Kids got the blues? Maybe they don't have enough friends
New study from Concordia University, Florida Atlantic University, University of Vermont
2010-12-17
(Press-News.org) Montreal, December 16, 2010 – Friendless kids can become social outcasts who risk spiraling into depression by adolescence, according to new research from Concordia University, Florida Atlantic University and the University of Vermont. Yet for most shy and withdrawn children, the study reports in the journal Development and Psychopathology, friends can be a form of protection against sadness.
"The long-term effects of being a withdrawn child are enduringly negative," says lead author William M. Bukowski, a psychology professor and director of the Concordia Centre for Research in Human Development. "Over time, we found that withdrawn kids showed increasing levels of sadness and higher levels of depressive feelings."
A total of 130 girls and 101 boys in the third through fifth school grades, took part in the three-year study. Participants were asked to rate whether they felt shy or preferred solitude. The research team also found that peers typically excluded children with poor social skills, who were perceived as overly aggressive or immature.
Compared with friendless children, those who had friends were less likely to report depressed feelings. "Friendship disrupts the negative and long-term effects of withdrawal," says Dr. Bukowski, who is also Concordia University Research Chair in Psychology. "Friendship promotes resilience and protects at-risk kids from internalizing problems such as feeling depressed and anxious."
Withdrawal can have consequences that extend beyond the near term. "In much the same was as a snowball rapidly grows as it rolls down a hill, an adjustment problem is thought to amplify as it worsens," says Dr. Bukowski. "Being isolated and excluded from the peer group can increase levels of depressed feelings in children and those negative feelings can escalate throughout adolescence."
The key to avoid peer rejection is to make at least one friend. "Having one friend can be protective for withdrawn or shy kids," says Dr. Bukowski. "Our study confirms the value of having friends, which are like a shield against negative social experiences."
INFORMATION:
Partners in research:
This study was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the W. T. Grant Foundation, the National Institute of Mental Health and the National Science Foundation.
About the study:
The paper, "The snowball effect: Friendship moderates escalations in depressed affect among avoidant and excluded children," published in the journal Development and Psychopathology, was authored by William M. Bukowski of Concordia University in Canada, Brett Laursen of Florida Atlantic University and Betsy Hoza of the University of Vermont in the United States.
On the Web:
Cited study from Development and Psychopathology http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=7909551
Concordia Department of Psychology: http://psychology.concordia.ca
Concordia Centre for Research in Human Development: http://crdh.concordia.ca
Media contact:
Sylvain-Jacques Desjardins
Senior advisor, media relations
University Communications Services
Concordia University
Phone: 514-848-2424, ext. 5068
Email: s-j.desjardins@concordia.ca
Twitter: http://twitter.com/concordianews
Concordia news: http://now.concordia.ca
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
2010-12-17
In a new report that bucks the concerns raised by the Food and Drug Administration, a Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH) (sph.bu.edu) researcher concludes that electronic cigarettes are much safer than real cigarettes and show promise in the fight against tobacco-related diseases and death.
The review, which will be published online ahead of print this month in the Journal of Public Health Policy, is the first to comprehensively examine scientific evidence about the safety and effectiveness of electronic cigarettes, also known as e-cigarettes, said Michael ...
2010-12-17
Films instead of walls. This is an idea that fascinates architects all over the world. The Eden Project in Southern England, the National Aquatics Center built for swimming events at the Olympics in Beijing and the Allianz Arena in Munich are only three examples of what you can make from plastic sheets. Ethylene tetraflourethylene (ETFE), a transparent membrane, is especially popular because it enables buildings that shine in all colors as in Munich and Peking. But, we are not just talking about colors. You can use this new foil for an intelligent improvement of existing ...
2010-12-17
Through a complex analysis of protein interactions, researchers from IRB Barcelona and the Joint Programme IRB-BSC have discovered new molecular mechanisms that may be involved in the development of Alzheimer's disease. The study, a collaboration between bioinformaticians and cell biologists, was led by IRB Barcelona group leader and ICREA researcher Patrick Aloy and appears today in the Genome Research, a reference journal in the field of genomics.
Alzheimer's disease is an age-related neurodegenerative disease. Despite the considerable efforts made in recent years to ...
2010-12-17
INDIANAPOLIS –While many studies have looked at the treatment of chronic pain from the patient's perspective, there has been little research on those who provide care for chronic pain.
In a study in the November 2010 issue of the journal Pain Medicine, researchers from the Regenstrief Institute, the Indiana University School of Medicine, the IU School of Liberal Arts and the Roudebush VA Medical Center report that chronic pain takes a toll on primary care providers as well as their patients. They conclude that providers' needs should not be ignored if pain care is to ...
2010-12-17
WASHINGTON — The rapid advances in information technology that drive many sectors of the U.S. economy could stall unless the nation aggressively pursues fundamental research and development of parallel computing -- hardware and software that enable multiple computing activities to process simultaneously, says a new report by the National Research Council. Better options for managing power consumption in computers will also be essential for continued improvements in IT performance.
For many decades, advances in single-processor, sequential computer microprocessors have ...
2010-12-17
KINGSTON, R.I. – December 16, 2010 – Geologists from the University of Rhode Island and Princeton University, in collaboration with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, have taken an important step toward helping the United States government monitor nuclear explosions by improving a 3-dimensional model originally developed at Harvard University. The improvements make the model more accurate at detecting the location, source and depth of seismic activity.
The results of their research were presented today at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco.
The ...
2010-12-17
The World Health Organization set a target for the influenza vaccination rate for 2006 of more than 50% of the elderly population and an increase to more than 75% by 2010. These rates have thus far not been achieved in the old German states. In the current issue of Deutsches Ärzteblatt International (Dtsch Arztebl Int 2010; 107[48]: 845) the working group around Annicka M. Reuss presents rates from flu seasons past.
Germany's Standing Vaccination Committee (STIKO) recommends annual vaccinations against seasonal influenza. The risk groups for the infection, which ...
2010-12-17
Modesto, CA (Dec. 16, 2010) – With nearly 16 million Americans living today with prediabetes, a condition that is the precursor to type 2 diabetes, and half of all Americans expected to have either prediabetes or type 2 diabetes by the year 2020, nutritional approaches to maintaining healthy blood sugar levels are essential.1,2 The findings of a scientific study examining the health promotion and disease prevention benefits of almond consumption were published in the June, 2010 Journal of the American College of Nutrition. The study, one of the first of its kind to quantify ...
2010-12-17
When children are exposed to head and neck radiation, whether due to cancer treatment or multiple diagnostic CT scans, the result is an increased risk of thyroid cancer for the next 58 years or longer, according to University of Rochester Medical Center research.
The study is believed to be the longest of any group of children exposed to medical irradiation and followed for thyroid cancer incidence. It was published in the December 2010 edition of the journal, Radiation Research.
The data also might provide some insight about why the rates of thyroid cancer continue ...
2010-12-17
AMES, Iowa – Wind turbines in Midwestern farm fields may be doing more than churning out electricity. The giant turbine blades that generate renewable energy might also help corn and soybean crops stay cooler and dryer, help them fend off fungal infestations and improve their ability to extract growth-enhancing carbon dioxide [CO2] from the air and soil.
Speaking at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union, a scientific society, in San Francisco today, a researcher at the U.S. Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory and his co-researcher from the University ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
[Press-News.org] Kids got the blues? Maybe they don't have enough friends
New study from Concordia University, Florida Atlantic University, University of Vermont
