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a1000shadesofhurt

a1000shadesofhurt

Tag Archives: Children

Childless at 52: How sweet it would be to be called Dad

13 Saturday Aug 2016

Posted by a1000shadesofhurt in Uncategorized

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childless, Children, disconnection, family, Grief, loss, men, regret, women

Childless at 52: How sweet it would be to be called Dad

A few years ago, I was visiting a friend who has two daughters, a newborn and a two-year-old. Reflecting on his experience of being a father he said that he felt he loved them so much he could “take a bullet for them”. I wept all the way home. If only I could feel that intensely. And here I am, a man who would love to have a child, wondering how I let this happen.

Some people surmise, “It’s different for men. You don’t have a biological clock.” And that’s pretty much the end of the discussion. As a 52-year-old man, can I know something of the anguish of women who long to have a child? The biological clock is, after all, a reality for women – I could theoretically still have a child if I were 70.

The problem is that “it’s different for men” translates easily into “it’s easier for men” and it’s one small step more to “you can’t understand what it’s like for us!” And from this the debate about not having a child is sequestered firmly into the experience of women: women grieve for the children they longed for and men don’t. Maybe that’s true – I can’t claim to be surrounded by men who talk about this. I think that by and large we don’t.

I am not sure what I am allowed to feel and how that differs from what I actually feel. Do men feel grief over being childless differently from women? If so, how? Does it matter?

Daily encounters remind me of what I don’t have. Just this morning, returning from the local shop, I saw my neighbour standing outside the door of our mansion block. Our building is set back off the road and has a communal garden bordered by hedges. There she stood with her two tiny ones, a little boy and girl gazing curiously at the pearled intricacies of a spider’s web spun across the lower branches of our hedge. I say good morning to their mother and then to them. I crouch down to join their wonder, and agree with their mother that probably the mummy spider was having a rest after her hard work and we should not disturb her. I watch their faces, their cheeks the lustre of rose petals, full of wonder at the spectacle. Adorable.

Shopping isn’t easy either. Politely standing aside for the harassed family of four as they pass, trying to manage the strollers, the shopping and the children’s runaround energy, I feel socially inferior. Despite loving my job and enjoying strong friendships, I feel I am not a real member of society – an unmarried man without children. I can’t participate in the hullabaloo about schools, catchment areas, snotty noses, and playdates. I am outside, looking in.

How do I disentangle these feelings? It’s easy just to distract myself. I think the most accessible layer of feeling is a sense of regret – I remonstrate with myself for the chances I missed and sadness for the people I have hurt. I can’t help but replay moments in my life that I wish could have turned out differently. These are so painful. That evening six years ago when I managed in one short hour to say all the wrong things to the right woman, precisely because she was the right woman. I could not bear to have that which I most wanted. So I destroyed something that I really longed for.

Only a few days later, she met someone else and two years later got married. They have a child now. I really wish I didn’t know that. But I do. A little girl. And I can’t help but wonder what it would be like if that little girl were my little girl. Would she have my eyes? My smile? What is it like to see in a child little mannerisms, a way of doing things, moving, speaking, laughing, playing, that remind us of ourselves? Or of course, she may have the eyes of my loved one. And what a joy that would be, to see in our child’s face, our love; to bring into this world a beautiful child that was of us – a child that would grow into her own person but growing out of who we are.

So another part of my sadness is born out of absence – fearing that I will never feel those exquisite joys; that I will never hear my son or my little girl call me dad. How sweet it would be to hear that word from the mouth of my little girl or my small son. To see them take first steps, to comfort them when they cry, to tuck them in before sleep and read them stories. To kiss them goodnight and be with them when the world seems too much. It could still happen. But it feels less likely with each passing year. And just because theoretically I still could doesn’t mean I don’t feel the loss of all those could-have-beens. Also, with the passing of the years, would I now have the energy if it were to happen?

And what of those parents who might answer me and say, “this guy is clueless. Does he have any idea of how hard it is to be a parent?” No. I don’t. I don’t know what it’s like to be short of sleep for a decade. To be exhausted and overwhelmed and have no time for myself. To feel mind numb after reading the same story for the 20th time. No, I don’t understand these things. But I do know what it is like to feel incomplete. To be fit for a purpose that I cannot fulfil. I will probably never know if I could bear the exhaustion and sacrifice that being a father would require but I long to try, precisely because that is the only way I can express something essential about who I am. It is not simply that I would like to be a father. I feel I am made to be a father. And because I don’t have a child, and it saddens me very much to admit this, in some ways I don’t feel fully like a man.

Sometimes, however, I get invited into the club. Four-year-old Archie arrived with his mother, Maggie, for a gathering of friends yesterday. Of course, he didn’t so much arrive as explode through the door. “I’m here!” he shouted as he ran into the hallway. While we adults exchanged smiles, Archie pulled out a dozen assorted soft toys, including a penguin, a lion, a giraffe and a hippopotamus, and left them strewn around the living room floor where he set up camp – a play base from which to launch sorties of boy energy into the kitchen.

Under his arm, too large and perhaps too fierce for any bag, is a pink Tyrannosaurus rex. The first chance I got, I served up food and went to play with him. Once we agreed that Captain America really was the best superhero, we were firm friends for the day, and Lego building and soft toy wars could ensue. Later, as we walked to the local cafe for tea and cake, he took my hand. For so many parents, this must be commonplace – to feel a small hand neatly clasped around the fingers of an adult – but for me it was special. His mother and I swung him, one, two, three, and up he went, until our arms were tired. An afternoon replete with the small joys of spending time with a little boy as he negotiates his way through the world.

And then they go home.

 

How robots are helping children with autism

11 Wednesday Mar 2015

Posted by a1000shadesofhurt in Autism

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autism, body movements, chest monitor, Children, classroom, communication, early diagnosis, emotion, facial expressions, family, feedback, interaction, modes, motions, non-threatening, non-verbal communication, reactions, research, robot, social interaction, social skills, teacher, therapist, treatment, withdrawal

How robots are helping children with autism

Anthony Arceri is seven and has autism. His clothes are covered in sensors, and he is standing in front of Zeno, a smiling, 2ft-tall robot. “What is your favourite food?” Zeno asks Anthony. “Chocolate milk and french fries.” “I love chocolate milk,” Zeno replies. The robot raises its arm, and Anthony copies. Zeno rubs his stomach, and so does Anthony.

It looks like fun – and for Anthony, it is. But researchers believe the interaction between Anthony and the robot also holds the key to early diagnosis and treatment of autism. Zeno is the result of a collaboration between Dr Dan Popa at the University of Texas at Arlington, Hanson RoboKind, Dallas Autism Treatment Centre, Texas Instruments and National Instruments – and is the brainchild of Hanson Robot owner and former Disney imagineer David Hanson.

Diagnosis of child autism has traditionally taken place through social interaction and speech exercises. This means that, until a child can speak, diagnosis is either a lengthy process, or can’t happen. But Zeno can interact with children through nonverbal communication such as body movements and facial expressions, speeding up diagnosis and perhaps even enabling it to be carried out before a child can talk.

Zeno isn’t just used for diagnosis. Children with autism can sometimes find social interaction threatening – making them withdraw, even from family members. Robots such as Zeno have features that look slightly human, but are obviously not human. This makes communication, with all its complex and frightening subtleties and nuances, less complicated and more comfortable for the child.

