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Conditions and Treatments

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channelnewsasia.com

Should youths need parental consent to seek mental health support?

Youths, parents and mental health practitioners weigh the benefits and risks of parental involvement, as Singapore considers how consent rules can better support young people seeking mental health care. SINGAPORE: For 17-year-old Alice (not her real name), seeking mental health support meant having to involve the very people who had dismissed her struggles. Alice, who has been dealing with an eating disorder and anxiety for years, was on the verge of tears when she realised she needed her parents' consent to attend a mental health programme for youths this year. Her parents downplayed her difficulties, telling her to “just be happy”, she said. "They are 'old school', so they feel anything related to mental health is just fake. (They think) 'It's all in your mindset, you're just faking it for attention'," she said. Alice’s experience highlights a wider concern among youths and mental…

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Living With It

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dailymail.com

ANNABEL FENWICK ELLIOTT: Is anyone actually enjoying half term? Or am I alone in counting down the days until it's over? I'll be honest: Having kids is boring

By ANNABEL FENWICK ELLIOTT, COLUMNIST Is anyone actually enjoying half term? Or am I alone in counting down the days until it’s over? This is a dichotomy I’ve been wrangling with for years: loving my children so much I’d willingly walk a barbed-wire tightrope barefoot over a pit of crocodiles to save them from harm, and at the same time dreading extended periods of one-on-one time with them. Weekends used to be something to look forward to before I became a mother. Now, with a ten-month-old girl and a four-year-old boy who’s usually at nursery, I fear those two days. They no longer fly by in a flash but seem punishingly long. Half term is even worse. And don’t get me started on the summer holidays. There are certain things I truly enjoy doing with my son Jasper: baking cakes, putting together puzzles, reading books, watching movies and, best of all, hugging him and covering him in…

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Research and Drugs

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cbsnews.com

From landlines to magazines, how families are finding alternatives to smartphones for kids

October 28, 2026 / 6:40 PM EDT / CBS Pittsburgh Many parents say they don't want to buy their child a smartphone, but they do want some of what a smartphone offers. Now a new industry has been created helping families in this scenario with alternatives to smartphones. Nearly half of teenagers in the U.S. ages 13 to 17 say they are online almost constantly. So it may be no surprise that about four in 10 parents and teenagers say they regularly argue about phone use, according to Pew Research. "We know the tech companies like Meta and Snapchat, TikTok, etc., they design their platforms to be as addictive as possible because they want to make sure that kids are on them all the time," says Kristen Beddard, co-lead of PA Unplugged. Two of the biggest companies offering alternative, limited-feature phones are Bark and Pinwheel. Both have GPS tracking and content monitoring and filtering.…

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Providers and Facilities

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irishtimes.com

‘Quasi-father figure’ found guilty of abusing orphaned children more than 50 years ago

A 92-year-old man has been found guilty of eight counts of indecent assault more than 50 years ago against two orphaned children to whom he was a “quasi-father figure”. A jury at Ennis Circuit Court on Wednesday returned unanimous guilty verdicts on the eight counts of indecent assault, which were alleged to have happened on dates between July 1st, 1973 and January 31st, 1975. The sisters were aged between eight and 10 years during that time, with six counts relating to the older sister and two to the younger. Their parents had died by the time they were aged five and four and they eventually came into the care of the accused and his wife in the early 1970s. Prosecution barrister Sarah Jane Comerford told the trial the man was a “quasi-father figure” to the vulnerable girls at the time he “perpetrated these offences” against them. The man previously paid €30,000 to each woman, and…

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