Blog

The California Psychological Association has sent out an "urgent request" by email to a distribution list of about 13,000 licensed psychologists seeking volunteers to help wildfire evacuees cope with emotional trauma. Jo Linder-Crow, the association's chief executive, said Tuesday the email was sent out a day earlier to licensed mental health providers across California. The email warned of "a tremendous acute and long-term impact" caused by the deadly wildfires and called for volunteers to...

Seventy-five years ago, The Atlantic published an essay by a man named Arthur Morgan. The essay, “The Community—The Seed Bed of Society,” appeared in the February 1942 issue, and was later expanded into a book called The Small Community: Foundation of Democratic Life. Both the essay and the book were arguments on behalf of communities, especially small towns, which Morgan believed had been abandoned by modernity to become “an orphan in an unfriendly world … despised, neglected, exploited,...

During the five years Tony Price roamed the streets and dozed in doorways, the emergency rooms of Sacramento’s hospitals were a regular place for him to sleep off a hard day’s drinking. “A lot of times I would pass out, and then I’d wake up in the hospital,” said Price, 50. About two or three times a month, he would show up at a local emergency department. Sometimes doctors hydrated him with intravenous fluids and sent him on his way. Other times, they kept him a night or two. “I’m kind of...

To get to the core of race in America today, read this new book by James Whitman. Whitman is the Ford Foundation Professor of Comparative and Foreign Law at Yale Law School. Prepare to be as startled as this respected legal scholar was when he came upon a meticulous record of a meeting of top lawyers in Nazi Germany after Hitler's rise to power. Not only did those lawyers reveal a deep interest in American race policies, the most radical of them were eager advocates of using American law as...

THE FEDERAL BUREAU OF PRISONS claims its mission is to “provide work and self-improvement opportunities to assist offenders in becoming law-abiding citizens.” When it comes to undocumented offenders, that’s a lie. The truth is that the BOP discriminates against undocumented people by denying them access to essential drug counseling and job training in prison. As President Trump threatens to lock up even more undocumented immigrants, it’s time for the BOP to reform these exclusionary...

Your child doesn't want to go to school. It's a daily struggle that many parents are familiar with. But what if your child refuses to go to school? Mental health professionals and educators say what used to be considered run-of-the-mill truancy could actually be something else. Some cases of chronic absenteeism are now being called "school refusal," which is triggered by anxiety, depression, family crises and other traumatic events. It can lead to weeks or even months of missed school days.

As a native Californian I knew it was important to be prepared for a natural disaster, however in my mind, I was preparing for an earthquake. Never in a million years did I envision a fire storm, let alone multiple fire storms raging across the state and across my community all at the same time! Before the Northern California fire storm our family felt well prepared for an earthquake, we had our camping gear, nonperishable goods, medications, and more staged in an easy to access location in...

[This is a media release from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.] New national data show that at least 38 percent of children in every state have had at least one Adverse Childhood Experience or ACE, such as the death or incarceration of a parent, witnessing or being a victim of violence, or living with someone who has been suicidal or had a drug or alcohol problem. In 16 states, at least 25 percent of children have had two or more ACEs. Findings come from data in the 2016 National Survey...

The Harvey Weinstein scandal has left many people wondering whether to report their own experiences of sexual assault or abuse. I thought it important to write this blog to catalogue the lessons I learned in going public about my encounter with Harvey Weinstein in order to help other survivors decide whether to come forward. I also wanted to educate the wider community about creating a trauma-informed and supportive environment so that survivors feel safe to trust us with their secrets. The...

Dynamic entrepreneurial companies have long been the drivers of America’s economic growth, and innovators like Andrew Carnegie, Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, and Steve Jobs held up as heroes. But today, high-tech companies are increasingly cast as villains. Uber was recently thrown out of London; Airbnb has been criticized for taking housing off the market and driving up rents; and Google, Amazon, and Facebook are described by many as monopolies. In recent years, firms like these and the...

Hurricane Irma knocked millions of dollars worth of oranges and grapefruits to the ground. Its high winds mowed down thousands of acres of sugarcane, toppled nursery plants, and decimated the avocado crop. The damage will cost the state's agricultural industry billions, but for the migrant workers who pick these crops and work in the fields, the storm means real hardship that will test lives already on the edge. "If you listen to the news coverage about Irma, you'll hear about damage to the...

Fed up with the way women and girls were portrayed in music on the radio, a group of teenage girls on a Boston soccer team brought an idea to their coach. They wanted to start their own radio station that portrayed women positively and respectfully, they said. Through the help of their coach, in 2003 the girls presented their idea to then-Mayor Thomas Menino, who supported it. Later that year, GRLZradio went on the air. Today, GRLZradio produces a girls-run radio show with programming that...