Despite recent attention — and even jail sentences — being handed out for teen bullying, it remains an all-too-common problem. School administrators and parents are often frustrated in trying to curb this behavior. It’s insidious, underground, and few teens want to talk about it openly — out of fear and stigma.

The fear is very real, because adults can’t watch kids and teens every moment of every day. The possibility of repercussions — such as even worse bullying — for reporting bullying behavior reinforce the fear and cycle of bullying.

That’s why it’s so refreshing and gives us hope to have come across this video the other day by 16-year-old Canadian Megan Landry. Join over 105,000 others (as of this writing) who’ve already watched and give a view below.

If you were hoping to get some medications prescribed for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) while in college or at university, you might be in for a rude surprise.

Colleges and university are cutting back on their involvement with ADHD, primarily due to abuse of the psychiatric medications — stimulants like Ritalin — prescribed to treat the disorder. Students — whether they are malingering the symptoms or actually have it — are prescribed a drug to treat ADHD (sometimes from different providers in different states), then sell a few (or all the) pills on the side. Profit!

Now universities are becoming wise to the epidemic nature of the problem, as some studies have suggested up to a third of college students are illicitly taking ADHD stimulants.

This might help curb the abuse problem, but will it also make it harder for people with actual ADHD to receive treatment?

“For most teens, the Internet is a fundamental part of life,” according to Dana Udall-Weiner, Ph.D, a psychologist who specializes in media literacy. It’s how they communicate and interact. Teens use social media sites like Facebook for everything from casual talks to breakups, she said.

With social media a major part of teens’ lives, it’s important they have a healthy relationship with the Internet. What does this look like?

According to Udall-Weiner, it resembles any healthy relationship: It has boundaries.

It also shouldn’t have to meet all their needs, including emotional, social, intellectual and spiritual, she said. For instance, sites like Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest should never replace face-to-face interactions, she said. Instead, they should supplement them. That’s because online interactions lack the emotional depth and support of real-time relationships. “…[I]t’s hard to know whether someone is trustworthy, loyal, and invested in your well-being.”

There are many reasons why kids need parents. They need parents to love them, teach them, support them, take them places and buy them stuff.

But do you know what else kids need parents for? Want to guess? Whatever you’re thinking is probably true, but I doubt it’s the answer I’m thinking of.

Kids need parents to restrict their freedom.

What?! That sounds like heresy in a freedom-loving culture.

Shouldn’t we all have freedom to follow our desires? To do what we want? To venture down the road we find most appealing? Isn’t that what our social movements (civil rights, women’s movement, gay liberation) have been about? Remove the restrictions! We want the freedom to indulge in our inclinations!

Every college student and high school student believes he or she has honed a set of highly effective, useful study skills. I used re-reading, lots of summarizing, note-taking (and outlining), and taking the little tests you would often find at the end of a chapter to help me remember the material I just read.

Nobody taught me how to study this way. It was just something I did through trial and error in trying and discarding multiple techniques. For instance, I tried highlighting, but it did little for me.

Of course, psychologists and other scientists have been testing effective study techniques now for decades. Being far more clever than I, they’ve actually run such techniques through the research ringer, and have come out with some effective study strategies.

Just last month, another group of researchers decided to take a look at all of that research, and boil down what we know about the most effective methods for studying. Here’s what they found.

Traditional psychotherapy focuses on helping clients through symptom reduction. This means that when the indicators for therapy fade away, the therapy is considered successful.

But there is a new perspective emerging as to what psychotherapy can offer. Positive psychotherapy (PPT) is a strengths-based approach that is directly aimed at offering a more comprehensive perspective of a client and his or her life circumstances. It is becoming known as an evidence-based standpoint that explores both strengths and weaknesses to achieve greater well-being and functioning.

We are moving from looking at what is wrong to looking at what is strong.

We take a lot of traditions for granted, and rarely think to ask questions about not only why we do something a particular way, but whether that something actually works or is good.

Take, for example, the lowly red marking pen.

Long used by teachers, professors, copyeditors and others to highlight wrong answers or problems that need correcting on a paper, a test, or something else submitted for approval, the red pen has been ubiquitous.

But red is an emotional color. People respond strongly to it, either negatively or positively. So using it can evoke unintended emotions where none are required (or worse, interfere with the feedback loop).

So does the color red interfere with feedback in the real world, when professors are grading college papers? Let’s find out.

It’s hardly breaking news that young adults are living at home longer.

Of course there are exceptions, but it appears that the idea of leaving the nest immediately following college graduation is long gone.

The current economy makes establishing financial independence a difficult feat. From a sociological perspective, extended mooching off Mom and Dad seems to be trending. Many young adults either are saving the money they do have, basking in domestic convenience, or simply waiting for the right living opportunity.

Overall, it seems they’re just not ready to take the next step.

Anyone can understand why school authorities would be jumpy, after the recent mass shooting at Newtown, CT.

But the recent suspension — and possible expulsion — of San Francisco high school student, Courtni Webb, is a fine example of how not to deal with suspected school violence.

Ms. Webb was suspended, according to news reports, for writing a poem about the Newtown killings, which apparently violated the school’s policy against threats of violence.

Poets, of course, have been deemed a threat to society ever since Plato banned them from his ideal “Republic.” Poetry, Plato argued, spoke to the heart, not the mind — and thus encouraged rebellion against the natural order of things.

But having heard Ms. Webb read her poem in its entirety, I found little in the way of violent rebellion, and certainly no overt threats to her classmates. Yes, the poem might be called self-absorbed — but isn’t that part of normal adolescence?

It’s only in recent years that ADHD is becoming better understood in girls and women. But we still have a long way to go, according to Terry Matlen, ACSW, a psychotherapist and coach who specializes in ADHD. She noted that we need to improve how we identify girls with ADHD, evaluate them and administer treatment.

In fact, the biggest myth about ADHD and girls is that girls don’t have the disorder in the first place. However, ADHD affects both girls and boys at roughly the same rate, said Stephanie Sarkis, Ph.D, a psychotherapist and author of several books on ADHD, including Making the Grade with ADD and Adult ADD: A Guide for the Newly Diagnosed.

Boys with ADHD tend to have a more obvious and classic presentation. They typically exhibit hyperactivity and impulsivity. In short, they stand out more.

Girls, however, are harder to spot because they internalize their symptoms and usually don’t exhibit behavioral problems at school, said Matlen, also author of Survival Tips for Women with AD/HD.

Isn’t anywhere safe anymore?

You can send your kids off to the movies — and they may get shot. Or they might go to hang out at the mall — and risk getting shot. Or to high school or college — where they might get shot. Kids get kidnapped on their way home from school and abducted out of their beds.

Now 20 first graders have been gunned down in their first grade classrooms.

In the last few years, our national sense of safety has been repeatedly shaken. We can’t take it for granted that when innocent kids do innocent, everyday things, they will risk nothing more than a belly ache from eating too much popcorn or an argument with a friend.

At times like these, we all search for meaning. We all look to make sense of tragedy. We need to put it into some organized containers, because otherwise it just becomes too overwhelming.

This time, the shooting involved not random people in a movie theater, or young adults on a college campus who unfortunately were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

This time, the shooting involved 20 elementary school-aged children. At school. As well as another 6 or 7 adults.

To even begin to wrap your mind around it causes most of us emotional pain and anguish.

In short, how do we make sense of such tragedy?