Increased antipsychotic use was observed across a wide range of mental health diagnoses, and was particularly high for children with ADHD or conduct disorder, although the FDA has not approved the drugs to treat these conditions in children. In total, 65% of children prescribed antipsychotics in 2007 were using the drugs “off-label,” or without FDA safety and efficacy data to support their use to treat young patients. The CHOP study is the second released this month that focuses on the use of antipsychotic drug use in children and is largest of its kind, representing 35% of children in the country.

“Given the significant proportion of off-label use of antipsychotics in children, it is reassuring that these drugs have been recognized as a priority for pediatric research by the National Institutes of Health,” said David M. Rubin, MD, MSCE, a senior author of the study, attending pediatrician, and co-director of CHOP’s PolicyLab. “If a child is prescribed an antipsychotic, it’s important for doctors to inform parents and caregivers if the drug is being prescribed off-label, of potential side effects, and of counseling therapies that might be offered as an alternative to medication.”

The frequent off-label use of antipsychotics has raised concern among many health care providers, especially in light of evidence linking antipsychotics with an increased risk of serious metabolic side effects in children, including weight gain and diabetes.

The researchers note that the increase in antipsychotic use is due to in part to an overall increase in the number of mental health diagnoses assigned to children. Researchers found a 28 percent increase in the number of children with a mental health diagnosis, but this alone did not account for the spike in prescriptions.

“We knew that the number of children prescribed antipsychotics had grown steadily over the past two decades, particularly among children with public insurance,” said Meredith Matone, MHS, the study’s lead author and a researcher at PolicyLab. “With this study, we wanted to learn more about why these drugs are being used so often, what diagnoses they’re being used to treat, and how prescribing patterns changed over the course of the last decade.”

While schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and autism were the most likely diagnoses to result in an antipsychotic prescription, children with these disorders did not make up the majority of antipsychotic users. Children with ADHD and those who were diagnosed with 3 or more concurrent mental health disorders made up the largest group of children taking antipsychotics. In 2007, 50 percent of children taking antipsychotics had a diagnosis of ADHD, and 14 percent had ADHD as their only diagnosis.

“The fact that we see an uptick in prescribing antipsychotics for many diagnoses tells us that antipsychotics are likely being used to treat specific behaviors, like aggression, that are shared among a variety of mental health diagnoses,” explained Matone. “Insights like this are only available by conducting very large-scale studies like this one. Reaching an average of 15 million children a year provided the needed national perspective on medication use. Continuing to conduct population-based, public health studies is crucial to inform policies and guidelines for the use of antipsychotics for children.”

Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/09/120910111700.htm

The study, conducted by a research team from the University of California, Berkeley, found that Mexican-origin mothers provide “warm and supportive home settings,” engage in fewer conflicts with spouses and exhibit evidence of stronger mental health than their white peers, despite higher poverty rates.

The study, published in the scientific journal Child Development, adds “nuance” to America’s immigration debate, the research team noted in a press release.

Over a three-year period, from 2003 to 2006, researchers visited the homes of and interviewed and observed 5,300 Mexican-born, Chinese-born and white native-born mothers. Mexican-origin mothers were found to have more than 20 percent fewer arguments with their spouses than their white peers, and nearly 40 percent fewer arguments than peers of Chinese heritage. Mexican immigrant mothers also had better results than their white counterparts on an independent assessment of depressive symptoms.

On the other hand, Mexican mothers read to their children infrequently and organized few educational activities that would advance school-related skills, especially when compared with Chinese-immigrant mothers. Mothers of Chinese origin performed better than the other two groups on pre-literacy measures and worse on social ones.

“Until now, little national evidence has been available to distinguish the home settings of major immigrant groups,” said Claudia Galindo, a professor of sociology at the University of Maryland and one of the study authors. “And many policymakers have assumed that poverty necessarily leads to poor parenting.”

The researchers looked at data from a nationally representative sample of births drawn by the National Center for Education Statistics, a research arm of the U.S. Department of Education. All children involved in the survey were born in the United States in 2001.

Bruce Fuller, another author of the study, called the findings about Mexican mothers as a “surprise.”

