Tagged: “Children”

CORONAVIRUS ANXIETY LEVELS ARE SOARING

As more cities, states, and entire countries go into full lockdown to slow the spread of the coronavirus, psychologists and pandemic experts are warning that we may soon have yet another health crisis on our hands: deteriorating mental health.

“People really need to prepare for self-isolation,” says Dr. Steven Taylor, author of The Psychology of Pandemics and a clinical psychologist at the University of British Columbia. “It’s not enough to stock up on toilet paper. They need to think about what they are going to do to combat boredom.”

Fortunately, the International Forgiveness Institute (IFI) has a solution that will not only provide a diversion from shelter-in-place rules but help you, your children, and all your family members increase your emotional, physical, and mental health despite these stressful times.

LOCKDOWN LESSONS: LEARN TO FORGIVE AT HALF PRICE!

For a limited time only, the IFI is offering its individual and family Curriculum Guides at the never-before-offered price of HALF OFF – a 50% DISCOUNT from the regular price. We’ve reduced the price of all our Curriculum Guides to $15.00 from the regular price of $30.00. That’s the equivalent of purchasing one Guide and getting a second Guide for FREE. 

Mix or match, you can select from our 14 grade-level Curriculum Guides                                (pre-kindergarten through 12th grade), our two Family-Learning Programs, and our        End-of-Life Manual. These are the same tested and proven study guides now being used by parents, teachers, and homeschooling families in the US and more than 30 countries around the world.

Incorporating the latest social-emotional learning principles, these guides teach both children and adults about the five moral qualities most important to forgiving another person–inherent worth, moral love, kindness, respect and generosity. Each guide encompasses 8 or more lessons (one-half to one hour per week for each lesson) and includes Dr. Seuss and other children’s book summaries that help reinforce moral principles.

THE PERFECT SHELTER-AT-HOME FAMILY PROJECT

Through repetitious, peer-reviewed testing, IFI researcher Dr. Robert Enright has scientifically demonstrated that learning how to forgive through Forgiveness Education Curriculum Guides can:

• IMPROVE EMOTIONAL HEALTH – by reducing anger, anxiety, depression, and/or PTSD symptoms.
• ENHANCE PHYSICAL WELL-BEING – by lowering blood pressure, reducing stress hormones, and enhancing one’s immune system.
• IMPROVE PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS – with family, friends, and community.
• BOOST SELF-ESTEEM AND SELF-IMAGE – while increasing hopefulness about the future.

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How young can someone be to start forgiving?

We have found that pre-kindergarten children (age 4) and kindergarten children (age 5) are able to follow picture-book stories centered on family love.  This is an important foundation for learning how to forgive.  We have found through our scientific studies that children as young as 6-years-old can understand the causes and consequences to behavior.  They, therefore, can understand unjust actions by others (a cause) and the development of resentment in the offended person (a consequence). Further, these 6-year-old children then can understand that the resentment can be overcome by forgiving, which in some cases can restore relationships (if the other is willing to cooperate).

For additional information, see Your Kids Are Smarter Than You Think.

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Should Forgiveness Education be required in school curricula for kindergarten through grade 12?

Let me start with a question: What is the major purpose of education?  Is it to prepare the student well for adult life?  If so, how are we now preparing students to confront and overcome the grave injustices against them that can rob them of their happiness and even lead to their displacing their discontentments onto others?  I think this overcoming of deep resentment happens only through forgiving.  What is more important: learning how to balance a checkbook or overcoming deep resentments that could kill a person?  The answer to this question, then, leads to my answer to your question: Yes, if education is to help people prepare for the rigors of adulthood, then it is wise to bring forgiveness education into school curricula.

For additional information, see Kids Are Smarter Than You Think.

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Tracking the Global Coronavirus Outbreak

The coronavirus pandemic has sickened more than 577,400 people, according to official counts. As of Friday evening, at least 26,678 people have died, and the virus has been detected in at least 171 countries, as graphically illustrated on these maps by 

There is evidence on six continents of sustained transmission of the virus. The  Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has advised against all non-essential travel throughout most of Europe, and to South Korea, China and Iran. The agency has also warned that older and at-risk Americans should avoid travel to any country.

The outbreak is believed to have begun in a seafood and poultry market in Wuhan, a city of 11 million people in central China. The virus seems to spread very easily, especially in confined spaces, making containment efforts difficult. It is difficult to know how many people who contract the virus die, but some early estimates put the fatality rate at roughly 1 percent.

The number of known coronavirus cases in the United States continues to grow quickly and has now surpassed that of any other country in the world including mainland China where the virus supposedly originated. As of Thursday morning, there have been at least 100,973 cases of coronavirus confirmed by lab tests and 1,572 deaths in the U.S., according to a New York Times database. That same database details confirmed cases and deaths for all 171 countries.

While the outbreak is a serious public health concern, most people who contract the coronavirus do not become seriously ill, and only a small percentage require intensive care. Older people and those with existing health conditions, like heart or lung disease, are at higher risk.

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is an infectious disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The disease was first identified in 2019 in Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province in central China, and has since spread globally, resulting in the 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic.

Common symptoms include fever, cough, and shortness of breath. Muscle pain, sputum production, diarrhea, and sore throat are less common. While the majority of cases result in mild symptoms, some progress to severe pneumonia and multi-organ failure. As of 20 March 2020, the rate of deaths per number of diagnosed cases is 4.1 percent; however, it ranges from 0.2 percent to 15 percent, according to age group and other health problems.

