people who experience psychosis to recover
and get their lives back on track,” said Dr. Perkins. Dr. Sylvia Saade,
director of OASIS, said, “We will provide a comprehensive team approach
with program participants and their families included as part of the
team.” Dr. Penn said, “We hope to create a sense of community in our
program.”
Schizophrenia is the most serious and
disabling of all mental illnesses, affecting all aspects of a person's
life. It strikes about 1 percent of the population, about 83,201 people
in North Carolina, most often first appearing in late adolescence and
early adulthood. The economic cost of schizophrenia in the United States
has been estimated at $65 billion a year, with $19 billion of that in
direct treatment costs.
Researchers have found that the sooner medication therapy begins after
the onset of psychosis, the better the patient's outcome. However, it
usually takes more than a year for someone with early psychosis to be
diagnosed and begin treatment. Moreover, most existing mental health
services in the United States are not specifically designed with the
needs of young people who are experiencing early psychosis in mind.
UNC's OASIS is modeled after early psychosis programs already in place
in Australia, England, Canada and Norway. These programs focus on
engaging young people in services and on minimizing disruption in young
people's lives. They work to reintegrate young people into mainstream
work and educational activities, with minimal reliance on traditional
mental health programs.
These programs have shown remarkable positive outcomes, including
avoidance of hospitalization for many participants, sustained long-term
remission of symptoms and the resumption of normal school or work
activities.
UNC Health Care
20 August 2005
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Kids learn eating and exercise habits from
parents
Kids whose parents do little to
discourage bad eating habits and sedentary activities, such as
television and video games, are significantly more likely to grow into
overweight or obese young adults, according to new study findings.
And kids don't appear to need to do much to stave off obesity in
adulthood, for even those who replaced TV and video games with
non-athletic activities such as jobs, marching bands and school clubs
were less likely to carry excess weight into adulthood.
“When children are doing anything but sitting on the couch watching
TV ... they're much less likely to become obese,” study author Ashley Fenzi Crossman of Arizona State University in Tempe told Reuters Health.
Crossman presented the findings this weekend at the annual meeting of
the American Sociological Association in Philadelphia.
As part of the study, Crossman reviewed information collected from 6,400
children between the ages of 12 and 19, who were recontacted 6 years
later.
She found that parents who did not monitor their children's diets and
did not make sure their children ate breakfast were more likely to have
children who grew up to become overweight or obese.
In an interview, Crossman explained that eating breakfast is important
because it appears to boost metabolism, and may prevent people from
binge eating later in the day when they get very hungry.
Interestingly, children who were very close with their parents were more
likely to become overweight in adulthood. This suggests that these
children may get very upset when they move away from their parents,
causing them to overeat. Alternatively, children close with their
parents may model themselves after parents who don't eat well
themselves, Crossman noted.
Children with high self-esteem were less likely to become obese, as were
those whose parents had a relatively high level of education. Household
income had no effect on children's later risk of weight gain.
For parents, the overall message of the study is very simple, Crossman noted: “Get (children) off the couch.”
Alison McCook
18 August 2005
___
Soft drinks in schools aren't to blame for
obese children
When it comes to childhood obesity, the raging debate over soda being sold in schools has about as much substance as the time-worn question: How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?
According to a 2002 study, the average
kid gets one half of 1 percent of his or her calories from vending
machines. While that is admittedly up from one third of 1 percent in the
1970s, it seems that limiting vending machines to water won't make a big
difference.
And the more political energy expended on vending machines, the less
there will be left to address the real cause of childhood obesity:
physical inactivity.
Former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Mark McClellan
observes, “Actual levels of caloric intake among the young haven't
appreciably changed over the last 20 years.”
Study after study corroborates McClellan's point.
A study published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology &
Metabolism pointed out: “It is often assumed that the increase in
pediatric obesity has occurred because of an increase in caloric intake.
However, the data do not substantiate this.”
Translation: The problem won't be found in vending machines. It's in the
gym. It's in the recess yard. And it's in our neighborhoods, where kids
now spend far, far more time with their Xboxes than they do running
around outside or biking with friends.
Walking and biking trips by children have dropped more than 60 percent
since the late 1970s. A full quarter of American children get no
physical activity whatsoever.
So why are we so quick to blame vending machines? Public attitudes have
been skillfully manipulated by interest groups, whose greatest concern
is that someone, somewhere may be enjoying what they eat and drink.
Anti-soda activists—who also seek extra taxes and warning labels on soft
drinks, as well as tobacco-style class-action lawsuits—have an
insatiable thirst for regulating our diets. They allege soda makers' new
school distribution policy doesn't go far enough. They want a complete
ban on soda in all schools.
In other words, a young man or woman old enough to carry a gun in Iraq
won't always be able to choose his or her own beverage.
America's dedicated diet scolds also want
diet soda out of schools. Pop may have unfairly drawn the short stick in
the obesity blame game.
But does any rational person think that replacing a zero-calorie
beverage with milk or juice will do anything to prevent weight gain?
Richard Berman
18 August 2005
___
No strong link seen between violent video
games and aggression
Results from the first long-term study of
online videogame playing may be surprising. Contrary to popular opinion
and most previous research, the new study found that players' “robust
exposure” to a highly violent online game did not cause any substantial
real-world aggression.
After an average playtime of 56 hours over the course of a month with
“Asheron's Call 2,” a popular MMRPG, or “massively multi-layer online
role-playing game,” researchers found “no strong effects associated with
aggression caused by this violent game,” said Dmitri Williams, the lead
author of the study.
Players were not statistically different from the non-playing control
group in their beliefs on aggression after playing the game than they
were before playing, Williams said. Nor was game play a predictor of
aggressive behaviors.
Compared with the control group, the players neither increased their
argumentative behaviors after game play nor were significantly more
likely to argue with their friends and partners.
“I'm not saying some games don't lead to
aggression, but I am saying the data are not there yet,” Williams said.
“Until we have more long-term studies, I don't think we should make
strong predictions about long-term effects, especially given this
finding.”
Williams, a professor of speech communication at the University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, is an expert on the effects of online
video-game play. He conducted the study with Marko Skoric, a lecturer at
the School of Communication and Information at Nanyang Technological
University in Singapore.
Their findings appear in the June issue of Communication Monographs
in an article titled “Internet Fantasy Violence: A Test of Aggression in
an Online Game.”
