Sandra Bullock makes some very solid points about the continued double moral standard between men and women in our society. It is only by repeated public statements will the culture begin to shift.

However, she missed the universal point. I don't think a young boy would escape the slash of verbal harassment about having a lisp. While there is a natural push for social culture to demand a certain level of conformity, children do not understand the limits of this wisdom or can reason through the paradox of conformity for the sake of conformity. [Soap box time] Children need the leadership of adults in social settings, primarily schools, to learn tolerance and the dangers of scapegoating. Adults continue to abdicate this role, parents pointing at schools, schools pointing at parents. During the critical times of elementary school, teachers have the major role, there can be no doubt. Parents seldom see their kids in a group, and currently other parents do not reliably tolerate their friends parents intervening with their own children. That too needs to change, but it won't until neighbors can actually recognize each other and learn how far they can trust each other.

Our natural process of social education has broken down. We now know enough to create a scientifically based social/emotional education curriculum. It's time to act.

FOXNews.com

"Why is that young boys and men are unique and eccentric and mavericks when they're different but women are 'odd' when we are eccentric or different? Would I have wished someone would have said to me when I was 12 or eight when I had my speech impediment? Uniqueness is something my mother pounded it into me," Bullock recently told Tarts. "She said be unique and I didn't understand it then, now I look at it and I go I wouldn't want to be like anyone else and I know I'm off. I had a lisp as a child, it's all these things that made me different and I tried to squelch and then once I realized I had squelched them I didn't feel like myself anymore."

Bullock is so upset with the unwritten rules and regulations in today's world she wants to spread a strong message to young girls.

"Don't change, be who you are. Society is really strong in their opinions so I made peace with the fact that the things I thought were weaknesses or flaws were just me," she added. "Why are we forcing people to follow another person's path in life taking away their real happiness? What is about us that is a culture that tries to get rid of what we consider the runt? Sometimes the runt turns out to be the best of the litter."

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Many of the boomer adults were raised with a lot of TV. It would appear things have gotten worse. We know a lot more about what TV does to children, but it doesn't appear to have had much effect. Simple logic will tell us that the experience of TV will decrease a child's ability to tolerate a delay in gratification of desires. Certainly, the TV ads are designed to create the desire for things we didn't know we needed, a certain frustration that we can't have it all, now. But it's much worse than that.

John M Grohol PsyD owner of PsychCentral.com is usually a man who politely understates things. But, he pulls no punches in a recent article.

Most child psychologists and child development experts recommend no TV whatsoever for a child before the age of 2 or 3. None. Yet a whopping 43 percent of parents plop their toddler down in front of the television set, apparently blind to the consequence of their actions.

[..]There are also the studies that show that teens who watch more sexual content on TV are twice as likely to be involved in a pregnancy over the next three years than their peers.

[From the Boston Globe]

Countless studies have documented the inverse link between devotion to the boob tube and achievement in school. Researchers at Columbia's College of Physicians and Surgeons concluded in 2007, for example, that 14-year-olds who watched one or more hours of television daily "were at elevated risk for poor homework completion, negative attitudes toward school, poor grades, and long-term academic failure.'' Those who watched three or more hours a day were at even greater risk for "subsequent attention and learning difficulties,'' and were the least likely to go to college.

In 2005, a study published in the American Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine found that the harm caused by TV watching shows up even after correcting the data to account for students' intelligence, family conditions, and prior behavioral problems. The bottom line: "Increased time spent watching television during childhood and adolescence was associated with a lower level of educational attainment by early adulthood.''

The baleful effects of TV aren't limited to education. The University of Michigan Health System notes on its extensive website that kids who watch TV are more likely to smoke, to be overweight, to suffer from sleep difficulties, and to have high cholesterol.

From Research Digest Blog, here is an excerpt from an article commenting on the effects of TV on in the background while a young child plays.

Schmidt's team described the disruptive effects of the background TV as "real but small". While the current study doesn't say anything about the possible developmental consequences of TV-disrupted play, previous research has shown that shorter play episodes and less focused attention tend to be associated with poorer developmental outcomes. Moreover, a previous unpublished study by the present team of researchers showed that background TV reduces how often parents interact with their children. "Taken together," the researchers said, the new and previous findings lead us to "hypothesise that background television, as a chronic influence, is by itself an environmental risk factor in children's development."

