Submissions Sought for Disability Employment App Challenge – Prizes Awarded!

WASHINGTON ‒ The U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Disability Employment Policy today announced the launch of its first disability-related application challenge, which is designed to generate innovative tools that will improve employment opportunities and outcomes for people with disabilities.

Nearly 22 years after the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act and 39 years after the passage of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, people with disabilities continue to be employed at much lower levels than those without disabilities. The goal of the app challenge is to promote recruitment resources for employers, develop job training and skill-building tools for job seekers, facilitate employment-related transportation options and expand information communication technology accessibility.

Submissions should provide access to important data and resources; attract users with different skill sets and language preferences; be accessible (that is, compatible and interoperable with assistive technology commonly used by individuals with disabilities, such as screen reading and speech recognition software); and consider partnerships that will ensure sustainability of the app.

In addition, they should be targeted toward a variety of audiences such as students, teachers, employers, career counselors and workforce professionals, as well as individuals with disabilities working or seeking work at all levels in a variety of salaried and hourly jobs.

 Awards with cash prizes – totaling $10,000 – will be given to the top three submissions, including the grand prize Innovation Award, the second prize People’s Choice Award, and the third prize Above and Beyond Accessibility Award. The winners will be featured prominently on ODEP’s website, http://www.dol.gov/odep, as well as at http://www.disability.gov and through other public outreach vehicles.

 Contestants must register for the contest on the Challenge.gov website by creating an account at http://challenge.gov/users/login. Each registrant will receive a confirmation email and may then enter a submission via the “Post a Submission” tab at http://www.disability.challenge.gov. Submissions must be entered between May 23 at 12 a.m. EDT and Aug. 23 at 11:59 p.m. EDT. Late entries will not be eligible for prizes.

Social Media Addiction a Growing Problem

Are any of your clients social media addicts? Is inclusion in the DSM-IV next?

GREEN BAY, Wis. (WFRV) – Social media now seems to be part of everyday life.

“I belong to twitter and tumblr,” said one local teen. “I belong to Facebook, twitter, but I usually go on twitter more than Facebook,” another teen said.

But how much is too much? Social media addiction is a problem not often tweeted about.

“We’ve seen that people will actually have increased heart rates and they’ll have pleasure response from checking their accounts and seeing that they have a new message,” explained Brad Bordini, a psychotherapist with Bellin Behavioral Health in Green Bay.

Bordini has treated patients for addiction to social media and said the ripple effect could be devastating.

“People are starting to lose the ability to interact at times on a human basis,” he explained. “We’re seeing a significant rise in social anxiety with people. They’re becoming more shut in.”

According to a recent study from the University of Chicago, texting and checking Facebook and twitter ranks just behind sex and sleep on a list of urges that are almost impossible to resist, even more addictive than alcohol and tobacco.

“They become almost upset when they don’t receive immediate feedback when they post something new,” added Bordini.

Those Local 5 talked with said they log on to connect with friends, play games, or just to kill time.

“It’s a habit more or less,” said one girl. “I do it at night or in the morning when I wake up.” “I just do it because I’m bored usually,” another teen told us.

But when it starts to get in the way of your daily routine, Bordini said it may be time to unplug

“We need to focus on what is appropriate, what’s not appropriate and setting boundaries for the self,” he said. “As far as how we’re going to let ourselves indulge in these different forms of media.”

Social media sites are now more accessible than ever, with smart phone and tablet apps, which doctors think could be contributing to some addictions.

 

 

 

 

Top Baby Names of 2011

Having a baby? Know someone who is? The list of the 10 most popular boys’ and girls’ babies names for 2011 was recently posted on MSN.

They are, in order:

BOYS -

Jacob Mason, William,

Jayden, Noah, Michael,

Ethan, Alexander,

Aiden and Daniel.

 GIRLS -

Sophia, Isabella, Emma,

Olivia, Ava, Emily,

Abigail, Madison,

Mia and Chloe.

