Depression. Bullying. Steroid abuse. These are some of the most harrowing issues affecting young people today. The threat they pose is reaching crisis levels. Counselors and educators all over The United States and Canada struggle to keep ahead of the spread of these afflictions.

Seven powerful and provocative new short films, collectively called The Maple Ave Series, provide valuable tools for initiating a dialogue about these disorders and shedding much-needed light on serious problems that teens face every day. Each Maple Ave film sets teens in believable dramas in which they struggle with an ever-growing roster of issues.

The Hurting: Cutting for Relief

One of the most troubling of these issues is self-mutilation, more commonly known as “cutting.” Cutting was virtually unheard of just a few years ago but is now finding its way into the mainstream of teen life. In THE HURTING: Cutting for Relief, a girl named Ashley substitutes one kind of pain for another, regularly cutting her arms and legs as a way of masking the misery of living with an abusive parent.

Ghosts in the Hall

Same Problem, Different Perspectives

As disturbing as cutting may be, it is not as widespread as the epidemic of bullying. In HATING TAMI: A Look At Female Bullying, the main character is regularly ridiculed by her classmates. Tami is even made the butt of a classmate’s vicious prank in which a boy appears to be interested in her. Besides the all too realistic depiction of Tami’s predicament, the film examines the role of parents whose attitudes can sometimes leave kids emotionally stranded.

Another Maple Ave film, GHOSTS IN THE HALL: The Aftermath of Bullying, deals with the same subject from a different perspective. The film presents two teens, Jim and Jenny, who have the same problem but whose lives, we soon find out, take radically different trajectories. Like Tami in the previous film, the two are tormented by their peers. Jenny is able to pull herself from a deep depression. But Jim can’t cope. His gradual slide into despair makes it easy to see how simple-seeming student pranks can end in disaster.

Jenny's Reasons

Friends Helping Friends

Depression, resulting from bullying, is the subject of JENNY’S REASONS: A Story About Teen Depression. Jenny—the same girl who appears in Ghosts in the Hall—is in the grip of a deep depression. Confused, overwhelmed and desperate, Jenny makes plans to kill herself but is saved when a friend, Tanya, intervenes at the last moment, helping Jenny to cope by sharing a dark secret from her own life.

Jenny returns the favor in another Maple Ave film, P.S. I MISS YOU: The Aftermath of Suicide. Tanya has a serious problem of her own: her brother has recently taken his life, and Tanya can’t make sense of it. She tries to deal with the loss by reaching out and helping others. But nothing seems to help. She starts drinking, and when that also does no good, she drinks more. Things have gone from bad to worse when her friend Jenny steps in and pulls Tanya back from the brink.

P.S. I Miss You

No Strange Bedfellows

At first blush, bulimia and steroids may not seem to belong together in the same film. But as MORE THAN THIS: Steroid Abuse & Eating Disorders points out, these two seemingly unrelated disorders are quite similar: each is about addictive personalities, and each involves body image issues on both sides of the gender fence.

The film follows Donnie, a star basketball player, whose abuse of steroids is completely unraveling his life. His coach is reluctant to help his star planer, leaving the problem in the hands of his girlfriend, Angela. In this film, the character of Angela raises the question of the bystander, a person who is close to someone in trouble and either chooses to help… or not. While taking care of Donnie, Angela, who once struggled with bulimia, can’t bring herself to share her experiences with two classmates for whom such a gesture could be crucial.

The final film in the series also deals with addiction. In PROMISE ME: Parents with Addictions, Ann’s parents are tearing apart the family with their twin addictions—the father’s to gambling, the mother’s to alcohol. Like her mother, Ann has trouble facing reality. She can’t bring herself to confront them even after her father has worked his way through her entire college fund. The result for Ann is despair. Despite the efforts of her brother and her best friend, her depression worsens until it seems that she is powerless to do little else but succumb to it.

Promise Me

Films Fulfilling their Function

Besides the hot-button nature of the subject matter, the Maple Ave. series is certain to appeal for many other reasons. The recurring characters in these films give the series the welcome familiar feel of a weekly TV show. Each of the seven programs is 25-30 minutes long. This makes them ideal for classroom presentations, allowing time for questions and discussion. And since it’s likely that these engaging films will provoke a good deal of healthy reaction, the chances are good that they will do what they are supposed to: they will help.

