Stress is a part of life, but students may have difficulty coping and feel overwhelmed, which can increase the risk for drug use. The article “Stressed Out?” helps explain how the body’s stress response system works, as well as the health consequences of ongoing (chronic) stress. Students will learn how their bodies respond to stress, and how they can manage under pressure.
Childhood obesity is a crippling crisis of supersized proportions. During the past four decades, obesity rates have soared among all ages, but no more so than in children ages 6 to 11. Today, nearly a third of our children and adolescents are overweight or obese. And the numbers continue to rise.
A researcher and psychotherapist explains how trauma affects children and teens and describes what can be done to help. Ginny Sprang, Ph.D., executive director of the Center on Trauma and Children at the University of Kentucky, explains how psychiatrists define trauma. Trauma can include direct exposure to physical or sexual harm, witnessing such harm, learning about a life-altering event such as a parent’s death, or repeated exposure to details of a traumatic event.
Financial inequality has been in the news a lot recently. It was the rallying cry for the Occupy Wall Street movement that began back in 2011, and it was at the center of Bernie Sanders’ campaign when he ran for president. This inequality creates what is typically called a social status ladder, with rich people at the top and poorer people toward the bottom. Research shows that your position on the ladder is actually one of the most powerful predictors of health. But it’s so much more than just how much money you have or how fancy your education is. It’s how you feel you compare to other people -- your subjective social status.
What does autism spectrum disorder look like in young children? Jennifer Rymanowski, a licensed behavioral analyst at Rochester Hearing and Speech Center, will describe how different each case of autism spectrum disorder is for each person they encounter.
When you’re in high school, it can seem like being popular is the most important thing in the world. But being popular in high school tends to have adverse outcomes once someone enters early adulthood. It all depends on what type of popularity someone has because it turns out there are two types. They are status and likability.
In this activity, teachers will induce mild stress in students by announcing they are about to have a pop quiz that will be a major part of their grade. Once students learn that this is not true, they will describe their physical and mental changes in response to this stress.
This alignment results from the ALEX Health/PE COS Resource Alignment Summit.
In this activity, students will fill out their own “physical reactions to stress” inventory and graph the class results. Then they will work in pairs to learn more about the body mechanisms that cause physiological stress symptoms, such as a fast heartbeat, cold hands, and dry mouth, or even longer-lasting symptoms such as a headache and sleeplessness. Finally, students will discuss their own reactions to stress and understand that many physiological stress reactions are part of the body’s normal functioning. Students will also look at ways of dealing with stress
This alignment results from the ALEX Health/PE COS Resource Alignment Summit.