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One afternoon my wife, Giulia, asked me: “Mark, if I kill myself, will you promise me that you will find a new wife so that you can still be happy?” I sighed and leaned back into the chair next to her, unsure of what to say. Actually, that’s not entirely true. I knew exactly what I wanted to say. I had been saying it for eight months. It’s just that at that moment, I was so tired – tired from work, tired from worry, tired from so many conversations about suicide – that I didn’t have the...

In Brett Story’s documentary The Prison in Twelve Landscapes, the camera journeys across the country, pausing in ordinary places where prisons affect our lives in ways so subtle that they almost seem invisible. In the film’s opening, we hear voices brimming with love, strained from loss, fragile with regret—sending messages to loved ones. “God loves you, and you know your Grandma does.” “All is well with the girls.” “Went fishing yesterday morning. Caught a couple of catfish …” As I watch, I...

On the Cleveland Clinic’s sprawling campus one day last year, the hospital’s brain trust sat in all-white rooms and under soaring ceilings, looking down on a park outside and planning the next expansion of the $8 billion health system. A level down, in the Clinic’s expansive alumni library, staff browsed century-old texts while exhausted doctors took naps in cubbies. And in the basement, a cutting-edge biorobotics lab was simulating how humans walk using a cyborg-like meld of metallic and...

Lisa Hamp is a survivor of the 2007 Virginia Tech shootings, in which 32 people died at the hands of student Seung-Hui Cho. Hamp and her classmates lived because they barricaded their classroom door. “The door did not have a lock,” Hamp says. “We used a desk and table to keep the shooter from entering.” Hamp recently joined a group in Washington, D.C., lobbying for funding to make U.S. public schools safer from such assaults. She joined representatives from organizations such as the Secure...

When 18-year-old Karolina Espinosa looks back to her freshman year at Buffalo’s Hutchinson Central Technical High School, graduation seemed like a long shot. “At the time,” she said, “both of my parents were incarcerated. I had trouble with reading, and I had problems with attendance.” But in May, sitting in the office of her school’s family support specialist, Joell Stubbe, Karolina talked excitedly about going to Buffalo State University, where she’s been accepted into the class of 2021.

If you’re anything like me, some emails are guaranteed to make you cringe, tense up or bring about an emotional response. While being mindful may be the last thing on your mind, these very moments are when it’s most important. Personally, I like to practice mindful emailing and my mantra is respond; don’t react. To learn more about maintaining mindfulness when it comes to email, I spoke with two mindfulness experts. Their advice will help you learn how to detox digitally and find inner...

It was about three years ago when I first heard about ACEs on NPR. It truly legitimized everything I had written about family and relationships with the outside world. I read The Teenage Brain and Childhood Disrupted. We are making huge strides in sharing the scientific findings about childhood trauma in as many avenues as we can it appears. Yet, I have a deep sadness at times that ACEs is an after the fact scorecard of traumas inflicted on our children. My most significant moment in reading...

Under Obamacare, efforts were made to cut the number of times patients needed to head back to the hospital after discharge. But would a reduction in these "readmissions" leave patients more vulnerable at home, raising death rates? A new study suggests that didn't happen. Reducing hospital readmission rates for heart attack, heart failure and pneumonia didn't increase death rates, the researchers said. As part of the Affordable Care Act, U.S. hospitals face significant financial penalties if...

If you had asked me at the age of 7 what my meaning of home was, I probably would’ve answered with “I don’t know.” When I turned 7, I was taken from my father and placed into a foster home. I remember my social worker telling me that I was going to a sleepover for a few days. Even though I didn’t know this lady, I believed her. As the strange lady walked me out the front door, I saw tears in my father’s eyes. He told me to be brave and to always remember that he loved me and that no matter...

Studying for a college degree takes a lot of mental energy. Generally speaking, you will spend around three to four years of your life studying for a college degree, with some programs requiring that work is completed on an almost daily basis. For many students, the studying and revision alone can become very mentally taxing, not to mention any other commitments that they may have. Thanks to online learning, more and more students are returning to school whilst continuing to work full-time...

Two pretty remarkable developments show how the ACEs movement continues to gain momentum. As part of the Campaign for Counter Childhood Adversity (4CA), about 100 people from about 20 California counties visited the offices of more than 80 California state legislators — Democrat and Republican — to educate them about ACEs science, to talk with them about their interests can be informed by ACEs science, and pointed out the accomplishments that had been made in their own districts. Those 100...

While Senate Republicans battle over a national health bill that will determine access to care for millions of Americans, a Republican from Wisconsin is raising another health issue. In a resolution introduced July 14, Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Green Bay, pushed for wider use of trauma-informed care, and called for a National Trauma Awareness Month. Trauma has been a major focus for Wisconsin's first lady, Tonette Walker. Her Fostering Futures initiative secured grant funding to get trauma...