“Poverty is definitely a drag on the well-being of families, but at the same time, at least for Mexican immigrants, they have cultural strengths that buffer the negative effects of family,” he said.

But the extent to which “culture” accounts for the well-being of these families isn’t so clear. A recent study by the Community Service Society of New York found that Puerto Rican youth in New York City are more than twice as likely as their Mexican peers to be out of school and unemployed.

Some scholars and commentators have argued that the differences between low-income Mexican families and families from other low-income groups have to do with historical and economic factors. Many Puerto Ricans settled in urban areas in the 50 and 60s, just as the manufacturing sector, which had provided stable work to generations of new immigrants, entered a long period of decline.

Other observers say that non-citizen immigrants, by necessity, tend to have more ambition and resourcefulness than most people.

“That has an impact on the formation of families, and how people relate to families and your relationship to the labor market has a major impact as well,” said Angelo Falcón, the director of the National Institute for Latino Policy.

These latest findings come amid much discussion by immigration scholars about the so-called “Latino Paradox” -– the finding that Hispanic immigrants tend to be healthier than their better-off, non-immigrant counterparts, despite the prevailing wisdom that richer people are healthier.

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/11/mexican-moms-more-nurturing_n_1872668.html?utm_hp_ref=latino-voices

Experts said that the finding was hardly reason to forgo fatherhood later in life, though it may have some influence on reproductive decisions. The overall risk to a man in his 40s or older is in the range of 2 percent, at most, and there are other contributing biological factors that are entirely unknown.

But the study, published online in the journal Nature, provides support for the argument that the surging rate of autism diagnoses over recent decades is attributable in part to the increasing average age of fathers, which could account for as many as 30 percent of cases.

The findings also counter the long-standing assumption that the age of the mother is the most important factor in determining the odds of a child having developmental problems. The risk of chromosomal abnormalities, like Down syndrome, increases for older mothers, but when it comes to some complex developmental and psychiatric problems, the lion’s share of the genetic risk originates in the sperm, not the egg, the study found.

Previous studies had strongly suggested as much, but the new report quantifies that risk for the first time, calculating how much it accumulates each year.

The research team found that the average child born to a 20-year-old father had 25 random mutations that could be traced to paternal genetic material. The number increased steadily by two mutations a year, reaching 65 mutations for offspring of 40-year-old men.

The average number of mutations coming from the mother’s side was 15, no matter her age, the study found.

“This study provides some of the first solid scientific evidence for a true increase in the condition” of autism, said Dr. Fred Volkmar, director of the Child Study Center at the Yale School of Medicine, who was not involved in the research. “It is extremely well done and the sample meticulously characterized.”

The new investigation, led by the Icelandic firm deCODE Genetics, analyzed genetic material taken from blood samples of 78 parent-child trios, focusing on families in which parents with no signs of a mental disorder gave birth to a child who developed autism or schizophrenia. This approach allows scientists to isolate brand-new mutations in the genes of the child that were not present in the parents.

Most people have many of these so-called de novo mutations, which occur spontaneously at or near conception, and a majority of them are harmless. But recent studies suggest that there are several such changes that can sharply increase the risk for autism and possibly schizophrenia — and the more a child has, the more likely he or she is by chance to have one of these rare, disabling ones.

Some difference between the paternal and maternal side is to be expected. Sperm cells divide every 15 days or so, whereas egg cells are relatively stable, and continual copying inevitably leads to errors, in DNA as in life.

Still, when the researchers removed the effect of paternal age, they found no difference in genetic risk between those who had a diagnosis of autism or schizophrenia and a control group of Icelanders who did not. “It is absolutely stunning that the father’s age accounted for all this added risk, given the possibility of environmental factors and the diversity of the population,” said Dr. Kari Stefansson, the chief executive of deCODE and the study’s senior author. “And it’s stunning that so little is contributed by the age of the mother.”

Dr. Stefansson’s co-authors included C. Augustine Kong of deCODE and researchers from the University of Iceland, Aarhus University in Denmark, and the company Illumina Cambridge Ltd.