Anthony’s mother, Pamela Rainville, found out about Zeno from the Dallas Autism Treatment Centre, and thought the project might benefit Anthony. “It’s always good for him to be put in different situations, things outside his normal routine. Anytime he can be around other people, it’s a good learning and growing experience for him.”

So far, Anthony has had two therapy sessions with Zeno. Rainville believes he got more out of the second meeting than the first, and she expects he will get even more out of subsequent interactions with the robot. “This second time, Anthony fist-bumped Zeno, which was great. It shows he was a little more relaxed.”

Popa believes that Zeno is a good motivator for children as he is engaging and non-threatening: the children listen to the robot. “The idea is for the robot to instruct kids, give them some useful social skills and at the same time observe their reactions and calculate their reaction times. That calculation could form some kind of an autism scale.”

He says there are three ways in which therapists can use Zeno. “The first mode is called a scripted mode of interaction, where you pre-programme a certain sequence of motions. For the second mode, we have added a control system so we can have an operator or therapist control the robot by tele-operations. In this mode, it mirrors the motions of the instructor.”

In the third mode, the child can take control of the robot. “This can be unsafe as the child can do things – such as slap himself – that the robot will copy and possibly break. So we tend to use this third mode as entertainment only.”

Zeno now has a brother, Milo, as well as an international family. Zeno came first, and is used in research and classroom settings. Milo was created specifically to work directly with children. According to Richard Margolin, director of engineering at Hanson RoboKind and part of the team who developed both robots, some children with autism who had never spoken directly to an adult teacher spoke to Milo.

Milo looks very similar to Zeno. His expressive face is an important feature, because a characteristic of autism is the inability to read and connect with the emotions of others. Children are asked to identify the emotion shown by Milo from multiple choices on an iPad. Milo’s eyes are cameras, recording feedback. The child wears a chest monitor that records changes in heart rate and therefore emotion. A typical lesson would involve Milo and a child interacting one-to-one; the child responding to the robot with an iPad, and a therapist or teacher present to help if needed and record difficulties and progress.

One of Zeno and Milo’s international relatives is Kaspar, designed in the UK by the University of Hertfordshire’s Adaptive Systems Research Group. The size of a small child, unlike Zeno and Milo, Kaspar has a neutral expression so that children can interpret him how they wish. Research is under way to see how Kaspar’s use could support children with other developmental conditions, such as Down’s syndrome or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, known as ADHD.

Another distant cousin is Nao, who was created in 2006 by Aldebaran Robotics and is being developed as a “house robot”. Along the way, Nao has been used as an educational tool, and the University of Birmingham’s Autism Centre for Education and Research worked with Aldebaran Robotics on a version of Nao to help children with autism. But like Kaspar, Nao has an expressionless face.

What seems to be unique about Zeno and Milo is the way that their expressiveness defies long-held robotic conventions. Designed to be the first advanced social robots in the world, they could eventually have an impact far beyond the diagnosis and treatment of autism. RoboKind envisages a broader role for its robots in educating young children. In the words of his creators, Zeno represents the future of robotics and could be “a wonderful addition to every household”.

Domestic violence could be stopped earlier, says study

25 Wednesday Feb 2015

Posted by a1000shadesofhurt in Relationships

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abuse, abusive relationships, Children, coercion, control, coping, danger, domestic abuse, domestic violence, fear, harm, health workers, help, impact, isolation, murder, police, professionals, relationships, risk, serious injury, teenagers, training

Domestic violence could be stopped earlier, says study

Victims of domestic violence are abused for almost three years before they get the help they need, and some are subjected to more than 50 incidents during that time, according to a study of the largest database of domestic violence victims in the UK.

The figures from the domestic abuse charity SafeLives reveal that almost a quarter of “high-risk” victims have been to an A&E with injuries sustained during violent abuse, and some went as many as 15 times before the problem was addressed.

Analysis of the SafeLives database, which has records of more than 35,000 cases of adults experiencing domestic abuse since 2009, found that 85% of victims had been in contact with an average of five professionals in the year before they got “effective” help from an independent domestic violence adviser (IDVA) or another specialist practitioner.

“Time and time again no one spots domestic abuse, even when victims and their children come into contact with many different public agencies. It’s not acceptable that victims should have to try to get help repeatedly. This leaves victims living in fear and danger and risks lifelong harm to their children,” said Diana Barran, the chief executive of SafeLives, which was previously called Co-ordinated Action Against Domestic Abuse (Caada).

Barran said the study was “more shocking evidence” that domestic violence could often be stopped earlier. “Every conversation with a professional represents a missed opportunity to get victims and their children the help they need,” she said.

SafeLives estimates that there are at least 100,000 victims at high risk of murder or serious injury in England and Wales, 94% of them women.

The study found that victims and often their children lived with abuse for an average of 2.7 years. Three-quarters reported abuse to the police, and 23% went to A&E because of violence sustained in abusive relationships.

Frances Wedgwood, a GP in Lambeth who provides training on domestic violence to health workers through the national Iris project, said a challenge for doctors was that many women did not come to them to disclose domestic violence.

“Domestic violence is still a very hidden problem and in my experience women do not disclose if they are not asked,” she said. “We need to get better at asking people directly if they need help.”

The study sheds light on the long-lasting impact of living in a family coping with domestic violence. According to the survey, in about a quarter of cases on the domestic violence database the victim has a child under the age of three. The study estimates that 130,000 children in the UK are living with domestic abuse, and that children are directly harmed in 62% of cases.

Among teenagers who suffered domestic abuse in their own relationships, almost half had grown up in households where violence was commonplace, the study found.

Vera Baird, former solicitor general and the current police and crime commissioner for Northumberland, said professionals needed help and training to have the confidence to deal with domestic violence.

“Domestic abuse is not a one-off violent attack. It is deliberate long-term use of coercion to control every part of the partner’s life. Violence, sexual abuse, financial control, constant criticism, isolating from family and friends are all familiar tools,” she said.

“People in that situation do not find it easy to speak and need those who could help to be alert. The alternative is what these figures suggest: victims and their families locked unnecessarily into cruelty and ill-treatment for years.”

Case study

Rebecca, 34, lived with domestic abuse for eight years before she sought help

One time I was having a nap in the afternoon, the baby had been teething so I’d been awake all night, and I woke up he was standing over me with a mop handle carved into a point, like a spear. He was pushing it into my throat, accusing me of cheating. Then he picked me up and threw me against the wall. I ran downstairs but he followed me, kicking and punching me and split my lip.

I locked myself in the bathroom and called 999. When the doorbell rang I heard chatting, calm talking. There was one young male officer, and my ex-partner was telling him that I was postnatal, that I’d gone mental and he was just defending himself. I started shouting at the officer: ‘Why aren’t you helping me?’ I swore and the officer said people could hear me, and it was a public disturbance so I swore again. He put handcuffs on me. He wouldn’t let me put my shoes on, so I wouldn’t move, and he lifted me up by the handcuffs and put me in the back of the car.

I was in a cell for hours asking for a solicitor. The duty sergeant finally came and when he opened the hatch he could see I’d been attacked. He got the officer to come and apologise to me and asked me if I wanted to file a complaint, or if I wanted to press charges against my partner. But I said no. I was exhausted and my baby was at home with my partner, who’d been drinking since the morning. It got worse after that. He was sort of smug, saying he could do what he wanted. I know there’s more training for police now, but that put me off calling the police for years.

