Results from a Recent Study Indicate that Concerns Regarding Video Gaming are Valid
In today’s society, most parents realize that allowing their children to play video games all afternoon might lead to future problems. What is new, however, is the growing amount of research done by professionals trying to find a link between the heavy use of video gaming and psychological problems. According to an article in The Medical Posttwo new studies were presented by Dr. Albert Liau at the American Psychiatric Association annual meeting (McAllister, 2011). In a study in Singapore, spanning over three years, results support what parents have been worried about for years. Roughly 9% of youth who regularly play videogames develop problems. Depression, anxiety, social phobias and school performance were worse for kids who scored a five or higher out of ten, ten being the highest amount of play, in a survey regarding the frequency of their gaming. In the second study discussed by Dr. Liau at the convention, 1,422 American teenagers who regularly played violent video games (up to five hours a day) displayed more aggressive behavior. Dr. Liau noted that the DSM – 5 will not include pathological video gaming but it will be discussed in the appendix. Hopefully, this new research will be a wake-up call to parents allowing their children to play video games without any restraint, especially those with aggressive themes. While there is no official suggestion for limiting your child’s video game time, most online recommendations mention only allowing two hours for total screen time including computers, television and video games. Parents will also benefit from paying better attention to the ratings given on games sold. Games are classified as either Early Childhood, Everyone, Teen, Mature, Adults Only or Rating Pending. The website below has a searchable database to look up the games your child plays. Controlling the extent of your child’s video game play could benefit them greatly in terms of mental health.

McAllister, J. (2011, May 24). More evidence video gaming leads to psychiatric problems . The Medical Post , p. 1.

Sexless Marriage – The Tip of the Iceberg

Arguments between married couples typically revolve around only a few particular issues: the kids, money and sex. Spouses also fight about other small topics like leaving the toilet seat up and who is going to put the dishes away, but common problems seem to revolve around those three issues. Research suggests that a couple that does not have a regular amount of sex, to be defined later in the article, does not necessarily have a physical problem. The cause could be something much deeper in the communication and framework of their marriage.

The Problem

“Some experts call marriages that average 10 rolls in the hay per year or less ‘sexless,’” (Mauer, 2009). It is important to note, however, that if both spouses are happy with the amount of times they have sex then it is not necessarily considered a sexless marriage. Each couple’s need for intimacy with their partner is specific to the individuals. With the decrease in privacy in people’s lives today, a low sex life for a married couple is more prevalent or at least, people are hearing about it more. In a study done in Australia, 3,240 men and 3,304 women who were both married and living with their spouse, were asked about their opinions of their sex lives. Interestingly, 54% of men and 42% of women said they were unhappy with the frequency of sex (Parker-Pope, 2011).The full report was published in the March issue of the Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy. It is interesting to note that most men were concerned about not having enough sex, yet one-third of the unhappy women said they had sex too often. Clearly, this is a very important issue that is facing a tremendous amount of people. In a separate report, the New York Times noted that approximately 15% of married couples had not been intimate in the past six months to a year (Mauer, 2009). Unfortunately, due to the nature of the issue, this topic has not received the full interest and research that it deserves. But an associate professor at Georgia State University studying sexless marriages has found that people who have more sex are generally happier and people in sexless marriages more frequently considering divorce. Being intimate with a spouse is often a good indication of how well a couple communicates to each other. It seems that in our hyper-sexual culture, not many people are actually having sex.

The Potential Causes

There are many reasons for why a couple could be having trouble with being intimate with each other. Every couple is different and there may be other causes not considered in the scope of this summary. Psychotherapist Tine Tessina, PhD claims that the most common causes of a sexless marriage are: “one partner had their feelings hurt or got turned down too many times, one got too busy or neglectful, or one or both partners has a communication problem of some sort”(Mauer, 2009). It seems that the main problem is that couples are not communicating their feelings appropriately. These feelings may have nothing to do with sex. A spouse could be upset about something said earlier in the day that stayed with her causing her to reject her husband. Unfortunately, a sexless marriage is a cycle of having marital problems which leads to not having sex which leads to further marital problems. Another simple cause could be that people never seem to have enough time anymore. Between both spouses working, children needing to be taken care of and dinner being prepared, many couples simply run out of time and become too tired to think of doing anything besides sleep. However, not making enough time for you and your spouse to take time and be intimate with each other, whether it’s through sex, a heart to heart discussion or going out on a date, is a problem in itself. One on one time in a relationship is needed.