Dr. Stefansson said that it made sense that de novo mutations would play a significant role in brain disorders. At least 50 percent of active genes play a role in neural development, so that random glitches are more likely to affect the brain than other organs, which have less exposure.

In the end, these kinds of mutations may account for 15 to 30 percent of cases of autism, and perhaps schizophrenia, some experts said. The remainder is likely a result of inherited genetic mutations and environmental factors that are the subjects of numerous studies.

Dr. Stefansson and other experts said that an increase in the average age of fathers has most likely led to more cases of autism. Unlike other theories proposed to explain the increase, like vaccinations, it is backed by evidence that scientists agree is solid.

But this by itself hardly explains the overall increase in diagnoses, at least in the United States. The birthrate of fathers age 40 and older has increased by more than 30 percent since 1980, according to government figures, but the diagnosis rate has jumped tenfold, to 1 in 88 8-year-olds in the most recent government survey.

And it is not clear whether the rate of schizophrenia diagnosis has increased at all in that time.

Nonetheless, if these study findings hold up and extend to other brain disorders, wrote Alexey Kondrashov, of the University of Michigan, in an editorial accompanying the study, “then collecting the sperm of young adult men and cold-storing it for later use could be a wise individual decision.”

That very much depends on the individual, of course. “You are going to have guys who look at this and say, ‘Oh no, you mean I have to have all my kids when I’m 20 and stupid?’ ” said Evan E. Eichler, a professor of genome sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle. “Well, of course not. You have to understand that the vast majority of these mutations have no consequences, and that there are tons of guys in their 50s who have healthy children.”

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/48754166/ns/health-childrens_health/#.UEY9UqMvk91

It is easy to think that babies and toddlers are not affected by exposure to violence. After all, they may not be completely aware of what is happening around them. But this is a myth. Even if young children do not fully understand, they can feel the danger and the loss. Babies may not be able to talk, but they hear noise and sense tension. Research suggests that experiencing ongoing violence can change the way a child’s brain develops and functions.

When children are born, they are completely dependent on adults and they get upset when their needs are not met. Babies and toddlers know their caregivers’ smell, the sound of their voices, the way they hold them, and the rhythms of the day. They notice when these things are disturbed or disappear. Young children also notice moods—like when a caregiver is tense, more quiet than normal, or comes to the crib slower than usual when they cry.

Children’s ability to show understanding, caring, sharing, and love is connected to the relationships they develop as babies and young children. As infants, children develop attachments by learning to trust that parents and other adults will protect them and provide for their needs. Toddlers further strengthen these bonds by communicating with adults and children at school. They learn to cooperate, take turns, observe rules, and share.

These early bonds begin to develop the blueprints for all other relationships that a child will have. They are important for his or her sense of safety, security, and willingness to try new things. Early relationships also help prepare children to learn and do well in school.

When a parent has been exposed to violence and or when a baby or toddler sees or hears violence in the home, he or she can lose this sense of safety to violence. Sometimes the emotional scars that result from violence may cause damage and heartbreak to a family, similar to the pain of physical wounds.

From birth to age two, babies grow and change quickly. Every child is unique. Some of the things that are typical for babies include smiling, laughing, making gurgling noises, following you with their eyes, and becoming attached to one person more than others—usually their primary caregiver(s). When babies have been exposed to violence they show changes in sleeping and eating patterns, become clingy, and have difficulty separating from adults (especially parents). Sometimes babies become fearful of new things, easily startled and display inconsolable crying, a lack of curiosity and a sober mood.

Typically, developing toddlers (12 to 18 months) show growing feelings of independence, use words or gestures to communicate needs, express feelings, and begin to interact with other children. When toddlers are exposed to violence, however, the development of language, curiosity, and exploratory and skills are interrupted. The toddler may have more difficulty paying attention, become fearful, aggressive or anxious, react to loud noises, and complain of stomachaches and other physical complaints.

How to help a baby or toddler who has been exposed to violence

- The publication for parents, Healing the Invisible Wounds, available on the Safe Start Center website, offers many suggestions to help children of different ages cope with exposure to violence. Among the suggestions for babies and toddlers are the following:

- Look for changes in a child’s behavior. Is the baby/toddler acting differently? Sometimes it’s hard to tell what’s normal and what’s not. For example, babies have days when they are clingy or do not want to eat. But if a baby does these things more and more often, to the point that you become concerned, you may need to consult with a mental health professional.