By 2003/4 the abuse was worse. We had two girls by that time. I was hospitalised with concussion after he’d kicked me in the head wearing steel-toe-capped boots. The police and the paramedics came and I was patched up and sent home. They asked me if I wanted to press charges but I didn’t want to go through all that, I thought it would make it worse. I didn’t know where the support would come from, where I could get help.

Another time I went to the hospital walk-in. I had a black eye and it wasn’t getting better. A doctor asked me what had happened and I said I’d been punched in the face. He repeated what I said: ‘You were punched in the face.’ I didn’t know what he wanted me to say. I was ashamed, I didn’t want to say my husband did this to me. If he had asked, I’d have told him. But he didn’t.

Social services got in touch because of the paramedics’ reports; he got put on an anger management course. But Christmas Day night he’d been drinking. He grabbed me by the throat and I stumbled and fell; he kept kicking me over and over again. My teeth went through my lip, my nose was bleeding, I couldn’t see. He picked me up and carried me to the bathroom saying: ‘Look what you made me do. Why did you do that?’ I crawled to the living room and phoned the police before he ripped it out of the wall.

I did press charges that time. He was sentenced to four months for ABH. He served two. We were separated, but we got back together. Why? I had such low self-esteem and he was always there, always pestering me, grinding me down. He’d be so nice, helping with the children and I was exhausted, I needed the help. I thought it might be OK.

It was OK for a while. The kids had been on the at-risk register because a couple of incidents had been reported, but they came off that and social services were visiting less. His behaviour just went back to the way it had been before, and that’s when I decided to leave.

I remember the exact moment when I saw the sticker for the Women’s Aid helpline: it was on the back of the toilet door in Asda. It took me a couple of months to call but when I did they offered me refuge. I didn’t even know that existed. They organised transport when he was out. It was quite surreal, but it was such a relief.

Women’s Aid were so helpful, they gave us so much support including counselling. My eldest daughter was seven when we left, her sister was three and their brother was nine months. That was the main reason I left, I was terrified for my kids.

I do think professionals should offer support. If they can’t support victims themselves, they just need to know who can. I think if I’d had that information I would have left earlier.

I was 16 when we got together; he was 23. By the time I was 17 we had a daughter. I thought it was a good relationship, he helped with the parenting and around the house, but about a year later, in 1999, slowly controlling behaviour crept in. He wouldn’t like certain friends, or me going out without him, wearing certain clothes or makeup. It was quite subtle at first, but then when we argued there was pushing, then hair-pulling – each time it was a little worse than before.

Soon it was normal to have slapping, kicking, punching, throwing things. At first I didn’t tell anyone; my self-esteem was very low. I just tried to pretend it wasn’t happening, I didn’t know anything about domestic abuse.

‘Culture of denial’ leaving UK children at risk of serious abuse

30 Saturday Aug 2014

Posted by a1000shadesofhurt in Sexual Harassment, Rape and Sexual Violence, Young People

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abuse, blame, child abuse, child sexual exploitation, Children, denial, gangs, perpetrators, rape, sexual exploitation, silence, violence

‘Culture of denial’ leaving UK children at risk of serious abuse

Children are at risk of serious abuse across England because of a culture of “wilful blindness” about the scale and prevalence of sexual exploitation across swaths of local government and in police forces, the deputy children’s commissioner warns.

In a highly critical interview given in the aftermath of the Rotherham abuse inquiry, which concluded that hundreds of children may have been abused there over a 16-year period, Sue Berelowitz said she had been “aghast” at the examples of obvious errors and poor practice she found.

Berelowitz told the Guardian she had discovered that police and council officers were in some cases still either looking the other way, not asking questions or claiming abuse was confined to a certain ethnic group – such as Asian men – or a particular social class.

Berelowitz is the author of a detailed report into child sexual exploitation in gangs and groups last year following a series of high-profile cases in towns such as Rochdale and Oxford as well as Rotherham.

On a recent field visit to a police force, Berelowitz was surprised to learn that the officers’ top search on their internal computer profiling system was “Asian male”. When she asked what would happen if the perpetrators were not Asian, the officer in charge replied that the force was “not looking for those”. “I was astonished. I said: ‘I think you better start looking.'”

She said that in other cases a culture of blaming the victims remained prevalent: “I had another case when I met the chair of the safeguarding board of a large city [meant to co-ordinate the protection of children from abuse or neglect]. When I mentioned cases of child sex exploitation, he said: ‘Oh yeah, those two girls are prostitutes always walking up and down this street.’ I won’t mention the city as you’d be aghast to learn who it was.”

Berelowitz said she was shocked to discover that although “there had been progress” by authorities in the aftermath of the grisly series of gang-rape and trafficking scandals, “there are still instances of not looking, of wilful blindness. We have to be careful none of us is in denial about the terrible reality of what happened in places like Rochdale and Rotherham.”

Because the subject matter is uncomfortable and scrutiny damaging, Berelowitz added that there was a “culture of denial” that had been exposed by Prof Alexis Jay’s inquiry into the handling of child abuse in Rotherham. It found at least 1,400 children were sexually exploited by predominantly Asian criminal gangs between 1997 and 2013.

A day after the Jay report was published, South Yorkshire’s police and crime commissioner Shaun Wright, a former Labour councillor who was cabinet member for children and youth services on Rotherham council between 2005 and 2010, came under intense pressure to resign his post.

On Wednesday night, after the Labour threatened to suspend him, he resigned from the party but insisted he remained committed to his police role. He said: “I was elected to deliver the people’s policing and crime priorities in South Yorkshire, and I intend to see that duty through.”

Theresa May, the home secretary, and Wright’s party, Labour, both said he should go. Wright’s former colleague and council leader, Roger Stone, resigned following publication of the Jay report.

Berelowitz’s comments, however, are intended to broaden the issue beyond Rotherham and similar cases of abuse. She cautioned that despite the emphasis placed on the fact that most of the victims in the northern towns were poor and white, while the perpetrators were Asian, she said that the issue affected “all communities, all races”.

“Usually people say to me that it was an issue of Asian males and white girls. When we dug deeper we found Afro-Caribbean girls and sometimes boys as victims, or Roma perpetrators. There’s a culture of wilful denial to the reality out there. It’s white people, it’s Asians. Parts of every community are involved.”

Most troubling was the rise of peer-to-peer sexual abuse and exploitation, where both victims and perpetrators are minors. She said that in another extremely disturbing case, police officers had caught a gang of 14- and 15-year-olds who had gang-raped an 11-year-old over a number of days. “The police caught the offenders and charged them not with rape, but with drugs offences. I told them that the message was ‘don’t do drugs but rape is fine’. The force is now working to bring the case back.”

She also warned that the rise of technology had enabled children to be seduced and controlled more easily than before, with young girls texted threats to “murder their mother, whom a gang leader has just seen pull up in a new car, if they talk about an attack” or blackmailed with an incriminating video taken on a mobile of their own rape, filmed to ensure their silence.

There was also a gap in the research explaining what led apparently otherwise normal men to commit rape and torture on often vulnerable girls, Berelowitz said.

“Most of the research into adult males who sexually abuse children in paedophilic mode has been on white males serving long sentences in prison. There’s no research into the particular model of Rotherham or Oxford or Sheffield.

