Posts Tagged ‘news and research’

There is a strong possibility that when a patient goes to the doctor with depression, to be treated within the medical model, they may underplay or not even mention physical symptoms, thinking that “they’re all in the mind” — meaning not real, not worthy of attention. In fact, pain is felt in all kinds of ways, and when doctors and patients alike recognise that, research shows that treatment works better.

In “Mother- and Father-Reported Reactions to Children’s Negative Emotions: Relations to Young Children’s Emotional Understanding and Friendship Quality”, researchers led by Dr. Nancy L McElwain of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign studied over 50 pre-school children, firstly assessing their emotional maturity, and then observing play sessions with a friend. In a situation designed to produce stress and conflict it turned out that the optimum situation for the child was one very involved parent and one much less so.

I think that it is of utmost importance that campaigns ‘against obesity’ should not make an underclass of overweight children who it is OK to treat however we like, because the health police and media are on our side. Both teasing, and pushing overweight teenagers to diet are likely to increase the likelihood of them discovering, and getting stuck in, destructive eating patterns.

Psychology today reports on ‘permaparenting’, the phenomenon of young adults coming back to the nest for indefinite amounts of time, or never leaving it at all. It paints a fairly bleak picture of young adults who are not mature enough to leave, and parents who are not mature enough to let them.

New government research from experts led by Sir David King, the Government’s chief scientific adviser, warns that half of all adults in the UK could be clinically obese by 2050, causing health problems on a huge scale with a steep rise in heart disease, diabetes and cancer which could stretch health service resources to the breaking point.