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As a graduate student at Harvard in the mid-1990s, I participated in research studies carried out by the psychology department that began in October 1996 and continued until August 2005 to interview adults who had experience sexual abuse as children and learn what effects the abuse had had on their lives. Although I was sure I knew what I would discover—that the abuse would be remembered as a horrible experience that overwhelmed the people I interviewed with fear when it happened and had...

Dustin French, 29, had four drug overdoses in the span of a year. “I was dead on arrival to the hospital,” he said of his last heroin overdose, which happened in April. “I woke up … and I didn’t feel like myself. I could tell this time I was really dead.” Now, he says, he’s 100 days clean. He lives with his girlfriend. And he has three sons: an 8-year-old, a 2-year-old and a 1-year-old. He credits his turnaround to a relationship he launched in the emergency department with a “peer recovery...

A report being released this morning paints a staggering picture of a quickly growing Skid Row population. Women living on the streets are increasing in number and are older compared to past years, according to the study. More than 90% of surveyed Skid Row women also have experienced physical or sexual violence in their lifetime. “The report has a range of findings, but it is clear that targeting services and dollars to specific groups of homeless people is what gets to the root of the...

A recent wave of popular historical scholarship on slavery and racism has swept the non-fiction landscape. One valuable new voice here is Sowande’ Mustakeem , whose debut book, Slavery at Sea: Terror, Sex, and Sickness in the Middle Passage , charts the human history of the Atlantic slave trade. Most people are familiar with the famous diagram of the Brookes slave ship, published by British abolitionists in 1788. The simple, two-dimensional engraving depicts cross-sections of the slave ship...

Few things are more awesome than listening to kids playing on the playground. There’s magic in that mix of laughter and exhausted breaths — giggle, pant, giggle. Just the other Saturday at Maplewood’s Memorial Park, I was watching my five-year-old playing with his friends from daycare. The kids have just started kindergarten and are now split up among four schools. Some industrious mom had the idea to get them together again. It was a great idea. It was also the moment when I saw the messy...

Hi everyone! So glad to have found you all. (I'm still learning my way around so apologies if I've posted this in a few places.) I'm Alison Morris, single adoptive mother to a child with early developmental trauma whose ACEs score is sadly quite high. Even more sad is that I think my own parenting may have added a check or two since I had no idea what was going on for quite a while, and even when I did I found it SO hard to parent in a trauma-informed (connection- and relationship-based)...

When we look at childhood trauma we cannot ignore the social and historical context in which children and families exist. This year’s Changing the Paradigm conferences takes on the issue of social and historical trauma, especially racial trauma, and with a team of experts from around the country will endeavor to create a safe space to talk about the impact of social and historical trauma on the communities we live in, as well as to showcase strategies that offer hope of community-level...

Nice article about the state education system's growing apprecation about trauma and ACEs. http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2016/oct/25/kansas-works-understand-trauma-impact-students/

Note: The impacts of toxic stress and the brain's neuroplasticity are discussed. The importance of infancy and attachment are here. ACEs are mentioned briefly as are trauma-informed general approaches. There is no surprise content to those of us who know about ACEs science. However, this is a great guide. It's accessible (for parents like me). The mention of ACEs could obviously be expanded upon. However, what is thrilling is the acknowledgement of how shame-reducing all of this science can...

Criminals in the US can be given computer-generated "risk scores" that may affect their sentences. But are the secret algorithms behind them really making justice fairer? If you've seen the hit Netflix documentary series Making A Murderer, you'll know the US state of Wisconsin has had its problems delivering fair justice. Now there's another Wisconsin case that's raised questions about how the US justice system works. In the early hours of Monday 11 February 2013, two shots were fired at a...

New research reveals that certain alterations in the brain may be present in pedophiles, with differences between hands-on offenders and those who have not sexually offended against children. For the study, researchers conducted imaging tests of the brains of pedophiles with and without a history of hand-on sexual offences against children, as well as healthy non-offending controls, during an assessment of what's called a response-inhibition task. Activation patterns in certain regions of...

When Francisco saw an image of himself without tattoos, he couldn't help but smile. "Damn," he said. " I haven't seen myself like that in years." Francisco is a former gang member. His arms, face, and hands are covered in tattoos and gang symbols, permanent reminders of his former life. But thanks to the photography and photo editing skills of Steven Burton , Francisco had the opportunity to see himself a changed man, the way he felt on the inside. [For more of this story, written by Erin...