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More than 36 percent of teenage girls in America are depressed or have suffered a recent major depressive episode, according to a study published in Translational Psychiatry. For boys, the rate is 13.6 percent. What are we doing to the kids? It isn't just one study. Research throughout the last several decades has shown a consistent pattern of rising anxiety, depression, suicide and suicide attempts among American adolescents. A 2001 paper published by the Bureau of Economic Analysis found that the suicide rate tripled between 1950 and 1990. The rise in depression and other psychological suffering cannot be written off...

Make way for Generation Z. Thirteen-year-old Hallie Turner of Raleigh, North Carolina, is filing a lawsuit against her home state, Al Jazeera reported Friday. The suit demands the state adhere to 4% annual deductions in carbon dioxide emissions. "I was [in] about third or fourth grade when the issue of climate change just came up at a dinner table conversation, and I had never really heard about it and I wanted to find out more about it," Turner told a local news reporter in a video posted Friday to Twitter. "I read Al Gore's book, An Inconvenient Truth, and that...

<p>There is a famous if apocryphal tale of a Fleet Street theater critic covering the first night of a new play in the West End of London. At the end of the evening, he went to a public telephone and dictated his review. The following morning, a furious editor called him and demanded to know why he had neglected to mention that, midway through the third act, the theater had caught fire and burned to the ground. The critic sniffily replied that it was not his business to report fires, but that, if the editor had read more carefully, he would have observed that the review included a passage noting discreetly that the critic had been unable to remain for the final scenes.</p>

  In Loco Parentis, or Pimp Students Out? David C. Stolinsky Oct. 16, 2011 UCLA officials announce that they are considering coed dorm rooms.− News item In my day, college dormitories were unisex. People of the opposite sex were not allowed above the first floor. When I took out a girl, which is what we called teenage females then, I checked in at the desk, and they phoned her to come down. In those days, we became legal adults at 21, not 18. We were called adolescents, meaning people who were in the process of becoming adults − just...

... Judging from The New York Times children’s best-seller list and librarian-approved selections like the annual “Best Books for Young Adults,” the bad parent is now enjoying something of a heyday. It would be hard to come up with an exact figure from the thousands of Y.A. novels published every year, but what’s striking is that some of the most sharply written and critically praised works reliably feature a mopey, inept, distracted or ready-for-rehab parent, suggesting that this has become a particularly resonant figure. ... Sometimes the parents are very, very busy, and sometimes they’ve simply checked out. The husband...

Doesn’t remind me of this…

Olivia Wilde is a princess in real life, and now she's a princess in the new movie "Year One." But her real-life title is waaaaay better than her movie one.

Megan Fox has revealed she’s bisexual. The actress — who is currently dating former Beverly Hills, 90210 actor Brian Austin Green — says she’d happily have a relationship with a member of the same sex, but insists she would never consider dating another bisexual female because she wouldn’t want a male’s “dirty” leftovers. “I have no question in my mind about being bisexual,” the 22-year-old Transformers star tells Esquire magazine. “But I’m also a hypocrite: I would never date a girl who was bisexual, because that means they also sleep with men, and men are so dirty that I’d never...

An estimated 200 or more Livingston County students could face criminal charges for possessing a cell phone picture of a naked Pinckney High School student — a photo the girl took herself and shared with friends who forwarded it to others, police say. The Livingston County Sheriff's Department has confiscated a dozen phones containing the photograph and is asking any students who have the photo to turn in their cellular phones at the school or Sheriff's Department. Sheriff Bob Bezotte said the 14-year-old girl indicated that she "was clowning around" when she took the picture of herself during the summer...

This is definitely a vanity post. My first, but it has been bothering me for several days and I have toget it off my chest. It does have serious social implications, however, and I hope not uninteresting to Freepers. Last Saturday night, my brother (46) and I (43) decided to go to a movie, King Fu Panda. Being an animated feature, we were wary of screaming kids so we specifically chose a showtime after 10PM. Four guys came in at the last minute and sat four seats away, with empty seats between us. Five minutes into the movie, the guy...

...Research shows that teenagers’ body clocks are set to a schedule that is different from that of younger children or adults. This prevents adolescents from dropping off until around 11 p.m., when they produce the sleep-inducing hormone melatonin, and waking up much before 8 a.m. when their bodies stop producing melatonin. The result is that the first class of the morning is often a waste, with as many as 28 percent of students falling asleep, according to a National Sleep Foundation poll. Some are so sleepy they don’t even show up, contributing to failure and dropout rates. Many of our...

