Diary of an academic mum

Dr Breanne Kunstler (BBiomedSci, BHealthSci, MPhysio, PhD). Last week I wrote about the physical health impacts of high screen time on children. This is the third post in a series of posts on children’s screen time and will involve examining some of the psychological health risks associated with screen time. I did a quick search and found hundreds of studies on screen time and child health, dozens of which were review-level (some of the best evidence you can get). I looked at some of the highest quality review-level evidence to inform this post. Basically, if I found high-quality review-level evidence to support relationships between health and screen time then I was pretty confident that the relationships exist. Let’s have a look at what the research I found has to say about the psychological health risks associated with screen time for kids. I will use a three-part system ( 'confident', 'hmm maybe' and 'unlikely' ) to indicate how confident I am...

Dr Breanne Kunstler (BBiomedSci, BHealthSci, MPhysio, PhD). Dr Breanne Kunstler, Associate Professor  Peter Bragge ​ and Ms  Alyse Lennox ​ recently published their rapid evidence and practice review called ' Changing prescribing behaviours with educational outreach: An overview of evidence and practice ' in BMC Medical Education. Please share this review using these  Twitter  or  LinkedIn  links. Picture this... Your mother slipped on some icy concrete last week and fell, fracturing her arm in two places. You hated seeing her in pain and you were very pleased when her GP promptly referred her to an orthopaedic surgeon who booked her in for surgery and gave her some pain medication. You were especially pleased to know that her GP gave her a couple of repeats for the medication the surgeon prescribed, just in case she needed them. Poor mum. Now let's talk about the  opioid epidemic . An opioid is a strong medica...