Features

The wonderful and scientific world that we live in these days, is giving us longer, and pain-free lives as most of our diseases can be diagnosed and treated by the innate skills of physicians and surgeons. London is a city especially popular as a healthcare hub, where scores of ill people troop in, on a regular basis. The doctors are exceptionally brilliant and have a cure for almost all the bodily ailments.

There is no dearth of psychologists and psychiatrists here too. The shrinks, as they are commonly called in colloquial slang, are people who look after our mental well-being. So if one is suffering from depression, melancholy, despair or an unexplained bout of sadness, one seeks them out.

I was always intrigued with the idea of visiting a shrink. The closest I have ever come to one is via a Woody Allen movie. For some reason, a majority of his films have scenes that are shot in a shrink’s chamber. The doctor usually sits behind a desk while the patient, sort of, reclines on a couch-like sofa. In this posture, the specialist listens to the constant chatter that pours forth from the sufferer. Occasionally, he jots down notes on a writing pad or if the prattle subsides, he prods the talker with some pertinent queries.

I liked this portrayal of psychologists, I really did. I mean, I lived in a house where nobody had the time or inclination to listen to my complaints. And here was a person whose sole occupation was to hear me speak. I could not contain my excitement and was eager to meet with one of them. All I needed was an appropriate ailment that could assist me in getting an appointment.

I am not really an unhappy person so depression was ruled out. I do not have much patience for melancholia and sadness also, but I do call myself a perfectionist and like to keep my home and hearth spotlessly neat and clean. I do not think that is a negative quality but if I presented it as an obsessive compulsive disorder then maybe the doctor would give me that much needed chatter session on the couch.

Moreover, I was fascinated with both the words obsession and compulsion. The former means being continuously preoccupied with a fixed idea, feeling or emotion and the latter is an irresistible urge to behave in a particular manner despite the consequences. I was actually totally charmed with this description. The only negative was the term “disorder” associated with it.

Next day I called up the clinic and fixed an appointment with the consultant. At the scheduled hour I presented myself at the hospital. The doctor made me sit in front of his desk and excused himself to answer the phone.

I observed that his table was overflowing with knick-knacks. Before I could stop myself, I started the tidying by placing the magazines in a neat pile, the scattered stationary in the pen-stand and the disposable coffee cups in the trashcan. 

“What are you doing?” asked the doctor rushing back.

“Putting things in order,” I answered.

“Your work station was very messy,” I informed him.

“It was my mess,” the shrink announced loftily.

“But it was on my side of the table,” I countered.

“Confirmed OCD,” he diagnosed suddenly.

“You or me?” I muttered under my breath.

“What did you say?” his voice was shocked. 

“Nothing! I have to go,” I said, beating a hasty retreat.

Obese kids may be able to drop weight with the help of an unlikely aid: video games. 

Special exercise video games helped overweight children drop kilogrammes — and improve their cholesterol and blood pressure — while they were having fun, in a study reported in Paediatric Obesity. 

It makes more sense to co-opt kids’ favourite pastime than to fight it, said the study’s lead author Amanda Staiano of the Pennington Biomedical Research Centre at Louisiana State University. 

“Kids are really interested in this and spend hours a week playing,” Staiano said. “So, rather than blame the games and technology, it made sense to see how they could help.” 

Staiano and her colleagues felt it was critical to find ways to reach overweight kids. In Louisiana, more than one in three children (35.3 per cent) between the ages of 10 and 17 are overweight and more than one in five (21.1 per cent) are obese. 

The video games funnel kids’ competitive urges into various kinds of exercise. “Your body becomes input into the game through an infrared sensor,” she explained. “It’s constantly reading what your body is doing. And you make points controlling the player on the screen with your own body.” 

To make a more effective programme, weekly talks with a coach via the internet were included. “That helped keep them accountable for physical activity goals,” Staiano said. “Other groups have given kids games at home only to find that kids stopped playing after a few weeks.” 

Staiano and her colleagues tested their programme, dubbed GameSquad, with the help of 46 families, each of which had a child between 10 and 12 who was overweight or obese. The intervention was designed to last six months. 

Half the families were randomly assigned to a “gaming” group, while the other half were put on a waiting list. 

Families in the gaming group were encouraged to meet national recommendations of 60 minutes per day of physical activity. They received an Xbox, a motion sensing device and four exer-games (Your Shape: Fitness Evolved 2012, Just Dance 3, Disneyland Adventures and Kinect Sports Season 2). They were also given a Fitbit to track their steps each day. 