According to Williams, researchers have suspected a strong linkage
between games and aggression “but, with the exception of relatively
short-term effects on young adults and children, they have yet to
demonstrate this link.”
Williams and Skoric undertook the first longitudinal study of a game to
see whether they could determine a link.
Because most video game research has been conducted in the laboratory or
by observation in the field — methods “not representing the social
context of game play” — they had their participants play the game in
normal environments, like home.
The results of the new study, Williams said, support the contention of
those who suggest that some violent games do not necessarily lead to
increased real-world aggression. But he and Skoric concede that other
types of games and contexts might have negative impacts. “This game
featured fantasy violence, while others featuring outer space or even
everyday urban violence may yield different outcomes.”
Williams and Skoric also concede that because their study didn't
concentrate solely on younger teenagers, “we cannot say that teenagers
might not experience different effects.”
Still, and interestingly, older players in their study were “perhaps
more strongly influenced by game play and argued with friends more than
their younger counterparts.”
The new study involved two groups of participants: players — a
“treatment” group of 75 people who had no prior MMRPG play and who
played AC2 for the first time; and a control group of 138, who did not
play. The participants were solicited through online message boards and
ranged in age from 14 to 68, the average age being 27.7 years.
Self-reported questionnaires were completed pre- and post-test online
and included a range of demographic, behavioral and personality
variables.
Aggression-related beliefs were measured with L.R. Huesmann's Normative
Beliefs in Aggression ( NOBAGS ) scale. Aggressive social interactions
were measured with two behavioral questions: in the past month, did the
participant have a serious argument with a friend, and in the same time
period, did they have a serious argument with a spouse, boyfriend or
girlfriend.
Because of the study's design, only moderate or large effects caused by
exposure to the game were capable of being detected.
Today, more than 60 percent of Americans
play some form of interactive game on a regular basis, while 32 percent
of the game-playing population is now over 35 years of age.
Fears about the games' social and health impacts have risen with these
numbers, Williams said, with politicians, pundits and media outlets
fanning some of the flames.
Games are becoming increasingly violent, as shown by content analyses,
Williams said. One reason is that “the first generation of game players
has aged and its tastes and expectations have been more likely to
include mature fair.” Still, the extent of knowledge about what games do
to or for people is limited, and there is “even less understanding about
the range of content.”
“If the content, context, and play length have some bearing on the
effects, policy-makers should seek a greater understanding of the games
they are debating. It may be that both the attackers and defenders of
the industry's products are operating without enough information, and
are instead both arguing for blanket approaches to what is likely a more
complicated phenomenon.”
Nor do researchers know much about the positive effects of gaming,
Williams said. “Based on my research, some of the potential gains are in
meeting a lot of new people and crossing social boundaries. That's
important in a society where we are increasingly insulated from one
another.”
Some game researchers believe that
video-gaming leads to substantial gains in learning teamwork, managing
groups and most important, Williams said, problem solving.
“How often can someone direct and coordinate a group of eight or 40 real
people to accomplish a complex task, as they do in these role-playing
games?
That's a real skill. Games are about solving problems, and it should
tell us something that kids race home from school where they are often
bored to get on games and solve problems.
Clearly we need to capture that lightning in a bottle.”
Andrea Lynn
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
15 August 2005
___
Tanning trendy for young despite skin
cancer rise
Avid tanner Brandi Donaldson was 25 when
she first noticed a new mole right above her navel. She didn't worry
until it started to change.
“It started to look a little different than my other spots,” said
Donaldson, now 27 and a counselor in Newport Beach, California. “It was
a little darker.”
It turned out to be not a mole, but melanoma, a potentially deadly form
of skin cancer. It was localized and she didn't need chemotherapy or
radiation treatment, but Donaldson endured a painful excision that
removed a large chunk of skin from her stomach, as well as an infection.
The latest research shows that Donaldson
is not unique among the young, who are experiencing a big increase in
skin cancer. Even after research has tied tanning to skin cancers like
melanoma and basal cell carcinoma, young people still see a tan as a
fashion accessory and can be lax about protection.
In a recent American Academy of Dermatology poll, only half of those
aged 18-24 said they are very or somewhat careful to guard against too
much exposure.
Rising number of cases
An estimated 1.3 million cases of skin cancer will be diagnosed in the
United States this year, according to the American Cancer Society.
Melanoma will account for nearly 60,000 of them but cause four-fifths of
skin cancer deaths.
In Canada, doctors will detect more than 80,000 skin cancer cases, and
up to 5,000 of those will be melanoma, according to the National Cancer
Institute of Canada.
More patients are women under 40. In fact, melanoma is now the most
common cancer in women aged 25 to 29, according to the Skin Cancer
Foundation.
A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association
last week showed the number of cases of non-melanoma skin cancer has
tripled since the 1970s.
Researchers at Minnesota's Mayo Clinic said the rise in skin cancers in
young people was disproportionate. They attributed the increase to the
popularity of tanning, particularly among teen-age girls.
Yet the dermatology academy's poll showed 61 percent of women 18 and
older think they look better with a tan, and more than half think it
makes them appear healthier.
Tans become chic
It hasn't always been the case. Tanning was dismissed as gauche
until the 1920s, when couture guru Coco Chanel returned from a vacation
in the south of France with golden skin, instantly turning a tan into a
fashion statement.
Fashion magazines and celebrities like Jessica Simpson and Lindsay Lohan
help keep the trend alive. Tanning beds and tanning creams make it
possible to get bronzed year-round.
Melanoma export David Hogg said he is frustrated by the glamorous image.
He compares tanning to smoking, saying with both people are willing to
enjoy a quick benefit in the face of long-term risks.
“It's upsetting to those of us who have to deal with the consequences,”
said Hogg, a researcher and medical oncologist at Princess Margaret
Hospital in Toronto.
Young people are particularly hard to reach, he said. “The younger you
are, the shorter your horizon of harm is.”
Donaldson now makes frequent trips to doctors to make sure the cancer
has not returned in a different place, and her risk of developing
another melanoma is now higher.
As a child, she wore sunscreen because her mother slathered it on, but
in her teens and 20s she often tanned on the beach with friends in
southern California.
“It looked healthier, we thought, than being white,” she said.
