Mental Health News Feeds

Apr 19, 2025 - Five-year-olds exposed to paternal depression are more likely to have behavioral issues in grade school, researchers find.

Apr 18, 2025 - New research has found that nearly half of the time American children spend with their grandparents involves interacting with or watching media on a screen. How that screen time is managed can influence media habits and impact family relationships.

Apr 16, 2025 - Affectionate mothering in childhood may have a lasting impact on important personality traits, potentially influencing life outcomes such as educational achievement, economic success, and health and well-being, according to new research. The findings suggest that positive maternal parenting could foster important traits such as openness, conscientiousness and agreeableness.

Apr 15, 2025 - Macaque mothers experience a short period of physical restlessness after the death of an infant, but do not show typical human signs of grief, such as lethargy and appetite loss, finds a new study by anthropologists.

Apr 14, 2025 - A new study has found children born to mothers who experienced gestational diabetes (GDM) during pregnancy are more likely to develop attention-deficient hyperactive disorder (ADHD) and externalizing behavior.

Apr 9, 2025 - While some studies have suggested that having a mother with Alzheimer's disease may put you more at risk of developing the disease, a new study finds that having a father with the disease may be tied to a greater spread of the tau protein in the brain that is a sign of the disease, according to a new study.

Apr 8, 2025 - Researchers explored the long-term effects of preschool expansion in Japan in the 1960s, revealing significant reductions in risky behaviors amongst teenagers. By analyzing regional differences in the rollout of the program, the study identified links between early childhood education and lower rates of juvenile violent arrests and teenage ...

Apr 7, 2025 - Investigators have linked difficult early life experiences with reduced quality and quantity of the white matter communication highways throughout the adolescent brain. This reduced connectivity is also associated with lower performance on cognitive tasks.

Apr 7, 2025 - Body signals such as heartbeat and breathing accompany us constantly, often unnoticed as background noise of our perception. Even in the earliest years of life, these signals are important as they contribute to the development of self-awareness and identity. However, until know little has been known about whether and how babies can perceive their ...

Apr 2, 2025 - A newly published study found that a mother's exposure to phthalates during pregnancy can affect their newborn's metabolism and brain development. These widely used plasticizers are commonly found in a variety of cosmetics and personal care products, such as shampoos, soaps, and detergents, as well as plastic food and beverage containers.

Apr 1, 2025 - A research group has uncovered a potential mechanism linking maternal inflammation to delayed neurodevelopment in infants. The research suggests the role of CD11c-positive microglia -- immune cells in the brain crucial for myelination -- during infant brain development. Their findings suggest new strategies to mitigate the long-term neurodevelopmental effects of maternal inflammation.

Mar 31, 2025 - AI mental health apps may offer a cheap and accessible way to fill the gaps in the overstretched U.S. mental health care system, but ethics experts warn that we need to be thoughtful about how we use them, especially with children.

Mar 20, 2025 - Americans have long believed that sports are one area in society that offers kids from all backgrounds the chance to succeed to the best of their abilities. But new research suggests that this belief is largely a myth, and that success in high school and college athletics often is influenced by race and gender, as well as socioeconomic status, including family wealth and education.

Mar 20, 2025 - Though we learn so much during our first years of life, we can't, as adults, remember specific events from that time. Researchers have long believed we don't hold onto these experiences because the part of the brain responsible for saving memories -- the hippocampus -- is still developing well into adolescence and just can't encode memories in our ...

Mar 14, 2025 - The oxytocin system -- which helps release breast milk and strengthens the bond between mother and baby -- may be affected during breastfeeding in mothers experiencing postnatal depression.

Mar 11, 2025 - Children who consumed the least amounts of seafood at 7-years-old were likely to be less 'prosocial' at ages 7 and 9 years than those who regularly consumed seafood, according to a new study. 'Prosocial' behavior includes friendly interactions, altruism, and sharing.

Mar 11, 2025 - Parenting skills can make a big difference in fostering a newborn's language acquisition and cognition, but there may be a limit to how far parenting can go to make up the challenges to developing this skill in those born in highly disadvantaged backgrounds.

Mar 10, 2025 - Researchers found new insights on the timing of prenatal stress and its effect on infant stress reactivity and temperament -- including differences between genders.