Nice to see so many old-fashioned names on this list – as opposed to some of the wacked-out names out there today. BTW: The last post, see below, was my 100^th on this blog! Yeah!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Help is Only a Click or Phone Call Away

AGS Foundation for Health in Aging – www.healthinaging.org                           

Addiction Search – www.addictionsearch.com

 American Association of Suicidology – www.suicidology.org

Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law – www.bazelon.org

Disability Accommodation & Compliance – www.jan.wvu.edu/bulletins/adaaa1.htm

Disability Statistics – www.disabilitystatistics.org

 Domestic Violence Hotline – (800) 799-7233

EAP Blog – http://eaptools.blogspot.com

Getting Hired – www.gettinghired.com

 Job Stress Network – www.workhealth.org

Mental Health America – www.mentalhealthamerica.net

Mortgage Payment Assistance – (800) 750-8956

National Association of Addiction Treatment Providers – www.naatp.org

National Business & Disability Council – www.nbdc.com

National Organization on Disability – www.nod.org

Office of Disability Employment Policy – www.dol.gov/odep

Stress Management Society – www.stress.org.uk

 Student Loan Relief Hotline – (866) 836-9168

Workforce Recruitment Program – (866) 633-7365; www.dol.gov/odep/wrp

Work Life Balance – www.worklifebalance.com

 

Mental Stress May be Damaging Mom’s Heart

BRADENTON, Fla. — Just in time for Mother’s Day, new research shows coping with mental pressures and anxiety may be more taxing on the heart health of women.

The study, presented at a recent annual Experimental Biology meeting, showed men and women given the same stressful math problem all had an increase in blood pressure and heart rate while solving it. Normally, when heart rate and blood pressure rise, blood flow to the heart muscle increases so it can compensate. However, findings showed while the men’s heart increased blood flow, the women’s heart did not.

With many mothers overextending themselves, cardiologists say stress management is a key factor in maintaining a healthy heart.

“Stress reduction is important for everyone. This study suggests women especially need to monitor their stress to avoid heart problems,” says Jeffrey Rothfeld M.D., F.A.C.C., a cardiologist at Bradenton Cardiology Center.

Studies of heart attack patients found that 15 to 30 percent of those admitted to a medical center had suffered from severe emotional stress.

Being able to identify stressors in life and releasing the tension they cause is critical in learning to cope with everyday pressure, as well as significant traumatic life events. Below are some common triggers that can affect mothers at all stages of life.

• Illness, either personal or of a family member or friend
• Death of a friend or loved one
• Problems in a personal relationship
• Work overload
• Unemployment
• Pregnancy
• Financial concerns

After identifying the cause of stress, the next step is to learn coping techniques. Some common techniques for coping with stress include:

• Eat and drink sensibly- Abusing alcohol and food may seem to reduce stress, but it actually adds to it.
• Stop smoking - Aside from the obvious health risks of cigarettes, nicotine acts as a stimulant and brings on more stress symptoms.
• Exercise regularly - Choose non-competitive activities and set reasonable goals. Aerobic exercise has been shown to release endorphins (natural substances that help you feel better and maintain a positive attitude).
• Relax every day - Choose from a variety of different techniques, such as meditation, to unwind.
• Get enough rest – Even with proper diet and exercise, you can’t fight stress effectively without rest. You need time to recover so the time you spend asleep should be long enough to relax your mind as well as your body.

Bradenton Cardiology Center is a full service heart center. For more information, visit www.BradentonCardiology.com

Moms at Risk for Internet Addiction

Mothers’ Day is Sunday, May 13…. Employee assistance professionals dealing with clients’ Internet addictions may be particularly interested in this post!

Moms are the new Internet junkies! According to Parenting magazine, many young mothers are addicted to blogs, message boards, and virtual-world sites like Second Life. In the most extreme cases, addicts don’t bathe, neglect their children, and use drugs to help them stay up later for more Internet time.

Certainly, not everyone’s problem is bad enough to need professional help, but if you’ve noticed you’re missing out on time with your child, or laundry isn’t getting done, you might be susceptible to the addictions of the Web. Here are some reasons why the Internet is so appealing to new moms:

Moms are alone most of the day. They’re desperate for someone to talk to, so they find an online community. Addiction fills a void, whether it’s emotional, physical, or spiritual. For a lot of new moms, the void is being home alone with a demanding newborn. They turn to the online world to feel like they’re not alone, and then it becomes an escape to turn to whenever they feel stressed or bored.

Moms are looking for ways to express themselves. After having a child, a lot of women feel they’ve given up their identity. Looking up old friends on Facebook or buying retro music online can remind them of who they used to be. On virtual-world sites like Second Life, moms can even create online images of themselves and become anyone they want to be – a popular cheerleader, leather-wearing motorcycle chick, and so on.