Tanning and sunburns aren't the only causes of the cell changes that
lead to skin cancer. Daily sun exposure adds up over time and is even
more damaging when the UV index is high, as it has been across North
America this summer.
Focusing on education
Before her diagnosis, Donaldson believed if she developed cancer,
doctors would just scrape it off. When it happened, friends also showed
ignorance about the seriousness.
“'You had all that for melanoma? Isn't that just skin cancer?' That was
something I heard all the time,” she said. “It was like a slap in the
face.”
Parents should be the first line of defense by teaching children about
sun protection early, but it may take a generation before good practice
becomes routine, Hogg said.
The Sun Safety Alliance launched a campaign called Mothers & Others, in
which parents boost awareness of sun safety in their communities.
For her part, Donaldson now does patient advocacy work through her
dermatologist. Seeing someone who developed the disease in her 20s makes
young people realize it could happen to them too, she said.
“Skin cancer is a real threat, and you don't have to be in your 60s and
70s to get it,” she said. “Tanning is not healthy. Tanning is skin
damage.”
Terri Coles
15 August 2005
___
Sunscreen does not encourage more
sunbathing — study
Using a strong sunscreen does not lead
people to spend more time sunbathing in the belief they can do so
safely, researchers said on Monday.
Study author Alain Dupuy of the Saint Louis Hospital in Paris wanted to
know if the higher protection afforded by stronger sunscreens would
encourage longer sun exposure by delaying the warning sign of sunburn
and giving a false sense of safety.
As part of the study, sunscreen was provided for free to 367 vacationers
at French seaside resorts.
The vacationers, 80 percent of whom were women, were given one of two
strengths of sunscreen labeled either “high protection” or “basic
protection.”
The amount of time reported spent in the sun had no connection to the
perceived level of protection, ranging from 13 to 15 hours a week,
according to the report in the journal Archives of Dermatology.
One of four of those who used the weaker sunscreen got sunburned,
compared to one in seven who used stronger sunscreen. Six were burned
severely.
The study was also found out that many participants did not always use
the provided suncreen and that most people still badly wanted a tan.
“One of the most chilling findings of
(the study) was not the featured data concerning sunscreen use; rather,
it was the self-reported intent of 96 percent of the participants to get
a tan during their vacation week, and this while they were participating
in a sunscreen study,” said an accompanying editorial written by journal
editor Dr. June Robinson and Dr. Mark Naylor of the Oklahoma Medical
Research Foundation.
“Clearly, this population views sunscreens more as tanning aids than as
a means of limiting (ultra-violet light) exposure. Unfortunately, it is
very clear from these and other studies that measure sun-exposure
behavior that we have a long way to go to get this situation headed in
the right direction,” they wrote.
15 August 2005
___
Children storing up risk of serious health
problems through lack of exercise
Only one in six Scottish schoolgirls and
one in three boys is taking the minimum amount of daily exercise
recommended by the government.
Youngsters are instead spending their time listening to music, watching
television, playing computer games and texting friends on mobile phones.
Parents are also failing to act as role models, with children claiming
their mothers and fathers don't encourage them to exercise or join in.
The worrying findings have led Edinburgh University academics to warn
that urgent action is needed to prevent a generation of obese children
at risk from heart disease and other medical conditions.
More than 1,500 children with an average age of 13 were surveyed each
November as part of the three-year project that tracked their exercise
habits between primary seven and S2.
Girls, in particular, are failing to
exercise, with only 49% claiming to do an hour or more of moderate
physical activity at least three times a week, compared with 68% of
boys. Current guidelines recommend that school-aged children are
moderately active for at least an hour on five or more days a week. But
only 17% of girls and 32% of boys met those levels.
A further concern was that one in 10 girls and one in 20 boys reported
that they took part in vigorous physical activity “less than once a week
or never”.
Joanna Inchley, the lead researcher on the Physical Activity in
Scottish Schoolchildren (PASS) study, said: “The survey shows that
children are not doing enough to stay active and those who are not
taking enough exercise face serious health problems, including obesity
and heart disease.”
Low self-esteem has also been identified as a major reason why girls'
exercise levels drop off when they reach high school. The survey showed
that the number of girls who liked physical activity a lot in primary
seven dropped from 71% to only 49% the following year.
Significantly more boys (67%) than girls
(39%) were classed as having high self-esteem. It has led the authors of
the report to suggest that schools should consider greater use of single
sex PE classes.
Inchley said: “Girls undergo a lot of physical changes around that age
and that is a factor in why their participation levels go down. They
don't want to be seen getting hot and sweaty in front of boys. They feel
embarrassed about doing exercise so they don't do it. Single sex PE
classes seem to be one of the ways to address that and remove the
stigma.”
Walking and running were the most popular activities for both sexes, but
while 82% of boys had played football the previous week, only 15% of
girls had played hockey, with 35% playing basketball, netball or
volleyball.
However, dance was common among girls, with 59% taking part the previous
week compared with only 9% of boys. Kay Cherrie, an 'active schools'
manager for Glasgow City Council, said the PASS survey showed schools
had to offer popular activities.
She said: “It is down to what the kids are interested in and that is why
we have offered dance and cheerleading classes for girls.”
The majority of pupils (79%) reported that they had two classes of PE
each week, but 19% received only half this amount. The most common
reported barriers to being active included bad weather, not having the
right equipment and too much homework.
Girls are also less keen than boys to join sports clubs outside school,
with barely a third doing so, compared with 50% of boys. More than
two-fifths of boys (43%), but only 13% of girls said they played for a
local sports team.
Figures from the Organisation for
Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) show Scotland is third
bottom, from 25 countries, in the amount of time spent on PE in schools.
Pupils aged between nine and 14 spend only 50 hours of curriculum time
on PE each year.
Arthur Macmillan
14 August 2005
___
UK youngsters 'easily obtaining drugs'
Young people in the UK have little problem getting hold of cigarettes, drugs and alcohol, researchers have announced. The Government has set numerous targets to tackle underage smoking and drinking, as well as launching campaigns to warn about the danger of taking illegal substances and tackle drug dealing.
But despite these, children are still
easily able to obtain alcohol, drugs and cigarettes — either from
friends or family or by buying them themselves, according to a study in
the British Medical Journal.
A team from NHS Health Scotland looked at recent research involving
young people to assess how simple it was for them to get cigarettes,
alcohol and drugs.
