All Posts Tagged With: "University of Western Ontario"

Research shows links to mental illness, lung capacity

When sociologist and drug-policy expert Andy Hathaway surveyed one of his first-year classes at the University of Guelph last fall, 80 per cent of students reported experience with cannabis.

Hathaway cautions that it was only a small pilot study (around 100 responses), and it took place at Guelph, which is, let’s face it, “a bit granola.”

Still, that 80 per cent figure isn’t surprising.

When twelfth graders are asked if they’ve tried marijuana, roughly half say yes.

Provincial rates of lifetime usage now range from a low of 40 per cent of Albertan twelfth-graders to a high of 63 per cent of those in Nova Scotia, according to the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse. And that’s before university.

Smoking pot can’t be considered deviant anymore, says Hathaway. It’s simply the new normal.

A loosening of cultural attitudes, particularly in the media, helps explains the shift. “We had Cheech and Chong in the 1970s, but that was a very stereotypical portrayal,” says Hathaway. “Now we have shows like Weeds that show use of marijuana by very regular people—soccer moms and dads.”

But as attitudes toward marijuana soften, some campus health experts report that they’re more worried about students using the drug than ever. That’s because research increasingly shows links between marijuana and the number one health problem on Canadian campuses: mental illness.

Dr. Elizabeth Osuch, a psychiatrist who runs the First Episode Mood and Anxiety Program at a hospital in London, Ont., encounters mentally ill students who offer their own evidence of marijuana-related problems. “I hear the story frequently about how ‘I get paranoid when I smoke pot’, ‘I get anxious when I smoke pot’, or ‘I’ve been smoking pot a long time and now I’m depressed’,” she says.

That’s not surprising to Dr. Osuch. What’s surprising to her is how surprising that is to others.

“I’ve given talks across this community and when I talk about the effects of marijuana, it’s news to people,” she says, “unless I’m talking to a group of clinicians who interact with people in a medical or counselling setting. They know, because they’ve been seeing this for years.”

The best-established risk is that marijuana can trigger or exacerbate psychosis in a small number of people who are susceptible, based on their genes. To some, the link is not even debatable. “A number of prospective epidemiological studies put it beyond doubt that cannabis use increases the subsequent risk of schizophrenia,” wrote the authors of a 2007 review in Addictive Disorders.

Devastating as psychosis may be for those who experience it, diseases like schizophrenia only affect a small proportion of the population. But Dr. Osuch warns that marijuana may also be contributing to the most common health problems on Canadian campuses: depression and anxiety.

One study published in Drug and Alcohol Dependence in 2007 followed a group of 14 to 17-year-olds over a decade, checking up on their mental health and drug use along the way. They found that depression, bipolar disorder and, to a lesser extent, anxiety disorders, all coincided with previous cannabis use—and more use predicted more illness.

But that’s only the beginning. “I would predict that there will be more and more information out there in the coming years looking at the problematic effects of what’s no longer a ‘soft drug’,” says Dr. Osuch, who notes that there’s more Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) in in marijuana today than ever.

Dr. Osuch is currently the lead researcher on one such study exploring the links to depression. She explains the theory behind that possible link: “Marijuana is very active on the neurocirciutry of reward processing. Anything that you do because you like doing it activates reward processing in the brain,” she says. “And if you slam that neurological system daily with a chemical [like THC], it becomes very difficult for the person to feel reward from doing normal things,” she adds.

Dr. Osuch is quick to point out that not everyone who smokes pot will have a problem. “But a significant percentage of them will,” she says, adding, “as long as you know what those percentages are, or a sense of what the risks are, you can make an intelligent decision.”

Right now, the students she meets when giving talks at the Western University in or London, Ont. high schools haven’t gotten the message. They perceive pot-smoking as low risk.

Part of the confusion is the conflicting messages young people get when they type “marijuana health effects” into Google. “What they’re getting is all kind of sites that say marijuana is great,” says Dr. Osuch, “what they aren’t getting is the scientific research.”

There are, of course, some well-funded and easy-to-find meassages about the risks online—those from the federal government. But Hathaway, the drug policy researcher at Guelph, says the federal government’s anti-drug messages aren’t trusted by youth, because they exaggerate the risk.

In one of the federal ads, called Fast Forward, a blonde boy refuses a puff on a joint after he envisions a life of violence and trouble with the law. In another ad, called Mirror, a girl in her bedroom ends up cutting her arm with a piece of glass after taking some unidentified drugs.

Such scare tactics cause teens to tune out drug messaging entirely, says Hathaway. “If you’re sending inaccurate messages about marijuana when they have enough experience to know this is basically propaganda, they’re going to have doubts about any message of that kind,” he explains.