Recommendations: Keep an online journal to track when you go online. If you can determine the triggers that make you seek cyber-refuge, you can come up with alternate activities, like taking your kids for a walk. Another tip: Make weekly appointments to get out of the house. This will help make your real life the place you want to be.

Sources: Coleen Moore, Illinois Institute for Addiction Recovery, John Tesh: Intelligence for Your Life (www.tesh.com).

Keep Your BlackBerry Out of Bed

If being connected 24/7 was supposed to make our lives easier, the business world didn’t get the memo. Most American professionals just can’t shake the end-of-the-day feeling that they didn’t get enough done. So day after day, they find themselves responding to work e-mail on their smartphones right up until their head hits the pillow. Sound familiar?

There is good news, says Jason Womack, author of Your Best Just Got Better: Work Smarter, Think Bigger, Make More (Wiley, February 2012, ISBN: 978-1-118-12198-6, $24.95).

By implementing a few small changes, you can get more done in less time —which not only staves off burnout, but leaves more time for doing what you love. The following is but one idea from Womack’s new book.

Keep your BlackBerry out of bed. Womack writes about a client who listed “Check e-mail on BlackBerry (in bed)” as part of his daily morning routine. Note that he didn’t do anything about those e-mails while still in bed. He waited until he was commuting to work (he had a 40-minute train ride to the office each day) to start taking action. Then, he said, he rushed through his morning worrying about the e-mails he had read in bed.

“Together, he and I designed a five-day experiment during which period he would leave his mobile device in another room and use an alarm clock to wake up instead of his phone,” says Womack. “He would shower, dress, eat breakfast, and then check e-mail on his train ride to work. Initially, he expressed concern that he might miss the ‘thinking about what I have to think about’ time he had built in to the early part of the day, but he was willing to give the experiment a try.

“When I called him the following week, he had good news,” Womack continues. “The experiment had worked. He was less stressed and was using his morning more productively. This change in his routine gave him a higher quality of life with less stress and increased productivity—one he didn’t know was possible without falling behind in his work.”

How Food Affects Kids’ Behavior – Part III

This is the final post in a series. These posts are excerpts from the  July “Child Care Support Network”  CE training for daycare providers. For more information, check out the “CCSN” link at www.impact-publications.com. See also the archives section of this blog.

The following are ways to assist children who may be consuming too many artificial food substances:

* Encourage healthy breakfasts. Giving children a breakfast with fiber (oatmeal, shredded wheat, berries, bananas, whole-grain pancakes, etc.) instead of loads of refined sugar should keep adrenaline levels more constant and make the school day more enjoyable.

* Limit candy. Sucking on candy is another way that kids can extend exposure to sugar, which harms teeth as well as other health concerns. Limit sweets and the time it takes for kids to consume them, and make sure children brush afterward.

* Fill sippy cups with water whenever possible. Children shouldn’t sip on sugary drinks or munch on sugary foods for extended periods of time. If you give children beverages other than water, be sure to limit consumption time. Take away the cup after a reasonable amount of time.

* Become more knowledgeable about food additives and preservatives. There are thousands of substances added to various foods for the purposes of coloring, flavoring, and preserving. Food additives include the following groups:

* Food dyes and colorings (such as tartrazine, annatto and carmine);

* Antioxidants (such as BHA and BHT);

* Emulsifiers and stabilizers (such as gums and lecithin);

* Flavorings and taste enhancers (such as MSG, spices, and sweeteners); and

* Preservatives (such as benzoates, nitrates, and sulfites).

(The FDA – at www.fda.gov  – maintains a list of all of the food additives currently used in the U.S.)

* Note that food sensitivities may produce symptoms that mimic signs of ADHD. These include hyperactivity and the inability to focus. When “trigger foods” are eliminated, symptoms decrease substantially.

How Food Affects Kids’ Behavior – Part II

Effect of Sugar on Behavior

The effect of sugar intake on children’s behavior is a hotly debated topic in pediatrics. Parents and educators often contend that sugar and other carbohydrate ingestion can dramatically impact behavior, particularly activity levels.

Physicians, on the other hand, have looked at controlled studies of sugar intake and have not found hypoglycemia or other blood sugar abnormalities in children who are consuming large amounts of sugar. Numerous researchers reason that the problem is not sugar, per se, but highly refined sugars and carbohydrates, which enter the bloodstream quickly and produce more rapid fluctuations in blood glucose levels.

