Blog

Healing from child abuse or chronic trauma doesn’t happen step-by-step, as if you were climbing a staircase. The healing process is more like peeling an onion. Child abuse is sustained trauma that happens day after day. It forces you to disconnect from your mind, body, and heart. This helps you survive the abuse, but it also hides your authentic self. Every day for years you disconnected from reality and from your true identity, while enduring the abuse. Every year added a new layer of...

Hello! I am writing to share a wonderful new resource from the Vital Village Network’s friend and partner, Charles C. Daniels, Jr. Charles is the Founder and CEO of Fathers’ Uplift, which works to assist fathers in overcoming barriers (financial barriers, addiction barriers, oppressive barriers, emotional barriers and traumatic barriers) that prevent them from remaining engaged in their children’s lives. Charles’s book “Pre-Father Care: Prenatal Care for Fathers” is now available for...

Every day, our jails and prisons take in large numbers of offenders who have serious mental health issues. But how good are we in diagnosing and treating their illnesses? Traditionally, not very good…and the record gets worse with respect to providing the most appropriate treatment. And as a recent study that I was part of published in the Journal of Youth & Adolescence showed, it is even more distressing when we examined diagnosis and treatment among racial/ethnic groups. In this study...

A bushy-bearded man in shorts, T-shirt and a heavy backpack entered the Texas Capitol earlier this month. He had a special delivery for the governor, the man said, and he had come a long way to deliver it. Tom Kennedy, 64, hiked almost 300 miles from Houston to Austin—via San Antonio, no less—to hand-deliver about 700 postcards written by Texans to the office of Gov. Greg Abbott. The effort was to raise awareness about the stigma of mental illness. “When I was a child there was a huge stigma...

Unity 2017 is a national conference designed for and about community health workers, community health representatives, and promotores. The theme for this year’s conference is “The Collective Power of CHWs, CHRs and Promotores.” The Center for Sustainable Health Outreach (CSHO) at The University of Southern Mississippi, with support from Sanofi US, the Boston University Center for Innovation in Social Work and Health, Baylor Scott and White Health, KDH Research & Communication, MHP Salud,...

How our Florida Red Mangrove tree was adopted as a Peace4Tarpon symbol and the Official Tree of Tarpon Springs!

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is running a special report called "A Time to Heal." This exhaustive series begins with tracing the significant economic issues that have hit "rust belt" cities like Milwaukee (the third-most impoverished big city in the U.S.) and imposed significant social and economic decline. The articles trace how researchers are now exploring why some people who are exposed to childhood trauma emerge undefeated—and whether their resilience can be coaxed out of others and...

Utah Governor Gary Herbert speaks to press at the monthly conference in March _______________________________________________ Utah Governor Gary Herbert signed into law on March 22 a resolution ( H.C.R. 10 ) to encourage state policy and programs to incorporate ACEs science to address “severe emotional trauma and other adverse childhood experiences” in children and adults and implement evidence-based interventions to increase resiliency. The resolution was approved unanimously on March 7 by...

P rincess Diana and Winston Churchill's mental health experiences are to be used to teach children how to avoid 'the black dog' of depression in school lessons. They are among a number of figures who have spoken out about their own struggles and feature in a scheme aimed at reducing the stigma around mental health. Princess Diana spoke candidly about her depression , her struggles with the eating disorder bulimia and self-harming in a 1995 interview with the BBC's Panorama programme. [For...

As the bestsellers started piling up, from 2008’s Predictably Irrational and Nudge to 2011’s Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow, the buzz around behavioral economics — the science and practice of nudging people toward a particular decision — could be heard from the classroom to the board room. Many dismissed it as a passing fad. Some balked at its paternalism. Others considered it “kinda creepy.” We at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation were cautiously optimistic. Could behavioral economics, a...

Gerald Chinchar isn’t quite at the end of life, but the end is not far away. The 77-year-old fell twice last year, shattering his hip and femur, and now gets around his San Diego home in a wheelchair. His medications fill a dresser drawer, and congestive heart failure puts him at high risk of emergency room visits and long hospital stays. Chinchar, a Navy veteran who loves TV Westerns, said that’s the last thing he wants. He still likes to go watch his grandchildren’s sporting events and...

As a child, many of us are taught that it’s important to put yourself in another person’s shoes, to feel what they’re feeling. “How would you like it if Joey took your toy and smashed it?” This is an attempt to understand that our behaviors can have a negative impact in another person’s life — that our actions can hurt others. So it’s no surprise that as we age, we tend to believe that it’s important to keep empathy in our lives when thinking about other groups of people — like the poor or...