Mar 10, 2025 - Research has shown that adults instinctively think of men when asked to think of a person -- they describe the most 'typical' person they can imagine as male and assume storybook characters without a specified gender are men. A new study by psychology researchers shows that the way parents talk to their children may contribute to these ...

Mar 7, 2025 - School readiness not only impacts kids' academic success, but also their long-term economic and health outcomes. Unfortunately, research reveals a concerning gap in school readiness for children with low birth weight, with only one-third of these children being on track. A new study identifies five key protective factors that can support children, ...

Mar 4, 2025 - Psychosocial stress during pregnancy could lead to higher blood pressure during the first year postpartum according to new research.

Feb 28, 2025 - Researchers have identified small molecules in the blood that may impact early childhood development, showing how dietary exposures, early life experiences, and gut health can influence a child's growth and cognitive milestones.

Feb 28, 2025 - Africa is a multilingual continent and many adults speak several languages fluently. An empirical study by a psycholinguist now shows that the roots of this multilingualism can be found in infancy: In Ghana, most babies grow up multilingually, with most of them coming into contact with two to six languages and just as many regular speakers of each ...

Feb 27, 2025 - A simple walk in the park could hold the key to unlocking a close and loving relationship between fathers and daughters, a new study has shown.

Feb 26, 2025 - Researchers find that parents show patterns of brain connectivity that oppose age-related changes.

Feb 25, 2025 - Identifying and treating risk factors for depression, anxiety and other psychological health conditions during pregnancy and postpartum may improve short- and long-term health outcomes for both mother and child, according to a new scientific statement.

Feb 20, 2025 - Fetal acetaminophen exposure increases the likelihood that a child will develop attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), according to a new study.

Feb 20, 2025 - A longer paternity leave after the birth of a child can improve the co-parenting relationship between moms and dads in a key way, a new study finds. Researchers found that mothers were less likely to discourage fathers' involvement in parenting if the dads had taken more time off after their child was born.

Feb 19, 2025 - Scientists report results from a promising new approach to treat the rare neurodegenerative disorder.

Feb 13, 2025 - Conversations about parental duties continue to be led by mothers, even if both parents earn the same amount of money, finds a new study.

Feb 13, 2025 - Many Japanese mothers are reluctant to send their children to childcare before the age of three due to the 'Three-Year-Old Myth,' which suggests that healthy development requires a child to stay at home and be raised by their mother. However, a recent study has shown that enrolling a child in kindergarten before they turn three may actually benefit their social, motor, and problem-solving skills.

Feb 13, 2025 - New postpartum depression findings could lead to a blood test to identify women at risk and possibly even to a preventive treatment.

Feb 12, 2025 - Getting at least 30 minutes of daily summer sun in the first year of life may mean a lower relapse risk for children who are diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS) later, according to a new study. The study also found if a child's biological mother had at least 30 minutes of daily sun during the second trimester of pregnancy, the child had a lower ...

Feb 4, 2025 - Maternal stress could leave epigenetic imprints on genes in the placenta associated with cortisol -- a necessary hormone for fetal development -- and this would affect the baby's development from very early stages. The study suggests that a mother's emotional wellbeing during pregnancy is not only important for her, but could also influence the future health of her baby.

Feb 3, 2025 - A new study finds that pregnant individuals who were unable to have their desired emotional support persons present during childbirth were more likely to have higher levels of perceived childbirth stress than those who were not missing their support people.

Jan 31, 2025 - While many studies have reported a link between a mother's health condition during pregnancy and her child's risk of autism, a new study shows that nearly all of these 'associations' can otherwise be explained by factors such as genetics, exposure to pollution, and access to healthcare.

Jan 29, 2025 - Researchers discovered children ages 3 to 5 tested before and after COVID lockdowns had a significant gap in a key cognitive skill, particularly for children from homes with low financial resources and adults with less education. The data is among the first to show the pandemic's cognitive effects on children who were not yet students.

Jan 29, 2025 - According to a new study, self-guided family therapy for obesity could work just as well as traditional approaches at a fraction of the cost.

Jan 28, 2025 - A new one-minute video game is able to accurately and efficiently identify children with autism from those who have ADHD or are neurotypical.

