Tributes paid to Cashel prizewinners in BT Young Scientist Exhibition

Students from all over Tipperary were very proud to have participated in the BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition 2022 last week.
Two Cashel students were among the winners for the project they entered in the 58th BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition when the prize winners were named last Friday.
The project presented by Ava Abbott and Megan Kirby of Cashel Community School was awarded second place in the Social and Behavioural Sciences for their work in investigating the links between prenatal trauma, traumatic childbirth and adolescent mental health.
Over 1,000 students qualified to take part in the prestigious event.
Schools from Cashel, Tipperary Town, Fethard, Clonmel and Cahir took part.
It was the second year in a row for Cashel Community School students Ava Abbot and Megan Kirby to taste success in the exhibition.
In 2021 they took third prize for their project on head trauma.
Following on from this they noticed a lot of talk about prenatal trauma in the psychology community.
They decided to investigate the effects these variables are having on children and adolescents in Ireland today and went to create another successful project which qualified for the 2022 competition.
They developed their hypothesis “There is a link between prenatal trauma/
traumatic childbirth and children and adolescents suffering from psychiatric disorders” following a period of research.
They set up a 31 question anonymous survey which received 5,250 participants through their social media platforms.
The participants of their survey were parents of 5-18 year olds. If a participant’s child had not suffered any pre-natal trauma or traumatic childbirth, they were still able to use this survey response as part of their control group.
They used many statistical methods such as standard deviation, correlation coefficients, Z score and a T test to analyse data in search of correlations.
An example of a correlation that they found is a positive correlation of 0.98 between % of people suffering from mental illness who also suffered prenatal trauma/ traumatic childbirth.
This strong positive correlation proved that there is a strong link between these variables.
However the girls are aware that correlation doesn’t always equal causation so they were only able to use 4,567 of the surveys. If a survey response stated that the child had a family history of psychiatric disorder, they didn’t include it in their findings as it was an outlying factor and made it less reliable.
Some recommendations that arose from the project are that any child who suffered prenatal trauma/ traumatic childbirth have a full psychiatric evaluation by a consultant psychiatrist who specialises in child and adoloscent psychiatry at the ages of 5,9 11 and 15 as early intervention is key.
Mr Quinn, the girl’s science teacher and mentor, said “the girls have put in a tremendous effort to bring this project to fruition. They spent a lot of their own time creating surveys,researching and analysing data. They have upskilled in maths and computing in their own time in order to properly work through the data. We are all in CCS impressed by their passion and drive to create such a great project.”

Romanian nurse and mother who appreciates her family's new life here is much better

Moya Coplica talks to Aislinn Kelly about her journey from Romania to Ireland and how her wonderful work ethic and love for children has fulfilled her life