I have a friend, a single mom, who has a 16-year-old son who has been seduced by a group of peers into smoking marijuana. They live in an upper-middle-class town in New Jersey, a suburb of Philadelphia. The kid says that 90% of his classmates smoke dope. The mom has grounded him, taken away his computer, will not allow him to get his driving permit, tried to reason with him about legal and health consequences, and things like that. But he seems impervious to reason and says he won't stop the behavior.

We're all big babies Last Updated: 12:01am BST 22/10/2006 How to be an adult Bombarded by petty rules, bossy advice and celebrity tittle-tattle, we have forgotton how to be adults. It's time we grew up, says Michael Bywater I imagine myself to be a grown-up, as, presumably, do you. You think that because you negotiated puberty and developed secondary sexual characteristics, and got qualifications and opened a bank account and subjected yourself to the scrutiny of anti-terrorism laws and anti-money-laundering laws and learned to drive and got a job and perhaps a spouse and maybe children, and quite possibly even pay...

Disaffection over spending and immigration have caused conservatives to take flight from President Bush and the Republican Congress at a rapid pace in recent weeks, sending Bush's approval ratings to record lows and presenting a new threat to the GOP's 12-year reign on Capitol Hill, according to White House officials, lawmakers and new polling data. Bush and Congress have suffered a decline in support from almost every part of the conservative coalition over the past year, a trend that has accelerated with alarming implications for Bush's governing strategy. The Gallup polling organization recorded a 13-percentage-point drop in Republican support for...

Are you a teen? Do you often feel sad or guilty for no reason? Do you feel worthless? Have you lost your confidence? If so, you might be suffering from teen depression. About 5 percent of children and adolescents in the United States suffer from depression at some time. Signs of depression might include: suicidal thoughts or even attempts at suicide. Other signs include decreased interest in activities, persistent boredom, social isolation, low self esteem, and extreme sensitivity to rejection or failure. If you have noticed these signs, it is time to seek help. Depression is not an illness on...

Parents feel a greater threat to their adolescent child's values from the media than from peers, and are therefore more controlling in response to these influences than to peer influences, according to a new Brigham Young University study. The study, "'Peers I Can Monitor, It's Media That Really Worries Me!' Parental Cognitions as Predictors of Proactive Parental Strategy Choice," published in the January issue of "The Journal of Adolescent Research," looks at how parents react to the conflicting values of media and peer influences. According to the research, during the transition to adolescents, youth often use media as a tool...

Zinc may be good for teenagers' brains, according to a paper presented last week at a meeting of the American Society of Nutritional Sciences. In a study led by James Penland of the Agricultural Research Service of the Department of Agriculture, 209 seventh-graders were randomly assigned to one of three groups. The first group received 4 ounces of fruit juice a day containing 20 milligrams of zinc, the second drank the same juice with 10 milligrams of zinc, and the third drank the juice alone with no zinc added. At the beginning and end of the 12-week study, students were...

After concluding that the use of antidepressants could increase thoughts of suicide among children and adolescents, the Food and Drug Administration said today that it was ordering manufacturers of all such drugs to post "black box" warnings on their products. A black box message is the most serious warning placed in the labeling of prescription medication, the F.D.A. said today. While the new labeling will not prohibit the use of antidepressants in children and adolescents, it warns of the risk of suicide and encourages doctors to balance that risk with the clinical needs of the patient. The warnings did not...

Adolescents who watch large amounts of television containing sexual content are twice as likely to begin engaging in sexual intercourse in the following year as their peers who watch little such TV, according to a RAND Corporation study issued today.In addition, the study found that youths who watch large amounts of TV with sexual content are more likely to initiate sexual activities other than intercourse, such as “making out” and oral sex. These adolescents behaved sexually like youths who were 9 to 17 months older, but watched only average amounts of TV with sexual content, according to the study published...

25 Mar 2004 - YOUTH STATEMENT YOUTH STATEMENT at Cairo and Beyond: Reproductive Rights and culture, 9 March 2004 NOTE: this statement was developed before the outcome document/action points of the conference were finalized. We would like to thank UNFPA and the Dutch Ministry for Development Cooperation for inviting us, younger people. It was a great experience and we are happy to share our vision with you. The young people present at the Reproductive Rights and Culture Conference have come together to discuss the developments of the conference and we would like to share our thoughts and vision with you...