The parents of a young boy with cerebral palsy are distraught after been told his assistance dog is not allowed to accompany him in school. While thousands of children returned to to their classrooms after the Christmas holidays yesterday, Luke Kelly-Melia, who is in sixth class at Knocktemple National School in Virginia, Co Cavan, stayed at home. His parents, Pauline and Brendan, have decided to home-school him after they were told his golden retriever, Aidan, is not allowed on the school grounds until further notice.

MARIEMONT, OHIO — Crisp is unlike most dogs; when he fetches something, it’s not a game. It’s his job. The Labrador-golden retriever mix is an assistance companion to 8-year-old Mason Murphy, a Mariemont Elementary student whose cerebral palsy prevents him from using his legs and contributes to other difficulties. Every night before Mason goes to bed, Crisp helps pull off his clothes and socks. The dog opens and closes doors and pushes elevator buttons and participates with Mason’s physical therapy. “Anywhere Mason goes, the dog goes,” says Page Murphy of Mariemont, Mason’s mother. “Mason had surgery last week; the dog was in the hospital with him all week. They’re inseparable. They’re best buddies.”

People who get migraines are more likely to have depression than people who don't get migraines, according to a new study in the journal Headache. And the findings also suggest that people with depression have a higher risk of migraine, Reuters reported, though a cause-and-effect relationship can't yet be teased out from the findings. Regardless, the results show that "something is going on here," study researcher Geeta Modgill, who worked at the University of Calgary while conducting the research, told Reuters. The research involved health data from 15,254 people who participated in the Canadian National Population Health Survey, and who were followed up biennially for 12 years, Medical News Today reported.

A new study finds changes in brain regions associated with addiction in frequent video gaming teenagers. But the findings raise questions about whether such research is really relevant to the understanding of true addiction. Led by psychologist Simone Kuhn of the University of Ghent in Belgium, scientists studied 154 normal 14-year-old videogamers. About half were frequent gamers who played at least 9 hours of video games a week. The others were less frequent gamers whose playing time didn't reach that amount. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), the researchers scanned the teens' brains and found that frequent gamers had a greater volume of gray matter — indicating a higher number of brain cell bodies — on the left side of a brain region called the ventral striatum, which is known to play a role in reward and addiction.

NAPERVILLE, Ill. (CBS) – A teenage girl who took her life on railroad tracks in Naperville last month was a resident of a home that is supposed to protect some of the state’s most vulnerable young people. CBS 2's Dave Savini investigated allegations the home was out of control. ChildServ in Naperville is where 15-year-old Caitlin Lee lived until she took her own life on nearby railroad tracks. Her mother, Mary Lee, blames the system and the home that was supposed to take care of her troubled daughter, who was a danger to herself and became a ward of the state.

Adam Bullough remembers vivid and bizarre dreams while in a coma after suffering a traumatic brain injury in a fall from his bike. In one, he was a German fighter pilot who’d been shot down in the United States and had to be sent home. In another, he and his brother Seth had been in an accident, Seth had died, and someone tried to remove their hearts and put them into Adam’s leg.

Fragile X syndrome and tuberous sclerosis both cause autism and intellectual disabilities in a majority of affected patients. And both diseases have been linked to abnormalities in the amount of proteins made by brain cells at their synaptic junctions, suggesting that treatments for one disease may be applicable to the other. But new research reveals that the underlying cellular mechanisms of the two are polar opposites: while the genetic mutations that cause fragile x syndrome lead to an increase in synaptic protein synthesis, tuberous sclerosis is characterized by a dampening of the same pathway.

Members of a group that gives horse riding lessons through Pasadena’s Arroyo Seco say they have witnessed the Family First Growth Camp in action and, in their opinion, the boot camp's drill instructors are abusive in their treatment of the troubled youth in the program . "You could hear them as you were riding through the arroyo, yelling at these kids,” said Nancy Rose of the Rose Bowl Riders. “You'd see them ganging up on one child and screaming in their face." Videos posted by the Pasadena Star News show children forced to drink water to the point of vomiting and a child wearing a car tire while being yelled at by drill instructors. The videos have intensified the scrutiny surrounding one of the boot camp’s instructors, Kelvin McFarland, who has been charged with kidnapping and handcuffing a 14-year-old girl. He is free on $185,000 bail while his case is still pending.

Clinical trials in all areas of medicine turn up some degree of "placebo effect" -- the phenomenon of people who are given a sham treatment, instead of the real thing, getting better anyway. Placebo responses are particularly common in certain disorders, depression being one. In the new study, researchers re-analyzed findings from a 2002 clinical trial that compared the antidepressant sertraline (Zoloft), the herbal depression treatment St. John's wort and a placebo. The original study, which included 340 people with moderate depression, had found that neither treatment was any more effective than the placebo when taken for up to six months. But the current study looked at the data in a different way: It asked whether patients who thought they were getting the real treatment were more likely to improve than those who thought they were on the placebo.

Canadian society - including employers and researchers - often underestimates autistic people, treating their condition only as a "devastating disorder," instead of focusing on their strengths and sometimes superior abilities, one expert says. Laurent Mottron, a University of Montreal psychiatry professor, says that if the scientific community acknowledged the benefits of autism, rather than focusing solely on the negative aspects of the condition, they'd recognize that autistic people could be ideal workers in the fields of scientific research and academia.

SILVER SPRING, Md., November 1, 2011 — Last fall, an Australian early-intervention organization designated November 1 as "Communication Shutdown Day." The day is intended for those in the autism community to fall silent online to highlight the communication difficulties that often come with autism. Not surprisingly, the concept of falling silent in order to speak didn't sit well with many in the autism community, and furthermore, it angered autistic adults who didn't see a lot of parallels between their communication difficulties, often mitigated by online tools, and neurotypical (NT) adults choosing to spend a day away from Facebook and Twitter.

