Blog

Researchers have found promising results for treating depression with a video game interface that targets underlying cognitive issues associated with depression rather than just managing the symptoms. "We found that moderately depressed people do better with apps like this because they address or treat correlates of depression," said Patricia Areán, a UW Medicine researcher in psychiatry and behavioral sciences. The first study enrolled older adults diagnosed with late-life depression into a...

When reporting on poverty, the media fall into familiar traps and pundits make prescriptions that disregard the facts. So, in the fifth and final installment of our series, " Busted: America's Poverty Myths ," we present a Breaking News Consumer's Handbook: Poverty in America Edition. It'll equip you with the tools to spot shoddy reporting and the knowledge to identify coverage with insight. With help from Jack Frech , former Athens County welfare director; Kathryn Edin , co-author of $2.00...

The Association of American Veterinary Medical Colleges’ fourth annual Veterinary Health and Wellness Summit focused on a challenging question: How can mental health and well-being be improved within the veterinary profession? Dr. Michele Gaspar, a feline veterinarian and licensed professional counselor from Chicago, noted during an opening talk that veterinary medicine is physically, emotionally, and intellectually demanding. Practitioners must ably handle the medical needs of sick and...

The connection between childhood trauma and poor adult health will get some needed and welcome attention in 2017. If you haven’t heard about ACEs, which stands for Adverse Childhood Experiences, you may soon. Two efforts to battle ACEs, also called toxic stress, are underway: Starting Feb. 1, pediatricians and other health care providers performing routine child health screenings will need to ask about abuse, mental illness, violence or substance abuse in the home. The policy affects roughly...

Excerpt from article written by Kit Mead who created this review site. We need alternatives to psych wards — community-based care that emphasizes autonomy and addresses crises without locking people up. These include warmlines , which are like hotlines people can call when they’re not actively in crisis. (One such project, Project Warmline, has received state funding in Oregon .) They also include 24-hour drop-in centers, peer respite centers , and in-home support. But in the meantime, we...

One of the most stressful questions a new parent confronts is, "Who's going to take care of my baby when I go back to work?" Figuring out the answer to that question is often not easy. When NPR, along with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, surveyed more than 1,000 parents nationwide about their child care experiences, a third reported difficulty finding care. Searching far and wide, finding little Megan Carpenter, a new mother who lives in...

With a president-elect who has publicly supported the debunked claim that vaccines cause autism, suggested that climate change is a hoax dreamed up by the Chinese, and appointed to his Cabinet a retired neurosurgeon who doesn't buy the theory of evolution, things might look grim for science. Yet watching Patti Smith sing "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall" live streamed from the Nobel Prize ceremony in early December to a room full of physicists, chemists and physicians — watching her twice choke...

For more than a decade, juvenile justice reformers have used developments in adolescent brain science and psychology to make their case for a system that emphasizes rehabilitation and second chances for young offenders. Those same developments now are helping fuel an interest in how the criminal justice system treats young adults. This population has plenty in common with their younger counterparts because they, too, are still maturing, researchers and policymakers say. And, because young...

Welcome to part 2 of the series on the development of technology for ACEs. This blog post is all about exploring the problem space and ideating: what challenges are people experiencing in this domain, what needs do they have, and what ideas do we have for solving them with technology? Further content to be written later; mind map inserted to support today's ACEs Tech Talk . Your browser is not able to display frames. Please visit Technology for ACEs on MindMeister. Click here to open the...

In January 2000, the Navajo Nation Council decided to revamp the Navajo Nation Criminal Code. The Council eliminated jail time and fines for 79 offenses, required the use of peacemaking in criminal cases, and required that the courts see to the rights of victims. The Council also incorporated the traditional concept of nalyeeh into the criminal code. Nalyeeh refers to the process of confronting someone who hurts others with a demand that they talk out the action and the hurt it caused so...

Last month my neighbor and I mustered our emotional strength, gathered up our neighborhood cat, and drove to the SPCA to help her leave this Earth in peace. He had named her Minou — French for kitty, a common term of endearment for cats in Cajun country — though I’m sure she’d had many names, which is why I’m posting about her here. Minou is one of the tens of thousands of animals that were victims of Hurricane Katrina. An estimated 15,500 were rescued, many more died, and some, like Minou,...

I try to get at least eight hours of sleep a night, but I’m not always successful. What can I say? Sometimes, it’s too hard to resist binge-watching a show on Netflix. But how does sleep deprivation actually affect us? On average, Americans get seven-and-a-half hours of sleep each night, which isn’t too bad. On workdays, most people are in bed before 11 p.m. and awake by 6:38 a.m. There is some bad news: A staggering 50 to 70 million Americans suffer from some type of sleep disorder, and...