According to these articles, Visual voodoo: the biological impact of watching TVandThe Psychologist, TV is a cause for attention deficits in children.

Sigman's review in fact only cites two published studies that show direct associations between TV viewing in this age group and negative consequences. The first, a 2004 longitudinal study by Dimitri Christakis and colleagues of 1200 children, found that for every extra hour of average daily TV viewing between birth and three years, the children were 10 per cent more likely to have attentional problems at age seven. The second, a cross-sectional study by Dimitri Christakis and Darcy Thomson, found that among 2068 infants aged between four months and three years, those who watched more television also tended to have less regular afternoon and nighttime sleeping schedules. The research base becomes more substantial when the focus is broadened to include TV viewing in older childhood and adolescence. For example, two studies by Robert Hancox and colleagues reported detrimental associations between TV viewing between the ages of five and 15, and educational attainment and several health measures at 26 years. Sigman's review, which also discusses harmful associations between adult TV viewing and mental and physical health, concludes these 'findings are set to re-cast the role of the television screen as the greatest unacknowledged public health issue of our time'. However, not all experts are sympathetic to Sigman's view. Dr Brian Young at the University of Exeter told us children are active in the way they use TV - they don't just sit on the receiving end of a stream of audiovisual input. 'There certainly are benefits for children interacting with TV,' he said. 'They learn stuff - it's as simple as that. But the best learning environment is where the mother or the family collectively consume television and discuss what's being seen. In that sense it's a 'window on the world'. However, he added: 'Any medium has a downside and unsupervised viewing by very young children - the "TV as a babysitter" - is not helpful.'

Now consider the effects of violence in TV and video games. Are we training our children to tolerate routine violence? I think so. It fact, it would appear that TV is an experiment on our children increasing obesity, tobacco and alcohol use, risky sexual behaviors, violence and social isolation.

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We've all heard about viruses and websites that steal our sensitive private information. Cyberstalking has also become a problem on social media sites. Blogs, Twitter, MySpace and Facebook, in particular, are prone to this sort of abuse.

But even cellphone texting can be a problem since you can forward others details where ever you want. Although there are mixed reviews of just how much of a risk there is, there is agreement there is a risk. Parents should certainly provide supervision for their kids with the youngest getting the most.

John Dvorak, a columnist at MarketWatch.com recently posted an interesting article.

If I were a professional thief, the first thing I would do is get a computer, find the folks out there who document everything they do on social-networking sites and go rob them.

There are a couple of risk that make this particular crime possible. If you tell the world what you are doing and where you are going, you are telling any criminal that might be listening when you've vacated your house. You may have already listed items in your house that might be particularly desirable by the thief, like the computer, PS3, perhaps even the type of car you have in the driveway.

Here are some rules for social media everyone should know about and practice regularly.

1. There is really only one reason to use your real name on the internet: to promote yourself or your business. Do a regular thorough search using Google of your full name, your address, and other identifying data and make sure all that you find is removed. Make sure your phone number and address are unlisted and there is no other way to find where you live. If you do promote yourself, use an email address as your contact point. To prevent misuse, change the @ sign to (at) or -at- to keep the robots from snapping up your email for spam lists. Or, better yet, use a virtual business card that has a contact form like card.ly. Then no one gets your email address until you decide.

2, Be careful about what you put on your site, like where you are, who is home, and when you go to work or go on vacation. Acquaintances who know your nick name on the internet might decide to break into your house while you are gone or share with others who you really are. Remember, personal information becomes permanently available to whomever wants it once you post it. Employers and college admission officers are regularly searching the internet for applicant's antics. Remember if you are protecting your identity in Twitter and refer to your Facebook site that identifies you, you've only delayed someone who might want to hurt you. If you post your picture on the internet, that could identify you to someone you don't want to know or could be used in a faked porn picture.

3. If you say something cruel to someone, remember that it's recorded forever for anyone who looks. Not only have you hurt another person, you have hurt yourself and your reputation forever. Your repeated insults on the internet could be turned against you and used as evidence to charge you with cyberstalking or cyberbullying and turned into civil or criminal charges.