They found that underage smokers said they could easily acquire
cigarettes — despite them only being legally available to over-16s. Most
often they received them from friends or family, but most regular
smokers aged 12 to 15 said they could buy them from shops.
Alcohol was also seen as easy to obtain by youngsters, especially since
the real price of drinks in the UK has halved since the 1960s.
“Young people's early drinking is often
done at home with their parents,” the researchers said.
“Later, they may drink with friends at parties or outdoors before
gravitating towards pubs and clubs from age 14-15 onwards.
“Around 80% of 15-year-olds in the UK perceive alcoholic drinks to be
very or fairly easy to obtain.”
When they looked at illegal drugs, the researchers found that around a
third of 13-year-olds and two-thirds of 15-year-olds thought they were
very or fairly easy to obtain — especially cannabis. Between 10%-20% of
10 to 12-year-olds said they had been offered illegal drugs, rising to
two-thirds of 15-year-olds.
By the age of 15, at least 10% claim to have been offered the Class A
drugs heroin, cocaine or crack cocaine.
Source: British Medical Journal
12 August 2005
___
Childhood cruelty to animals may signal
violence in future
Childhood cruelty to animals can be an
early warning of a propensity for violence against other people, a
report published yesterday said.
The research wing of animal rights charity, Peta (People for the Ethical
Treatment of Animals), has compiled a study of the links between severe
animal abuse by children who later committed acts of extreme violence —
in some cases, murder.
Several cases have been well documented.
Thomas Hamilton, the Dunblane killer, enjoyed shooting animals and
squashing rabbits' heads beneath car wheels as a youth. Robert Thompson,
who was 10 years old when he and John Venables killed two-year-old Jamie
Bulger, pulled the heads off live birds.
David Mulcahy and John Duffy, the so-called Railway Rapists, who raped
and murdered three women and raped or assaulted 12 more in the 70s and
80s, shared a teenage fascination with tormenting animals. Peta, which
has sent its report to the Crown Prosecution Service, MPs and all UK
police forces, believes there should be closer cooperation between
police and social services and organisations such as the RSPCA, so that
those at risk of becoming dangerous criminals can be spotted, and
perhaps helped, as early as possible.
The FBI, which already uses reports of
animal abuse to analyse criminal threat potential, has found a childhood
history of cruelty to animals is prevalent among many serial rapists and
murderers.
Robert Ressler, founder of the FBI's behavioural sciences unit, said:
“These are the kids who never learned that it was wrong to poke a
puppy's eyes out.” Alan Bradley, an FBI special agent, said: “Some
offenders kill animals as a rehearsal for targeting human victims and
may kill or torture animals because, to them, animals symbolically
represent people.”
The Peta study found abuse of pets in the home was often linked to
domestic violence, with adult perpetrators tormenting family pets, as
well as children and partners.
Peta's research found that some children in abusive homes copy the
abusers' behaviour. “Children in violent homes are characterised by
frequently participating in pecking-order battering, in which they maim
or kill an animal. Domestic violence is the most common background for
childhood cruelty to animals.”
Scotland Yard's homicide prevention unit, set up last year to examine
the psychological profile of violent offenders in an effort to thwart
future crime, is also interested in the links between various patterns
of cruelty.
Laura Richards, a senior behavioural consultant with the unit, said there was a definite link between domestic violence and stranger rape.
Rosie Cowan
August 11, 2005
___
Melanoma rates in kids continue to rise
The annual rate of occurrence of new
melanomas in children in the United States is increasing “rapidly,”
according to a new report.
“Melanoma is becoming more common in children and adolescents and should
be excluded by biopsy if a mole becomes painful, ulcerates, increases in
size or bleeds,” advised Dr. John J. Strouse in comments to Reuters
Health.
Strouse from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, and
colleagues used data from the National Cancer Institute's SEER database
to investigate the incidence of childhood melanoma from 1973 to 2001.
The incidence of melanoma in children increased by almost 3 percent per
year, the investigators report in the July 20th Journal of Clinical
Oncology.
Melanoma incidence was higher with
increasing age and in females, but significantly lower in blacks, Asians
and Native Americans than in whites, the report indicates. The incidence
of melanoma directly correlated with environmental UV radiation
exposure.
Nonetheless, melanoma in children is quite rare. For example, even among
the highest risk group — older white teen girls — about three cases of
melanoma occur among 100,000 individuals per year.
Survival after a diagnosis of melanoma was lower for males than females,
the study shows. However, “With local excision, 5-year survival for
pediatric melanoma is excellent,” the authors conclude — except in
“infrequent cases” when the cancer has spread into the body.
“No clear screening recommendations exist for children,” Strouse noted,
“and screening is unlikely to be worthwhile given the rarity of melanoma
in children.” However, if a parent or older child spots an unusual
growth, “Timely evaluation of concerning skin lesions is important,”
Strouse added.
“Prevention by reducing environmental UV exposure is key,” he stressed.
That is, using sun screen and clothing to block UV, avoiding hours when
UV exposure peaks, and “avoidance of indoor tanning.”
Source: Journal of Clinical Oncology, July 20, 2005.
Will Boggs
9 August 2005
___
Children could get 'diet pills'
Obesity is an increasing problem among
children Children as young as 12 could be given anti-obesity drugs to
help them shed excess weight. Pharmaceutical company Roche said it had
new trial data showing its drug Xenical (orlistat) works in under 18s.
The European Union recently updated its information for doctors on the
drug to include results from the study.
Doctors said it was useful to have more prescribing option, but warned
of possible over-use of the drug.
As orlistat still does not have an official licence for use in
adolescents, it will be up to doctors' discretion to decide who to
prescribe it for, said a spokeswoman from Roche.
The prescribing information for orlistat states that it should only be
prescribed to those defined as clinically obese.
People given the drug also have to follow a calorie-controlled diet.
Research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association
in June shows orlistat can help children aged 12-16, who fall into this
category, to lose weight.
But Dr Graham Archard, vice-chairman of the Royal College of General
Practitioners, warned the drug should only be used in extreme cases.
Pill-popping nation
“Children should not come to rely on tablets to keep their weight down,”
he said.
He said the focus should be on children taking more exercise and eating
healthily and warned that we were becoming a “tablet-driven society”.
Dr David Haslam, chairman of the National Obesity Forum, said orlistat
use would be warranted in some cases.