The children were encouraged to play the games at home with a friend or family member. “Studies have shown that children expend more energy when they are playing with another person,” Staiano said. 

At the end of the study, the members of the control group were given the gaming console and the exergames. 

Most of the families — 22 out of 23 — in the gaming group completed the six-month programme. By the end of the study, the kids in this group had reduced their body mass index by about 3 per cent, while kids in the control group had increased their BMIs by one per cent. Similarly, cholesterol levels went down in the gaming group, while they rose in the control group. 

And although family members were not monitored as part of the study, “anecdotally we heard from parents who also lost weight”, Staiano said. 

The study’s use of video time to boost activity was intriguing to Linda Van Horn, a professor of preventive medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago and a Northwestern Medicine epidemiologist. 

The findings show that “harnessing modern technology along with appealing to a child’s interest in gaming can help achieve an increase in physical activity”, said Van Horn, who was not involved in the new research. “Everybody is more interested in reducing exposure to screens. This study took advantage of the fact kids like to look at screens and applied it in such a way that the kids were motivated to exercise. This could have a new meaning for adapting screens to a favourable outcome.” 

The new study “encourages us to think out of the box”, said Tammy Brady, who is the medical director of the paediatric hypertension programme at Johns Hopkins Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland. 

“We are realising more and more that we need to meet kids half way, so to speak,” said Brady, who is not affiliated with the new research. “This says that maybe we need to be more inventive and pay attention to what children and teens are doing and adapt our methods to what is interesting to them. I think this is very promising in terms of the outcomes they were able to get in a short time.”

Obese girls are more likely to develop depression during childhood and adolescence than their peers who weigh less, a research review suggests. 

Compared to girls at a healthy weight, girls with obesity were 44 per cent more likely to have depression or to be diagnosed with it in the future, the analysis of 22 studies with a total of almost 144,000 participants found. 

Just being overweight rather than obese, however, did not appear to influence the risk of depression for girls, and there was not any association between weight and depression in boys. 

The smaller studies included in the analysis were not controlled experiments designed to prove whether or how obesity might cause depression, or the role that gender might play. But it’s possible boys and girls might have different perceptions about body image that at least partially explain the results, said lead author Shailen Sutaria of Imperial College London in the UK. 

“While a number of factors may be involved, clearly there are additional social pressures on girls to be a certain body shape, perpetuated and amplified though social media,” Sutaria said by e-mail. 

Girls who experience body dissatisfaction may develop symptoms of depression as a result, Sutaria added. But overweight or obese boys might think differently about their size. 

“Boys may find it desirable to be larger as this reflects strength and dominance, traits that are likely to be desirable during childhood,” Sutaria said. 

Globally, more than 40 million children are overweight or obese by the time they are five years old, according to the World Health Organisation. 

Depression is also a leading cause of reduced quality of life for children, impacting school performance, friendships and the risk of substance use and other risky behaviours, researchers note in the Archives of Disease in Childhood. 

While previous research has linked childhood obesity to an increased risk of depression, results have been mixed and the estimated excess risk has ranged from as low as 4 per cent to as high as 64 per cent, researchers note. 

In the current analysis, children were 14 years old on average and almost 16 per cent were obese. Slightly more than one in 10 obese children were depressed. 

“We know that children with obesity are at risk of developing depression and we know that children with depression are at risk of developing obesity,” said Stephen Pont, a researcher at the University of Texas Dell Medical School in Austin who was not involved in the study. 

“To some degree we have been in a ‘chicken and the egg’ situation,” Pont said by e-mail. “We do not know if obesity causes depression or that depression causes obesity.” 

Still, parents should keep the risk of depression in mind when they try to encourage overweight or obese children to achieve a healthy weight, said Rebecca Puhl of the Rudd Centre for Food Policy and Obesity at the University of Connecticut in Hartford. 

That means avoiding talk about the scale, Puhl, who was not involved in the study, said by email. 

“When parents talk to their teen about losing weight, the teen is more likely to turn to unhealthy dieting and maladaptive weight control behaviours — like binge eating,” Puhl added. “But when parent conversations instead focus on healthy behaviours like eating nutritious foods, rather than body weight, the teen is less likely to engage in those unhealthy behaviours.” 

At home, parents should also make sure kids aren’t teased about their weight and that there is a supportive environment that encourages healthy behaviour, said Eleanor Mackey of Children’s National Health System in Washington, DC. 