“My own personal hypothesis is that they live in a patriarchal environment and are likely to have grown up with a fair amount of domestic violence.”

The scale of abuse, too, was alarming. The office of the Children’s Commissioner estimated that 16,500 children are at risk from abuse from criminal gangs. In London there are about 3,500 street-gang members, Berelowitz’s most recent work says, adding that estimates that one in 20 of the population had suffered intra-familial abuse “are far too low”. “In London alone there are about 3,500 young people aged between 13 and 25 involved in street gangs. There is a level of extraordinary violence involved. Now any girl living in a neighbourhood is at risk. I’d say there was more than one girl for every gang member at risk,” she said.

Reinforcing the point that the problem is not easily categorised, a report from University College London and Barnardo’s reveals that the number of boys affected by child sexual exploitation may be much higher than previously thought. The report – which looked at 9,042 children affected by childhood sexual exploitation and supported by Barnardo’s since 2008 – reveals that 2,986, or one in three, were male.

Society, said Berelowitz, was only just coming to terms with the disturbing nature of the problem and the scale of the abuse. “I think we are facing a public health problem here. We need to mount a public information campaign like that done about seatbelts and get money for therapy. We cannot arrest our way out of this problem.”

More than 300 rapes reported in schools in past three years

23 Saturday Aug 2014

Posted by a1000shadesofhurt in Sexual Harassment, Rape and Sexual Violence, Young People

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child abuse, Children, harm, rape, safeguarding procedures, Schools, sexual abuse, Sexual Violence, young people

More than 300 rapes reported in schools in past three years

Sexual abuse in British classrooms is increasing fast, according to official figures that reveal a 40 per cent increase in reports of rape in schools in the past three years.

At least 2,865 sex-crime reports have been recorded by police between 2011 and 2013  – and more than half of them were committed by other children, according to data released to The Independent by police under the Freedom of Information Act.

The figures showed that more than 320 alleged rapes were reported in schools in the last three years, with the NSPCC saying that pupils’ easy access to online pornography has likely driven the surge in online child abuse.

Last year alone, there were at least 1,052 alleged sex offences reported in schools, of which 134 were reported as rape.

Statistics on rape and sex crime reports that took place in schools were released by 37 out of 46 UK police forces. Children accounted for more than 90 per cent of alleged abuse victims, but more than half of the claimed offences were also said to have been committed by children.

The Department of Education (DfE) has resisted calls to introduce mandatory reporting of abuse allegations but the Government is now facing renewed pressure to reform child safeguarding. Currently, headteachers are urged to report allegations to child-protection experts, but there is no legal penalty if they choose not to.

Among cases that have come to light in recent years, a 12-year-old girl was allegedly stripped naked and raped by pupils at a school in Hampshire. The school, however, believed she had consented and excluded her for breaking rules by having sex on its grounds, a tribunal heard. In May, the Crown Prosecution Service said no charges would be brought against the suspects because of insufficient evidence.

In another case, a religious-education teacher in Manchester groped and kissed a teenage pupil in one-on-one meetings he arranged in his classroom. Richard Jones, 57, started a secret relationship with the girl, but was arrested when and when her family discovered explicit messages on her computer.

He was sentenced to eight years in prison last month after admitting a string of sexual offences.

Claire Lilley, of the NSPCC, said: “Schools must make sure they have adequate safeguarding procedures in place and that parents and teachers are able to recognise warning signs early so they can take swift action when required.

“However, the damaging behaviour of these children can be turned around if caught early. Prevention has to be the key.”

The National Association of Headteachers claimed the increase in child-abuse reports may reflect “alleged victims being more confident about making a disclosure”. A spokesperson said the work being done in schools to create a safe environment was “excellent”.

But Labour called on the Government to take “urgent action”. Yvette Cooper, the shadow Home Secretary, said: “These figures are very disturbing. Schools should be a place of safety for children and young people. The Government needs to take action given the evidence of growing sexual violence amongst young people.” She added they must “introduce compulsory sex and relationship education in all schools”.

A Department for Education spokesperson said: “There is nothing more important than protecting children from harm – any allegation of abuse must be taken very seriously. Schools’ safeguarding arrangements are regularly inspected.”

Australia’s detention regime sets out to make asylum seekers suffer, says chief immigration psychiatrist

17 Sunday Aug 2014

Posted by a1000shadesofhurt in Refugees and Asylum Seekers

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adolescents, asylum seekers, Australia, Children, detainees, detention, doctors, harm, mental health issues, policy, shame, suffering, suicidal, Torture

Australia’s detention regime sets out to make asylum seekers suffer, says chief immigration psychiatrist

The chief psychiatrist responsible for the care of asylum seekers in detention for the past three years has accused the immigration department of deliberately inflicting harm on vulnerable people, harm that cannot be remedied by medical care.

“We have here an environment that is inherently toxic,” Dr Peter Young told Guardian Australia. “It has characteristics which over time reliably cause harm to people’s mental health. We have very clear evidence that that’s the case.”

Young is the most senior figure ever to condemn the detention system from within. Until a month ago he was director of mental health for International Health and Medical Services (IHMS), the private contractor that provides medical care to detention centres on the Australian mainland, Christmas Island, Nauru and Manus Island.

Young has extensively briefed Guardian Australia about a system he says is deliberately harsh, breaks people’s health, costs a fortune, compromises the ethics of doctors and is intended to place asylum seekers under “strong coercive pressure” to abandon plans to live in Australia. “Suffering is the way that is achieved.”

He believes this process is akin to torture: “If we take the definition of torture to be the deliberate harming of people in order to coerce them into a desired outcome, I think it does fulfil that definition.”

Young strongly criticised the immigration department for:

• Delays that endanger health in bringing patients to Australia from Manus and Nauru: “It is seen as undesirable because it undermines the idea that people are never going to Australia and also because of the concern that if people arrive onshore then they may have access to legal counsel and other assistance.”

• Leaving people in detention who are acutely suicidal: “Trying to manage them in a non-therapeutic setting like that is just inherently futile. It’s not going to work.”

• Returning patients with less severe problems to detention despite medical advice that they cannot be expected “to fully respond to treatment in an environment that was making them sick”.

• Misusing patient information. “People disclose a lot of personal information which is then recorded in notes which are then available to non-medical people for other purposes.” Young says the dual role of IHMS staff treating detainees but reporting to the department raises fundamental ethical problems for doctors in the system.

• Displaying an obsession with secrecy: “Speaking out of turn is clamped down on whenever it occurs … they continue to maintain the fantasy that they can keep everything a secret.”

• Reluctance to gather and use mental health statistics that might “result in controversy or threaten the application of the policies of deterrence”.

• Directing doctors not to put in writing that detention has led to deterioration in their patients’ mental health. IHMS doctors ignored the direction. Young said they saw evidence all around them of detainees “sick because they are there and getting sicker while they remain there”.

The Manus camp particularly appalled Young. “When you go to Manus Island and you walk down what is called the ‘walk of shame’ between the compounds and you see the men there at the fences it’s an awful experience,” he says.

“You have to feel shame. You have to understand what that feeling is about in order to be able to be compassionate. By feeling the shame you stay on the right side of the line.”

