While many parents may think that allowing their teens and their teens’ friends to drink at home under adult supervision keeps kids safe and leads to healthier attitudes about drinking, the truth is that there are serious negative consequences for both parents and teens. The Partnership at Drugfree.org and The Treatment Research Institute (TRI) today announced the launch of a new, interactive web resource for parents and caregivers to help inform them about one of those negative consequences: parents’ legal liabilities if they serve alcohol to teens.
Recognizing the value, particularly at prom and graduation season, of giving parents and caregivers free access to this important information, “Underage Drinking In The Home,” provides a state-by-state outline of the legal liabilities for adults who serve alcohol to minors. This new resource was created as part of the Parents Translational Research Center, a collaboration between The Treatment Research Institute and The Partnership at Drugfree.org, and the first ever National Institutes of Health-funded initiative focused on developing research-based resources for parents around issues of adolescent substance use/abuse.
Unfortunately, many parents subscribe to common myths and misperceptions related to underage drinking:
Myth: Some parents think that providing alcohol to teens at home decreases the risk for continued drinking as teens get older, and subsequent drinking problems later in life. Truth: The opposite is true – parents should be aware that supplying alcohol to minors actually increases, rather than decreases the risk for continued drinking in the teenage years and leads to subsequent problem drinking later in life.
Full story of underage drinking at home at DrugFree.org
Photos courtesy of and copyright PhotoPin, http://photopin.com/
Beedie Savage – President of Quantum Units Education
Boys with ADHD may be at risk for obesity later in life, according to a new study – which, if confirmed in larger studies, may have implications for the more than 4 million kids in the United States living with the disorder.
Researchers at NYU’s Langone Medical Center have been following more than 200 kids for four decades. They found those who had ADHD in their early years were twice as likely to be obese at age 41.
“This study was started by Dr. Rachel Klein in 1970, and it involved a number of waves of evaluation, during which the results of having hyperactivity in childhood were assessed,” said Dr. F. Xavier Castellanos, a professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at NYU and one of the study authors.
“We brought back individuals who were 41 years of age, and examined a number of measures, including brain imaging analyses. But during those brain imaging analyses, we noted that men who had been hyperactive children had a greater difficulty sitting in the scanner – they were too large for the research scanner.”
That’s when the idea took shape to look at all of the subjects’ height and weight. Castellanos and his team instantly noticed the high levels of obesity – twice as high as those adults who never suffered from ADHD.
Full story of adhd in boys leads to obesity at CNN Health
Photos courtesy of and copyright PhotoPin, http://photopin.com/
Beedie Savage – President of Quantum Units Education
Addiction to drugs, alcohol and tobacco are the most common mental health problems in teenagers, a new government report concludes. Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is the most commonly diagnosed problem overall in youth ages 3 to 17, NBC News reports.
The findings, from a report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), found almost 7 percent of children under 18 are diagnosed with ADHD, while 3.5 percent have behavioral problems and 1.1 percent have autism.
An estimated one million teenagers abuse drugs or alcohol, and more than 695,000 are addicted to tobacco, the CDC found. The agency found during 2010-2011, a total of 4.2 percent of teens were dependent on or abused alcohol in the past year. An estimated 4.7 percent of teens had an illicit drug use disorder in the past year.
Full story of teen addictions at DrugFree.org
Photos courtesy of and copyright PhotoPin, http://photopin.com/
Beedie Savage – President of Quantum Units Education
Teens who were depressed as children are far more likely than their peers to be obese, smoke cigarettes and lead sedentary lives, even if they no longer suffer from depression.
The research, by scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and the University of Pittsburgh, suggests that depression, even in children, can increase the risk of heart problems later in life.
The researchers report their findings March 15 at the annual meeting of the American Psychosomatic Society in Miami, Fla.
"Part of the reason this is so worrisome is that a number of recent studies have shown that when adolescents have these cardiac risk factors, they’re much more likely to develop heart disease as adults and even to have a shorter lifespan," says first author Robert M. Carney, PhD, a professor of psychiatry at Washington University. "Active smokers as adolescents are twice as likely to die by the age of 55 than nonsmokers, and we see similar risks with obesity, so finding this link between childhood depression and these risk factors suggests that we need to very closely monitor young people who have been depressed."
Full story of depression in kids at Science Daily
Photos courtesy of and copyright PhotoPin, http://photopin.com/
Beedie Savage – President of Quantum Units Education
Children who are bullied online or by mobile phone are just as likely to skip school or consider suicide as kids who are physically bullied, according to a study led by a Michigan State University criminologist.
The findings, published in the International Criminal Justice Review, suggest parents, school officials and policymakers should consider bullying experiences both on and offline when creating anti-bullying policies and procedures.
"We should not ignore one form of bullying for the sake of the other," said Thomas Holt, associate professor of criminal justice. "The results suggest we should find ways to develop school policies to combat bullying within the school environment and then figure out how to translate that to the home, because the risk goes beyond the schoolyard."
The study is one of two new research papers from MSU scholars dealing with cyberbullying. The other study, led by Saleem Alhabash in the Department of Advertising and Public Relations, suggests positive online comments are an effective way to fight cyberbullying.
Full story of online bullying at Science Daily
Photos courtesy of and copyright PhotoPin, http://photopin.com/
Beedie Savage – President of Quantum Units Education
While many parents may think that allowing their teens and their teens’ friends to drink at home under adult supervision keeps kids safe and leads to healthier attitudes about drinking, the truth is that there are serious negative consequences for both parents and teens. The Partnership at Drugfree.org and The Treatment Research Institute (TRI) today announced the launch of a new, interactive web resource for parents and caregivers to help inform them about one of those negative consequences: parents’ legal liabilities if they serve alcohol to teens.
