The Australian Psychological Society (APS), Australia's largest allied health representative body, strongly supports the call from Allied Health Professions Australia (AHPA) for the allied health sector to be involved in the design, governance and delivery of the Government's new primary health care system...

Mental Health Network director Steve Shrubb said that the Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health's report, 'Chance of a lifetime,' showed how important mental wellbeing is across public service Commenting on the Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health report, 'Chance of a Lifetime,' which says that 80% of all crime is committed by people who had conduct problems as children, Steve Shru...

What would happen if solar panels were free? What if it were possible to know everything about the world--not the Internet, but the living, physical world--in real time? What if doctors could forecast a disease years before it strikes? This is the promise of the World Changing Idea: a vision so simple yet so ambitious that its full impact is impossible to predict. Scientific American’s editorial and advisory boards have chosen projects in five general categories--Energy, Transportation, Environment, Electronics and Robotics, and Health and Medicine--that highlight the power of science and technology to improve the world. Some are in use now; others are emerging from the lab. But all of them show that innovation is the most promising elixir for what ails us. --The Editors

The No-Money-Down Solar Plan [More]

A new paper by William W Bostock from the School of Government, University of Tasmania, analysing the debate between the psychiatric profession and the Australian government over collective depression syndrome found among asylum-seeking detainees, has been published in the Dove Medical Press journal: Psychology Research and Behavior Management...

Pfizer announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved Geodon® (ziprasidone HCI) Capsules for maintenance treatment of bipolar I disorder as an adjunct to lithium or valproate in adults...

Research by the University of Warwick and the University of Manchester finds that psychological therapy could be 32 times more cost effective at making you happy than simply obtaining more money. The research has obvious implications for large compensation awards in law courts but also has wider implications for general public health...

Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) School of Medicine (SOM) has received a Robert Wood Johnson grant to fund a Public Health Practice Based Research Network called The Ohio Research Association for Public Health Improvement (RAPHI)...

Just days after the release of controversial new guidelines recommending against routine mammograms for most women under 50, a different group of medical professionals has announced that the frequency of Pap tests for cervical cancer detection should also be decreased for most women. [More]

The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) has announced that an interdisciplinary team of four research institutions will carry out the largest study of suicide and mental health among military personnel ever undertaken, with $50 million in funding from the U.S. Army. Study investigators aim to move quickly to identify risk and protective factors for suicide among soldiers and provide a science base for effective and practical interventions to reduce suicide rates and address associated mental health problems.

Parents and Peers As a psychologist very familiar with the research, I think in “ Do Parents Matter? ” Judith Harris is conflating personality and behavior, which are two different concepts. Personality has more to do with genetic traits related to mood and energy (which plenty of research indicates are strongly influenced by genetics). Behavior, on the other hand, depends on context and is guided by laws of behaviorism--that is, reinforcement principles. If parents do (or do not) provide reinforcement for specific types of behavior, you will either see or not see those behaviors. Likewise, certain behaviors will be reinforced in the classroom by teachers.

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