Young told Guardian Australia IHMS figures had shown for some time that a third of adults and children in the detention system had what he called “a significant-level disorder”. If they were living in Australia, that would require the care of specialist medical health services. The figures only got worse as detainees stayed longer in detention: “After a year it approaches 50%.”

Last week, in alarming evidence to an Australian Human Rights Commission inquiry, Young said the immigration department had refused to accept IHMS statistics proving damage to children and adolescents held in prolonged detention. He told the inquiry: “The department reacted with alarm and asked us to withdraw the figures.”

In a belligerent appearance before the inquiry, the secretary of the immigration department, Martin Bowles, accused the president of the Human Rights Commission, Gillian Triggs, of making “highly emotive claims” about health problems in the detention system. He had not heard evidence of the problems provided by Young and other IHMS doctors earlier in the day.

His hand shook as he confronted Triggs. When his evidence produced laughter he demanded the room be silenced. He refused to answer some questions and retreated at times behind a wall of bureaucratic prose.

But Bowles did not deny a link between prolonged detention and mental illness. He called this a “well-established” issue and insisted his department was doing “everything it humanly can” to provide “appropriate medical care” to address the mental health problems of detainees.

Young told Guardian Australia that was impossible: “The problem is the system.”

Young is confident that in his time at IMHS the men and women working for him made better assessments of detainees’ health and delivered much better treatment than in the past.

“But you can’t mitigate the harm, because the system is designed to create a negative mental state. It’s designed to produce suffering. If you suffer, then it’s punishment. If you suffer, you’re more likely to agree to go back to where you came from. By reducing the suffering you’re reducing the functioning of the system and the system doesn’t want you to do that.

“Everybody knows that the harm is being caused and the system carries on. Everybody accepts that this is the policy and the policy cannot change. And everybody accepts that the only thing you can do is work within the parameters of the policy.”

The window of reasonableness closes
Young arrived in the system in 2011 at a crucial moment: the high court was about to knock back the Gillard government’s proposed “Malaysia solution” and, as the boats arrived in ever-increasing numbers, the detention system was bursting at the seams. So the government began processing detainees quickly and releasing large numbers into the community on bridging visas. “The problems that we were seeing from a mental health perspective decreased massively.”

Young has been a psychiatrist for nearly 20 years, most of that time working in public health. He joined IHMS believing the detention system was problematic but confident that good could be done from the inside. “I felt that given the experience I had I could work between the immigration department and IHMS and the detention health advisory group to bring about positive change.”

The year before Young’s arrival, the immigration department had been put on notice once again that prolonged detention harms mental health. Professor Kathy Eager of Wollongong University reached that conclusion in a study commissioned by the department itself.

“There is,” she wrote, “almost universal criticism of the policy of detaining asylum seekers, particularly in terms of the mental health implications.”

Her findings were backed by the department’s independent Detention Health Advisory Group (Dehag), the Australian College of Mental Health Nurses and the Australian Psychological Society. In 2011 the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists declared: “Prolonged detention, particularly in isolated locations, with poor access to health and social services and uncertainty of asylum seeker claims, can have severe and detrimental effects.”

While detainees were being rapidly released, Young observed attitudes towards them improved throughout the system. They were not treated as prisoners.

Their mental health was generally good: “These people are actually quite robust and psychologically healthy individuals despite all the suffering that they have been through.”

But what Young calls “the window of reasonableness” stayed open for only six months. With boats arriving in unprecedented numbers and the opposition in full cry, the government reversed direction. Once again boat people were to be held for long periods. The camps on Manus and Nauru were reopened. Kevin Rudd announced that no new boat arrivals would end up living in Australia.

“You just can’t overstate how things changed so rapidly when the policy changed,” Young says. Once again the system treated them as prisoners. The impact on their mental health was as predicted: fine for a few months, then increased depression, anxiety and stress.

“Most people have a level of resilience which allows them to function fairly well for a few months, but after that time there is a steady deterioration … after six months the cumulative harms accelerate very rapidly.”

Asylum seekers self-harming is ‘seen as bad behaviour’.
Uncertainty does the worst damage, Young says. Then comes hopelessness. “They are constantly given a message that they are on a negative pathway, meaning their claim is not going to be accepted. This is despite what we know about the outcomes of processing in the long term, which is that greater than 80% of people are found to be genuine refugees.”

And they have so little autonomy. “Just the day-to-day daily lives that they experience living in the detention system means that they have very little control over what they do. It makes things particularly difficult for people who are there with their children as well. Their capacity to act as parents and to make decisions on behalf of their families is so restricted.”

Young sees immigration detention as inherently more harmful than prison. “In prison those with mental health problems generally improve. People are more well on their release than when they entered. What we see in detention is the opposite of that. Over the course of time in detention, they get sicker.

“We don’t have families in prisons. Secondly, when people go to prison they go through a recognised independent judicial process. It’s not arbitrary. This is an arbitrary process and people see it as being unfair and that is another factor.

“Also, when people are in prison they have a definitive sentence so they know there is an end point. This is not like that at all. This is indefinite.”

Each quarter IHMS presents the department with figures on the health of detainees. The data for July to September 2013 showed a third of those held in detention for more than a year were experiencing extremely severe depression; 42% were suffering extremely severe anxiety; and 42% were extremely stressed. The report notes these figures are consistent with internationally published research: “The pattern shows the negative mental health effects of immigration detention with a clear deterioration of mental health indices over time in detention.”

Abbott takes power
“People didn’t really take Rudd seriously,” Young recalls. “But everybody was saying when the Libs get in it’s really going to get tough. So there was a building up of expectation that things were going to get worse, which made it worse in itself.”

When the change came in late 2013, there was no radical shift in policy. “Everything just got harsher.”

Relations between the department and its independent health advisers were already rocky. Dehag had been set up in 2006 at a time of acute embarrassment after it was discovered that a schizophrenic Australian resident, Cornelia Rau, was being held in the detention.

She was thought to be German, was desperately ill and the immigration department refused to release her for treatment. She was finally identified naked in the yards of the Baxter detention centre.

Dehag had an independence the department came to regret. Its dozen members were nominated by peak medical authorities, including the Australian Medical Association, the Mental Health Council of Australia and the professional colleges for nursing, general practitioners and psychiatry. The experts were at the table but the department found itself dealing with people who could neither be corralled nor muzzled.

“It’s always been a very tense relationship,” says Louise Newman, director of the centre for developmental psychiatry and psychology at Monash University. Newman chaired the group for a time. “At every meeting until they disbanded us we would make a statement that we did not support mandatory detention or prolonged detention of any form, that it was damaging and that it created problems that we could not fix.”

Young, who sat in on the group’s meetings, confirmed the experts’ fundamental objection to detention: “That’s been the baseline position that they have always held and they have always presented.”

The group watched with concern as the Gillard government reversed its policy of swift release for asylum seekers. Newman sees the second round of detention as worse than the first because it came as the evidence of harm was even more firmly established. “They replicated the very conditions that they have admitted contribute to mental harm and deterioration,” she said.

“It’s seen as collateral damage. The department does what it can to reduce it but in the name of the greater good of border protection and deterrents it doesn’t really matter. We’re saving lives by sending people mad.”

The group drove change. “The department was very pleased to use things that we brought in, so any positive reforms that have gone on in the system in terms of screening people and healthcare and health standards were all done by Dehag.”