Judy Hoffman's severely disabled adult son was taken from her a year ago Saturday.The house was decorated for Halloween: pumpkins and skeletons, bats, spider webs. "We were listening to the Monster Mash," said Hoffman. Nineteen-year-old Jesse, who has cerebral palsy, epilepsy and autism, was in a swing chair, moving to the music. Through the window Judy saw an RCMP cruiser pull up. The authorities had come, unannounced, to remove Jesse from their Sooke home after she had sent an emotional email begging for help after cuts were made to his homecare services.

Depression almost ended Elizabeth Manley-Theobold's skating career when she was 17 years old - four years before she won the Olympic silver medal. Manley-Theobold's parents had divorced, her skating coach of 10 years quit and she was sent to the U.S. for training. "There was a massive amount of change, but there was no one to sit down with me and say, 'Are you OK with everything?'" Manley-Theobold, 46, said Saturday at the Kaleidoscope of Hope Gala to raise money for youth mental health services. "I was trying to deal with it on my own, in another country, with a new coach, with no friends. It was a really hard time."

To Kate Myshrall, this feel-good story should not be about her son, Patrick, a St. Peter-Marian High student with Down syndrome who scored a touchdown in the closing minutes against Doherty on Oct. 21, but about the people who opened their hearts and made the touchdown happen

BOWLING GREEN — Training residents for emergencies is a priority for Wood Lane Residential Services, but getting the message across can be a challenge. This summer, staff and clients who live in group homes and apartments across Wood County got together with the Bowling Green Fire Department to film a video that instructs developmentally disabled adults about what to do in case of fire, tornado, a bomb threat, or a power outage. The 12-minute video features faces and places residents will recognize, and, staff hopes, will enable them to understand and retain the information better.

The father of a severely disabled 22-year-old woman is fighting a legal battle to keep her in school after a council insisted she was no longer entitled to publicly-funded education. Anthony Williams wants his daughter Maria, who suffers from Down's syndrome, to continue studying at Columbus College, Chelmsford, until she is 25. But Essex County Council say she was no longer entitled to publicly-funded education once she reached the age of 19.

The six-year-old Yarraville boy, who has autism, was deemed to know too many words to receive funding for an integration aide at his mainstream school. His mother, Emma Stirling, said Oscar scored 73 on the Education Department's language test - three marks over the cutoff for funding.

The province has hired a consulting firm to look into a case of abuse at Braemore Home Corp. in Sydney.

After several months of work, students at nonPareil Institute, based at SMU's campus in Plano, issued their first iPad application, called Soroban. The abacus-styled animation game allows users to add, subtract, multiply and divide up to seven digits.

Responding to the recent slaying of a mental health worker at a group home in Revere, the state mental health commissioner announced today she was forming a task force to study safety procedures and training for people who provide services to the mentally ill in community settings.

Abigail Sandler has fought for clearer rules on who calls the shots when a group-home resident becomes deathly ill ever since her mentally disabled sister got sick in 2006.

Operators of private group homes that serve troubled youths across Maryland are asking the legislature to scrap a forthcoming requirement that their staff members be certified by the state, calling it expensive and unnecessary.

Edmonton’s most damaged, unruly kids — in the province’s care — are being kicked out of group homes and often left to fend for themselves on the street.

Two men accused of killing a resident of an eastern Illinois group home in January have pleaded not guilty to murder charges.

A new study has suggested that serotonin plays a vital role in autism spectrum disorders.

"Snip-its" is a franchise salon aimed at helping children get a hair cut especially those with developmental disabilities.

The system of privately operated group homes and day rehabilitation centers for people with mental illness is a historic advancement over the prior practice of confinement in large institutions. But there is a flaw — now a fatal flaw — in a system that assumes nearly every person with mental illness, including those with violent criminal pasts, is ready to live in a community setting.

The death of a manager at a Revere group home last month has spurred the creation of a state task force designed to improve safety and training for those providing and receiving Department of Mental Health services

Four staff members at a Buffalo-area home for troubled youths are nursing injuries after trying to break up a fight involving about 10 teenagers. Five young people were arrested.

The new director of the state Agency for Persons with Disabilities abruptly resigned late Monday, Feb. 21 amid questions about his oversight of a controversial Tampa area group home that allowed sex between residents.

A 16-year-old girl with a history of using ceramic items as a weapon, was warned by a Timmins judge that she might end up killing someone if she doesn’t change her violent ways.

Two men accused of killing a resident of an eastern Illinois group home in January have pleaded not guilty to murder charges.

A new study examines how cell phone use affects your brain. The phone increases activity in the part of the brain closest to the phone's antenna.

A study in the journal BMC Medicine suggests that it may one day be possible to predict which infants are at risk of developing ASD based on patterns of brain activity.

In women with bipolar disorder, premenstrual mood changes are associated with more depressive episodes and more severe symptoms

Zebra fish grown from eggs in water laced with ethyl alcohol could even hold secrets to treating children with fetal alcohol syndrome.

Gulf Coast pregnant women abstaining from alcohol to prevent Fetal Alcohol Syndrome might find their unborn babies are at risk of the disability due to Corexit that has been sprayed along with crude.

State senators want a group home for developmentally disabled men closed after hearing of allegations of sex between residents.

A late-night fight injures staffers at a home for troubled youth.

Brian Deer radiates a remarkably bland persona for someone who stunned the global medical community and unravelled what he calls “one of those Aristotelian stories where you have both pity and fear.”