4. Never give out personal information that could identify you. This includes:
* full name
* home address
* phone number
* Social Security number
* passwords
* names of family members
* credit card numbers

5. Keep online friendships in the virtual world. Meeting online friends carries more risks than other types of friendships because it's easy for people to pretend to be something they're not when you can't see them or talk in person. Even if you "feel" you know someone, you really can't know them as well as if you had known them face to face. Some people think they have fallen in "love" with an online friend. The only thing you can fall in love with online is your fantasy of who the other person might be. The non-verbal and contextual clues about another person is sometimes the only thing that can keep us safe in a face to face relationship. Our intuitions about trust are truly potential lifesavers. What we know about another persons history from our own and others experiences fill in the picture. These aids to judgment either don't exist online or are clouded by an 'unseen' or undocumented history. If you must meet someone you know from on line, do so as if you are meeting someone for the first time, because you are. Meet only in public preferably with someone else. And don't give out personal information like you would with someone you just met.

Let me know if I missed anything. I'll update as needed.

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With 75% of all prisoners in state and federal prisons showing significant symptoms of mental illness, it's not surprising that youths are not immune. The sad part is that the younger the prisoner, the more damaging will be the experience of prison, the more likely they will re-offend on release, and the more likely they'll be back in prison.

At least some states are beginning to emphasize rehabilitation rather than the self-defeating plan to punish the guilty.

Psychiatric News

Prisons must be prepared to provide culturally competent psychiatric care to juvenile offenders sentenced to adult prisons. Mental disorder prevalence rates are high among these young people.

Nearly 70 percent of adolescents from a Chicago detention center charged with a crime and transferred to adult criminal courts have at least one psychiatric disorder.

Furthermore, teenagers from the detention center sentenced to prison had more than twice the odds of having a psychiatric disorder as those not sentenced to a prison term, according to a study published in the September Psychiatric Services.

The findings point to a crisis in the juvenile-justice system, in which a substantial number of adolescents are remanded to adult courts for trial, according to Jason Washburn, Ph.D., lead author of the study and a research assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine.

"Psychiatric treatment needs to be an integral part of any rehabilitation program for these," Washburn told Psychiatric News.

Deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill was considered the most humane solution to the long-term hospitalization and poor conditions of state hospitals. However, the money did not follow the released into the community. As a result, the mentally ill make up most people who are homeless and in prison. Given the high cost of housing the mentally ill and chemically dependent in prison, and the likelihood the problem will be make worse before release, we need real reform for community treatment.

Hennepin County in Minnesota has begun to take on the problem. Britain has come under withering criticism about their juvenile system.

California has reform in mind, but will also realize cost savings. The public supports reform for juvenile offenders, I have to wonder if public attitudes are moving for adult rehabilitation as well.

Great post from Dr. Deb.

This is a haunting and visually stunning work of art, showing how beauty is merely a facade. How media and its messages create a subjective world, where unattainable goals often lead us to disaster.

Here is another example of how the media doesn't really do much to enhance understanding of mental health. A researcher releases his results for peer review and integration into professional knowledge. A reporter sees the alarmist headlines and shares it with the general public with the first line of the article: "A researcher at the University of Missouri-Columbia has found that girls who talk very extensively about their problems with friends are likely to become more anxious and depressed."

The danger here is that the average parent will see this as a reason to intrude into their daughter's friendships in hopes of preventing "co-rumination" by interrupting an unhealthy peer relationship. That could be a very destructive approach and may in fact drive those relationships "underground", outside of the parents' awareness where the real danger lies.

Every child needs supportive peer relationships. As children move into adolescence, peer relationships allow them a means to develop a self-concept as separate and teaches them the skills they need to competently move towards independence.

Co-rumination is a symptom of another problem. We don't teach our children comprehensively how to cope with emotions, how to give or accept effective support, nor are parents taught the value of the child's privacy and what is appropriate intrusion into our children's lives. We have to rely on what we learned by example from our parents.