“To have research is reassuring for doctors as they will now feel safe
prescribing it for under-18s.
The drug works by blocking the absorption of fat in the gut and should
be taken as part of a low-fat diet.
If people taking it eat a fatty diet, they experience a bloated and
painful stomach and oily diarrhoea.
Patients given orlistat have been shown to lose an average of 10% in
body weight over a year, compared with a 6% loss for those who only
follow a low-fat diet.
8 August 2005
___
Shoestring sex ed: FLYER program adjusts to
funding shortage
Participants in the Red Cross’ Finger
Lakes Youth Encouraging Responsibility, or FLYER, program grimaced as
they watched slides depicting individuals infected with various sexually
transmitted diseases.
“Everybody OK?” asked FLYER volunteer coordinator
Chris Reybrouck, a sophomore at State University College at Fredonia and
former FLYER participant.
“Just a couple more,” promised co-volunteer Kaylee Millerd, also a
sophomore at SUC Fredonia.
Such workshops may not be pretty,
coordinators of the program say, but they prepare high school students
for the difficult task of teaching their peers about healthy sexual
practices.
“They just need to have that wealth of information,” said Finger Lakes
Red Cross Youth Coordinator Sarah Krause, who organized last week’s
five-day FLYER training at Hobart and William Smith Colleges.
Students participated in several workshops, ranging from the STD
presentation to a media literacy program educating teens about how
outside influences affect their self confidence to a session on how to
deal with rape and sexual abuse cases. Through it all, participants also
worked to develop their leadership, public speaking and interpersonal
skills.
The peer education program — which has been in existence for more than a
decade — enables students to teach their classmates both about the
benefits of abstinence and ways to foster healthy sexual relationships,
stressed Finger Lakes Red Cross Executive Director Dale Wright, noting
that those trained in FLYER often conduct sex education classes at their
respective high schools.
That dual emphasis, however, has proved
costly for FLYER, which lost a $90,000 federal grant two years ago
following the Bush administration’s decision to promote programs with an
abstinence-only focus.
The result? A shoestring budget of $46,000 — garnered from local
donations and other fund-raising efforts — that must cover Krause’s
part-time position, materials and other costs.
Wright noted that this year’s conference alone cost $11,000 — $6,000 for
the venue and another $5,000 for updated educational materials.
To stay afloat, enrollment in FLYER was cut from about 80 students three
years ago to 25 this year, staff members went from paid to non-paid and
parents were encouraged to make donations to support the program.
Through these obstacles, though, Wright stressed that support for the
program remains high.
“We used to pay these college students to come back and do this
conference this year ... We can’t pay the stipend any longer, but they
believe in it so much that they’re willing to do that,” she remarked,
adding that the volunteers, comprised entirely of past FLYER
participants, illustrate the long-term success of the program.
“There are over 400 alumni of the FLYER program right now, many who have
gone on to pursue health careers, who have gone on to be teachers,” she
said, noting that two current FLYER members also sit on the Red Cross’
board of directors to help adults stay abreast of trends within the teen
community.
Nor are Wright and FLYER staff members willing to consider shifting from
their abstinence/safe sex policy to one that more closely reflects the
wishes of the current administration.
For Millerd, abstinence-only programs have misled adolescents into
thinking that alternative forms of sex pose few to no health risks.
“Kids think that oral sex isn’t really sex, (but) cases of STDs are
definitely rising with oral sex,” she said.
Planned Parenthood Marketing and Communications Manager Sherry Handel
said Millerd’s observations closely reflect findings published this
spring by the Journal of Adolescent Health, which indicate that
teens who pledged abstinence until marriage were just as likely to
acquire an STD as those who did not take the pledge.
The study found, Handel said, that “the emphasis on virginity would have
the affect of limiting the adolescents to non-coital behaviors (which)
may not be the optimal approach to preventing STD acquisition among
young adults.”
FLYER participants themselves say that abstinence-only is a good message
but one that doesn’t square with reality.
The abstinence push will only cause teens to rebel, added first-time
FLYER participant Caitlin Cieri, a sophomore at Waterloo High School.
“A lot of teens tend to do completely the opposite of what adults say,”
she said.
Teaching her peers can be extra
challenging for DeSales High School senior Ellen Quarmby, 17, who must
follow strict codes of conduct when teaching sex education in health
class.
“You’re not supposed to mention condoms unless somebody asks about them,
(but) usually we have somebody ask,” she said, but stressed that a big
part of her job entails educating students outside the classroom.
She said she’s had peers approach her quietly to get “more information
about where they can get tested and stuff like that.”
For Caitlin Cieri’s mom, Darlene, FLYER ensures that her children will
receive accurate information about sex.
“If you know your kid is getting the facts straight from the Red Cross,
it takes some of the burden (off),” she said.
Wright acknowledges that the program, like any, is far from perfect. For
example, with about five boys and 20 girls participating in this year’s
FLYER training, the gender discrepancy has become difficult to ignore.
“If you look at the facilitators from past FLYERs, the ratio is much
higher guys to girls,” said Wright, adding that she’s not sure what’s
causing the shift.
Given the right funding, though, Wright hopes to both discern the root
causes of the gender gap and then rework the program to make it more
attractive to boys.
Despite its problems, giving up on this program is not an option, Wright
emphasized, noting: “If the child is going to participate in something
we don’t necessarily believe in, I’d rather they have the facts, not the
rumors.”
Sujata Gupta
7 August 2005
Source
___
IRI study: Consumers still like their
“enjoyment” foods despite increasing focus on healthier alternatives
Despite the influx of health-focused food
and beverage products produced each year for retail store shelves, U.S.
consumers are still spending one-third of their consumer packaged goods
(CPG) food and beverage budget on products consumed for pure enjoyment
rather than nutritional value.
According to a recent study by Information Resources, Inc. (IRI), a
leading provider of enterprise market information solutions for the CPG,
retail and healthcare industries, Americans' strong desire for taste,
indulgence, and variety has sustained spending and consumption of
certain “enjoyment” food and beverage categories.
The report, entitled “The Enjoyment Factor: Consumers' Unwavering
Demand for Taste, Indulgence and Variety,” delves into the movement
of this marketplace, which has seen heightened spending on these
categories.