Here are some of the facts:

* Sugar is high in calories and has little nutritional value like vitamins, minerals, protein or fiber. Sugar is typically added to foods during processing, preparation or at the table. Typical “junk foods” that are high in sugar include soda, cookies, cake, candy, and frozen desserts. However, many brands of children’s favorite foods — such as yogurt, cereal, and fruit juice — also contain large amounts of added sugar.

* Naturally occurring (intrinsic) sugars are “good” sugars that are an integral part of whole fruit, vegetable, and milk products (such as fructose found in fruit and lactose found in milk).

* Added (extrinsic) sugars are “bad” sugars and syrups that are added to foods during processing or preparation and include sugars and syrups added at the table.

* Studies show that children are consuming too much sugar. The American Heart Association (AHA) found children as young as 1 to 3 years old consuming around 12 teaspoons of sugar per day. By the time a child is 4 to 8 years old, sugar consumption jumps to an average of 21 teaspoons a day. These amounts are way above the recommended intake of sugar. Diets high in sugar have also been linked to other health issues in children including tooth decay and obesity.

Guidelines

In 2009, the AHA released new recommendations for children’s consumption of sugar:

* Toddlers and preschoolers with a daily caloric intake of 1,200 to 1,400 calories should not consume more than 170 calories, or about 4 teaspoons (around 17 grams) of added sugar a day.

* Children ages 4 to 8 with a daily caloric intake of 1,600 calories should consume no more than 130 calories, or about 3 teaspoons (around 12 and a half grams) of added sugar a day. (One teaspoon of sugar is equal to about 4.2 grams.)

Friday: More recommendations

How Food Affects Kids’ Behavior – Part I

Author’s note: This post is for educational purposes only and should not be construed as a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. This “re-post” of sorts is in response to the high degree of interest in this topic. See this blog’s archives for additional posts and links…. In addition: An article on this subject will appear as the July “Child Care Support Network” CE training for child care (e.g. daycare) providers. To find out more, check out the “CCSN” link at www.impact-publications.com.

What makes a child behave appropriately? Misbehave? A child’s behavior is affected by many factors – one of the least known of which is the effect that certain foods can have on children’s behavior. The principle additives addressed in these posts are artificial food coloring and so-called “bad” sugars.

The adverse effects of artificial food coloring have surprised many parents.

The following is a brief sampling of parents’ testimonies posted by the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) at www.cspinet.org :

“My daughter is highly sensitive to food dyes (especially Yellow 5, Yellow 6, Blue 1, Red 40), and can change from being able to sit and read quietly or do a whole page of addition problems to not being able to sit at all, sometimes running in circles uncontrollably when she is exposed to these food dyes.” – A.E., New Mexico.

“[My child] becomes very disoriented, confused and frustrated after consuming foods with artificial food coloring. He is unable to focus and prone to extremely angry outbursts resulting in a complete loss of control – violently striking out and screaming uncontrollably.” – N.M., New Jersey.

“These symptoms went TOTALLY away [from avoiding dyes]. Artificial preservatives may cause some issues, but artificial dyes are a definite.” – T.L. in Alabama.

More Scientific Evidence

In addition to the CSPI, other research-based organizations back up parents’ claims. In 1987 the Hyperactive Children’s Support Group (HACSG), with the support of Professor Neil Ward, the group’s scientific director, found that, out of a total of 357 children who had been diagnosed as hyperactive, 87% had adverse reactions to artificial colorings and 72% to artificial preservatives in food. Similar results were discovered in 1993 at the Institute of Child Health.

More recently, a 2007 study has become a flashpoint in the current debate. In it, 3- and 8-year-olds were given two types of drinks that contained a mix of dyes. Afterward, parents reported a significant increase in hyperactivity – while teachers and independent observers did not. In addition, because the dyes were mixed together, it was hard to tell which might be causing a problem.

Despite concerns with the British study, European legislators now require a warning label on foods that contain artificial dyes. It lets parents know their kids might become hyperactive if they consume the product.

The studies have caused some experts in the U.S. to urge the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to ban foods containing food coloring – or at least require a warning label. The CSPI, for example, wants the FDA to ban eight artificial food dyes – particularly Red No. 40, Yellow No. 5, and Yellow No. 6. These substances comprise 90% of the food dyes on the market.

Thursday: Effect of sugar on behavior.

Friday: Recommendations.