The virus is typically spread from one person to another via respiratory droplets produced during coughing. It may also be spread from touching  contaminated surfaces and then touching one’s face. Time from exposure to onset of symptoms is generally between two and fourteen days, with an average of five days.

Learn More:

• How to Protect Yourself and Prepare for the Coronavirus
• How the Coronavirus Can and Cannot Spread
• Visit the John Hopkins University and Medicine Coronavirus Resource Center
• Visit the Harvard University Medical School Coronavirus Resource Center

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Forgiveness Therapy Proposed as Antidote for Traumatic Childhood Experiences

Forgiveness Therapy and forgiveness interventions developed by Dr. Robert Enright are being embraced in a just-released study as promising tools for effectively dealing with what the study calls a “major public health crisis.” 

Researchers at the Laureate Institute for Brain Research (Tulsa, OK) have teamed up with those at Stanford University (Stanford, CA) to study the life-long adverse impacts of Early Life Adversity (ELA). The study is titled “Is There an Ace Up Our Sleeve? A Review of Interventions and Strategies for Addressing Behavioral and Neurobiological Effects of Adverse Childhood Experiences in Youth.” It was published just five days ago, March 13, 2020, in the empirical journal Adversity and Resilience Science.

ELA is the term for the negative experiences children may face or witness while growing up (sometimes also called Adverse Childhood Experiences—ACEs). These traumatic experiences include:

• emotional, physical, or sexual abuse;
• emotional or physical neglect;
• living in a household in which domestic violence occurs;
• growing up in household dealing with substance abuse or mental health problems;
• instability due to parental separation, divorce or incarceration;
• witnessing violence in the home; or,
• having a family member attempt suicide.

Any of those traumatic experiences can lead to what child development specialists call “toxic stress” if encountered by children without adequate adult support. Toxic stress can disrupt early brain development and compromise functioning of the nervous and immune systems. The more adverse experiences in childhood, the greater the likelihood of developmental delays and other problems that can cause life-long complications.

In fact, psychologists say, adults with more adverse experiences in early childhood are also more likely to have health problems including alcoholism, depression, heart disease, diabetes and other chronic diseases as well as impaired cognitive and social development. The report suggests that many adult diseases are, in fact, developmental disorders that begin early in life.

The new ELA publication describes and evaluates existing evidence-based interventions and their outcomes including Forgiveness Therapy. Three of Dr. Enright’s peer-reviewed empirical studies were examined and cited for achieving commendable outcomes compared to those of a control group:

• Female incest survivors (Freedman & Enright, 1996). Results: “significantly greater decrease in levels of depression and anxiety.” 
• Women diagnosed with fibromyalgia who had experienced at least two ACEs in their childhood (Lee & Enright, 2014). Results: “increases in forgiveness toward their abuser, lower levels of state anger, and improvements in physical health related to their fibromyalgia symptoms.” 
• Female Pakistani adolescents with histories of abuse (Rahman, Iftikhar, Kim & Enright, 2018). Results: Similar findings to the fibromyalgia study “suggesting that Forgiveness Therapy may uphold in a cross-cultural context.”

Those three intervention experiments by Dr. Enright and his research partners are the only Forgiveness Therapy examples cited in the 24-page ELA study that “have shown forgiveness therapy to be effective” in both physically and emotionally healthy ways. The ELA study also postulates that those interventions are effective because in Dr. Enright’s approach “the hypothesized mechanism behind forgiveness therapy involves cognitive restructuring of the abuser and events.”

Based on the evidence gather through this new ELA study, Forgiveness Therapy is one of the promising interventions for children who are experiencing toxic stress without appropriate support from parents or other concerned caregivers. That, they conclude, can help return a child’s stress response system back to normal while reducing negative mental and physical health outcomes later in life.

“Therefore, we conclude that they (Forgiveness Therapy interventions) are well-suited for and hold promise to exert immediate preventive and sustained changes in outcomes for maltreated youth.” – ELA study conclusion, March 13, 2020.

Why is this subject important? Why does it matter?

According to the World Health Organization, as many as 39% of children worldwide are estimated to experience one or more forms of early life adversity, placing a high economic burden on health-care systems—and society in general—through medical costs and lost productivity.

The mission of the Laureate Institute for Brain Research (LIBR) is to “develop novel therapeutics, cures and preventions to improve the well-being of persons who suffer from or are at risk for neuropsychiatric illness.” Dr. Namik Kirlic, the LIBR Principal Investigator for the ELA study, is a clinical psychologist who has devoted his professional life to studying ELA interventions and how to optimize their positive outcomes. Other team members for the ELA study include Zsofia Cohen (Dr. Kirlic’s Research Assistant) and Dr. Manpreet Singh, a psychiatrist and medical doctor at Stanford Health Care.

MORE INFORMATION:

• Read the full, 24-page ELA study on Adverse Childhood Experiences.
• Learn more about Adverse Childhood Experiences on the Psychology Today website.
• Find out how toxic stress can have damaging effects on learning, behavior, and health across the lifespan at the Harvard University Center on the Developing Child.
• Read about Early Childhood Development on the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services Office of Early Childhood Development website.

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