“There are substantial opportunities to grow 'enjoyment category'
spending,” said Janet Eden-Harris, executive vice president and global
chief marketing officer, IRI. “This latest report provides a rich
analysis of enjoyment category trends as well as implications for the
marketing of healthy/nutritional products. The report empowers
manufacturers and retailers with the visibility to see new trends and
take immediate action to capitalize on current and emerging
opportunities to improve performance.”
Consumer trends
According to the report, 43 percent of consumers place taste above
health benefits in the purchase decision process, signaling the
requirement that healthy foods must meet or exceed taste expectations in
order to increase share of consumer spending and consumption.
Additionally, the study revealed growth potential within the enjoyment
food and beverage sector as today's consumers are reportedly striving to
balance their diets with indulgence of desserts and snacks.
Demographically speaking, households with children spend more on
enjoyment products than those without, due to larger household sizes.
Moreover, Baby Boomers and older generations allocate much more of their
spending on enjoyment categories than Generation Xers and Echo Boom
adults, with the disparity in spending driven not by health concerns but
by difference in the types of enjoyment products consumed, such as
higher-priced wine and spirits for older adults and lower-priced salty
snacks and carbonated beverages for the younger generation.
Product development potential
Growth of the enjoyment market will remain slightly hampered by healthy
eating trends, which IRI predicts will drive a slow, gradual increase in
allocation of spending to products with nutritional value. However,
there are still considerable opportunities for manufacturers and
retailers to increase their stake in these categories through the
introduction of new product offerings and properly aligned distribution
strategies.
For example, manufacturers should examine the potential for “light”
versions of food categories. These versions have excelled in beer and
carbonated beverages, but products in the ice cream, salty snacks and
chocolate candy categories have not made major inroads over the years.
The report suggests that manufacturers strive to enhance the taste of
these types of food products and consider creating initiatives that
reach consumers suffering from chronic health conditions. Additionally,
premium products have the potential to provide a good niche for
manufacturers across mass market channels. These items, which offer
greater tastes in exchange for higher calories and higher costs, have
seen relatively strong growth during the past year. Variety in products,
flavors and forms might also drive manufacturers' success in the
enjoyment marketplace.
Channel opportunity
In terms of channel selection, drug stores and mass merchandisers,
which hold an above-average share of the enjoyment marketplace versus
total food and beverage, represent a sizable competitive threat to
grocers across these categories and a potential upside for enjoyment
product manufacturers. The report also encourages retailers to make
certain that their enjoyment category product mix is in alignment with
their core consumers' preferences, as there appears to be major
generational differences in the channels consumers choose to purchase
their enjoyment foods and beverages.
The complete report can be found on the News & Events section of IRI's Web site (www.infores.com) in the Thought Leadership section.
5 August 2005
___
US youth popping supplements, concerned
with body image
US adolescents are becoming more and more
preoccupied with their bodies, and a growing number are taking
supplements and even steroids to improve their physiques, according to a
new survey.
The study of 10,000 adolescents published in the journal Pediatrics
found that those youths who do decide to pop supplements are heavily
influenced by the media.
Twelve percent of boys and eight percent of girls surveyed by Children's
Hospital, Boston, said they had used such products in the past year to
improve their appearance.
Five percent of boys and two percent of girls used such products at
least once a week.
Most commonly used supplements were
protein powders and shakes, creatine, amino acids, the amino-acid
metabolite HMB, the hormone dehydroepiandrosterone, or DHEA, growth
hormone and anabolic steroids.
“The Internet is full of sites where these substances can be purchased,
and many are advertised in popular health and fitness magazines with
covers like 'Great abs in 5 minutes a day,'” said Dr. Alison Field, an
epidemiologist at Children's Hospital Boston and a co-author of the
study.
The study found the media played a prominent role in influencing
adolescents to take body image enhancing supplements.
Girls who said they wanted to look like women in films, magazines or on
television were twice as likely as their contemporaries to use
supplements at least once a week.
Boys who read men's fashion and health magazines were more than twice as
likely as their friends to use supplements at least once a week to build
muscles.
“More and more media images show people with sculpted physiques. It used to be scantily clad women, but now, you see more and more of images of men with physiques are that impossible for most people to obtain,” Field said.
Source: Pediatrics
2 August 2005
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Teens targeted with candy-flavored
cigarettes
The tobacco industry is continuing its targeted
marketing to teens via candy-flavored cigarettes, according to an
American Lung Association Tobacco Policy Trend Alert: From Joe Camel
to Kauai Kolada — the Marketing of Candy-Flavored Cigarettes.
Advertising and promotion for these products uses hip-hop imagery,
attractive women, and other imagery to appeal to youth in similar ways
that Joe Camel did a decade ago. Tobacco products remain virtually
unregulated and each day more than 5,000 kids under 18 try their first
cigarette, and more than 2,000 become established daily smokers.
Increased marketing efforts for
candy-flavored cigarettes came after the 1998 Master Settlement
Agreement prohibited tobacco companies from using cartoon characters to
sell cigarettes. The surge in advertising from top tobacco companies
such as Reynolds American has successfully reached the intended audience
— youth — in an underhanded manner. Researchers at the Roswell Park
Cancer Institute in Buffalo, NY, recently released the results of
several surveys that showed that 20 percent of smokers ages 17 to 19
smoked flavored cigarettes in the past 30 days while only 6 percent of
smokers over the age of 25 did.
“It's appalling that the tobacco industry is not held responsible for
the deadly products it continues to market and sell to young people,”
said John Kirkwood, President and CEO of the American Lung Association.
“Clearly, the industry is trying to get young people hooked on smoking
and nothing is being done to limit this targeted marketing. Cigarettes,
even in assorted candy flavors, cause lung cancer and lung disease and
should be banned for the sake of our children.”
Action at the federal level has been minimal. A proposed bill giving the
Food and Drug Administration ( FDA ) authority to regulate tobacco
products failed to pass in Congress in 2004. Identical FDA legislation
was reintroduced in March 2005. Under the proposed FDA legislation,
candy and fruit flavoring in cigarettes would be immediately prohibited.
The legislation would also regulate the sale, marketing and
manufacturing of cigarettes.
Additional controls on the tobacco industry could come through the
Department of Justice's ( DOJ ) lawsuit against the industry. In its
proposed remedies, the DOJ has called for a complete ban on
candy-flavored cigarettes.
