Bullying’s Impact on Girls

Medscape has a new CE offering on the impact of bullying on girls. Seems that a new study indicates that girls have far more long-term psychological sequelae from bullying than boys, a finding particularly interesting to me as the mother of a girl-child. If you’d like to get better acquainted with the study (or at least a brief synopsis of the study), you can check it out and get 0.25 hours of AMA PRA Category 1 credit (or for my nursing friends, .50 contact hours) for your efforts. As always, these offerings are free, but require site registration to participate.

Teen Dating Violence

Yesterday, I received an email from a reader looking for materials on teen dating violence. There are several sites addressing this issue right now. One is That’s Not Cool, which does a great job speaking directly to teens about stalking, harassment and violence. There’s also Break the Cycle, which has a boatload of free resources that would be great to have on hand as patient handouts (in English and Spanish), including safety planning workbooks for teens and for college students (PDF). They also publish a report on state laws each year–you can see how your state measures up here (OH gets an F) or download the full report (PDF).

Sexting Podcast

The Indiana Youth Institute has a podcast on sexting available on their website. I’m on the road with the Army this week and haven’t had a chance to listen to this one yet. But since there’s been a flurry of searches for “sexting” on the site recently, I figured this would be timely. I don’t even have any background on the speaker (just the sponsoring organization), so let us know if it’s worthwhile, please.

Cyberbullying

In April, the Maternal and Child Health Bureau (HRSA) held a webcast on cyberbullying. You can download the slides (PDF) from the webcast on their site, but unfortunately there’s no audio accompanying it. Still the slides have some good info and both prevention and intervention are addressed. There’s definitely an educator bent to the talk, but I think healthcare providers, particularly those dealings with kids/teens, will find a lot of the information helpful.

Articles of Note: June Edition

Time once again for a run down of some of the new and noteworthy articles in the current literature. Most of these are from the June/July issues; I have included a couple articles electronically available now in anticipation of print publication, as well (all from the last 4 weeks). As always, please keep in mind this in no way a comprehensive list; simply items that have caught my attention from a selection of peer-reviewed journals. All links lead to PubMed abstracts (unless there isn’t one for that article); from there you can choose what’s worth a.) paying for; b.) a pilgrimage to your nearest medical library;  or c.) downloading via the full-text access you possibly have at your disposal.

Childhood Bullying

Medscape has a new CE offering, Bullied Kids More Likely to Become Psychotic Preteens. It’s in your standard article-posttest format. 0.25 credits are available for both physicians and nurses. The article is based on a published study in the current issue of Archives of General Psychiatry. As with all Medscape offerings, it’s free of charge, but site registration is required.

Electronic Aggression

Sitting in the airport in Moline, IL, looking for something completely unrelated, and I came across this podcast from the CDC on electronic aggression. It’s a little over 12 minutes and looks at online bullying and youth violence. You can also view a transcript of the session on the same page, or download a PDF here. For more on the issue, you can check out their related page, which links to other resources, including a brief for educators and caregivers.

Youth Violence

The Michigan Public Health Training Center has an online CE offering, Youth Violence: It’s a Public Health Issue. 1.5 CEUs are available for their archived webcast, originally presented in Decomber ’08. It’s free of charge and lasts about 90 minutes.

Professional Responsibility in Preventing Violence & Abuse

I seem to be on an article kick right now, because I have more for you today. I was actually looking for something else entirely and stumbled across the AMA‘s Journal of Ethics, Virtual Mentor, instead. Having never heard of it (not being an AMA member), I was fascinated that this online ethics publication had an entire issue related to clinicians and violence prevention, and that said publication included such topics as the potential conflict between patient confidentiality and mandatory reporting, and lateral violence. Not the usual fare, although it addresses issues such as IPV, child abuse, bullying and school violence, as well. (No sexual violence according to the TOC; I haven’t finished working my way through the issue to know if it’s buried. No elder abuse, either.)

NIJ Journal: Human Trafficking

The current issue of the NIJ Journal is now available, featuring articles on human trafficking, post-conviction DNA testing and critical incidents in schools (at least those were the highlights for me). You can download the full journal here (PDF). The complete TOC includes:

• Sex Trafficking: Identifying Cases and Victims: Robert Moossy, J.D.
• Drugs, Race and Common Ground: Reflections on the High Point Intervention: David Kennedy
• Postconviction DNA Testing Is at Core of Major NIJ Initiatives: Nancy Ritter
• Sleep Deprivation: What Does It Mean for Public Safety Officers? Bryan Vila, Ph.D.
• Protecting America’s Ports: Bruce Taylor, Ph.D., and Pat Kaufman
• Using Technology to Make Prisons and Jails Safer: Philip Bulman
• Preventing, Preparing for Critical Incidents in Schools: Beth Schuster

Cyberbullying

HRSA‘s Maternal and Child Health Bureau is hosting a free webinar on cyberbullying April 22nd at 3pm ET. It’s scheduled to last 90 minutes and will feature information on prevention and response to cyberbullying, including legal and policy issues. Pre-registration is required.

Youth Violence Prevention

This week is Youth Violence Prevention Week and NCJRS has a site dedicated to the topic. By clicking on the right hand column of the main page, you can access fully-linked separate pages on stats; gun violence; youth violence; research; school violence; and gangs. Most of the links lead to federal sites (most of those within DOJ/NIJ), so it’s not definitive, but it’s pretty extensive.

Providing Services to Victims of Bullying

OVC‘s next Web Forum will be on providing services to victims of bullying. As with their other forums, you can submit questions in advance, and then return on March 18th at 2pm ET for the live discussion. To read more about the forum and the featured experts, click here. To submit questions, follow this link. An index of previous forum topics, with archived questions and responses, can be found here.

Articles of Note

I’m auditioning a new feature to the site: a monthly look at what’s new and notable in the literature. Obviously this won’t be a comprehensive review, since A.) there are hundreds of journals to comb through and who has that kind of time? and B.) my interests skew in a pretty specific direction so I’m sure there’s stuff out there that wouldn’t necessarily catch my attention but would be compelling and/or relevant to many of you.