“Parents should also encourage friendships that support the adolescent without bullying,” Mackey, who was not involved in the study, said by e-mail. “Finally, if a parent notices changes in mood, attitude, or increase in sleeping, difficulty sleeping, poor concentration, irritability, or sad mood, please seek help.” 

First launched in 2013 with the featured entry-level 2.0t model arriving the following year, the Infiniti Q50 is the Honk Kong-based Japanese manufacturer’s compact executive saloon follow-up to the fondly remembered and superb yet sometimes underrated G-Sedan.

Ushering in a new “Q” based alphanumeric nomenclature and the first production car ever offered with optional drive-by-wire steering, the Q50 was and remains a bona fide rival the likes of the BMW 3-Series, Mercedes C-class and Audi A4 that well stands the test of time even against newer German rivals, and other competitors.

Assertive, aerodynamic aesthetic

Among the prettier, yet more assertively designed cars in its class, the Q50’s sculpted surfacing, flowing lines, complex ridges and moody demeanour are nevertheless sophisticated and stylish. A natural successor to G-Sedan’s urgent posture, the Q50’s styling is fluent and evolutionary, rather than being an overstated departure from previous design, as is the case with its closest Japanese rival.

Assertively muscular, yet smoothly flowing, the Q50’s design further provides low CD0.26 aerodynamics and zero lift, which contribute to its quiet ride and stability at speed, and improved efficiency.

With a long swooping and ridged bonnet, rearwards cabin and pert boot emphasising its classic front-engine and rear-wheel-drive layout, the Q50’s rakish roofline, prominent haunches and rear window kink help complete a sense of forward momentum and assertive road stance.

Dramatic from front, the Q50 features a snouty and wide honeycomb grille that is pinched in the middle, and flanked by heavily browed headlights. At the rear, it features prominent dual tailpipes and a built-in boot ridge that serves as a spoiler. Meanwhile, mildly revised version is expected to arrive in Jordan by next year, with minor styling differences.

Robust and responsive

The entry-level petrol model in a wider Q50 range that features two 3-litre twin-turbo V6 engines replacing Infiniti’s sublime traditional naturally-aspirated 3.7-litre V6, and a 3.5-litre hybrid, the turbocharged direct injection 2-litre four-cylinder 2.0t driven is, however, no slouch, and offers confidently brisk performance.

Sourced from Mercedes-Benz under a technology-sharing deal, the Q50 2.0t’s engine is the equivalent to Mercedes’ own “250” engine designation. Developing 208BHP at 5500rpm and 258lb/ft throughout 1250-3500rpm, the Q50 2.0t dashes through 0-100km/h in 7.2-seconds and tops out at 245km/h, yet returns moderate 6.3l/100km combined cycle fuel consumption.

Well suited for city, highway and more interesting winding and steeply inclining country routes, the Q50 2.0t’s quick spooling turbo ensures good responses in traffic and hill starts.

Meanwhile, its generous and robust mid-range torque sweet spot provided on the move flexibility and confidence during test drive in Amman and more hilly terrain further afield. Smooth and consistent in delivery, the Q50’s low rev gurgle lends an impression of latent yet un-tapped power when cruising. However, and unlike Infiniti’s naturally-aspirated V6 engines, the 2.0t is comparatively low-revving and does its best work in mid-range, up to 5500rpm.

Sporty set-up

Smooth, stable and refined at speed and in town, the Q50 is also comfortable and forgiving in town, albeit with a slight firmness on small jagged bumps, owing to the use of run-flat tyres with firm sidewalls. At 225/55R17 tyre size is just right for aesthetics, handling, braking, steering, efficiency and comfort over imperfect Jordanian country and city roads.

On crests and dips, vertical control is meanwhile settled and rebound is nice and taut, while braking on steep descents and from speed was reassuring and well resistant to brake fade.

Lighter in front than other Q50 models, the 2.0t is tidy and eager turning into corners, with front tyres gripping well and its electric-assisted hydraulic steering providing quick and accurate reflexes and a more natural feel for the road and the car’s position than the more exotic drive-by-wire system offered on some Q50 models.

Set-up with sporty and drift-bias that is counteracted by its stability controls keeping things in order if one gets too enthusiastic. In low intervention “off” mode, stability controls allow more leeway for one to easily slide the rear out slightly and to self-correct before it steps in.

