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Dr. Bruce Perry uses humor to punctuate and bring relief to what is otherwise the most serious subject matter: how trauma interrupts human development. “I don’t mean to sound ungracious, but I hate the term ‘trauma-informed care,” Perry said, in his opening remarks for the Southern Texas Trauma-Informed Care Conference, which was held this month in downtown San Antonio. The audience tittered, briefly thrown off balance by his candor. They laughed harder later on as the man who was recently...

As in many post-industrial cities, Newark has experienced dramatic challenges since the second half of the 20 th century. A confluence of factors has resulted in the current landscape in which one third of the city lives in poverty, 72 percent of children are born into single female-headed households, and high rates of community and interpersonal violence burden residents. In 2008, Newark faced a health crisis created by the abrupt closures of two of its five hospitals. In response, the New...

On Tuesday, May 22, 2018, the U.S. Senate passed SR346 supporting trauma informed care. The Resolution was co-sponsored by Senator Johnson and Senator Heitkamp.

Nearly half of children nationwide experience at least one traumatic event before they reach age 17. That’s according to a recently released report examining trauma among children from the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, compiled from government data. That statistic doesn’t surprise DeJernet Farder, who teaches first grade at Morton School of Excellence in East Garfield Park. [For more on this story by Alison Bowen, go to...

A Wisconsin pediatrician is recommending closer attention be paid to what appears to be the slightest injuries on very small children. The issue is part of a statewide discussion on childhood trauma and its lasting effects. Dr. Angela Rabbitt is an associate professor at the Medical College of Wisconsin. She spends one day a week at a Children's Hospital of Wisconsin clinic in Elkhorn that helps abused and neglected kids. Rabbitt says more attention needs to be paid to what's known as...

I found one solitary page of a book I began to write in 2001. I was still using a word processor then, but the single page clearly reflects the damage caused when a mother-daughter attachment has not occurred.

Stumbled upon an old journal entry of mine....it was written after my 3rd sexual assault, age 27 Sometimes I feel that being a Woman must be similar to being a piece of the earth. Not so much in a spiritual or moral sense, but metaphorically so. It is understandable that so many ancient cultures should refer to an "entity" or force of nature described as "Mother Earth". We, Woman, begin our existence fresh and pliable, fertile and necessary; with time, exposure to elements compacts and...

" Published in the June 2018 issue of the Economics of Education Review, the researchers found that this increased student-teacher familiarity led to higher test scores, albeit a small increase, after controlling for students’ prior academic achievement and teacher differences. The benefits of getting the same teacher twice in a row were largest for minority students. And when a large share of classmates had the same teacher as before, even kids who were new to the class posted higher than...

http://www.philly.com/philly/opinion/commentary/poverty-broke-in-philly-diabetes-sudden-infant-death-syndrome-asthma-20180521.html

This piece was originally published in Scalawag , which amplifies the voices of activists, artists, and writers reckoning with the South. You can read the original here . We ascend through darkness, the sound of our boots on the steep metal steps of the guard tower echoing against the cement walls. When we emerge onto a platform, Zeke Jones, Derek Cummings, and I look out at an empty prison yard. It’s almost cartoonishly prisonlike: two sinister cell blocks side by side, bars over the...

Every month, about 300 refugees apply for asylum in Denmark, seeking shelter from conflicts and persecution in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Syria and elsewhere. And many of them need help beyond finding a new home. A 2013 study calculated that 30 percent of refugees in high-income host countries have experienced torture; about 150 refugees seek treatment at the Danish Institute Against Torture every year. We already know the moral reasons for helping traumatized refugees to recover. But are...

Tyreek works full-time in the sanitation department while co-parenting his 10-year-old son. Ahjoni, a cancer survivor, was enduring a chemotherapy regimen. Mohammad was kicked out of prep school, then suspended for 100 days from high school for, among other things, selling chocolate to his classmates. Emanuel was serving a three-year sentence for armed robbery when a jury tossed out his conviction. These are not the profiles of students who get admitted to a classic university-run honors...