Parental intrusion into peer relationships often is a lose-lose approach. The parents lose sight of the peer relationships, and the child loses the value of adult supervision. Parents need a healthy "involvement" in their child's peer relationships. Children need to see their parents as a resource to help them with their peer relationships. Co-rumination should be a signal for the child to seek out an adult about information and resources. The adult needs to be ready to provide both support and information to help the child manage his peer relationships.

Anxiety Insights

A researcher at the University of Missouri-Columbia has found that girls who talk very extensively about their problems with friends are likely to become more anxious and depressed.

The research was conducted by Amanda Rose, associate professor of psychological sciences in the College of Arts and Science. The six-month study, which included boys and girls, examined the effects of co-rumination - excessively talking with friends about problems and concerns. Rose discovered that girls co-ruminate more than boys, especially in adolescence, and that girls who co-ruminated the most in the fall of the school year were most likely to be more depressed and anxious by the spring.

"When girls co-ruminate, they're spending such a high percentage of their time dwelling on problems and concerns that it probably makes them feel sad and more hopeless about the problems because those problems are in the forefront of their minds. Those are symptoms of depression," Rose said.

"In terms of anxiety, co-ruminating likely makes them feel more worried about the problems, including about their consequences. Having anxiety symptoms (and presumably, associated heightened levels of worries and concerns) and a high-quality friend to talk to may provide a uniquely reinforcing context for co-rumination, she continued.

"Co-rumination also may lead to depression and anxiety because it takes so much time - time that could be used to engage in other, more positive activities that could help distract youth from their problems. This is especially true for problems that girls can't control, such as whether a particular boy likes them, or whether they get invited to a party that all of the popular kids are attending."

IIronically, although co-rumination was related to increased depression and anxiety, Rose also found that co-rumination was associated with positive friendship quality, including feelings of closeness between friends. Boys who co-ruminated also developed closer friendships across the school year but did not develop greater depressive and anxiety symptoms over time.

"For years, we have encouraged kids to find friends who they can talk to about their problems, and with whom they can give and receive social support," Rose said. "In general, talking about problems and getting social support is linked with being healthy. What's intriguing about theses findings is that co-rumination likely represents too much of a good thing. Some kids, especially girls, are taking talking about problems to an extreme. When that happens, the balance tips, and talking about problems with friends can become emotionally unhealthy."

Rose said adolescents should be encouraged to talk about their problems, but only in moderation and without co-ruminating.

"They also should engage in other activities, like sports, which can help them take their minds off their problems, especially problems that they can't control," she said.

The research cautions parents and adults against being lulled into a false sense of security about youth, especially girls, with seemingly supportive friendships. While other studies indicate that adults should worry about socially isolated youth, this research raises the issue that youth in seemingly supportive friendships may also be at risk for depression and anxiety if the friendship is based on a pattern of co-rumination.

Rose AJ, Carlson W, Waller EM. Prospective associations of co-rumination with friendship and emotional adjustment: Considering the socioemotional trade-offs of co-rumination. Dev Psychol. 2007 Jul;43(4):1019-31. [Abstract | Full text (PDF format)]

Cognitive Daily today has a nice post on a recent MRI study of brain activity while playing violent games. The question a lot people have on their minds is are gamers more likely to be violent.

It's well established that playing violent games is associated with aggressive behavior, but it's difficult to determine whether violent games cause aggression. After all, people who are predisposed to aggressive behavior might seek out violent games. But a team led by Rene Weber did realize that a neurological study could provide another link between violent games and aggression.

Research in the past few years has found that adolescents with antisocial and aggressive behavior disorders tend to have the same type of activity in certain regions of their brain as normal individuals do when they are imagining aggressive behavior. The key brain regions are the amygdala and the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), which is divided into the dorsal and rostral parts (dACC and rACC). For normal individuals, brain activity increases in the dACC and decreases in the rACC and amygdala when imagining aggressive acts. For those with aggressive and antisocial disorders, these patterns remain even in nonviolent situations.