Eager and ergonomic

With its eager and agile cornering aided by a selective braking torque vectoring system, the Q50 carves corners eagerly and tidily. And while stiffer damping and more mechanical rear grip might have been welcome on some low traction road surfaces, the Q50 drifty and pointy handling are entertaining and help one tighten cornering lines with an easily induced, but balanced and predictable weight pivot.

For best result through winding roads, the Q50 responds well to a committed yet measured driving style and smooth progressive inputs, including steering turn-in and when coming back on throttle after a corner’s apex to strike a balance between cornering grip and adjustability.

At the sportier handling end among compact executive saloons, the Q50 is a sometimes overlooked but formidable player in its segment. No one-trick pony, it also offers a comfortable and refined ride. Its pleasantly airy, leather-bound and well-appointed cabin is among the most spacious in the segment, especially compared to some other “first time”compact executives, while generous 500-litre volume even outdoes some full-size luxury saloons two segments above.

Ergonomic inside with a comfortable, supportive and well-adjustable driving position, the Q50 is also well-equipped and features reversing camera, parking sensors, dual screen infotainment system, dual-zone A/C and more, as driven.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

Engine: 2-litre, in-line, turbocharged 4-cylinders

Bore x stroke: 83 x 92mm

Compression: 9.8:1

Valve-train: 16-valve, DOHC, direct injection

Gearbox: 7-speed automatic, rear-wheel-drive

Power, BHP (PS) [kW]: 208 (211) 155 @5500rpm

Specific power: 104.5BHP/litre

Power-to-weight: 121.28BHP/tonne

Torque, lb/ft (Nm): 258 (350) @1250-3500rpm

Specific torque: 175.79Nm/litre

Torque-to-weight: 204.08Nm/litre

0-100km/h: 7.2-seconds

Top speed: 245km/h

Fuel consumption, urban/extra-urban/combined:

8.6/5/6.3 litres/100km

CO2 emissions, combined: 146g/km

Fuel capacity: 80-litres

Height: 1,445mm

Width: 1,820mm

Length: 4,790mm

Wheelbase: 2,850mm

Track, F/R: 1,540/1,570mm

Aerodynamic drag co-efficient: 0.26

Kerb weight: 1,715kg

Luggage volume: 500-litres

Steering: Electric-assisted rack & pinion

Turning diameter: 11.4-metres

Suspension, F/R: Double wishbones/multi-link, twin

tube dampers, stabiliser bars

Brakes, F/R: Ventilated discs, 330mm/308mm

Tyres: 225/55R17

Price, as tested: JD48,800 on-the-road, no insurance

TAMPA — Most people who use online dating websites seek partners who are out of their league, said a recent study based on heterosexuals in four big US cities.

“Both men and women pursued partners about 25 per cent more ‘desirable’ than themselves,” said the report in the journal Science Advances.

Hardly anyone reached out to people who ranked significantly lower than themselves. 

People’s desirability was determined using a ranking algorithm based on how many messages they received from other popular users on a dating site in New York, Seattle, Boston and Chicago.

“If you are contacted by people who are themselves desirable, then you are presumably more desirable yourself,” said the study.

Using this PageRank algorithm, which is employed by web search engines, researchers could establish a person’s “league”, which they scientifically coined “hierarchies of desirability”.

For some at the pinnacle of the dating game, the flurry of messages from would-be suitors was dizzying.

“The most popular individual in our four cities, a 30-year-old woman living in New York, received 1,504 messages during the period of observation, equivalent to one message every 30 minutes, day and night, for the entire month,” said the study.

While researchers did not reveal the end to this lady’s love story, they did find that the majority of daters on the site tended to reach out to people who were ranked higher than themselves.

They also tended to send lengthier messages to people deemed higher on the desirability ladder.

In most cases, these long-shots fell short.

When there is a big gap in desirability between online daters, “there is a pronounced drop in the probability of reply”, said the report.

And only in Seattle were there signs that long letters were more successful than short messages at getting a potential mate to respond.

The Great War and the Remaking of Palestine
Salim Tamari
US: University of California Press, 2017
Pp. 207

The last decade of the Ottoman Empire was a time of great change, not least the 1908 constitutional revolution led by the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), the overthrow of Sultan Abdul Hamid, his short-lived restoration in 1909, then the restoration of parliament and the outbreak of World War I. 

