School is out and the long summer stretches ahead. It should be a time for outdoor fun, playing with friends, baseball games, reading, craft projects and lemonade stands; but many children spend their summers glued to the computer, playing games on the Internet for hours on end. Gaming, which seems to be particularly appealing to […]
Can Insomnia Be Inherited?
A new study presented at Sleep 2009, the 23rd Annual Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Studies, suggests that insomnia may be inheritable. The study of 1,436 eight- to 16-year-old twins found that the same genes that impact depression and anxiety affect adolescent insomnia. Study results are consistent with the results of similar studies connecting insomnia […]
Fidgeting Helps ADHD Students Succeed
Children seem to be in constant motion. Parents are forever admonishing their children to sit still. But for children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) the constant fidgeting isn’t in their parents’ imagination. Even when other children are able to remain focused and quiet, children with ADHD are compelled to fidget and twitch and squirm. Parents […]
Parents’ Anxiety Can Affect Children
When parents suffer emotional problems, those problems can affect their children. Children who have a parent suffering from an anxiety disorder are also likely to exhibit anxiety. In a new study, researchers at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center have found that family counseling has the ability to prevent anxiety disorders in the children of parents with anxiety […]
Two Cookies with Love
My supervisor in residency training gave me a saying that I thought was very descriptive. When you’re a child, if you get two cookies with love, two cookies will always be enough. If you get two cookies without love, no amount of cookies will ever be enough (paraphrased). Of course, the cookies are metaphorical for […]
Routine Depression Screening Advised for Teens
With more than two million U.S. teens affected by depression, an influential medical panel is urging physicians to routinely screen their teen patients for depression. According to the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, a government-appointed blue-ribbon group of medical experts that sets health guidelines for doctors on a wide range of health issues, most depressed […]