- Provide comfort with a security blanket, a pacifier, or a special toy.

- Soothe them by rocking, holding or singing,

- Spend time in face-to-face interactions, lots of baby talk and giggles. Babies love to see your face and hear their caregiver´s voice.

- Follow their lead. If the child wants to be picked up, do so.

- Ask questions that will help them tell you their feelings. For example, “You look scared. Would you like me to hold you?” Or, “You look sad. What would help you feel better?”

- Find people you trust to babysit so you can take care of yourself.

Source: http://mommybites.com/col2/nanny/how-babies-and-toddlers-are-impacted-by-exposure-to-violence-and-how-to-help-them/

Led by Dr Karen Ersche, the Cambridge researchers aimed to identify risk factors that make a person vulnerable to developing drug dependence. They examined 50 adults with cocaine dependence together with their biological brothers and sisters who have never abused drugs. All participants underwent extensive assessments of their personalities, including their ways of feeling and thinking. The researchers were also interested in negative experiences that participants may have had during childhood (to include physical, emotional or sexual abuse).

Dr Ersche, of the Behavioural and Clinical Neuroscience Institute (BCNI) at the University of Cambridge, said: “It has long been known that abusive experiences during childhood have long-lasting effects on behaviour in adulthood and this was confirmed by our results. The siblings had more troubled childhoods compared to healthy peers in the community, and we also found a direct relationship between traumatic childhoods and their personalities.”

She added: “This relationship is interesting because impulsive personality traits are known to increase the risk of becoming addicted to drugs but it is not an excuse for drug-taking.”

The childhoods of the brothers and sisters of the cocaine-dependent individuals were also traumatic, and they also exhibited higher-than-normal levels of impulsive and compulsive behaviours, but they did not abuse drugs.

The researchers next intend to explore how the siblings who do not abuse drugs managed to deal with their traumatic childhoods and their highly impulsive and compulsive personalities. The scientists want to understand what makes the siblings resilient against addiction. A better understanding of what protected the brothers and sisters from drug abuse may provide vital clues for developing more effective therapeutic interventions for those trying to beat their addiction.

Dr Ersche added: “Not all individuals with these personality traits would have had a traumatic upbringing. Nor does everyone with these traits develop an addiction. However, our findings show that some people are particularly at risk and their upbringing may have contributed to it.”

The study was funded by the Medical Research Council and conducted within the Behavioural and Clinical Neuroscience Institute at the University of Cambridge, which is co-funded by the MRC and the Wellcome Trust.

Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120831083402.htm

Further, the theory holds, finding ways to reduce stress in the home and school environment could improve children’s well being and allow them to be more successful academically.

High levels of stress hormones influence the developing circuitry of children’s brains, inhibiting such higher cognitive functions such as planning, impulse and emotional control, and attention. Known collectively as executive functions, these mental abilities are important for academic success.

Clancy Blair, Ph.D., of New York University, New York City concludes that this altered stress response and its effect on executive function helps to explain one way in which poverty affects children’s development of school readiness skills and later classroom performance.

Although poverty is considered a major source of stress, the findings also suggest that other sources of stress may affect children in all income groups — for example, from divorce, harsh parenting, or struggles with a learning disability.

“The conclusion from this body of work is that working to reduce inappropriate environmental stresses facing young children would not only improve their overall well being, but also improve their ability to learn in school,” said James A. Griffin, Ph.D., of the Child Development and Behavior Branch at the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD).

The body of research was described in the September/October issue of Scientific American Mind, in an article by Dr. Blair.

During the course of their research, Dr. Blair and his colleagues measured children’s levels of cortisol, a hormone the body releases in response to stress. With minor stress, a modest increase followed by a decrease in cortisol over time is associated with improved performance on complex tasks (graphic at http://www.nichd.nih.gov/news/releases/stress_learning_graphic.cfm.)

However, Dr. Blair explained, at high levels of stress, particularly over a long period of time, cortisol can be sustained at high or low levels or even become blunted, actually decreasing in response to challenges.