But Newman alleges the department later sabotaged medical screening of asylum seekers for signs of torture and trauma. “We argued that no one who had been tortured should be detained or particularly not in remote places. The departmental doctors decided the best way to get around that was not to do the screening, so they didn’t find out who was tortured. They stopped it on Christmas Island so people could be shipped away before it was even known if they were trauma survivors.”

Tension between Dehag and the department intensified after Bowles was appointed secretary of the department in 2012, Newman says. Bowles is not a doctor but for much of his career was a health administrator before joining the defence department. He is one of a group of former army and defence figures who now hold the most senior positions in the immigration department.

Bowles announced a review of Dehag, which he renamed the Immigration Health Advisory Group (Ihag). He failed in manoeuvres to change its membership but imposed a former military doctor, Paul Alexander, as its chairman. “It was meant to be a much more controlled group,” Newman says.

Bowles wanted the experts to withdraw from public debate. Young says: “They wanted the thing to be more watertight.” The experts were not accused of leaking. “But they expressed views in public which were relevant to the business before the committee.” They continued to do so. The most vocal was Newman.

The experts and the department continued to be at loggerheads over the standard of care for detainees. Newman says Dehag and Ihag always argued that detainees had to be looked after “regardless of visa status” while they were in Australian hands, and it was an ethical obligation on all medical practitioners working in the system to provide care to Australian standards.

But once Nauru and Manus reopened, the department began to demand treatment be pegged to the much lower standards of care on those islands. There would have to be exceptions – no inpatient mental healthcare is available on Manus or Nauru – but the department’s wish was to lower the general standard of care for detainees in those camps.

At what was to be the last meeting of Ihag in August 2013, the issue was debated at length. An impasse was reached, says Newman. “The department at a very high level from secretary down argues the Australian government is not obliged to provide our standard of care to these people.”

But experts insisted that standards must be maintained and that the department’s plan was an ethical minefield for doctors. “Clinicians who go along with it are absolutely compromised,” says Newman.

Ihag experts continued to work in the system, but they never met as a group after Abbott’s victory in the federal election of September 2013. A long pattern of suddenly cancelled meetings ended with no meetings called at all. In mid-December the experts received letters thanking them for their service. They were dismissed. Alexander was now to be the sole adviser on medical matters to the renamed Department of Immigration and Border Protection.

Scott Morrison, the new minister, issued a statement: “The large membership of the group made it increasingly challenging to provide balanced, consistent and timely advice in a fast-moving policy and operational environment.”

Young says: “That doesn’t wash at all. Ihag had consistently told the department things it didn’t want to hear and the department had pretty transparently sabotaged the operation of it for more than 12 months.”

The chiefs of peak medical bodies, including the AMA’s Dr Steve Hambleton, expressed shock at Ihag’s demise. Abbott condemned the generally negative reporting of the move as “a complete beatup by the ABC and some of the Fairfax papers”. The prime minister declared: “This was a committee which was not very effectual.”

The rising tide of data
Morrison had been in the job only a few months when he assured Australia that mental health problems among detainees were on the wane. In mid-December, Nine News reported: “Immigration minister Scott Morrison yesterday said diagnosed mental health problems among detainees in Australia had fallen from a peak of 12% in 2011 to the current rate of 3.4% as a result of greater resourcing.”

Young is scathing about Morrison’s figures. “That’s not a prevalence rate. It never has been. It’s a pale shadow of what the real prevalence rate is because of the way that data is derived.”

Young says Morrison was ignoring the figures revealed by regular screening and instead using a count of visits to GPs or psychiatrists where mental health problems were raised. “It doesn’t take into account people who may have a disorder who are not seeing either of those two categories of clinicians.”

Gathering better statistics was one of Young’s key ambitions in his time at IHMS. The department dragged its feet on his proposals to use new measures to screen mental health problems. “There seemed to be a fear that it would result in controversy or threaten the application of the policies of deterrence,” Young says.

But the chief psychiatrist finally got his way and the new measures were used for the first time in the first quarter of this year. Young presented these figures to the Royal College of Australian and New Zealand Psychiatrists in May. They confirmed the long-established pattern: about a third of all those in detention had clinically significant problems – and the longer the detention, the worse the problems.

Half those who had been detained for 19 months or more were extremely or severely depressed; 40% were extremely or severely stressed; and 40% were extremely or severely anxious. The worst scores were gathered on Manus and Nauru. But the figures show a common pattern across the whole detention system.

In a PowerPoint presentation provided to Guardian Australia by the college, Young concludes: “All show linear deterioration in mental health status over time in detention.”

Young’s staff were also collecting figures on the impact of detention on children. “Changing to instruments more appropriate for children has been something the department has dragged their feet on for quite a long time.”

Young shocked the Human Rights Commission inquiry last week by alleging the department refused to accept these Honosca (Health of the Nation Outcome Scales for Children and Adolescents) figures.

He told Guardian Australia: “This is not the only instance where data which has been seen as controversial or just difficult to understand has been buried.”

But Triggs requested the figures be given to her inquiry. They show across the mainland detention system a large number of children showing emotional distress or related symptoms. Young considered the figures a sign of serious problems that needed urgent consideration and action. Some of these children are those that IHMS doctors reported as showing issues of self-harm, regression, aggression, bed-wetting and despair.

The Health of the Nation Outcome Scales for Children and Adolescents figures
When Bowles was questioned at the inquiry, he did not deny his department issued instructions to IHMS to withdraw the figures but was at pains to suggest to the commission that they remained under consideration by the department. He said: “I have no doubt that most of this sort of reporting is mainstream.”

Giving evidence to Triggs’s inquiry was Young’s last assignment for IHMS. As his three years with the commercial providers drew to a close, he decided to make a professional and public assessment of the detention system once he was free to do so.

“As a medical practitioner your duty is always to your patients and the people you look after,” he says. “To them you have a broader moral and ethical responsibility. In this case you see harm being done and as the primary duty of a doctor is to do no harm, your duty is to speak out against that harm – to say that harm should not be done.”

More than half of bullied children become depressed as adults, survey shows

12 Thursday Jun 2014

Posted by a1000shadesofhurt in Bullying, Young People

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'character-building', Bullying, Children, Cyberbullying, Depression, rite of passage, self-harm, suicidal

More than half of bullied children become depressed as adults, survey shows

55 per cent of children who have been bullied develop depression – with more than one in three becoming suicidal or self-harming as a result, according to a Europe-wide poll released today.

Yet despite the scale of suffering, one in three adults view bullying as a routine rite of passage, and 16 per cent describe it as “character-building”.

The shocking statistics have provoked calls for urgent action, with more than 100,000 people joining a campaign by the BeatBullying charity calling on the European Commission to introduce new laws to protect children from bullying and cyberbullying.

This comes after an inquest in May heard how a British teenager walked into the sea to drown after suffering cyberbullying over Facebook.

Callum Moody-Chapman, 17, from Cumbria, had been sent online threats by a former friend who was going out with his ex-girlfriend. The 17-year-old boy threatened to beat him, set fire to his home and encourage friends “to stamp on your head”. A verdict of suicide into the youngster’s death last December was recorded by the coroner, who cited the abusive messages as “by far the most significant aspect of this case”.

Attitudes need to change if such tragedies are to be prevented, according to campaigners.

