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"It can hurt to go through life with your heart open, but not as much as it does to go through life with your heart closed." -- Jim Doty Growing up, Jim Doty had many strikes against him: an alcoholic father, a mother with depression, a family living in poverty. But somehow—in a journey he recounts in his new book, Into the Magic Shop —he managed to overcome them. Dr. Doty is now a clinical professor of neurosurgery at Stanford University. He founded and directs the Center for Compassion and...

How much do you know about Childhood Trauma? Got 30 seconds?

How much do you know about Childhood Trauma? Got 30 seconds?

When Rolling Terrace Elementary School in Takoma Park, Maryland, told parents in the fall of 2014 that it would allow students to use Chromebooks as a way to bridge the digital divide between low-income families and affluent families, there were mixed reactions. The plan was aimed at helping students become more adept at using technology, but the affluent parents, most of whom were white, were apprehensive about their children getting more screen time. Alison Risso, then the president of the...

Psychiatrists and psychologists have traditionally taken distinct approaches toward mental health and, according to a new study, these differences may be here to stay. Researchers in the UK surveyed psychiatrists and psychologists in training about their perspectives on the causes of mental health issues and found that, despite attempts to integrate the field, the two disciplines “continue to sit at opposite ends of a biological/psychological spectrum.” “We found that trainee clinical...

As a society, we have unanimity about few things, but one of these is that no child should be harmed by violence. And yet, every five minutes a child somewhere in the world dies a violent death, and half of all children in the world — a billion kids — experience violence each year. Violence — emotional, physical, and sexual — is rampant in high-income countries, including the U.S., as well as in low- and middle-income countries, and across ethnic and racial groups. Three seminal studies the...

Let’s start with how not to have a conversation about race: Here’s the July 11 Minneapolis Star Tribune : “Minneapolis cops working Lynx game walk out over player comments, warm-up jerseys. Police union leader says walkout is justified.“ The Lynx are Minnesota’s high-flying WNBA basketball team. An accompanying photo shows two players wearing black T-shirts bearing the words, “CHANGE STARTS WITH US. JUSTICE & ACCOUNTABILITY.” According to the caption, the Lynx players “observed a moment...

Philando Castile was shot by a police officer during a traffic stop. His girlfriend, Lavish Reynolds, broadcast the aftermath of the shooting live on Facebook. The video leaves a trail of questions about the sequence of events, and the actions that led to Castile’s death. It also reinforces a broader question: How can police better train and equip officers to serve and protect the public? In search of some answers, I turned to some people who have deep expertise in these matters. Two of them...

This interactive graphic is part of our project exploring the more than 33,000 annual gun deaths in America and what it would take to bring that number down. See our stories on suicides among middle-age men, homicides of young black men and accidental deaths, or explore the menu for more coverage. [For more go to http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/gun-deaths/]

The brutalization of black bodies is now a form of repetitive trauma. The highly publicized killings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, recorded and shared on multiple social media outlets (many of which include autoplay on videos), only reinforced the onslaught of violence and made it inescapable. For young black people, the visibility of this violence only reinforces the idea that the black body is up for consumption. It can be viewed, manipulated, desecrated, and even legally...

Whac-A-Mole players (photo by Laura ) _______________________________________________ Many people and organizations focus on preventing violence with the belief that if our society can stop violence against children, then most childhood trauma will be eradicated. However, research that has emerged over the last 20 years clearly shows that focusing primarily on violence prevention – physical and sexual abuse, in particular – doesn’t eliminate the trauma that children experience, and won’t...

On television screens, social media posts and the pages of newspapers, it is impossible, it seems, to escape the relentless bombardment of images of last week’s fatal shootings in Dallas, Minnesota and Louisiana, and it is affecting people’s psychological health, experts said Monday. “We have a nation that is extremely impacted,” said Dr. Andrew Williams, mental health services program manager for Riverside University Health System-Behavioral Health. And to cope with the disturbing...