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Cookie Monster and friends in San Diego Guadalupe Mendoza used to drop off her kids for pre-school, then make a quick and silent retreat. “I hid away,” says Mendoza, mother of five children aged 18 to 5; all but the oldest attended the Head Start/ECEAP (Early Childhood Education Assistance Program) at Walla Walla’s Blue Ridge Elementary School. “I didn’t allow myself to have a connection with the staff.” Three years ago, Mendoza began volunteering with the pre-school. Then she attended a...

I just got home from a beautiful retreat on trauma and compassion in Nashville, TN. It was very well organized by the hosts and a very diverse group of people attended. We heard from researchers in the field of trauma and compassion and then spent 2 days immersed in learning about and experiencing compassion through meditation, sharing, and journaling. I came away from this experience feeling very moved. I even found myself in tears more than once on the plane ride home as I reflected on the...

Trauma and racism are closely linked, but is that message coming through on social media? A new analysis from Berkeley Media Studies Group reveals gaps in conversations about these social justice issues and highlights opportunities for making the connection clear.

Promoting emotional health and providing behavioral health care is as important as ER care for a broken arm. Vital. We won’t be healing and preventing childhood trauma and maltreatment without a robust behavioral healthcare system in every community. (Yes, we have our work cut out for us in all fifty states.) Innovations needed in every county focuses on citywide collaboration between existing mental health care services and school-based health care. Prevention can involve all the programs...

Specific impairments within six large-scale brain networks during drug cue exposure, decision-making, inhibitory control, and social-emotional processing are associated with drug addiction behaviors, according to a systematic review of more than 100 published neuroimaging studies by experts at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and published Wednesday, June 6 in the journal Neuron. Drug addiction is a disorder that encompasses not only excessive drug-seeking and taking, but also...

The number of college assistance programs for current and former foster youth is growing, but there are still major gaps in helping students access them, according to a national survey of state-run colleges. The goal of the survey, produced by the First Star Institute’s Foster Youth Success in College Project, is “to provide a more detailed current look at what these programs look like, how extensive they are throughout the country, and to detail best practices in place in different parts of...

The Marshall Project and Mother Jones Leona Godfrey was sitting down to dinner at a TGI Fridays in Orange, Connecticut, in December 2013 when she glanced at a television and saw her little brother’s name on the local news. Davon Eldemire had tried to rob a small grocery store, shooting and injuring the owner. “I was devastated,” Godfrey recalled. “What was he thinking? I couldn’t eat.” He was 20. She was 10 years older and had helped raise him, looking on in shame as he piled up an arrest...

While traffic stop interactions with the police may be shrugged off as brief inconveniences for whites, for black Americans, they can lead to humiliation , violence , and even death . This has become clear over the last few years, as videos have surfaced, hashtags have trended, and reports have been released —opening up the black box of negative interactions between the police and drivers of color for the world to see. A forthcoming book, “ Suspect Citizen: What 20 Million Traffic Stops...

Lifting weights might also lift moods, according to an important new review of dozens of studies about strength training and depression. It finds that resistance exercise often substantially reduces people’s gloom, no matter how melancholy they feel at first, or how often — or seldom — they actually get to the gym and lift. There already is considerable evidence that exercise, in general, can help to both stave off and treat depression. A large-scale 2016 review that involved more than a...

Leading research universities have played a central role in America’s dominance of high-tech sector after high-tech sector. From software to biotech, the technology and talent streaming out of these universities have been crucial to the startups that have powered innovation and local economic growth in many regions. Silicon Valley is unimaginable without Stanford University. The innovation ecosystem of Boston and Cambridge turns on MIT. And research universities have played a key role in...

The approach to the treatment of youthful offenders has changed dramatically in the last 20 years. Systemic models that once focused on using vocational training as a means of rehabilitation have recently evolved into mental health-focused treatment programs and reentry efforts. Diversion programming and restorative justice have replaced reform schools, as a juvenile justice reformation is in full swing nationwide. Conversations among practitioners, academicians and policymakers seem to be...

Saw this great article by Jenny Anderson in Quartz this morning. Here are some excerpts (and thanks for sharing such great stuff Robin Cogan ). Read full article.