In this book, Palestinian historian Salim Tamari examines what these tumultuous events meant for people, politics and culture in Bilad Al Sham, and how they shaped Palestine in particular. “It was during this period that the term ‘Southern Syria’ became synonymous with ‘Palestine’, but the expression gained an added political significance after 1918… in response to the British-Zionist schemes of separating Palestine from Syria.” (p. 3)

To illustrate the changes, Tamari addresses a series of topics such as urban planning, modernisation, infrastructure projects and wartime mobilisation undertaken by Istanbul, the transformation of urban pubic space, as well as developments in education and social services, and the rise of regional, nationalist and religious identities that either supported or challenged the ideology of Ottomanism.

The book is especially interesting because Tamari relies mostly on primary sources, which gives his observations authenticity and added validity. Besides old maps, newspapers, local histories and diaries, he gleans valuable facts from Ottoman-commissioned surveys of the territory and population of Beirut province, which then included Beirut, Akka, Nablus, Tripoli and Latakiyya. 

Tamari’s research challenges conventional wisdom by revealing many nuances, distinctions and outright differences in how the local population reacted to these changes. For example, the constitutional revolution of 1908 was celebrated as giving more freedom by the residents of Jerusalem, Jaffa and Akka, but not Nablus, the town in Palestine most closely tied to the Ottoman Empire. To show the different perspectives, Tamari focuses on the works of two local historians from Nablus, Ihsan Al Nimr and Muhammad Izzat Darwazeh, “both eyewitnesses and participants in the political struggles of that period”. (p. 119)

Al Nimr, from a feudal family, “was a solid supporter of the Islamic salafi currents and Hamidian Ottomanism; while Darwazeh, the plebian militant, adhered briefly to the ideals of the CUP and, subsequently, moved to the Ottoman Decentralisation Party and [later] to the Freedom and Accord Party…” eventually joining the nationalist Faisali movement for the independence of Syria and Palestine. (p. 120)

Tamari finds the writing of both men useful, but credits Darwazeh with a more coherent, class-based analysis of the local conflicts in Nablus.

The book also chronicles changes wrought by the war itself, such as “major population displacements among the civilian population, which significantly affected the world of women in both rural and urban areas of Palestine”. (p. 143)

This meant fewer adult males, but many war orphans and refugees. To shed light on how these changes affected women, Tamari unearthed the notebook of Adele Shamat Azar (1886-1956) in which she describes her efforts to support and educate girl orphans and destitute women in Jaffa during the war. Oddly, her name is absent from most accounts of the early Palestinian women’s movement, because most feminist writers underestimate the importance of charitable associations. Challenging this notion, Tamari contends that her work “was a revolutionary episode in the creation of the women’s movement at the turn of the century”. (p. 141)

Tamari’s book is a valuable contribution to understanding the beginning of the 20th century in the Eastern Mediterranean, when a triangle of interests were pitted against each other and/or redefining their relationships: The Ottomans, the Arab subjects/citizens of the empire and the Allied colonial powers (Britain and France). Tamari evaluates the nature of the ties between Istanbul and the Arab provinces: Were they based on the Islamic bond as he terms it or on a concept of multicultural citizenship? Tamari also enters the debate about the nature of the CUP/Young Turks and the constitutional revolution. Did it herald more freedom, equal citizenship and modernisation or was it promoting stricter centralisation and a narrow concept of Turkification? Addressing this question, Tamari cites a report written during the war: “Muhammad Kurd Ali presented the most sophisticated case for Arab support of an Ottoman commonwealth based on Turkish-Arab unity. He also made the most succinct plea for bilingualism as an instrument of integration in the empire… Contrary to subsequent accusations by Syrian and Arab nationalists, Turkification is not posited as a forceful imposition against Arab culture. On the contrary, the report proposes a parallel process of Ottoman integration…” (p. 86) 

While the outcome of World War I would seem to have made such debate irrelevant, it is still important for understanding this fateful period which ushered in the colonial division of the area and the loss of Palestine to the Zionist movement. It also provides ideas, concepts and real experience related to the meaning of citizenship and a multicultural society, lessons which could promote justice and stability in many countries of the region today.

Many people think that intelligence is something we are born with. New research is showing that this is partly true.

