School Health News

Children and teenagers can play a pivotal role in supporting individuals experiencing cardiac arrest in settings outside the hospital by engaging bystanders, performing CPR and using automated external defibrillators when available, according to a policy statement issued by the AAP.

NEW YORK — Though the association between fictional depictions of suicide and imitative self-harm is not new, recent trends in media content and viewer habits, specifically seen with the television phenomenon “13 Reasons Why,” has misrepresented and possibly sensationalized suicide to adolescents, according to a presentation at the American Psychiatric Association Annual Meeting.

The content of school lunches packed at home were heavily influenced by the child’s desires rather than the parent’s choice, with reports of concerns about price and anxieties about whether their lunch was eaten, according to findings from the United Kingdom published in the Journal of Nutritional Education and Behavior.

Later school start times benefit the sleep schedules of adolescents, with seventh and eighth graders reporting a longer duration of sleep and less sleepiness during the day, according to findings published in the Journal of School Health.

This Friday marks 19 years that many Americans watched the aftermath of the Columbine High School tragedy unfold on live television. In the hours that followed, viewers learned two students killed 12 students and a teacher, and injured another 23.

Symptoms of disordered eating behavior were associated with later depressive symptoms and bullying in adolescence, according to study results published in JAMA Psychiatry.

Although most concussions in pediatric patients older than 6 years of age were sports related, investigators found about one-third of concussions were sustained through non-sport activities.

Physician input may improve the care of asthma exacerbations and anaphylaxis in the school setting because emergency action plans are maintained by only approximately 41% of children with allergies and 21% of children with asthma, according to a study presented at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology in Orlando.

Findings published in The British Journal of Psychiatry showed that children whose grades declined throughout elementary and high school were more likely to develop depression in adolescence, and self-harm was only linked to declining grades during high school.

Study findings demonstrated that school-based mental health services delivered by teachers and other school personnel helped reduce mental health issues in elementary-aged children.