Energy Drinks Risky for Children and Teens

Energy drinks are under-studied, overused and can be dangerous for children and teens.  

Dakota Sailor, 18, a high school senior in Carl Junction, Mo., says risks linked with energy drinks aren't just hype.

Sailor had a seizure and was hospitalized for five days last year after drinking two large energy drinks - a brand he'd never tried before.  

He said his doctor thinks caffeine or caffeine-like ingredients may have been to blame. Introduced more than 20 years ago, energy drinks are the fastest growing U.S. beverage market; 2011 sales are expected to top $9 billion.  

The American Association of Poison Control Centers adopted codes late last year to start tracking energy drink overdoses and side effects nationwide; 677 cases occurred from October through December; so far, 331 have been reported this year.

Most 2011 cases involved children and teens. Of the more than 300 energy drink poisonings this year, a quarter of them involved kids younger than 6.

A clinical report on energy drinks is expected soon from the American Academy of Pediatrics that may include guidelines for doctors.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) limits the amount of caffeine in soda because it's classified as a food.

But the FDA has no control over energy drinks because they're classified as dietary supplements.

Doctors said case studies show energy drinks can contain up to three times as much caffeine as soda. It's believed they have caused seizures, strokes, high blood pressure and heart palpitations. Doctors believe energy drinks could also cause sudden death among children with underlying medical conditions, such as diabetes, mood swings and migraines.

Denmark, Turkey and Uruguay have banned the beverages while Norway doesn't allow them to be sold to anyone under 15.

 

Poison Help 1-800-222-1222

 

Published in the Horizon Family RMG TEEN ALERT

Posted by Lindy Kahn, M.A., CEP for Kahn Educational Group, LLC  

Risks for Quitting College Identified

College students who consider dropping out are particularly sensitive to a handful of critical events including depression and loss of financial aid, according to a study led by Michigan State University scholars.

Surprisingly, however, other events such as a death in the family and students’ failure to get their intended major did not have a significant influence on their intention to drop out, said Tim Pleskac, MSU assistant professor of psychology and lead researcher on the project.

By identifying which risks prompt students to consider quitting, the research could help in the effort to combat college withdrawal, Pleskac said. More than 40 percent of students in the United States fail to get a bachelor’s degree within six years at the college where they began, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

“Prior to this work, little was known about what factors in a student’s everyday life prompt them to think about withdrawing from college,” Pleskac said. “We now have a method to measure what events are ‘shocking’ students and prompting them to think about quitting.”

“From an institutional perspective,” he added, “we are now better suited to think about what students we should target in terms of counseling or other assistance to help them work through these issues.”

The study, funded by the College Board, will appear in an upcoming issue of the research journal Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes.

In the study, Pleskac and colleagues developed a mathematical model that describes how students decide to quit. They used the model to analyze surveys from 1,158 freshmen at 10 U.S. colleges and universities. The surveys listed 21 critical events (or “shocks") and asked students whether these events had happened to them during the previous semester; the students were later asked whether they planned to withdraw.

The critical event with the most influence was depression. Students also were sensitive to being recruited by an employer or another institution; losing financial aid or experiencing a large increase in tuition or living costs; unexpected bad grade; and roommate conflicts.

They were less sensitive to critical events such as death in the family; significant injury; inability to enter their intended major; becoming addicted to a substance; coming into a large sum of money; losing a job needed to pay tuition; and becoming engaged  or married.

Previous research had studied the role critical events play in employee turnover decisions. However, this was the first study to examine the phenomenon with college withdrawal, the researchers said.

“Traditionally the problems of employee turnover and college student attrition have been viewed from different lenses,” said Jessica Keeney, a project researcher and doctoral student in psychology at MSU. “But we see a lot of similarities in how employees and students decide to quit. A ‘shocking’ event, such as a clash with a co-worker or roommate, could be the final factor that pushes someone to leave.”

The other project researchers were Neal Schmitt from MSU, Stephanie Merritt from the University of Missouri-St. Louis and Frederick Oswald from Rice University.

Published by Michigan State University
Posted by Lindy Kahn, M.A., CEP for Kahn Educational Group, LLC

Sexting: Schools, Legislators Debate Punishments For Offenders

Sending provocative or explicit messages and photos over cell phones and computers has become increasingly popular among American teenagers in recent years.

The popularity of sexting has sent parents, school officials and legislators scrambling to figure out how to address the issue.

According to a national survey by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, 39 percent of all teens admitted to sending sexually suggestive messages over the Internet or on cell phones. A further 20 percent of teens said they had sent or posted nude or partially nude images or videos of themselves.

It's become obvious that sexting won't go away over night. The question remains: is it parents, schools or law enforcement's job to intervene?

Schools Lead The Charge

In some school districts, such as Kelso, Wash., sexting policies have recently been put in place to deter students and catch perpetrators.

KATU News reports the Kelso School Board voted Monday, Feb. 7, to allow school officials to confiscate cell phones from any student suspected of sexting. The device is then searched for evidence of inappropriate messages and photos.

Students caught engaging in sexting could face suspension or expulsion. The American Civil Liberties Union has objected to the policy, claiming it infringes on individual privacy rights.

The New York Department of Education has also moved to ban sexting. The rules would mean 90-day suspensions for students caught sexting. Students could get in trouble not just for messages sent during school, but at home as well.

States Move To Criminalize Sexting

Across the country, many legislators have recently passed, or are in the process of passing, state laws that criminalize sexting.

Before there were official sexting laws, young people caught distributing sexually explicit photos of themselves or others were sometimes charged with felony penalties for child pornography. The felony can carry punishments such as jail time, steep fines and induction into the sex offender registry.