In one study, Dr. Blair and colleague Rachel Peters Razza, Ph.D., tested 170 4-year-old children who were attending Head Start — the preschool program for children in poverty. The researchers analyzed levels of cortisol in the children’s saliva before, during and after the testing, as a measure of the stress the children experienced when participating in the tests. The researchers also assessed children’s executive function, asking children to tap a peg twice, after the researchers tapped it once, and vice versa, and to identify different ways in which pictures of items were similar in terms of shape, color, and size.

In this study, the researchers found that children exhibiting the typical cortisol response pattern had higher levels of executive function. Teachers also rated these children as being high in self-control in the classroom. In contrast, children exhibiting a flat low or high response or a blunted response had low levels of executive function and were rated by teachers as having poor self-regulation.

Cortisol levels in saliva tend to follow one of four patterns in people’s response to stress. Research indicates that emotional regulation, self-control and academic performance are tied to the typical pattern, in which cortisol rises in response to stress and falls again when the stressor is gone. Consistently high levels of cortisol as well as blunted responses to stress are linked with poor self-control and academic difficulty.

The researchers then reassessed the children in kindergarten. Those who had high executive function scores in the original study tended to have the highest math scores. Conversely, the children with high cortisol levels and low executive function were likely to have difficulty with math, reading, and writing.

The researchers next sought to identify which aspects of poverty might be particularly stressful for children. Dr. Blair and his colleagues focused on parenting style. In the article, he cited earlier research showing that parents living in poverty are more likely than are other parents to be concerned with eliciting obedience from their children by disciplining them.

“Although parents in poverty can and do provide sensitive care, they are less likely to do so, given the realities of their situation and, potentially, their own high stress levels,” Dr. Blair said.

For about seven years, the researchers have been observing more than 1,200 children and their families, as part of the Family Life Project, an NICHD-funded study of the effects of growing up in rural poverty. Most of the children are from poor rural communities in Appalachia and the Deep South. In a study published about their observations, the researchers analyzed video recordings of mothers interacting with their children during play sessions. Children whose mothers engaged in scaffolding — creating opportunities to accomplish small tasks, like stacking blocks — had lower cortisol levels and were more attentive. In contrast, the children of mothers who were more authoritative — completing the task for their children, or restricting the children’s activity — had higher cortisol levels, suggesting that the children had higher stress levels.

This association between parenting style and cortisol level was present when the children were 7 months old, and again when they were 15 months old.

In a subsequent study, the researchers sought to ascertain the influence of poverty on children’s executive functioning. The researchers found that the more impoverished the family, the less likely the parents were to engage in the scaffolding approach. The children of these parents were more likely to have elevated cortisol levels in response to stress. And the children with high cortisol levels were more likely to have poor executive function.

“Research indicates that stress from a variety of sources — including crowded and chaotic home and classroom environments, for example, or problems with family or peers — impedes learning,” Dr. Blair said. “The potential good news is knowing that stress is a malevolent force means that finding ways to thwart it could boost children’s learning capacity.”

The researchers are now testing a new program that teaches parents how to engage in scaffolding behavior — to provide opportunities for their children to learn while providing supportive and loving care. The program is also testing a new curriculum that gives preschoolers and kindergarteners more control over their learning activities. In a year, the researchers will compare the children’s cortisol levels and executive functioning.

“Although this work is in its early stages, we are encouraged by the possibility that informed changes to environments can boost children’s self-control and academic competence, giving many of our youth a far greater chance of succeeding in life,” Dr. Blair wrote.

About the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD): The NICHD sponsors research on development, before and after birth; maternal, child, and family health; reproductive biology and population issues; and medical rehabilitation. For more information, visit the Institute’s website at http://www.nichd.nih.gov/.

About the National Institutes of Health (NIH): NIH, the nation’s medical research agency, includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIH is the primary federal agency conducting and supporting basic, clinical, and translational medical research, and is investigating the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit www.nih.gov.

Source: http://www.nih.gov/news/health/aug2012/nichd-28.htm

Canadian researchers estimated between two and seven percent of those mental disorders might be due to punishments inflicted in childhood, not including more severe forms of abuse and maltreatment.