Although Hathaway doesn’t advocate abstinence like Dr. Osuch, he does believe there’s room for better education about marijuana. “Effective social policy would account for the small minority who may run into trouble with drugs and be candidates for some kind of intervention,” says Hathaway.

The government might do better to educate youth about the dangers of smoking tobacco along with marijuana, for example, says Hathaway. Tobacco is known to reduce lung capacity and increase the risk of cancer. Meanwhile, a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association in January showed that smoking two to three joints actually increases lung capacity.

But because the JAMA article portrays marijuana as less harmful, it’s unlikely to would make it into the government’s messaging. Once again, the science is unlikely to reach young Canadians.

And if there’s one thing Dr. Osuch and Prof. Hathaway agree on, it’s that young people need better access to the facts. That way, they can determine the risks for themselves—whatever they may be.

The naming of sports teams is now fraught with peril

One of the best running gags in the TV show Community is that Greendale College’s teams are called “The Human Beings”—an absurdly bland moniker designed to insulate the school from complaints and controversy—the sort of complaints levied periodically against the Cleveland Indians or the Washington Redskins.

The fictional school’s feckless Dean might have a point, though, because naming sports teams, at schools especially, is now fraught with peril.

This danger was underscored last week when Utah’s Corner Canyon High School had to do away with its team name “Cougars.” The term, which, in some circles has come to mean an older woman sexually interested in younger men, was the subject of complaints. Canyon teams will now be “The Chargers.”

Continue reading The Cougars? The Redmen? Oh, how offensive!

Researchers say meteorites fell over Selwyn, Ont.

Astronomers from the University of Western Ontario released a rare video Wednesday of a meteor falling from the sky just east of Toronto.

The footage was captured just after 6 p.m. on Monday evening by six video surveillance cameras belonging to Western’s Southern Ontario Meteor Network. The basketball-sized meteor was first spotted over Lake Erie and moved toward the north-northeast ending just south of the town of Selwyn, Ont., according to a news released from the university. Researchers say it likely sprinkled small meteorites over the area east of Selwyn near the eastern side of Upper Stony Lake.

Peter Brown, the director of Western’s Centre for Planetary and Space Exploration, says the occurrence is rare—only about a dozen meteorite falls have had their orbits measured by cameras. That’s why researchers at Western and the Royal Ontario Museum are interested in hearing from anyone who may witnessed or recorded the event or has found fallen meteorite fragments.

“Finding a meteorite from a fireball captured by video is equivalent to a planetary sample return mission,” Brown said in the news release. “We know where the object comes from in our solar system and can study it in the lab.”

Did you see the meteor? Contact Kimberly Tait at ktait@rom.on.ca

Students currently need to meet with the VP Finance to see details

The University of Prince Edward Island Student Union says it will continue to keep the details of its budgets “for members only.” In other words, these pie charts with no figures attached are all that will remain posted on their website—the place where the public would normally expect to find details.

This comes after students demanded at a meeting last week that the union make their plans for spending easier to find, reports The Cadre.

That meeting resulted from a Facebook post that made the rounds. It said: “$700 of your dollars will go to the UPEISU over four years. Do you think that the SU budget should be accessible to the students and be able to see how they’re spending your money? Post this if you are concerned…”

Continue reading Student union still won’t publish its budget

Police warn students

Students in London, Ont. are being warned by police to secure their doors, windows, and patio doors due to an increased number of break-and-enters near student housing. Western News reports that more than 100 have occurred near the University of Western Ontario in recent months.

London Police officer Dennis Rivest held a press conference at Fanshawe College recently to offer more information. He called the thefts “crimes of opportunity” and believes that thieves may be walking from residence to residence, looking for easy ways to break in and steal electronics. He says students should not only secure their residences better, but should record serial numbers for computers, cameras, TVs and tablets.

Why master of journalism degrees are big news in 2011

Carmen Smith used to think she didn’t need graduate school. And why would she? Even before finishing her bachelor of journalism degree at Bennett College in Greensboro, N.C., Smith was the publisher of a women’s magazine called Belle, which she founded.

But she changed her mind after an academic adviser told her about a new master’s in journalism program offered at King’s College in Halifax that could help her do better with her own publication. “I really thought it was interesting to see how they were developing their program around entrepreneurial journalism,” Smith recalls. “That’s why I came.”

Smith, now 22, is one of a growing number of wannabe journalists heading to master’s programs in Canada. Before 2000, there were only two degrees available in the country, at Carleton University and the University of Western Ontario. Today, there are six, with the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Wilfrid Laurier University both gearing up their own programs.