Our brain is composed of 60 per cent fat and every nerve cell is connected to at least 10,000 other cells through chemical messengers called neurotransmitters. Providing the right healthy fats and the needed nutrients for making these neurotransmitters can greatly improve your mental health at any age. Achieving an optimal supply of nutrients is central not only to intelligence and memory but also your mood and emotional intelligence. The trick is knowing how: 

Omega 3 oils 

Children eating oily fish three times a week or supplementing omega 3, especially DHA plus EPA and GLA (omega 6), have the lowest risk of developing behavioural and learning problems later in life. Omega 3 oils are important more for emotional intelligence than IQ. DHA is more effective for improving memory while EPA has an anti-depressive, anti-anxiety effect. Some studies even show that giving these healthy fats to pregnant and breastfeeding mothers increased their children’s IQ for 10 years. 

Eggs are good for you

Egg yolk is rich in phospholipids. These make up the healthy walls of our nerve cells. Fish, organic meat and eggs are rich in them. They are particularly helpful for memory boosting and learning difficulties. Free range organic omega 3 eggs are super foods for children.

Methylation nutrients

Faulty methylation (a biochemical process involved in almost all of our body’s functions) is linked to depression, memory loss and even low exam results. It can result from genetic predisposition, an unhealthy lifestyle or a deficiency in methylation nutrients. A simple blood test for homocysteine, vitamin B12, B6, B9 and zinc levels can detect this faulty process and is usually treated by supplementing accordingly.

Sugar makes you stupid

Avoiding high intake of sugar while providing healthy whole carbohydrates ensures proper fuel for brain cells without nerve damage. High intake of sugar is linked to lower IQ. The difference between high sugar consumers and low sugar consumers is a staggering 25 points. Blood sugar imbalances are also implicated in aggressive behaviour, fatigue, learning difficulties, depression and ADHD.

Allergies & food intolerance

The gut-brain connection is now well established. In other words, what’s going on in your gut could be affecting your brain. Chronic food allergy causes abdominal pain, fatigue, poor concentration, anxiety and missing school days, so make sure you test for it and treat accordingly.

Heavy metals

If your child’s performance in school is not improving with the above, it would be worth doing some blood test for heavy metals that are toxic to the brain in order to treat any toxicity. This includes testing for aluminium, mercury, copper and lead.

Optimum nutrition for the mind

In 1988, professor David Benton, a research psychologist, published results of his randomised double-blind study, in which 30 children were put on a high strength multivitamin and mineral, and compared to 30 other children on placebos and 30 children on nothing. Benton measured the IQ and, after seven months, the children on the vitamins had gone up a massive 10 points versus three points on placebo and nothing in the control group. Many studies show that there is no single nutrient that can increase IQ; supplementation of nutrients in combination yields the best result.

The writer is clinical pathologist & laboratory medicine specialist. The article is reprinted with permission from Family Flavours magazine

Parents with depression may be more likely to take their children to the doctor than those without mental health problems, a UK study suggests. 

When parents are depressed, kids are 41 per cent more likely to visit the emergency room, 47 per cent more likely to be admitted to the hospital and 67 per cent more likely to have outpatient clinic visits than when parents are not depressed, researchers found. 

“Our study did not explore the reason for the link between parents’ mental health and their children’s use of health services, however, there are several possible explanations,” said lead study author Kathryn Dreyer of the Health Foundation in London. 

“Parental depression might be a consequence of prolonged illness in a child,” Dreyer said by email. “Additionally, parents with depression may require additional support to help them manage both their health and their children’s health and as a result may use more healthcare services.” 

As reported in BMJ Paediatrics Open, Dreyer and colleagues reviewed one year of electronic health records for more than 25,000 patients registered with a multisite medical practice in London. This included 6,738 children up to 15 years old living in 3,373 households with parents ranging in age from 18 to 55. 

Roughly 41 per cent of kids lived in single-parent households, another 41 per cent lived with both parents and about 19 per cent lived with three or more adults. 

Overall, almost 1,000 kids, or 16 per cent, had a parent diagnosed with depression. 

After researchers accounted for parents’ use of healthcare, parental depression was still associated with increased odds of children using health services. 

When parents had consultations with general practitioners, kids were 7 per cent more likely to see the family doctor than when parents did not have consultations of their own. 

And, when parents had visited an emergency room for care, their children were 27 per cent more likely to also have received emergency care at some point compared to children of parents who had not gone to the emergency room. 

The study was not designed to prove whether or how parents’ own use of medical care or their depression might directly impact how often their children saw doctors. Researchers also lacked data on how much social support parents and children had from grandparents or other relatives, which might influence how often they received medical care. 