“We know that maltreatment is traumatic, but I think the point here is that even harmful parenting behaviors that may not be classified as maltreatment per se have this association with (mental) disorders,” said Lisa Berlin, who studies parenting and child maltreatment at the University of Maryland School of Social Work in Baltimore.

The finding “adds to our existing worries about the use of physical punishment, and speaks to the value of non-physical discipline,” Berlin, who wasn’t involved in the new study, told Reuters Health. “There just seems to be one study after another… that says we can and should find different ways to discipline our kids.”

Up to half of all children may be spanked as punishment, according to researchers led by Tracie Afifi at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg – but they wanted to look at harsher punishments, such as shoving and hitting.

The study team used data collected by United States Census interviewers in 2004 and 2005 in surveys of close to 35,000 adults across the country.

The interviewers asked participants about how often they were physically punished as children, other problems their families had – such as parents who had drug problems or went to jail – and about their own symptoms of mental disorders, current or past.

Afifi and her colleagues didn’t include anyone who reported being physically, sexually or emotionally abused by family members to zone in on the effect of punishment that didn’t go so far as to constitute maltreatment.

They found about six percent of interview subjects had been punished beyond spanking “sometimes,” “fairly often” or “very often.”

And those people with a history of harsh physical punishment were more likely to have a range of mood and personality disorders or to abuse drugs and alcohol.

For example, 20 percent of people who remembered being physically punished had been depressed, and 43 percent had abused alcohol at some point. That compared to 16 percent of people who weren’t hit or slapped who had been depressed, and 30 percent who drank too much.

Those links held up after the researchers took into account family problems – including which participants’ parents had been treated for mental illness themselves – and interviewees’ race, income and level of education.

“People believe that as long as you don’t cross that line into child maltreatment, and the physical punishment is controlled and doesn’t cross the line into abuse, it won’t have any negative long-term consequences for the child,” Afifi told Reuters Health.

“The way we see it is along a continuum of having no violence to severe violence.”

She and her colleagues write in the journal Pediatrics that physical punishment may lead to chronic stress in kids, which could then increase their chance of developing depression or anxiety, for example, later on.

Michele Knox, a psychiatrist who studies family and youth violence at the University of Toledo College of Medicine, agreed that’s a likely explanation.

“Physical punishment is a chronic and sometimes repeated stressor for young people, and we know that chronic and repeated stressors have a negative impact on the brain,” Knox, who wasn’t part of the research team, told Reuters Health.

But the findings can’t prove the punishments, themselves, caused kids to develop mood and personality disorders.

Knox pointed out the interviewees might not have known if their parents had been treated for mental illness – and many people with a mental condition never get treated anyway – so those cases wouldn’t be accounted for in the data. Mental illnesses like depression and anxiety are known to be at least partially genetic.

Still, Knox said, “Spanking and other forms of corporal punishment have a huge variety of negative outcomes, and almost no positive outcomes.” Those negative outcomes include aggressive behavior and delinquency in kids, she added.

She said parents can make an agreement even before their child is born to never use physical punishment, and instead rely on methods like “time out” and using positive reinforcement to reward good behavior.

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/02/us-hitting-slapping-mentaldisord-idUSBRE8610N020120702

Or perhaps none of us are, because it’s always the other parent who hovers too much, never ourselves.

But by the standards of our grandparents, we are all smothering our kids. We have fewer children on average, but we spend much more time and money on the ones we have. And we’re more likely than our grandparents to move away from extended family and to land in cities and inner suburbs. In these noisy, complex, atomized environments, parents tend to keep kids physically close.

This brand of parenting represents a huge personal investment during a time when the public investment in children is shrinking, as measured by budget cuts to education, health programs and amenities like parks and playgrounds. To put it bluntly, we as parents are competing more fiercely for fewer resources.

As a result, today’s moms and dads feel they have little margin for error. It starts early, when urban parents struggle to navigate complicated and competitive private and public school admissions, fighting to avoid under-resourced schools. It doesn’t end there: when I was a teen, advanced placement student, SAT prep courses were optional; that’s no longer the case. Health care is much more expensive than it was for earlier generations, and so is housing. Stress is epidemic among parents, which contributes to record levels of mental illnesses like depression and anxiety — as well as physical ones like heart disease and adult-onset diabetes.

