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As a student assistance counselor, I regularly receive flashy emails from various organizations promoting materials for drug-free schools. Secretly I roll my eyes and strike the trash icon. “Drug free schools - ha, right?!” It may sound cynical or jaded that I don’t believe in drug-free high schools. It’s not that. The truth is I don’t believe a drug-free high school exists. This isn’t from a lack of effort or concern. As a product of the “Just Say No” era, schools have worked for decades to...

Britain's Prince Harry's two-decade struggle to deal with the death of his mother, Princess Diana, is sadly all too common for children who suddenly face the loss of a parent, mental health experts say. In an interview with The Daily Telegraph this week, Prince Harry admitted that his inability to process his mother's death in childhood led to two years of "total chaos" in his late 20s. The prince sought professional counseling at 28 at the urging of his older brother, Prince William, after...

The director of the Annie E. Casey Foundation 's* Juvenile Justice Strategy Group sounded an alarm Monday about a slowing of progress and an increase in the length of time youth are being incarcerated in some of the 300 sites of the Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative . Nate Balis spoke at the 25th anniversary celebration of the Foundation-sponsored Initiative (JDAI), with some 900 registrants attending the three-day event. The JDAI has been instrumental in cutting the juvenile...

In 2015, the Illinois ACEs Response Collaborative strategically held five screenings of the movie Paper Tigers—James Redford’s documentary about the dramatic reboot of a local alternative school after its principal became an advocate of trauma-informed care. Each screening was standing-room only.

The sight of a police officer interacting with a member of the public causes a significant if unknown number of Americans to reach for their cell phones and start recording, just in case. It isn’t that they believe all cops to be abusive or dishonest––just enough to warrant vigilance. “Take your phone out, take your phone out!” a Georgia resident told a companion as they watched Sergeant Michael Bongiovanni of Gwinnett County Police Department. He was standing by a sedan during a traffic...

Religious groups across the USA have long helped recovering addicts through 12-step programs and nonprofits that hire recovering addicts. But now, many are turning their sights on the opioid crisis gripping the nation, and experts say they can do more to fight the epidemic. Shining a spotlight on addiction educates congregants about the problem among family and friends and also helps reduce stigma, said Monty Burks, director of the Tennessee Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse...

This post is part of a CityLab series on o pen secrets —stories about what’s hiding in plain sight. An empty trestle bridge spans a grey river. White-washed doors lean on the side of a barn. Telephone poles and a tin shed frame a half-mowed ravine. Unseen in these otherwise mundane images of the American South: visual evidence for the acts of racial terror that once unfolded there. “It seems that many Americans, especially white Americans, either don't know much about lynchings or are...

Every day in this country students come to school without a way to pay for lunch. Right now it's up to the school to decide what happens next. Since new legislation out of New Mexico on so-called lunch shaming made headlines , we've heard a lot about how schools react. Some provide kids an alternative lunch, like a cold cheese sandwich. Other schools sometimes will provide hot lunch, but require students do chores, have their hand stamped or wear a wristband showing they're behind in...

It’s difficult to have a teenager’s mind. The brain develops rapidly during the adolescent years, which partially explains why teens experience anger, sadness and frustration so intensely. During these tumultuous years, hormones surge, bodies change and adolescents must face a number of social and academic challenges, such as managing their relationships, coping with peer rejection and,– especially this time of year — graduating from high school or preparing for college admission tests.

Jennifer and Peter Buffett and their NoVo Foundation, founded in 2006, have announced they have finished their study meant to help them understand how to spend $90 million in grants to local and regional groups taking on “the deep systemic, societal and institutional challenges” faced by girls and young women of color. NPQ’s Shafaq Hasan wrote about the start of this study period . To figure out what their priorities and approach should be, the foundation took the all-too-rare approach of...

In 2015, more Americans died from drug overdoses than from car accidents and gun homicides combined. That’s according to a startling interactive story published by The New York Times recently, which also noted that since 1990, drug-overdose deaths have increased by 500 percent. A new study suggests unemployment might be one of the factors behind that dramatic rise. The paper, published by NBER last week, finds that as the unemployment rate increases by one percentage point in a given county,...

Back for the second year, Beyond Paper Tigers conference will take place June 28th and 29th in Walla Walla, WA. Featuring Dr. Ken Ginsburg from Children's Hospital of Philadelphia as the keynote speaker, BPT builds on the story of one community and how they've learned that embracing trauma-informed care and implementing ACEs science truly takes a village. Operationalizing the latest in brain science, BPT will provide concrete strategies for intervention with youth, families, and communities...