Mental health connection to girls ethnic clothing

A new study by Queen Mary University of London has raised some interesting questions. It suggests that in the UK Bangladeshi girls who wear ‘traditional’ clothes suffer from fewer behavioural and emotional problems than ones who wear more mainstream clothes.

This apparently only applies to females and nothing equivalent could be seen in the mainstream community.

It is extremely doubtful that the actual clothes make any the difference, and the report does not claim it does. There is likely to be some indirect link.

One of the authors of the study, Professor Kam Bhui, , felt the result was "surprising", having expected the reverse. He conjectured the reason could be:

"Traditional clothing represents a tighter family unit, and this may offer some protection against some of the pressures that young people face.

"What it suggests is that we need to assist people who are moving from traditional cultures and becoming integrated into Western societies, as they may be more vulnerable to mental health problems."

One wonders if it has occurred to the reports authors that yes traditional clothing does indeed indicate a tighter less integrated family with more ‘traditional’ attitudes towards females and all that that implies.

Bangladeshi girls that don’t resist this come under less pressure from their families. They are often resident in effectively ghettoised areas, where this is the prevailing attitude and may well attend schools containing a significant number of girls from similar backgrounds.

Girls from traditional families under these circumstances that choose to step outside the somewhat narrow confines of this, to embrace a more mainstream ‘western’ lifestyle are surely more likely to come under increased pressure from the family, face the possibility of disapproval, loosing family support in some cases - and in some extreme cases even the possible threat of honour killing.

These factors are bound to undermine their equilibrium.

A comparison with girls of more mainstream integrated Indian decent might prove instructive.

French Kissing Cyber bullying in the USA

It seems teachers in the UK are not the only ones being cyber ‘bullied’.

While teenagers still think that most bullying happens offline, one third of online teenagers in the US have reportedly been cyber-bullied, according to the Pew Internet Project .

The most common complaint from teens, was about private information being shared, rather than direct threats.

One has to question exactly what they are counting as bullying. Is it the perception, or do they have a list and does it actually include things that most people would not even consider bullying?

Though it may not necessarily be the case here, I have seen some surveys where the criteria were dubious, to say the least, effectively designed to maximise the response.

According to this report, girls were more likely to be bullied than boys. Girls tend to network more, so that makes sense. People who share their identities online were apparently the most vulnerable.

Some 32% of teenagers questioned had experienced one, or more, of the following:

• Receiving an aggressive email, IM or text message.
  
• Having a rumour spread about them online or having.
  
• Having a private e-mail, instant message, or text messaging forwarded, or posted where others could see it.
  
• Having an embarrassing photograph posted online without permission.
  

The last two are a bit ambiguous. The more sensitive, the more likely to experience bullying if it is intended, or not.

This from a 16 year old girl certainly fits the bill:
"There's this boy in my anatomy class who everybody hates and some girl started up this I Hate [Name] MySpace thing. So everybody in school goes on it to say bad things about this boy."

I guess the one who started that - and the ones that joined in - never heard of Columbine High School, or Virginia Tech...

According to Secret service investigators, many of the shooters in those situations had feelings of alienation, or persecution, that eventually drove them to violence.

Teen Drinking Falls

Recently the “protect us all from ourselves” brigade and health fascists have done their best to ensure teenage drinking becomes a cause of major concern.

Earlier this year, the partially State Funded (via UK Department of Health) UK charity Alcohol Concern was calling for parents who taught their children how to handle alcohol moderately at home to be prosecuted.

A subsequent study confirmed the common sense view, finding that those who drank with parental supervision were in fact less likely to engage in binge drinking.

Now it seems that fewer underage teenagers are drinking regularly – due, at least in part, according to a Trading Standards survey, to more effective enforcement of the perfectly adequate existing sales regulations.

The survey found that nearly half of those who said they drank alcohol did so at home under parental supervision, or at family functions.

So it seems we may not, after all, need a plethora of new poorly drafted and ill conceived legislation making specific offences of, say - anyone under the age of three to purchase Polish Lager on a Wednesday after 4 pm with a personal cheque signed in green ink, whilst wearing red socks and carrying a copy of A Tale of Two Cities. Then there would be the offence of Aggravated purchase before 4 pm on Wednesdays…

The survey indicated the proportion of those aged between14 and 17 buying alcohol dropped by 12% to 28%. Those who said they drank regularly (that is at least once a week) fell from by 6% to 44% and those who never drink alcohol at all has risen by 5% in the last two years to 17%

Director of the Centre for Public Health, Professor Mark Bellis, said: "It is very positive that we have seen such a dramatic drop in kids buying their own alcohol.”

Unfortunately over 7% polled said they had been in a car (presumably actually being driven, as opposed to having subsequently regretted sex in the back seats) with a young person who had been drinking, and around 6% said they had regretted having sex while drunk. Given the age range involved 14 - 17 the majority of those polled should not be driving, drunk or sober.