But it’s not just the health of adults that’s harmed. Our stress affects our kids as well. In fact, our ability to manage our own stress is the second most reliable predictor of our children’s wellbeing — with the first being love and affection. When the Families and Work Institute surveyed children of working parents, the kids didn’t say they wanted more time with their parents. What they really wanted was for their parents to be less stressed.

Science is on the side of the kids.

There is quite a lot of evidence saying that parents need to give them more space to play and slack off. Following the “Tiger Mom” Amy Chua’s all-work-all-the-time prescriptions may ultimately get your kids into Harvard — but it could also inflict crippling emotional and social wounds. Robert Sapolsky of Stanford summarizes decades of studying stress in nonhuman primates this way: “What’s clear by now is if you have a choice between being a high-ranking baboon or a socially affiliated one, the latter is definitely the one that is going to lead to a healthier, longer life.”

What are the solutions? On a societal level, we need to increase the public investment in kids. That includes making sure every kid gets the health care and education he or she needs — and thank you, Justice Roberts, for saving Obamacare. This will help parents take it down a notch or two — countries with universal health care tend to be less stressed, happier places. Do I sound like a “socialist”? I don’t care. The United States needs to stop making excuses for neglecting the health and wellbeing of families, from every social class.

On a personal level, we should carve out time for our spouses, our social lives and ourselves — which will, as a byproduct, give our kids more time to themselves and with their friends. In short, we should emulate Sapolsky’s socially affiliated baboons.

But there’s something else research says we can do to reduce stress: feel some compassion and forgiveness for each other. Attacking the dreaded helicopter parent might feel good in the moment — but it does nothing to address the social conditions that have turned 21st-century parenthood into a rat race. Parents, and Americans in general, should band together, not turn on each other.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/07/14/when-parents-hover-and-kids-dont-grow-up/success-in-parenting-means-balanced-relationships?scp=2&sq=mental&st=Search

Kelly Schraf spots her through the curtain, and tiptoes into her room.

Schraf is a child life specialist, a type of health care provider whose job is to help sick children and their families navigate difficult medical situations emotionally and psychologically while in the hospital. They do it largely through play—the basis of how a child learns and grows.

Schraf introduces herself to Yoselyn and her mother, and explains to them why she’s there: “It’s my job at the hospital to make it easier for you to be here and make it more fun.” At the word “fun,” Yoselyn begins to look a little more relaxed.

One of the scariest parts of surgery for a child is the anesthesia mask, so Schraf brings Yoselyn the mask in advance, along with some sparkly stickers for decoration.

“The doctor is going to put sleepy air through this hole, and sometimes the sleepy air is stinky. Another little girl told me it smells like dirty socks,” Schraf explains. “So what I have are special smells to put inside to make it smell good. I have bubblegum, strawberry and cotton candy.”

Yoselyn picks bubblegum and applies a generous layer of it to her mask.  By the end of their visit, she’s grinning, and so is Schraf.

Schraf is straight out of college, followed by a mandatory 480-hour child life internship. She says she’s already found her perfect job. Her favorite part, she explains, “is knowing that I made a difference in a child or a family’s life.  Seeing them so stressed because they’ve gone through so much that a child shouldn’t have to experience, and knowing that I can work with the hospital team and make their stay better.”

Pediatric ear, nose and throat surgeon Rahul Shah says the doctors in the outpatient surgery unit are as grateful for child life specialists like Schraf as the patients are. “It’s really profound when you hear some of the most old school physicians or surgeons asking for something you would consider warm and fuzzy,” he says. But those doctors insist that they need child life specialists, largely because they make the unit more productive.

When the child life specialists aren’t available, Shah explains, “It’s hard. You’re pulling [children] sometimes away from the parents. The parents are upset. The child is upset. It heightens their anxiety. You bring them back to the operating room, and it’s a lot harder to put them back to sleep. It’s a lot harder to give them an IV.”