Continue reading Journalists are gettin’ schooled

University town has had four cases already this year

After discovering four cases of the mumps, London, Ont. heath officials are warning students to make sure they’re vaccinated against the disease, which spreads easily in school residences.

“It’s not an epidemic,” Marlene Price, manager of vaccine and preventable diseases for the local health unit, told the London Free Press. But she does warn anyone born since 1970 to make sure they’ve had a second dose of vaccine. (People born before 1970 usually have immunity, she said.)

Mumps can cause severe swelling of the salivary glands, pain in the throat, breasts or head, fatigue and respiratory symptoms. Occasionally, there are dangerous complications of the pancreas.

The number of cases of Mumps in Canada dropped from 34,000 per year in the 1950s to an average of 87 between 2000 and 2004 following widespread vaccination, says Health Canada.

However, there was an outbreak at Dalhousie University in 2007, which affected at least 350 students. Many had received only a single dose of the MMR (Measles, Mumps and Rubella) vaccine.

Since that outbreak, cases have been reported at Fanshawe College, Nipissing University, the University of Lethbridge, the University of Calgary, SAIT Polytechnic and Mount Royal College.

One school gets an A-grade. Another failed the assignment.

Universities in Canada are rushing to get their apps onto your phones and tablets. When done right, those apps can help potential students see into the soul of a campus. Even better, they can help current students find their way to lunch, to class and to enriching events. But when done poorly, apps can make a school look out totally of touch with technology. The lesson? Don’t rush your app schools. Here’s what we think of six Canadian universities’ apps for iPhone.

University of British Columbia — Grade: A

If every school made an app this good, then there would be no more paper brochures arriving in the mailbox, no one will ever get lost on campus, and no student would ever have an excuse to say that they’re bored.

Continue reading On Campus grades six university apps

The most important test I’ll ever write?

Even though it’s been more than a week since my last exam, I can’t relax and fully embrace summer vacation. Some of my marks haven’t been posted yet, but that’s not the problem. And I’m pretty sure that I’m not suffering from Post-Exam Stress Disorder, which is usually caused by physics or chemistry exams (I only had biology courses this semester). The reason I can’t relax is because I’m now studying for one of the most important tests that I’ve ever written: the MCAT.

For most schools across Canada, a high GPA and solid extracurricular experience are usually given more weight than the MCAT. Some schools don’t even consider MCAT scores, such as the University of Ottawa and the Northern Ontario School of Medicine. McMaster University only considers the Verbal Reasoning portion of the test, and although the University of Toronto requires applicants to write the MCAT, their score isn’t included in the overall academic calculation. Instead, it’s just used as a “flag” during the admissions process, with less than minimum marks possibly disqualifying the application.

When it comes to medical school admissions, an applicant’s MCAT score isn’t a universally-important deciding factor. But it’s still going to be one of the most important tests I’ve ever written.

For one thing, the MCAT is much more important to med schools in the States and abroad. And even if some schools don’t consider the MCAT in their admissions process (or they only use cut-off scores), it’s still important for many Canadian schools, such as the University of Western Ontario. This is especially true outside of Ontario- the University of British Columbia, the University of Calgary, and the University of Manitoba all consider MCAT scores, just to name a few.

So unlike my last summer vacation, the next couple of months won’t just be a combination of part time jobs and relaxing- I’ll also be preparing for the MCAT. And stressing out about the physical sciences section.

Rappers allege “Errbody’s good lookin”

School pride at the University of Western Ontario has migrated from the backside of sweatpants and your boyfriend’s football jersey to video quickly gaining popularity on YouTube.

The video, called “White & Purple,” has been dubbed UWO’s “newest anthem” by producer Eddie Manuel and is making the rounds on students’ Facebook walls and emails circulated with the subject line “ZOMG.”

Starring Shayan, Nava40 and Dee Minaj, the video purports that the University of Western Ontario is superior to other institutions of higher education.  Supposedly “reppin’ the school where errbody’s good lookin,’” the performers make a series of allegations which include the fact that its “Ladies [are] blinged out with precious metals,” and “In class errbody’s wearin’ ripped jeans.” At several points throughout the video, students yell “F**k Queen’s” whilst flipping the bird to the camera. Ah, school spirit…

The best rhyme of the piece has to go to one young gentleman whose T-shirt suggests he has been “Fly Since 1985.” Surrounded by comrades on the Mustangs’ football field, he says “Booster Juice got more peeps than the bar / Glitch on WebCT—bonus marks!” Never before has academic misconduct been so fly.

In all seriousness though, great production value and annoyingly catchy. I hope and can’t wait for a Queen’s rebuttal.