Recommendations

Here are a few tips for repairing your emotional relationship with your spouse in order to fix your physical relationship:

1. Communicate. Communicate. Communicate.
Couples need to discuss how they value sex and what would be an ideal frequency. Couples must also be prepared to clear the air on other recent disagreements as that can affect a person’s mood as well.

2. Schedule It In
It may not be the most romantic and spontaneous form of intimacy but if the issue is time related and less about marital issues then planning a time a week in advance will help you focus on just each other.

3. Don’t Be Afraid to Get Help
If you and your spouse have been experiencing a sexless marriage for several months, you may want to consider seeing a therapist. This may help bring to light deep rooted issues in your marriage which may improve communication and thus improve the relationship.

When Two Families Blend: Advice for Merging Stepfamilies

In today’s changing society, stepfamilies are becoming a very frequent occurrence. A stepfamily occurs when a single person with children decides to marry another single person with children creating new relations between stepparents, stepchildren, and stepsiblings. In most cases this occurs when the two parents already with children are married and want to live together. Due to this reality in contemporary families, the American Psychological Association has put out resourceful tips on how to provide the best environment possible for kids and parents in a blended family.

General Tips

- Move into a new house & open a joint account to cover shared expenses.
A new home can provide the space for a new family to make their own. “Couples who have used the “one-pot” method generally reported higher family satisfaction than those who kept their money separate”.
- Resolve the past before moving on to the future.
Make sure the children resolve feelings about the previous marriage. The new stepparent shatters their dream of their parents getting back together.
- Discuss the parental role of the stepparent
Between the parents, discuss the role that the stepparent will play in their stepchildren’s lives. This may be dependent on many factors such as how involved the child’s other parent is in their live and how well they get along with the stepparent.
- Plan time for being newlyweds.
Oftentimes, new marriages are neglected due to the demands of the children. Make sure to plan dates or times away from the kids in order to continue to strengthen your bond together thus bettering the children as well.

Parenting Tips

- Age matters
o Younger kids (under 10 years old) – usually more accepting of the new adult in their lives
o Young adolescents (10 – 14 years old ) – most difficult time adjusting because they are forming their own identities
o Older adolescents (15 and older) – don’t require as much parenting and thus have less of an impact on the family as a whole
- At first, be a friend
Children usually will not respond kindly to people who are immediately discipline them upon first contact. The authority can come later once the child respects the stepparent. For now, just monitor the child and tell the spouse of any necessary intervention.
- Make Rules
As a family, establish basic rules that everyone follows so that the children understand that stepsiblings and stepparents are part of their family. A few examples of this are “We agree to respect every family member” or “We agree to listen to our stepparent and get along with stepsiblings”
- Respect Physical Boundaries
Both boys and girls prefer verbal regard, such as praise and compliments, from their stepparent. Most girls say they are not comfortable with hugs and kisses from their stepfather until much later. Overall, boys tend to accept their new stepfather faster than girls do.

- Do Not Dismiss the Other Parent
Parents should never speak ill of their ex-spouses because the child should never be put in a place where they have to defend their parent. It could affect the child’s self-esteem. Children usually adjust better to their new family when the other parent consistently sees the child and continues frequent contact.

Blending a family can be a difficult time for any parent or child. It can take two to four years, even when done under the best conditions, for a stepfamily to feel entirely comfortable and established with each other. Seeing a psychologist during this time of change could help relieve some of the pressure on parents to watch out for signs of distress in children. In addition, talking to all members of the family together or separate could benefit a family’s bonds with each other in order to provide the best environment possible for everyone involved.

