Book reports on teen issues

This feature requires the Standard edition. You are running the Trial edition or your site domain is not associated with your license key. Please visit www. Tuesday, July 16, A book review gives readers a sneak peek at what a book is like, whether or not the reviewer enjoyed it.

While there has been a lot of focus on the role of cannabis use in psychosis, there has been less attention on whether cannabis use is associated with an increased risk of common mental health disorders, such as depression and anxiety. Researchers from McGill University and the University of Oxford carried out a systematic review and meta-analysis of the best existing evidence and analysed 23, individuals from 11 international studies to see whether use of cannabis in young people is associated with depression, anxiety and suicidality in early adulthood. They found that cannabis use among adolescents is associated with a significant increased risk of depression and suicidality in adulthood not anxiety. While the individual-level risk was found to be modest, the widespread use of the drug by young people makes the scale of the risk much more serious. Gabriella Gobbi, Professor, Department of Psychiatry, McGill University and a scientist at the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre, states: "While the link between cannabis and mood regulation has been largely studied in preclinical studies, there was still a gap in clinical studies regarding the systematic evaluation of the link between adolescent cannabis consumption and the risk of depression and suicidal behaviour in young adulthood. This study aimed to fill this gap, helping mental health professionals and parents to better address this problem.

As the sixth What Kids Are Reading report bemoans a tendency among secondary school students to read books that are too easy — suggesting that teachers and librarians aren't pushing challenging titles strongly enough to older kids — the organisers of World Book Day have announced a list that might serve as a corrective, or at least a useful source of ideas. The Writes of Passage list of popular books for young adults, voted for by 7, people across the UK, features a top 10 of books to help "shape and inspire" teenagers, and give them the empathic tools and words to handle some of the challenges of adolescence. The complete list of 50 features books to "help you understand you", "change the way you think" and "make you cry", as well as thrill, transport and scare you.

Book reports seem part of the realm of middle school and elementary school. You don't often hear of students doing book reports in high school, but I feel much can be learned by doing such an assignment in the higher grades. To start, I recommend that students choose the book for their report themselves, and I stipulate that the book must not be one for which there are SparkNotes or CliffsNotes.