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Kids are resilient. Kids bounce back. Tell that to Dave Brethauer , a performance coach in Chicago, who told Genetic Literacy Project that he spent the better part of his adult life “fighting to find” himself following the trauma he experienced as a child. “From the time I was five till 14 I had an abusive stepdad in my life,” he said. To cope, he found himself turning to alcohol, sex, overeating, and exercise addictions – anything to steer his mind away from the memories and pain that...

You can’t teach gratitude practices in a vacuum—especially to teens. As a former high school teacher, I can imagine eyes rolling and arms crossing during a lecture on the value of an attitude of gratitude. Simply asking students to share three things they are grateful for might also trigger understandable resistance. Teens tend to respond more positively to lessons and activities that help them understand themselves and connect with peers—and this is what researcher Giacomo Bono and his team...

It all began with two friends taking walks together in the streets of Los Angles in the late 1990s, but now it’s a nationwide movement that has more than 100,000 Black women walking for wellness and social justice. “GirlTrek was just me and Morgan holding ourselves accountable and supporting each other in sisterhood and love,” says co-founder Vanessa Garrison about how she and co-founder Tanya Morgan Dixon met in college and bonded over shared beliefs in radical acts of self-care. The...

As the opioid epidemic continues to plague the region, some community leaders are asking the faith community to help solve the problem. To help build the alliance between clinicians, educators and the church, community and faith leaders gathered at Northeast State Community College on Tuesday to announce the Holy Friendship Summit, a two-day event that will create a long-term vision for beating the opioid crisis. “The name is important, Holy Friendship Summit,” said Lottie Ryans, director of...

Thank you, @Scott A Webb, at the Wisconsin Department of Health Services, for putting this together and letting us share it. ACEs, Adversity's Impact Childhood spankings can lead to adult mental health problems Unemployment triggers increase in child neglect, according to new research Neighborhood's quality influences children's behaviors through teens, study suggests Brain and Biology Scientists identify mechanism that helps us inhibit unwanted thoughts Bullying First...

Let me tell you, dinner with a behaviorist is an experience, a somatic experience. Lily (name changed to protect her ;-) ) and I shared Indian food two nights ago in Keene, NH. As I shuffled into the restaurant ten minutes late (typical me), I rounded the corner and saw her sitting at a table for two. I beamed; I knew I was in for some rich discussion and a total "nerding out" session. Lily and I are former colleagues. We worked together for only a year, but it was my first year in a new...

For those monitoring the headlines, the Age of Morality hardly seems a likely title historians will use for the current period. But look closer—in the world’s neighborhood, workplace, or school—and what’s there are countless honest exchanges resting upon mutual trust. “We are all moral code writers,” writes Michael Ignatieff in his new book, The Ordinary Virtues . Ignatieff, a writer, politician, academic, ex-journalist, and former head of Canada’s Liberal Party , has turned his restless...

According to a coalition of adoption advocates, broader acceptance of an emerging mental health diagnosis has the potential to help traumatized children access the help they need. That’s the goal of the End Childhood Trauma Tour , which stops in five cities this week in the name of promoting awareness of the disruptive effects of trauma on children. The tour started in Minneapolis on Friday before stopping in Chicago. It heads to Boston tonight before moving on to Philadelphia and...

Aerobic exercise can improve memory function and maintain brain health as we age, a new Australian-led study has found. In a first of its kind international collaboration, researchers from Australia's National Institute of Complementary Medicine at Western Sydney University and the Division of Psychology and Mental Health at the University of Manchester in the UK examined the effects of aerobic exercise on a region of the brain called the hippocampus, which is critical for memory and other...

This is a call to all who serve, advocate for, help, support, treat and generally have the backs of survivors of sexual abuse. First, thanks. Thanks even more than I can say. You warm my ole’ survivors heart with all the work you do, all the time you spend trying to address and end this epidemic. I’m pleased as punch that so many of you even exist in the world. How many of you are there? Has anyone counted THAT number? We’ve got the CDC numbers of survivors – last time I checked there were...

Helen Nez had 10 children. Now she only has three. Seven of her children died of a disorder called Navajo neuropathy , which is linked to uranium contamination. "Many people died and some have liver disease, kidney disease and some suffer from cancer as a result," Nez said through a translator. When she was pregnant, Nez and her children drank from a spring, located on Navajo Nation in northeastern Arizona, with uranium levels at least five times greater than safe drinking water standards,...

WASHINGTON — James Bell, founder and president of the W. Haywood Burns Institute , told a gathering of juvenile justice reformers earlier this month that it was time to begin “an uncomfortable” conversation about racial disparities in the youth justice system. He made the comments to Models for Change stakeholders gathered here to discuss the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation ’s final evaluations of the $121 million juvenile justice reform initiative, which began in 2004. It...