Emma-Jane Cross, chief executive of BeatBullying, said: “Far too many European citizens still see bullying as ‘part of growing up’ and don’t take it seriously. This is pushing young people to the brink with some even resorting to harming themselves in order to cope.”

She added: “How many more children have to tragically lose their lives before these outdated perceptions change? Today more than 100,000 children, families, schools and charitable organisations are sending the European Commission a clear message that enough is enough. We urge them to listen.”

And Sarah Crown, editor of Mumsnet, one of the organisations backing the protest, commented: “These figures demonstrate once again why bullying ought not to be treated as ‘part and parcel’ of growing up. It’s a serious matter that can result in severe consequences for the victim.”

Little Mix, Amanda Holden, JLS singer Aston Merrygold, and reality TV star Jamie Laing from Made in Chelsea are among the names supporting the campaign. Leigh Anne of Little Mix said: “Myself and the girls have all experienced being bullied at some point in our life, when we see on Twitter that some of our fans are going through it now we find it so upsetting, and that’s the reason we feel so passionate about this campaign.”

And the effects on victims can be long-lasting. For childhood bullying can continue to damage mental and physical health for decades afterwards, causing higher rates of depression, ill health and unemployment in adult life, according to a study by researchers from Kings College London published earlier this year.

Malnutrition in conflict: the psychological cause

10 Tuesday Jun 2014

Posted by a1000shadesofhurt in PTSD

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Children, conflict, despair, displaced, flashback, hopelessness, hypervigilant, infanticide, irritability, isolation, malnutrition, natural disasters, parents, post-traumatic stress, psychological support, recovery, signs, suicide, trauma, violence

Malnutrition in conflict: the psychological cause

Treating malnutrition in humanitarian crises, such as conflict and natural disaster, is far more complex than simply curing disease and providing children with therapeutic foods. Often, post-traumatic stress disorder – common in extreme situations – hinders treatment and its success. In Bangui, in the Central African Republic (CAR), the number of children suffering from life-threatening malnutrition has tripled since the outbreak of violence in December 2013.

Each month, 180 patients are being seen in a ward that initially had just 49 beds available for malnourished children. For many weeks, two to three patients – and their caregivers – were sharing single beds, increasing the risk of cross-infection of illness and delaying recovery.

The cause of severe acute malnutrition runs far beyond economic hardship and lack of food. Many of the hundreds of thousands of people displaced by fighting have been directly exposed to death threats, witnessed the deaths of neighbours or family members, and lost nearly all of their belongings. They are often exhausted by the harsh living conditions in camps.

75% of over 1,000 case studies of the parents of malnourished children collected by Action Against Hunger between July 2013 and March 2014 presented symptoms of post-traumatic stress linked to their exposure to extreme violence. The stress prompted behavioural changes, flashbacks, fatigue, isolation, excessive irritability, and feelings of hopelessness and despair.

These experiences also provoked reactions that – while understandable, normal, and usually temporary – can be disabling enough to impact a mother’s ability to nurse and feed her child. Nurses leading pre- and post-natal sessions with women in the 12 health centres around Bangui have reported that some mothers become convinced they cannot produce milk, or fail to respond to their child’s needs, resulting in early weaning that can be fatal for babies in an already challenging environment. In extreme cases, some mothers have attempted suicide and infanticide.

Children, while too young to fully understand what they have witnessed, may develop physical symptoms such as continuous crying, refusing to eat and bed wetting. Even small babies can present signs of trauma, such as feeding and sleep disturbances, continuous crying, and poor interaction. Not recognising the signs, some parents don’t make the connection and severely scold their children. To combat this, malnourished children and their carers are receiving psychological and social support.

At the nutritional therapeutic ward of Bangui’s main pediatric hospital, Action Against Hunger’s nutritional, psychological and social teams offer free treatment for severely malnourished children from a specialised counselling team. Feeding times, medical monitoring and psychological and motor activities pace the daily routine.

When Dieumerci Tsongbele, a single parent to his six-year-old daughter Jessica, arrived at the hospital, she had been refusing food and was not interacting with others. When he joined a welcoming session led by psychological and social experts, Tsongbele and other parents learned about factors that exacerbate malnutrition, including trauma. The information evoked an emotional response from the father, who had witnessed people killed. While he managed to escape the violence, the experience had left him unable to sleep, irritable and hypervigilant. Overwhelmed by the situation, he admitted he had been less attentive to his daughter’s needs.

During the programme, Tsongbele and the other parents participated in various activities with their children ranging from toy making to baby massage, which aim to provide both parents and children with a safe space to recreate natural and vital bonds that are essential for human development. Play sessions help to limit the negative effects of malnutrition strengthen parent-child relationships. Malnutrition treatment is not simply about filling stomachs, but also restoring the desire to eat.

Names have been changed to protect identities.

Stephanie Duvergé is a Action Against Hunger psychologist in the Central African Republic. Follow @ACF_UK on Twitter.

A third of first-time mothers suffer depressive symptoms, research finds

07 Saturday Jun 2014

Posted by a1000shadesofhurt in Postnatal Depression

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baby, Children, Depression, depressive symptoms, diagnosis, early years, first-time mothers, four years postpartum, GPs, health professionals, health visitors, irritable, low mood, maternal health, mental health issues, midwives, mothers, new mothers, parents, Postnatal Depression, postpartum, pregnancy, risk, signs, tearful, training, worrying

A third of first-time mothers suffer depressive symptoms, research finds

One in three first-time mothers suffers symptoms of depression linked to their baby’s birth while pregnant and/or during the first four years of the child’s life, according to research.

And more women are depressed when their child turns four than at any time before that, according to the study, which challenges the notion that mothers’ birth-related mental struggles usually happen at or after the baby’s arrival.

The findings have led to calls for all women giving birth in the UK to have their mental health monitored until their child turns five to ensure that more of those experiencing difficulties are identified.

The results are based on research in Australia, but experts believe that about the same number of women in the UK experience bouts of mental ill-health associated with becoming a mother.

In all 1,507 women from six hospitals in Melbourne, Australia, told researchers from the Murdoch children’s research institute and royal children’s hospital in Parkville, Victoria, about their experience of episodes of poor mental health at regular intervals until their child turned four.

The authors found that almost one in three first-time mothers reported “depressive symptoms on at least one occasion from early pregnancy to four years postpartum [and that] the prevalence of depressive symptoms was highest at four years postpartum”. The women’s depressive symptoms are often short-lived episodes and do not mean that the women were diagnosed with postnatal depression. Studies in both the UK and internationally have estimated that between 10% and 15% of new mothers suffer from that clinical condition.

The researchers also found that four years after the child’s birth 14.5% display depressive symptoms, of whom 40% had not previously reported feeling very low. At that time, women with only one child were much more likely (22.9%) than those with two or more offspring (11.3%) to be depressed.

Dr Jim Bolton, a member of the Royal College of Psychiatrists and a consultant psychiatrist at a London hospital, said that one in three women giving birth in the UK were likely to become depressed at some point during those first four years. “If a similar study was done here, I wouldn’t be surprised if the results were similar. Usually the sorts of mothers who are at greater risk of depression are younger mothers who feel they can’t cope and mothers living in situations of adversity or deprivation or partner violence,” he said.

“These findings are about depressive symptoms, which can be very short-lived, not a formal diagnosis of illness or postnatal depression. This study isn’t saying that one in three women gets that,” stressed Bolton, who treats mental health problems in pregnancy and after birth among new mothers in his hospital’s women’s health unit.

