Behavioral Health | Penn Today

Two people, one older, one younger sitting and looking at their phones.

What influences how parents and their gay adolescent sons talk about sexual health at home?

Research from Penn found that even when parent-child conversations avoid heteronormative stereotypes, outside factors like mass media and religion—those beyond the parents’ control—can reinforce them.

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Predicting post-injury depression and PTSD risk

Up to half of all acute injury patients experience post-traumatic stress disorder in the months after injury. For urban black men, some of whom have experienced prior trauma, childhood adversity, and neighborhood disadvantage, acute post-injury stress responses are exacerbated.

Lego figurines seated at a toy desk made to look like a business office

How to fix a toxic workplace

Is the workplace really any more toxic than it once was? Despite improvements in equality and discrimination, greater awareness of calling out toxic environments is having an impact. So what are employees, and businesses, doing about it?

teen holding up a phone inside in the sunglight.

How self-harm images on Instagram affect viewers

A new study at the Annenberg Public Policy Center investigates the relationship between exposure to self-harm on Instagram and subsequent self-harm and suicidal ideations.

Trauma linked to earlier puberty, premature brain development, and mental illness

A Penn study details the effects of poverty and trauma on brain and behavior in youths.

Child in a white shirt sleep on a paper-covered desk in a classroom, with three students in the background.

Children who nap midday are happier, excel academically, and have fewer behavioral problems

A Penn study of nearly 3,000 fourth, fifth, and sixth graders in China revealed strong connections between 30 to 60 minutes of shuteye at least three days a week and positive outcomes in a handful of areas.

A child wearing an electroencephalogram cap looking at a bright screen, with someone standing nearby.

Names prompt distinct brain activity in preschoolers

A study from Penn and CHOP found that when preschoolers with autism spectrum disorder hear their name, their neural patterns match those of their typically developing peers. The finding held regardless of whether the child’s mom or a stranger called the name.

Two people walking on a brick path, talking, in a courtyard surrounding by green bushes and a tree.

Training physician-scholars to see patients as people, not categories

The anthropology M.D.-Ph.D. program, recently graduating its first two students, combines clinical and ethnographic skills aimed at working with and caring for society’s marginalized.

A hospital worker with arm around a patient seen from behind as they look out the window.

Survey examines emergency department management of deliberate self-harm

SP2’s Steven Marcus’ new study examines how routinely emergency room staff members properly provide help to individuals who present for self-harm, and how to improve emergency care for high-risk patients.

Two men sitting cross-legged on a wooden bench.

For Kennett Square’s mushroom farmworkers, healthy interventions come directly to the workplace

With the President’s Engagement Prize, seniors José Maciel and Antonio Renteria plan to bring subjects like nutrition and sleep to the workers, reinforcing preventive screenings already provided by a local, federally qualified health center.

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