Blog

Involving the Child in Health Care Decisions – It is Time for the Customary Implementation of a Collaborative Decision-Making Process

Research suggests, that in medical practice children have a minimal role in major treatment decisions regarding their health care. In particular, an investigation conducted by Coyne (2008) found that the ‘views of children are rarely sought nor acknowledged’. This conflicts with the well-established United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, that states children… Read more »

Early Intervention and Children’s Food Policy: Challenging the Emphasis on ‘Choice’

Attention to children’s brain development in the early years has been at the centre of English social policy since the late 1990s, and is linked to recent efforts to ‘improve people’s life chances’.  Children’s food policy has been influenced by the language used in these debates. The belief that habits learnt in the early years… Read more »

From Romania with Neuromania

The Nobel Prize winners David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel demonstrated that kittens deprived of sensory input in one eye at birth remained permanently blind in that eye.  The story of a blind kitten certainly tugs at the heart strings, but Hubel and Weisel, did not only demonstrate the irreversibility of the damage in the shut… Read more »

Better safe than sorry? The case of drinking alcohol during pregnancy

Picture perfect pregnancy Since the days when a pregnant Demi Moore posed proudly on the front cover of Vanity Fair, the media has bombarded us with images of what pregnancy should look like. Magazine covers display images of glowing women engaged in wholesome activities: drinking kale smoothies, attending yoga classes, or enjoying breezy countryside walks.… Read more »

How do services engage young people in treatment for first episode psychosis?

Psychosis is a medical condition that is most commonly characterised by visual hallucinations and voices, and/or by the presence of grandiose, persecutory or self-blaming delusions. A psychotic episode can be a terrifying and often traumatic experience for young people. This is especially true for those that have previously had limited exposure to or awareness of… Read more »

Generation Z: “We are Young, Not Stupid”

Last year Giacomo Mazzariol, a 20-year-old Italian writer, was presenting his book in schools all over Italy, when he had the idea to develop a blog that could give “generation Z” (people born between 1995 and 2010) a space to have their voices heard. Indeed, although the school teachers he met described their students as… Read more »