Weber's team wanted to compare the brain activity of experienced violent gamers to adolescents with behavior disorders. So they recruited gamers in Tübingen, Germany to play the M-rated game Tactical Ops: Assault on Terror while their brain activity was monitored by an fMRI scanner. Next a panel of two judges analyzed recordings of the game play on a frame-by frame basis, to determine the level of violent content at each instant of game play, rating each scene on a scale ranging from 1 (passive/dead) to 5 (active/fighting and killing). When the two judges disagreed, they worked with a supervisor to resolve the difference and come upon a compromise. Rating the 13 hours of video took about 120 hours per judge. Judges also monitored instances when a player committed arbitrary acts of violence such as shooting an already-dead or non-threatening person.

[..]at the time of the violent act, amygdala and rACC activity are low, and dACC activity is high. This corresponds exactly to the brain activity of adolescents with antisocial and aggressive behavior disorders, and is the same as normal individuals' brain responses to imagining aggressive behavior.

Weber's team points out that it's possible to have the same brain activity, but still be conscious of the fact that a video game is not real behavior. It's not necessarily true that die-hard video gamers are rewiring their brains to behave aggressively in the real world. However, what can be said is that the fear and fight responses are strikingly similar to those found in real-world aggressive and antisocial individuals.

MRIs are amazing gadgets, but there isn't enough evidence to justify brain activity by location studies. There is too much contrary evidence that says there are major individual differences in brain activity to similar tasks. MRIs seem to impress researchers for the wrong reasons. Too much gadgetry, too little substance.

Lets approach this question from the perspective of Behavior Theory. Humans learn in at least two basic ways, operant conditioning, perhaps the most available to cognition, and classical conditioning, least accessible to cognition. To approach this question, we need to separate out the effects of these two kinds of learning. By playing violent video games, do we condition our emotional responses to exposure to violence? Do we habituate to violent stimuli? Research I'm aware of says yes. Certainly habituation would make violent behavior more likely if we generalize the video game environment to real life.

The other question from an operant point of view, do we learn ways to cope with life playing violent games that might be applied outside of the video game environment? Certainly the first questions about conditioned emotional responses are testable. The second set of questions about operant conditioning is not so easily tested, other than longitudinally, by following violent gamers over time. I think there is enough evidence about conditioned emotional responses to violent games to warrant longitudinal exploration of real world generalization of violent behavior.

Seems to be I read somewhere that gamers make good fighter pilots. There is some evidence gaming may actually help with ADHD. Perhaps similar comparisons could be made, but the most important answers can only be had by longitudinal study. But I believe there is plenty of evidence to say that habilituating ourselves to violence is not good for us.

I tripped over a surprising bit of news over at Anxiety, Addiction and Depression Treatments. Hispanic teens are suffering the highest rates of mental health and chemical health issues according to a recent CDC press release.

In the recent upsurge in interest regarding immigration issues, many Hispanics youths, who themselves are American citizens are being swept up in racism and ill-advised nationalism. No matter where you fall on the issues, the health of American citizens should be something that everyone can agree on. With upwards of 10 and 15% of Hispanic youths reporting attempted suicide, this survey should serve as a clear call to action.

The issue is about children of Hispanic parents, a large proportion of their parents are Spanish speaking immigrants. This creates problems unique to Hispanic teens.

MercuryNews.com

More than 11 percent of all Latino students -- and 15 percent of Latino girls -- said they had attempted suicide, according to the report issued Thursday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The white and black rates were about 7.5 percent. Latinos also reported much higher rates of cocaine, heroin, ``ecstasy'' and methamphetamines use. Their use of condoms was at lower rates than the other groups.

Local youth counselors say they are not surprised by the numbers. In all categories of high-risk behavior, including drug abuse and teen pregnancy, the proportion of Latino youths with problems is rising, they say. ``Teen pregnancy has dropped overall, but among Latino youth it's gone higher,'' said Mario Ozuna-Sanchez, manager of intervention services for the Mexican American Community Service Agency in San Jose. ``Latino youth are 70 percent of juvenile hall right now.''

One reason, he said, is a lack of services targeted at Latino communities. ``There's not only a lack of services in general, there's a lack of services in English and Spanish, services targeted toward parents,'' Ozuna-Sanchez said. ``Everyone knows the problem, but few people are addressing it.''

We need to actively encourage training Hispanic practitioners. And we need to encourage therapists to develop bilingual skills to serve these under served families.

