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(Reuters Health) - - Both LGBQ sexual identity and traumatic experiences in childhood are linked to a heightened risk of suicidal thoughts and behaviors, U.S. researchers say. Teens who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or are questioning their sexual identity are also more likely than their heterosexual peers to have had adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) in childhood, the study team reports in Journal of Adolescent Health. Suicide is the second leading cause of death among adolescents...

The field of positive psychology has grown by leaps and bounds in recent years. Now almost everywhere you look, you see articles in mainstream publications about the science of happiness and emotion, purporting to tell us the secrets to achieving a happier life. Historian Daniel Horowitz, professor emeritus at Smith College, became fascinated with the rising popularity of this scientific movement. But he was also disturbed by some of the larger social and political themes many in the field...

Chris Newman used to be a software engineering manager, well-paid, but he worked long hours, ate fast food and went to the doctor a lot. Eventually, enough was enough. He and his wife moved from the Washington, D.C., area to Charlottesville, Va., to become farmers. Now he is healthier, has fewer stomach problems and can eat dairy products again. He raises pigs, ducks and chickens. "Because I grow all this stuff, I tend to eat it. I don't eat at Popeyes anymore. I think it's disgusting. I...

This interactive tool allows you to explore how changes to housing costs, minimum wage, and the social safety net could affect child poverty statewide and in your county. We find lower housing costs and minimum wage increases could lower child poverty substantially—while helping Californians across the income spectrum. And though investments in California’s safety net would need to draw from the state budget, these approaches could also reduce child poverty considerably—while concentrating...

How do you build a narrative around ACEs science, bolster it with data and convince your leadership that integrating it is critical for the community you serve? Representatives from San Francisco Bay Area health and social service agencies had an opportunity on December 5 to learn about ACEs science, find data sets to help them make a case for supporting ACEs education and resiliency programs, and then role play ways to deliver powerful messages. Donielle Prince, ACEs Connection Network’s...

For me, resiliency is in part innate. I don't think we can teach resilience. Through love and connection we can most certainly nurture it. A key piece of resiliency is connection with others. I look back at all that I have endured in my life and wonder what made me keep getting back up. Why did I become more tenacious each time life and family knocked me down? For me, what kept me going was being out in the world connecting with people throughout the day. It made me feel part of something...

The notion that drug addiction is a health condition is not, in the main, controversial in 2017—not politically and not medically. For decades, doctors and researchers have categorized it as a disease, and in recent years the majority of the American public has caught up with them, with widespread support for increased access to treatment and reduced reliance on incarceration. But this consensus hasn’t entirely translated to the courts. There’s perhaps no case that illustrates this...

One of the most damning features of the U.S. criminal justice system is its vast racial inequity. Black people in this country are imprisoned at more than 5 times the rate of whites; one in 10 black children has a parent behind bars, compared with about one in 60 white kids, according to the Stanford Center on Poverty & Inequality. The crisis has persisted for so long that it has nearly become an accepted norm. So it may come as a surprise to learn that for the last 15 years, racial...

The study and discussion of child sex offending is replete with stereotypes of predators and molesters who prey on children. These stereotypes are often used to characterise child sexual abuse as the problem of a deviant minority, and so the only available response is to identify and incarcerate those responsible. In contrast, in its final report , released today, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse presented a socially and historically contextualised...

Can training the mind make us more attentive, altruistic, and serene? Can we learn to manage our disturbing emotions in an optimal way? What are the transformations that occur in the brain when we practice meditation? In a new book titled Beyond the Self , two friends—Matthieu Ricard, who left a career as a molecular biologist to become a Buddhist monk in Nepal, and Wolf Singer, a distinguished neuroscientist—engage in an unusually well-matched conversation about meditation and the brain.

For the last two weeks, Philip Alston , a professor at the New York University School of Law and a United Nations special rapporteur on poverty and human rights, has been on a fact-finding tour of the United States' poorest communities. Alston visited neighborhoods in rural Alabama where raw sewage sits in open trenches and pits. He spent time at a free dental clinic in West Virginia, where he met a 32-year-old whose teeth have all but rotted away. He saw a homeless encampment in Los Angeles...

When you hear the phrase “eating disorder,” what do you picture? Perhaps a young white woman, about 5’10”, blonde, with a face you would expect to see in a Hollister advertisement, size 00 (yes, Hollister carries size double zero). Contrary to cultural assumptions, eating disorders do not just plague white cis hetero women. They affect everyone, regardless of race, size, gender, class, or sexuality. However, they don’t affect everyone the same way. Eating disorder research has historically...