You can make your voice heard on this issue by logging on to
www.lungaction.org/campaign/tobaccofda
and advocating for stricter regulation of the tobacco
industry. The full American Lung Association Tobacco Policy Trend
Alert: From Joe Camel to Kauai Kolada — the Marketing of Candy-Flavored
Cigarettes can be viewed on the web at
www.slati.lungusa.org.
About the American Lung Association:
For 100 years, the American Lung Association has been the lead
organization working to prevent lung disease and promote lung health.
Lung disease death rates continue to increase while other leading causes
of death have declined.
The American Lung Association funds vital research on the causes of and
treatments for lung disease. With the generous support of the public,
the American Lung Association is “Improving life, one breath at a time.”
1 August 2005
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Study into self-harm finds that the urge to
cut never goes away
New research has revealed that some people who self-harm may never be free of the “urge” to hurt themselves. A study carried out at the University of Stirling found that, just like people with addictions to drugs, alcohol or gambling, sufferers can struggle to overcome the impulse even if they have stopped self-harming for months or even years.
Some of the participants in the research,
who ranged in age from 29 to 40, even kept their “favourite” cutting
tool stored safely in case they needed it.
Rates of self-harm have increased in the UK over the past decade and are
now among the highest in Europe. It is estimated that one in 10
teenagers deliberately hurts themselves. However, little research has
been carried out to understand and identify the processes involved in
the urge to self-harm.
Dianne Cameron intensively interviewed people who were currently
self-cutting or had self-injured in the past for her PhD at Stirling
University’s nursing and midwifery department.
She said: “What I found was that once the participants started
self-cutting it was really difficult for them ever to be free of the
behaviour again.
“They may be free from cutting in the sense that they haven’t cut for a
few months, weeks or even years, but it doesn’t mean their lives are not
still affected by the urge to cut.”
She said the experiences and feelings
that the participants had were similar to those felt by people who are
addicted to drugs, alcohol or gambling.
“Most of them would not say they had stopped cutting, even though some
participants had not self-injured for as long as two or three years,”
Cameron added.
“Instead they would say it’s three years since I last cut or two months
since I last cut, as if they didn’t want to completely let go of the
behaviour.
“Some participants had a specific knife or tool which they liked to use
when cutting and even though they hadn’t cut for a few years, they knew
where that knife was just in case they needed it.
“One participant referred to this as a ‘safety net’, and just knowing
where the tool was helped them not to cut.”
Cutting and burning are the most common forms of self-harm, but it can
also involve taking overdoses of tablets or medicines, pulling out hair
and scratching or tearing at the skin.
Experts say that while there are many
reasons why people do it, the behaviour is often a method of coping with
the emotional pain of trauma, such as abuse, or difficult experiences,
such as bullying or bereavement.
Linda Dunion, director of the See Me campaign, which aims to reduce the
stigma around mental health issues, said: “Self-harming behaviour is not
yet well understood.
“That may be why there’s so much secrecy and stigma attached to it. It’s
generally a sign of mental distress but it is too often dismissed as
just attention-seeking.
“People who self-harm actually go to considerable effort to try to hide
the behaviour from others, which can make it all the more difficult to
identify individuals who need help.”
Pat Little is the development manager for young people’s services at
Penumbra, one of the main organisations working in the field of
self-harm. He said that, while the problem was generally only thought of
as a young person’s phenomenon, that was not the case.
“We have come across very young people
self-harming, but also people in their 60s,” he said. “The biggest group
for admissions to hospital for self-harming injury is 33 to
44-year-olds.”
He backed the findings of Cameron’s research, saying that never being
free from the urge to self-harm was likely to be a “common feeling”.
“It is mainly because people have learned to use self-harm as a way of
coping with stress,” he said. “With something you know works, there is
always the temptation to do it again.
“A lot of people, because they have managed to cope with stress in the
past, can manage to stop it completely. But for others, harming
themselves much less frequently would be a success for them.”
Little also pointed to the fact that while the problem appeared to be on
the increase, agencies often struggled to deal with it because of a lack
of understanding.
“There is a real need to bring the issue into the open and make it
easier to go for help,” he said.
“For example, a lot of young people who self-harm are made homeless as
housing associations and housing departments can’t understand it and
think, ‘These people are too disturbed to have our accommodation, they
need specialist accommodation.’
“In fact they are not dangerous to anyone and the issues are around
their own distress,” he added.
Cameron, who is now an assistant psychologist at Aberdeen Royal
Infirmary, agreed that more understanding about the condition was
required, including among health professionals.
She said: “It is important not just to look at the cutting behaviour,
but for professionals to understand the importance of the urge and how
it affects the lives of people who are currently self-injuring or have
done so in the past.
“Even though they haven’t cut for a few years, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they are managing to cope with the feelings that caused them to self-injure and they might still be battling with the urge to cut.”
Judith Duffy
31 July 2005
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Psychiatric polypharmacy in children on the
rise
The practice of prescribing multiple psychotropic medications to children and adolescents has increased over the last decade, results of a literature review suggest. However, research into this treatment strategy has failed to keep pace, leaving open the potential for serious adverse drug-drug interactions.
“Drug augmentation therapy is common
clinical practice among adults,” study co-author Dr. Joseph V. Penn said
in an interview with Reuters Health, and there has been a “trickle-down
effect” to children and adolescents, despite the absence of scientific
research to support the practice.
Dr. Penn and his associates at Brown Medical School in Providence, Rhode
Island, performed a Pub Med search from 1994 to 2004 regarding
polypharmacy in child psychiatry in the US. According to their report in
the August issue of Psychiatry, they found a “universal increase” in the
use of polypharmacy.
For example, two national surveys showed a nearly eight-fold increase
between 1987 and 1996. Among those taking one medication, the rate of
having a second medication added had increased by a factor 25. Another
study found a five-fold increase in polypharmacy among children
prescribed stimulants from 1993-1994 to 1997-1998.
Common combinations were antidepressants
and antipsychotics, stimulants and antidepressants, stimulants and the
alpha-agonist clonidine, and antidepressants and clonidine.
“A lot of families want that quick fix so medication tends to be the
go-to thing,” Dr. Penn said. Other factors putting pressure on
physicians to prescribe drugs include increased pharmaceutical
advertising, both to consumers and to clinicians; increased pressure to
shorten hospital stays; lack of time on the part of primary care
providers to adequately evaluate the patient; and the shortage of
specialists in child psychiatry.