Here is another angle on concern about today's adolescents and young adults. It appears that the malaise affecting African American adolescents and young men stretches across racial boundaries at least somewhat. More young adult males live at home stalling the transition to adulthood. There certainly has always been some cultural spill over from African Americans to Caucasions. Part of the attraction of the "cool-pose culture" has been the admiration it creates even among whites.

But perhaps there is a bigger issue here. I suspect it's the economy and lack of adequate paying jobs that would enable young males to emancipate. This has to create a discouraged attitude among the young. Then I wonder if the new computer/internet generation has gotten lost in fantasy games more so than anyone has guessed, perhaps in part because of the lack of opportunities. If the American Dream is out of reach, then why get on with life at all? I certainly have seen this discouragement in individuals. Could it be pandemic?

WaPo

This phenomenon cuts across all demographics. You'll find it in families both rich and poor; black, white, Asian and Hispanic; urban, suburban and rural. According to the Census Bureau, fully one-third of young men ages 22 to 34 are still living at home with their parents -- a roughly 100 percent increase in the past 20 years. No such change has occurred with regard to young women. Why?

My friend and colleague Judy Kleinfeld, a professor at the University of Alaska, has spent many years studying this growing phenomenon. She points out that many young women are living at home nowadays as well. But those young women usually have a definite plan. They're working toward a college degree, or they're saving money to open their own business. And when you come back three or four years later, you'll find that in most cases those young women have achieved their goal, or something like it. They've earned that degree. They've opened their business.

But not the boys. "The girls are driven; the boys have no direction," is the way Kleinfeld summarizes her findings. Kleinfeld is organizing a national Boys Project, with a board composed of leading researchers and writers such as Sandra Stotsky, Michael Thompson and Richard Whitmire, to figure out what's going wrong with boys. The project is only a few weeks old, it has called no news conferences and its Web site ( http://www.boysproject.net ) has just been launched.

So far we've just been asking one another the question: What's happening to boys? We've batted around lots of ideas. Maybe the problem has to do with the way the school curriculum has changed. Maybe it has to do with environmental toxins that affect boys differently than girls (not as crazy an idea as it sounds). Maybe it has to do with changes in the workforce, with fewer blue-collar jobs and more emphasis on the service industry. Maybe it's some combination of all of the above, or other factors we haven't yet identified.

Here is a very interesting research article about a link between depression and later victimization by domestic abuse. While, I don't find this surprising, it's gratifying to see connections that have the potential to influence the focus of psychotherapy.

MedlinePlus

Young women who had significant depression symptoms as teenagers were 86 percent more likely than their non-depressed peers to report serious partner violence 5 years later. This association still held after a number of potential risk factors, such as race, parents' education and history of childhood abuse from a caregiver, were taken into account. MORE

I have always associated victimization with low self-esteem. Low self-esteem has often seemed to relate to an increased risk of depression. Certainly, victims of abuse often are also depressed. But to find a connection of adolescent depression with double the risk of future victimization is a strong association.

Self-esteem has been one of those difficult to measure constructs, many because one would think that a person would know if they liked themselves or not. In my experience, people are often out of touch with themselves to the extent that what they want to believe is what they believe, rather than what is actually the truth. Self-esteem needs to be defined as set of behaviors in certain circumstances, such as acquiescence vs. assertiveness in intimate relationships.

Now it would make sense that a person who is depressed would been more likely to miss cues of potential danger. People who are depressed typically devalue their own opinions and would seem more likely to dismiss intuitions suggesting they are not safe that might allow them to protect themselves. They also are more likely to see fewer alternatives after the abuse has occurred. They would also be more likely to blame themselves for the abuse or believe that they deserve nothing better. Add low self-esteem to depression and the possibilities grow dramatically for victimization. A very interesting question is what is the relationship between low self-esteem as defined above and DSM IV TR criteria for depression and risk for recurrence.

Here is an example of putting this knowledge immediately into therapeutic practice. David Markham puts it this way:

As a psychotherapist working with depressed teens and depressed adults, I often encourage these women to find their voice and become more assertive. I kiddingly say "You can either be sad or be mad, and I think getting mad and saying, 'I'm not going to take this any more, or do this any more' is a step in the right direction in fighting off the depression."