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Perioperative anxiety is a common and distressing aspect of anaesthesia for many children, resulting in management challenges at the time of anaesthesia and potential physical and psychological adverse outcomes. We conducted this qualitative phenomenological study to explore the perspectives of children, parents and staff on perioperative anxiety in our institution. Planned recruitment was 20 each of children who had undergone elective anaesthesia, their parents and staff.
There is a paucity of longitudinal research comparing early-life mental health in rural and metropolitan communities. Living in rural areas is associated with limited access to specialist care, as well as additional stresses such as natural disasters. To address health disparities for rural communities it is critical to understand variance in predictors and outcomes for child mental health.
Loneliness, a negative emotion stemming from the perception of unmet social needs, is a major public health concern. Current interventions often target social domains but produce small effects and are not as effective as established emotion regulation (ER)-based interventions for general psychological distress (i.e., depression/anxiety).
Social anxiety, peer victimisation, and social support are key issues during mid-childhood that provide important influence in the later adolescent years. While extensive research has evaluated these constructs in isolation and during adolescence, almost no longitudinal studies have evaluated relationships between them during mid-childhood.
Parental severe mental illnesses (SMIs), including schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and major depressive disorder (MDD), can impact children's well-being, yet existing meta-analyses are limited in scope and methodology and do not comprehensively assess cognitive and academic performance in offspring across SMIs.
Climate change is both an environmental crisis and a growing source of psychological distress for young people, calling for responses that nurture emotional resilience and collective engagement. The emerging response to climate distress has mainly focused on formal psychological and individual-level interventions.
Cognitive theories contend that attentional bias to negative information contributes to elevated trait anxiety. However, research in this area has been hindered by the lack of a standardized assessment task that demonstrates the required qualities, including strong internal consistency and ecological validity. The present study aimed to develop and validate the Talking Heads Attentional Bias Assessment Task, an easy-to-implement measure that overcomes the limitations of previous attentional bias assessment tasks.
According to the Young Minds Matter study, mental health disorders such as anxiety and depression are experienced by approximately one in seven or 560,000 young people in Australia. These disorders can often have a significant impact on children’s learning and development and on family life.
Early intervention offers the potential to mitigate adult mental illness; however, trials spanning decades present significant challenges, necessitating predictive early markers useable in trial settings. We hypothesised that parent evaluation using the child behaviour checklist (CBCL) total problem score at age two years predicted adult depressive and anxious symptoms and explored other potential parent ratings.
Psychological prevention programmes delivered in schools may reduce symptoms of depression. However, high-quality, large-scale trials are lacking.