 

The White House is set to hold a conference next week in which President Obama will hear  concerns about anti-LGBT bullying.

The anti-bullying prevention conference, scheduled to take place at the White House on March 10, is being hosted by Obama, the Department of Education and the Department of Health & Human Services.

In a conference call Tuesday, Melody Barnes, White House domestic policy adviser, said the conference will bring together students, parents, teachers and other leaders who “have been affected by bullying, and who have taken action to prevent bullying.”

“Participants will have the opportunity to speak with the president and representatives from the highest levels of the administration about bullying as well as ways to take action to address it in their communities,” Barnes said.

Link to the rest of the story.

Sex education programs that advise students to delay sexual activity while also offering instruction on ways to avoid unintended pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections effectively reduce risky sexual behavior, increase condom use and decrease spread of STIs.

While the report concluded there was not enough information to determine the effectiveness of “abstinence only” education, advocates for more comprehensive sex education weighed in:

James Wagoner of Advocates for Youth said, “At long last, evidence and common sense have returned to public health policy,” adding that the report “endorses the comprehensive approach to prevention that includes condoms and birth control.” Wagoner said, “We should be spending taxpayer dollars only on evidence-based programs.” Sarah Brown of the National Campaign To Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy said, “Most Americans would like their teens to stay away from sex,” adding, “Strong research shows that the best way to do this, especially in schools, is to use a curriculum that encourages teens to delay sex and also — this is the key — talks to them about family planning and protection.”

The National Partnership for Women and Families post also cited a recent report from the Washington Post.

From today’s New York Times

By and large, mothers from Latin American countries take care of their health during their pregnancies and give birth to robust children, but those children fall behind their peers in mental development by the time they reach grade school, and the gap tends to widen as they get older.

The new Berkeley study suggests the shortfall may start even before the children enter preschool, supporting calls in Washington to spend more on programs that coach parents to stimulate their children with books, drills and games earlier in their lives.

“Our results show a very significant gap even at age 3,” said Bruce Fuller, one of the study’s authors and a professor of education at Berkeley. “If we don’t attack this disparity early on, these kids are headed quickly for a pretty dismal future in elementary school.

Link to complete NYT artlice

From the story:

“What this poll shows is that parents are still very concerned about bullying in their schools. about three-quarters of states nationwide have implemented bullying prevention laws that are designed to encourage, and in some cases force schools to present and deliver bullying prevention curriculum to
students,” says Davis, who is also an associate professor of public policy at the U-M Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy. “But based on these findings, it doesn’t appear that those curricula or programs are working effectively.”

Washington, D.C., officials are planning to make testing for sexually transmitted infections available at all public high schools in the coming school year, adding D.C. to a growing list of cities that test students for STIs….

he new program requires all students to attend a lecture about STIs, after which they are escorted into restroom areas in groups of 15 to 20. They are then given paper bags with urine collection cups and go into the stalls, at which point they can decide whether to provide a sample. All students return the paper bags, regardless of whether they provided samples. Students give a password and can call a week later to receive their confidential results and, if necessary, treatment at the school or an STI clinic, which is paid for by the city. The district first offered the program two years ago at two charter schools, and eight high schools were included during the past school year.

Also from The Women’s Health Report, news from Boston:

Boston’s health agency on Tuesday is scheduled to launch a safer-sex campaign that reaches out to teenagers through Web sites such as Facebook and YouTube, the Boston Globe reports. The campaign was created in response to rising rates of sexually transmitted infections among young people in the city, according to the Globe. The $100,000 campaign originally was intended to address communicable diseases in general. However, experts noticed the increase in STI cases among teenagers and decided to spend all the funding on the campaign targeting STIs.

Researchers found that young adults who had been exposed to a popular drug abuse prevention program as adolescents were less likely to engage in risky sexual behavior five to seven years later, according to the findings published online by the Journal of Adolescent Health. The study provides the strongest evidence to date that drug abuse prevention programs can also curb risky sexual practices in young adulthood.