Even if each visit saves only four minutes of the surgical team’s time, he says, it can allow that team to accomplish an extra surgery each day.

There are about 4,000 child life specialists in the country. Most of them work in the acute units with the very sickest children. Liz Anderson, who, like Schraf, is bubbly, blond and 24, works in the oncology unit, where children often spend months at a time.

“I get to know them very, very well,” Anderson says.

She’s been working with nine-year-old Owen O’Hara for several weeks. He sits in his pajamas in an isolation room, a feeding tube in his nose. It’s been less than a week since his bone marrow transplant, which his doctors hope will cure his leukemia; his immune system still too vulnerable to be in the unit’s playroom with the other kids. So yesterday, Anderson brought him a brand new set of Legos to play with.

“We’re building an alien spaceship,” Owen explains, pointing out the cockpit and several green plastic men with tentacles.

Owen’s mom Jackie O’Hara says child life specialists have made a huge difference in helping Owen understand what’s happening to him, often explaining difficult medical concepts in child-friendly words. “Medical terminology is a different language altogether and it’s scary,” O’Hara explains. “They’re able to take the scariness out of it.”

But like all things in health care, child life programs come at a price. The 16 child life specialists at Children’s National Medical Center cost about $800,000 a year, which gets added to the hospital’s overhead, like electricity or maintenance, which gets passed on to patients and insurers.

Mark Wietecha, president and CEO of the Children’s Hospital Association, says the cost is “greatly worth it.” Child life specialists can minimize the trauma caused by a hospital stay – and that can pay dividends far into the future for a sick child, he said.

“It’s really almost an insignificant amount of money on our national expenditure to let the sickest kids have some opportunity to a life and be re-assimilated,” Wietecha said.

O’Hara couldn’t agree more. The child life program, she says, is “like having a little bit of a normal life in the middle of something that’s not normal.”

Source: http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/Stories/2012/July/23/hospital-child-life-specialists.aspx

Judith C. Baer, an associate professor in the School of Social Work, and her team, in the study, “Is it Generalized Anxiety Disorder or Poverty? An Examination of Poor Mothers and Their Children,” published online in Child and Adolescent Social Work, argue that although high levels of stress over long periods can lead to psychological problems, there is no evidence that generalized anxiety disorder in poor mothers is because of an “internal malfunction.”

The findings confirm earlier studies that the poorest mothers have the greater odds of being classified as having generalized anxiety disorder. But Baer and her team wrote, .” ..there is no evidence for a malfunction of some internal mechanism. Rather, “there is a physical need in the real world that is unmet and produces anxiety.”

“The distinction is important because there are different ways to treat the problem,” Baer said. “While supportive therapy and parent skills-training are often helpful, sometimes the most appropriate intervention is financial aid and concrete services.”

Rutgers researchers argue that changing and broadening definitions for GAD have caused, in some cases, mental health experts to categorize the reactions of these mothers to the extreme conditions they face daily as symptoms of the anxiety disorder.

Baer’s team has been exploring relationships between poor mothers and their children and whether links between poverty and maternal anxiety might play a part in their offspring developing anxiety of their own.

The latest research by Baer and colleagues MiSung Kim, who completed her doctorate in May, and Bonnie Wilkenfeld, a doctoral candidate, analyzed data from the ongoing Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study with 4,898 participants conducted at Princeton University, consisting of surveys and home observations when children were 3-years-old. It confirmed that the poorest mothers had greater odds of being classified as having GAD but that the path from anxiety to parenting stress was not supported.

“This suggests that mothers can be poor and anxious, but still provide positive parenting for their children,” Baer said.

Currently, psychiatric diagnoses are based on the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), which uses symptom-based criteria to determine disorders. Recent versions do not consider context, such as poverty conditions, in determining diagnoses, Baer said.

“Our findings suggest that anxiety in poor mothers is usually not a psychiatric problem but a reaction to severe environmental deficits,” she continued. “Thus, assessment should include careful attention to contextual factors and environmental deficits as playing a role in the presentation of symptoms. Labeling an individual with a diagnosis, especially if it is inaccurate, has a serious social stigma.”

Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/07/120720083312.htm