Can cuddling an infant change their biology to better cope with stress? (from
Hoag, H. (2011, Spring). Are your genes your destiny?. McGill News, 92, 17-19.)

Recent research shows that being a balanced nurturing mother to young children, such as cuddling with them when they are hurt, can pay off in their later years. Parenting styles that incorporate comforting a child of a certain age during stressful or traumatic times may allow the child to cope better during stressful times in their adult life.

There never seems to be a clear winner in the psychology debate between nature and nurture. Nature’s side of the argument is that a person’s thoughts, behavior, etc. is due to their genetics and biology. Nurture enthusiasts, however, believe that a person’s life is solely determined by their environment (parents, schooling, etc.). Most recent research claims that the truth lies somewhere in between these two arguments; that both elements are essential in shaping a person. In fact, research at McGill University is showing how a person’s environmental factors can actually impact the phenotype expression of DNA. In other words, they are studying epigenetics.

Michael Meaney, a neurobiologist and clinical psychologist, has teamed up with Moshe Szyf, a molecular biologist, in order to show how rats raised with a nurturing mother, as opposed to a neglectful mother, are better capable of handling stressful situations. An epigenome reveals “which genes should be expressed by adding or removing chemical tags composed of carbon and hydrogen from the genome” (Hoag, 2011). When the researchers looked at the rats’ epigenomes, they found that when the mother licked them, a gene was “switched on” that reduces the stress hormones released under pressure. Even more interesting, they were able to reverse the process that neglecting mothers had started. By placing the baby rats with other nurturing mothers or by injecting the brains of adult rats with trichostatin A, they were “in effect erasing the negative effects of early life experiences” (Hoag, 2011).

The research that Meaney and Szyf produced is extremely important. It shows not only that environmental factors can have an influence on how our DNA is expressed but it also shows that unfavorable experiences will not necessarily doom a person to a life of mental disorders. While the study does explain a lot for psychologists, it focuses on rats, a much less complex species than humans. When Meaney and Szyf were approached by Gustavo Turecki, however, they gained access to the Quebec Suicide Brain Bank. Turecki is a psychiatrist and the director of the McGill Group for Suicide Studies. Complete with the right population to study, Patrick McGowan joined the crusade for finding biological evidence in people who had stressful experiences. He isolated 36 total brain tissue samples from men who had been abused as children and committed suicide and from men who had not been abused but had also committed suicide. In addition, there was a control group of brain tissue from healthy men. This research, focusing on stress response genes in the hippocampus, found that men who had a history of abuse also had methyl groups attached to the genes. This means that these people were biologically vulnerable to having depression because of their past abuse.

The McGill Alumni Magazine that contains this article (Hoag, 2011) also mentions some current research underway. Meaney and others have begun the Maternal Adversity, Vulnerability, and Neurodevelopment (MAVAN) project in which five hundred mothers and children will be evaluated for stressors, cognitive and physical development, hormone levels, DNA, mother-child interactions and more at many stages of their lives. They are hoping to find which children are more vulnerable to developing mental disorders and eventually find out how to help them become less susceptible.

It is important for parents to realize that their parenting behaviours, such as manner of consoling, can contribute to their young children’s development of resilience and coping with stress. Giving a child a hug or giving them verbal encouragement when a child experiences some form of stress (i.e., social struggle, disappointment, upset, playground injury) can take less than a minute, but it will show your child a way to use social support to cope with a stressful situation. But, not just that, according to some early stage research, it could possibly change their biology to contribute to the level of resilience in the face of life stress or even traumatic situations. On the other hand, it’s important that a parent does not over-protect their child. Coddling, in the extreme, could possibly create issues of dependency. Parents can give added thought to figuring out what a child’s needs by listening to them, and responding to them, and tracking how they respond to and what they need in certain situations. Finding a balance between nurturing your child, and allowing them to learn how to self-soothe or seek out contact with others for consolation is also important for promoting better coping later as an adult.