While the reasons depressed parents seek more care for their kids are not clear from the study, the findings still underscore the importance of parents getting treatment for mental health disorders, said Dr Katherine A. Auger, a researcher at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Centre and the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine in Ohio, who was not involved in the study.

It is possible that children of depressed parents get more emergency and urgent care because they don’t get as many well-child checkups as kids whose parents are not depressed, and they’re sicker as a result, Auger said by email.

“Parents with depression may be more worried about their child’s symptoms and take them to the emergency department more frequently. It is also possible that parents of sicker children who need the emergency department may be more prone to depression,” Auger added.

“Depressed parents balancing chaotic work schedules and family routines may choose to seek care at the emergency department as opposed to general clinics because of the easier availability of the emergency department,” Auger noted.

MELBOURNE — A rare set of teeth from a giant prehistoric megashark twice the size of the great white have been found on an Australian beach by a keen-eyed amateur enthusiast, scientists said on Thursday.

Philip Mullaly was strolling along an area known as a fossil hotspot at Jan Juc, on the country’s famous Great Ocean Road some 100 kilometres from Melbourne, when he made the find.

He told Museums Victoria, and Erich Fitzgerald, senior curator of vertebrate palaeontology, confirmed the seven centimetre-long teeth were from an extinct species of predator known as the great jagged narrow-toothed shark (Carcharocles angustidens).

The shark, which stalked Australia’s oceans around 25 million years ago, feasting on small whales and penguins, could grow more than nine metres long, almost twice the length of today’s great white shark.

“These teeth are of international significance, as they represent one of just three associated groupings of Carcharocles angustidens teeth in the world, and the very first set to ever be discovered in Australia,” Fitzgerald said.

He explained that almost all fossils of sharks worldwide were just single teeth, and it was extremely rare to find multiple associated teeth from the same shark. 

This is because sharks, who have the ability to regrow teeth, lose up to a tooth a day and cartilage, the material a shark skeleton is made of, does not readily fossilise.

Fitzgerald led a team of palaeontologists, volunteers and Mullaly on two expeditions earlier this year to excavate the site, collecting more than 40 teeth in total.

Most came from the megashark, but several smaller teeth were also found from the sixgill shark (Hexanchus), which still exists today.

Museums Victoria palaeontologist Tim Ziegler said the sixgill teeth were from several different individuals and would have become dislodged as they scavenged on the carcass of the Carcharocles angustidens after it died.

Getting rid of trash, planting new grass and trees and making other improvements to vacant lots may reduce neighbours’ feelings of depression and worthlessness, a recent study suggests. 

Improving blighted areas could be an inexpensive way for communities to help address local mental health, say the authors. 

“As an emergency medicine physician, I see the downstream effects that poverty and neighbourhood environment have on health all the time,” study leader Dr Eugenia South of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia told Reuters Health in an e-mail. 

“You can’t escape your environment. It is with you day in and day out. We know it is going to have an impact on both physical and mental health and my goal is to make that impact a positive one,” she said. 

Where people live, and specifically the physical environment of their neighbourhood, has an impact on their health, said South. 

“For people living in areas with dilapidated neighbourhood environments, that impact is likely to be negative. Vacant lot greening is a simple and relatively low-cost neighbourhood intervention that can turn an unhealthy environment into a healthy one,” she said. 

As reported in JAMA Network Open, South and her colleagues randomly assigned 541 vacant lots in Philadelphia to one of three groups: greening intervention, trash cleanup only, or no intervention. 

The greening intervention included removing debris, grading the land, planting new grass and a few trees, installing a low wooden perimeter fence with openings, and doing regular maintenance. 

In addition, the study team interviewed 342 randomly selected nearby residents about their mental health, twice in the 18 months before the interventions and twice during the 18 months afterward. Nearly 45 per cent of participants had annual family incomes of less than $25,000. 

The study team found that reports of feeling depressed fell by about 40 per cent and reports of feeling worthless were reduced by about 60 per cent among people living near greened vacant lots compared with people living near lots that were left alone. The rate of self-reported poor mental health was also lower among those living near greened vacant land, but the difference was too small to be statistically significant. 

Simply cleaning up the trash did not have much of an effect. 

“The vacant lot greening intervention, which was created and implemented by the Pennsylvania Horticulture Society, is a simple, low-cost intervention that can be easily implemented and scaled up,” South said. 

A commentary published with the study points out that a growing body of evidence ties contact with nature to health benefits.