The authors recommend that the UK overhauls its monitoring of maternal mental health, which focuses on pregnancy and the early years after birth, because more than half the women who experience depression after becoming a parent are not identified by GPs, midwives or health visitors.

More women could have postnatal depression than the usual estimate of 10%-15% partly because women may mistake the signs of it – which include being more irritable than usual or unusually tearful, inability to enjoy being a parent or worrying unduly about the baby’s health – as being things undergone by all new mothers.

Health professionals do not always spot it or ask the right questions to identify it, though are far more aware of it than ever, Bolton added.

One leading psychiatrist said that the one in three women who had depressive symptoms was between two and five times higher than the estimated number of people in the general population who would experience serious low mood in their lifetime, but was higher than the number of women who experienced the most severe forms of depression. Between 5%-10% of people generally suffer major/serious depression during their lifetime.The study, published in BJOG: An international journal of obstetrics and gynaecology, is the first to follow a sizeable number of new mothers for as long as four years after birth. Elizabeth Duff, senior policy adviser at the parenting charity the NCT, said: “This study has included mothers for four years after birth, so suggests that perinatal mental health needs to be monitored for a longer period. Given the devastating effects of postnatal depression, health professionals should give equal consideration to the mental and physical health of parents with young children.”

A Department of Health spokeswoman said it welcomed any new research that would lead to women receiving better help with maternal depression.

“We want to do everything we can to make sure women and families get as much support as possible throughout pregnancy and beyond. That’s why, earlier this month, we announced that expert training in mental health will be rolled out for doctors and midwives to identify and help women who are at risk of depression or other mental health issues,” she said.

Numbers of midwives and health visitors have been growing under the coalition, while specialist mental health doctors and midwives will help improve earlier diagnosis of such problems, she added. However, the Royal College of Midwives said that even more midwives were needed to ensure mothers received the best possible care of their psychological welfare.

Night terrors: In my wildest dreams

29 Tuesday Apr 2014

Posted by a1000shadesofhurt in Neuroscience/Neuropsychology/Neurology

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adults, Children, night terror, nightmares, panic, reassurance, scream, shout, sleep, stress, terror

Night terrors: In my wildest dreams

The walls are closing in on me. The air is sucked out of my lungs and everything turns black. One thought pulses through my mind – to get out of the room, no matter how. I push open my window and start climbing out. Only when the fresh air hits me do I realise something’s not right. I fall backwards and crawl back into bed, confused and disorientated by my surroundings.

This was the most dangerous night terror I suffered during my final year at university. I initially forgot what had happened, until I saw the chaos the next morning – my desk and chair were overturned, my books had been knocked off my bedside table and my laptop’s screen had smashed. The window was still wide open.

Deep bruises came up a day after, with the right-hand side of my body turning black and blue. My GP practically laughed me out of the surgery when I went in for a consultation. “There’s nothing I can do about it, it happens in your sleep,” he said, smiling. It was only once I had moved to London and suffered a similar attack that left me bleeding that I decided I’d had enough. After a three-month wait, I finally managed to get a space in one of the UK’s busiest sleep clinics for an overnight study.

The technicians wired me up at the clinic at London Bridge. There were 10 sensors attached to my head alone, with countless cables running down my body. Lying on the bed, monitored by two cameras, I knew that I wouldn’t be having a night terror that night. But I was hopeful that the results might shed some light on my condition.

When someone suffers from a night terror, they can scream, shout and thrash around in extreme panic, sometimes jumping out of bed. It’s an unnerving experience for anyone to watch – the sufferer’s eyes will be open, but they’re not fully awake or aware of what they’re doing. Once the panic subsides, the person will fall back asleep, oblivious to the chaos.

Most people experience nightmares or night terrors growing up. Figures show that between 20 and 30 per cent of children between the ages of five and 12 have frequent nightmares, while night terrors affect 17 per cent of children. Once children reach adulthood, incidence rates are much lower, with only one in 20 of that 17 per cent still reporting night terrors in later life. But recent research has linked recurring night-time problems to more ominous long-term consequences. A study conducted by the University of Warwick followed nearly 6,800 children up to the age of 12. The results suggest that long-term sufferers of nightmares and night terrors have a higher risk of mental health problems as they enter adolescence. Those having nightmares aged 12 were three-and-a-half times more likely to have problems and the risk was nearly doubled by regular night terrors.

Psychology professor Dieter Wolke led the research at Warwick. He says that while children often experience night-time problems, in adults, it’s only around 1 to 2 per cent who still have night terrors. When they persist into adulthood, the physical risks also increase. “Night terrors become more dangerous, as you’re larger and more mobile. People are known to have fallen off balconies or thrown themselves out of windows,” says Professor Wolke.

From a young age, I have been a restless sleeper, but the night terrors only started happening when I entered my teens. It wasn’t until university that they became more severe. The more extreme ones saw me running around the house or frantically trying to open my bedroom window.

So why do night terrors occur? According to Dr Nicholas Oscroft, a respiratory physician at Papworth Hospital, genetics and not getting enough sleep could be to blame. “It does seem to run in families… From previous research it has become clear that night terrors happen more often if people don’t get enough sleep on a regular basis. Work or family-related stress also increases the risk.”

Another sufferer is 24-year-old Kevin Stone. He started having night terrors from the age of seven. He believes it’s because of having lived in South Africa, where his family experienced regular break-ins. His night terrors follow a repeated theme – someone is always trying to chase or kill him. “I once dreamt that people had broken into the house and were in my room. They made me get out of bed and kneel on the floor while I tried to convince them not to kill me. When I have a night terror, I act out everything. I can hear their voices, I can see them, I can even feel the gun against my head.”

Stone’s night terrors took a gruesome turn when he was 18. One night, he woke up and was convinced someone had broken into the house. As a result, he jumped out of his bedroom window and fractured his spine and broke both his ankles. “I realised what I was doing just before I hit the ground.” Terrified by what his sleeping mind was capable of, he sought treatment to stop his night terrors from happening. But he believes that his problems can’t be solved, because it’s all in his mind. “Doctors have said to keep a bedtime journal to clear my mind, but that hasn’t worked.” He also wasn’t happy with the option of being prescribed antidepressants.

So can night terrors be solved? Dr Oscroft seems unsure. “Adult patients who suffer from them need to try and reduce how often it happens. The best way to achieve this is by getting enough sleep. People should also optimise their sleeping environment, so that they won’t be woken up during the first two hours of sleep, which is when night terrors are most likely to occur.”

Night terrors can put a strain on relationships. Dr Oscroft says the best thing to do when someone is suffering from a night terror is to reassure them. “People who are having a night terror will be agitated, so the best thing to do is to calmly talk to them until they wake up. Don’t try to restrain them unless they are in danger of hurting themselves.”

My results from the sleep clinic proved surprising. I had woken up four times during the night – flustered and disorientated. Even though there was no physical cause, I do suffer from slow wave arousal disorder, which is usually associated with sleepwalking and other sleeping disorders. Aside from the advice to sleep more or to take sleeping pills, my diagnosis remains unchanged. I suspect that it will be something I’ll have to deal with on a regular basis throughout my life. Until they stop completely, I’ll be keeping my bedroom window firmly locked.

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