Sometimes medication simply isn't the best treatment for the presenting
problem. “Maybe the kid is being teased or bullied at school or there
was a recent break-up of a relationship, stressors that don't
necessarily respond to medications,” the researcher said.
“It's an informed consent issue,” he added. “Youth and families need to
be educated about the potential risks and benefits and alternatives, and
to consider counseling or other psychosocial treatment with or without
medication.”
“The bottom line is that we need more research into psychotropic medications for kids, especially using ... meds in combination.”
Psychiatry 2005.
Karla Gale
1 August 2005
Source
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AUSTRALIA
Minors in adult psychiatric care suffer 'trauma and a lifetime of illness'
More than 1000 juveniles were admitted to
adult psychiatric wards around Australia in the past year despite
warnings from leading psychiatrists that the practice risks condemning
them to a lifetime of mental illness.
Patrick McGorry, a world leader in adolescent psychiatry, said juveniles
admitted to adult wards received inappropriate treatment, were often
shackled and over-medicated and were sexually vulnerable.
Professor McGorry said juveniles' problems were often compounded by
admission to adult wards and some young patients suffered post-traumatic
stress.
Figures obtained by The Weekend Australian from state and territory
health departments show more than 1000 mentally ill juveniles were
admitted to adult wards in the past year.
Professor McGorry said present treatment regimes were inappropriate
because 75per cent of mental illness began not long after puberty.
Schizophrenia, mood disorders such as
depression and bipolar disorder, eating disorders, personality disorders
and substance abuse disorders usually manifested between 12 and 25 but
were not treated properly.
“The culture of the service (in adult wards) is really organised around
middle-aged and very disabled patients, so young people in the early
stages of a mental illness get very poor care and often quite traumatic
care,” he said.
“There are a lot of disturbed patients there and they're often secluded
and injected with medications.”
John Mendoza, chief executive of the Mental Health Council of Australia,
yesterday called for an immediate end to juveniles being admitted to
adult wards.
Mr Mendoza said the issue was the biggest challenge for mental health
policy-makers “because the trajectory for people who don't have access
to quality interventions is a lifetime of being marginalised”.
More than 500 juveniles under 18 were admitted to adult wards in the NSW
health system in 2003-04, including 262 who were aged 16 and under.
Queensland admitted 380 minors to adult wards in the same period.
Victoria admitted 354 15 to 19-year-olds to adult wards during 2004-05 —
but this included admissions to a specialised adolescent unit called
Orygen, run by Professor McGorry.
Australian Medical Association vice-president and child psychiatrist Choong-Siew Yong said the federal Government's recent proposal to establish a Youth Mental Health Foundation was a step towards addressing the issue, but called for more to be done.
Cath Hart
30 July 2005
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Fear factor may fuel racial divides
Overcoming fear of members of another race may not be as easy as some might hope, a new study suggests.
The research, which included the use of
photos of people and mild electric shocks administered to study
participants, revealed the same responses for both black and white
Americans.
The only factor that helped diminish the fear was experience with
interracial dating, the study found.
“This provides support for something that's happened to this country for
quite a while — efforts to integrate,” said Elizabeth Phelps, senior
author of the study and a professor of psychology and neural science at
New York University. “Those efforts may be one of the best ways to
combat these natural biases that are not about conscious attitudes.”
Mahzarin Banaji, a study co-author and a professor of psychology at
Harvard University, said via e-mail: “Avoiding knowledge about
disagreeable aspects of our nature will only lead us to underestimate
the work needed to overcome our spontaneous fear of other groups — a
fear that makes little sense in our increasingly global social
interactions.
“It's not good business practice and it fundamentally sits in opposition
to our aspiration to treat each person fairly and equally,” Banaji
added.
The study results appear in the July 29
issue of the journal Science.
The researchers noted that similar fear responses have been noted
before, albeit in the wild. For instance, humans and other primates tend
to hold on to fears of snakes and spiders longer than fear of birds and
butterflies.
“There are certain categories of stimuli that are more readily
associated with aversive outcomes than other categories and that, once
acquired, are harder to get rid of,” Phelps explained. “There's a bias
in our fear-learning mechanism for certain classes of stimuli.”
Phelps and her colleagues wanted to see if this pattern persisted in
social groups defined by race. They relied on a variation of a method
devised by the Russian scientist Ivan Pavlov a century ago; in his
experiments, dogs learned to salivate simply by hearing the ringing of a
bell.
In Pavlov's case, the stimulus — the bell — was paired with something
positive — food.
In the new study, the stimulus — photographs — was paired with something
negative — a mild electrical shock.
“It's learning by association,” Phelps said. “It's a very simple type of
learning.”
The photos consisted of pictures of two
black male faces and two white male faces. All wore neutral expressions.
In the first phase of the experiment, each participant received a small
electric shock while looking at one of the black faces and one of the
white faces. The severity of the shock was chosen by each participant to
be uncomfortable but not painful.
In the second phase, the participants looked at the same faces, but
without the shock.
Fear responses were measured through changes in the sweat glands.
Not surprisingly, all the participants acquired a fear response to the
images that were associated with a shock.
But when the shocks were taken away, the fear response to the face from
the participant's own race lessened while the fear response to the face
from the other race persisted.
“It was the same whether it was black or white. It was an in-group,
out-group effect, not a race-specific effect,” Phelps said.
“If you are looking at someone in a race group not your own and that
particular individual is now linked with an aversive consequence, that
learning is going to be stronger and harder to get rid of than if it's
someone of your own race,” she continued.
When the participants' attitudes and
beliefs about race and contact with members of other groups were probed,
the only factor that helped diminish the fear was their experience with
interracial dating.
“About 20 percent of white and 50 percent of black participants had
dated someone of another race,” Phelps said. “If we eliminated all these
subjects, the magnitude of the effect was equivalent,” she pointed out.
“It's hard to know what to do with findings like this,” Phelps added.
“We can be aware of the fact that there may be biases in how we respond
and how we learn about individuals, based on their social group
identification relative to our own.
The best we can do is use that information to try to let those types of
biases influence choices that have some substance.”
Source: July 29 issue of the journal Science.
Amanda Gardner
Health Day
28 July 2005
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