Jan 27, 2025 - A large proportion of babies born very early need intensive care, which can be painful. But the healthcare system fails to provide pain relief to the full extent. This is shown by the largest survey to date of pain in neonatal care.

Jan 21, 2025 - Parents attending an adult weight management program, who were worried about their child's weight, would accept support and signposting to services for their child if it was offered.

Jan 20, 2025 - Boys exposed to violent screen content in the preschool years were more likely to become antisocial and violent themselves a decade later, in their mid-teens, a new study shows.

Jan 16, 2025 - A new study found that younger siblings generally receive more favorable treatment from parents. Meanwhile, older siblings are often granted more autonomy, and parents are less controlling towards them as they grow up.

Jan 3, 2025 - A new study adds to the growing body of evidence on the cognitive benefits of speaking multiple languages, finding that multilingualism not only enhances general cognitive abilities but also may help reduce certain symptoms and bolster control of daily thoughts and actions in children with and without autism.

Dec 18, 2024 - A new study shows that an app can help parents who are mourning the loss of a child. Parents who used the app for three months reported reduced symptoms of prolonged grief and post-traumatic stress, and also had fewer negative thoughts. Some parents thought the app should be offered early in the mourning process.

Dec 17, 2024 - A psychologist found that a baby's first sweet sounds and early attempts at forming words are directly linked to the baby's heart rate.

Dec 17, 2024 - Almost three quarters of adolescents in Australia experience clinically significant depression or anxiety symptoms, with most being chronic, according to a new study. And preventive strategies outside our clinics are urgently required to address this considerable public health problem facing the nation.

Dec 17, 2024 - Novel research shows that a reduced neural response to receiving rewards in teens predicts the first onset of depression, but not anxiety or suicidality. This is independent of pre-existing depressive or anxiety symptoms, as well as age or sex, which are already strong risk factors for depression. The study is a step toward using brain science to understand and assess mental health risks.

Dec 16, 2024 - When young children's behavior becomes challenging, many parents resort to threats -- from taking away toys to threatening that Santa will skip their house, a national poll suggests.

Dec 12, 2024 - The study, conducted in the US, found that mothers take on seven in ten (71%) of all household mental load tasks.

Dec 11, 2024 - In animal studies, boosting serotonin in the cells that line the gut reduced anxious and depressive-like behaviors without causing cognitive or gastrointestinal side effects.

Dec 10, 2024 - New research shows that mothers have twice the impact on language exposure, challenging traditional parenting advice. In a new study, researchers found that there wasn't a single strategy that could be singled out as 'best' to raise a child bilingually. But when they looked at parents' language use individually rather than the family's overall ...

Dec 9, 2024 - Researchers found that adolescents with more symptoms of gaming addiction showed lower brain activity in the region involved in decision-making and reward processing; this blunted response to reward anticipation is associated with higher symptoms of gaming addiction over time and suggests that reduced sensitivity to rewards, in particular non-gaming rewards, may play a role in problematic gaming.

Dec 4, 2024 - Teens who think their parents use cannabis are more likely to hold favorable attitudes toward the drug and to consider trying it themselves, according to a new study. The research also reveals that parental monitoring and the closeness of parent-child relationships play crucial roles in adolescents' views about cannabis, often with distinct effects based on the parent's gender.

Nov 28, 2024 - A Canadian study reveals that allophone children often face learning and communication difficulties in kindergarten, which can negatively impact their educational journey.

Nov 27, 2024 - Children of mothers who took certain anti-seizure medications while pregnant do not have worse neurodevelopmental outcomes at age 6, according to a long-running study.

Nov 25, 2024 - Infants whose mothers regularly use language to describe what their child is thinking or feeling, have higher levels of the hormone oxytocin, finds a new study.

Nov 25, 2024 - New research challenges views on screen time, revealing factors such as parental mental health and the type of screen being used may have some impact on child development.

Nov 22, 2024 - Parents are much less likely to intervene when their young children are getting dressed or performing other simple chores if those tasks are framed as learning opportunities, according to a new study.

Nov 21, 2024 - Adolescents who snore frequently were more likely to exhibit behavior problems such as inattention, rule-breaking, and aggression, but they do not have any decline in their cognitive abilities, according to a new study. This is the largest study to date tracking snoring in children from elementary school through their mid-teen years and it ...