While lawmakers are suggesting that sexting should be classified as an illegal act, most are looking to divert young people into educational programs instead of overloading the juvenile justice system.

In New Jersey, Assemblywoman Pam Lampitt introduced a bill last year that would let first time offenders take an informative course in lieu of harsher punishments.

According to the AP:

The legislation requires the attorney general's office to create a program to teach teens about the criminal penalties and social consequences of sending or receiving nude or seminude images through cell phones or computers. The educational components would include lessons on how the uniqueness of the Internet can produce long-term and unforeseen consequences after photographs are posted and the connection between cyber-bullying and the posting of sexual images.

This week, Texas State Senator Kirk Watson brought a similar bill to the legislature in his home state -- with one caveat: parents would also be forced to attend the educational seminars along with their child.

According to the Houston Chronicle, being charged with sexting could carry a Class C misdemeanor, for which the youth and a parent would have attend classes about the potential harm caused by sexting.

The policy would make parents assume greater responsibility for their child's actions, while learning about sexting themselves.

From the The Huffington Post
Posted by Lindy Kahn, M.A., CEP for Kahn Educational Group, LLC

Record Level of Stress Found in College Freshmen

The emotional health of college freshmen — who feel buffeted by the recession and stressed by the pressures of high school — has declined to the lowest level since an annual survey of incoming students started collecting data 25 years ago. 

In the survey, “The American Freshman: National Norms Fall 2010,” involving more than 200,000 incoming full-time students at four-year colleges, the percentage of students rating themselves as “below average” in emotional health rose. Meanwhile, the percentage of students who said their emotional health was above average fell to 52 percent. It was 64 percent in 1985.

Every year, women had a less positive view of their emotional health than men, and that gap has widened.

Campus counselors say the survey results are the latest evidence of what they see every day in their offices — students who are depressed, under stress and using psychiatric medication, prescribed even before they came to college.

The economy has only added to the stress, not just because of financial pressures on their parents but also because the students are worried about their own college debt and job prospects when they graduate.

“This fits with what we’re all seeing,” said Brian Van Brunt, director of counseling at Western Kentucky University and president of the American College Counseling Association. “More students are arriving on campus with problems, needing support, and today’s economic factors are putting a lot of extra stress on college students, as they look at their loans and wonder if there will be a career waiting for them on the other side.”

The annual survey of freshmen is considered the most comprehensive because of its size and longevity. At the same time, the question asking students to rate their own emotional health compared with that of others is hard to assess, since it requires them to come up with their own definition of emotional health, and to make judgments of how they compare with their peers.

“Most people probably think emotional health means, ‘Am I happy most of the time, and do I feel good about myself?’ so it probably correlates with mental health,” said Dr. Mark Reed, the psychiatrist who directs Dartmouth College’s counseling office.

“I don’t think students have an accurate sense of other people’s mental health,” he added. “There’s a lot of pressure to put on a perfect face, and people often think they’re the only ones having trouble.”

To some extent, students’ decline in emotional health may result from pressures they put on themselves.

While first-year students’ assessments of their emotional health were declining, their ratings of their own drive to achieve, and academic ability, have been going up, and reached a record high in 2010, with about three-quarters saying they were above average.

“Students know their generation is likely to be less successful than their parents’, so they feel more pressure to succeed than in the past,” said Jason Ebbeling, director of residential education at Southern Oregon University. “These days, students worry that even with a college degree they won’t find a job that pays more than minimum wage, so even at 15 or 16 they’re thinking they’ll need to get into an M.B.A. program or Ph.D. program.”

Other findings in the survey underscore the degree to which the economy is weighing on college students.

“Paternal unemployment is at the highest level since we started measuring,” said John Pryor, director of the Cooperative Institutional Research Program at U.C.L.A.’s Higher Education Research Institute, which does the annual freshman survey. “More students are taking out loans. And we’re seeing the impact of not being able to get a summer job, and the importance of financial aid in choosing which college they’re going to attend.”

“We don’t know exactly why students’ emotional health is declining,” he said. “But it seems the economy could be a lot of it.”

For many young people, serious stress starts before college. The share of students who said on the survey that they had been frequently overwhelmed by all they had to do during their senior year of high school rose to 29 percent from 27 percent last year.

The gender gap on that question was even larger than on emotional health, with 18 percent of the men saying they had been frequently overwhelmed, compared with 39 percent of the women.

There is also a gender gap, studies have shown, in the students who seek out college mental health services, with women making up 60 percent or more of the clients.

“Boys are socialized not to talk about their feelings or express stress, while girls are more likely to say they’re having a tough time,” said Perry C. Francis, coordinator for counseling services at Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti. “Guys might go out and do something destructive, or stupid, that might include property damage. Girls act out differently.”

Linda Sax, a professor of education at U.C.L.A. and former director of the freshman study who uses the data in research about college gender gaps, said the gap between men and women on emotional well-being was one of the largest in the survey.

“One aspect of it is how women and men spent their leisure time,” she said. “Men tend to find more time for leisure and activities that relieve stress, like exercise and sports, while women tend to take on more responsibilities, like volunteer work and helping out with their family, that don’t relieve stress.”

In addition, Professor Sax has explored the role of the faculty in college students’ emotional health, and found that interactions with faculty members were particularly salient for women. Negative interactions had a greater impact on their mental health.

“Women’s sense of emotional well-being was more closely tied to how they felt the faculty treated them,” she said. “It wasn’t so much the level of contact as whether they felt they were being taken seriously by the professor. If not, it was more detrimental to women than to men.”

She added: “And while men who challenged their professor’s ideas in class had a decline in stress, for women it was associated with a decline in well-being.” 

Written by Tamar Lewin for The New York Times
Posted by Lindy Kahn, M.A., CEP for Kahn Educational Group, LLC