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Stephanie was eight years old when her heroin-addicted father was sent to prison for armed robbery. When she attempted to give her dad a hug during her first visit to the prison where he was being held, an armed guard immediately chastised her, snatching him away to another room, where she was only able to speak to him by phone through a glass window. In a video released by the Children of Incarcerated Parents Initiative, she says she never questioned why her father was serving time,...

Cook County Jail is exploring a powerful program that could change lives. The population of the Cook County Jail is more than 9,000 inmates. Of them, it's estimated about 30 percent have mental health issues. At a time when state, county and city mental health centers have all but vanished, Sheriff Tom Dart has made it a priority to address the issue. In what used to be the boot camp facility, a new day is dawning for these inmates. It is now called the mental health transition center. Many...

Michael Burghardt couldn't sleep. His legs were shaking, his bones ached and he couldn't stop throwing up. Burghardt was in the Valley Street Jail in Manchester, N.H. This was his 11th stay at the jail in the last 12 years. There had been charges for driving without a license, and arguments where the police were called. This time, Burghardt was in after an arrest for transporting drugs in a motor vehicle. Burghardt, 32, has been taking methadone for 10 years to help his recovery from heroin...

Five blogging activists who have never met launched a social media campaign, almost spontaneously that is giving women with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) visibility and support - and is getting support as well. I'm overwhelmed by the response. We simply wanted people to know women get PTSD and that this reality should be reflected in popular images shown on Google (or Bing or Yahoo) searches. The support has been incredible. People have posted pictures on Twitter, written blog posts...

Talk about an inspiring duo. In an interview for “Good Morning America,” Prince Harry and First Lady Michelle Obama stressed the importance of seeking treatment for mental health conditions. They also slammed the negative stereotypes attached to mental illness, especially when it comes to members of the military. “[Mental illness] is not a life sentence,” Harry told anchor Robin Roberts. “If you open up and speak about it and get the right help as soon as possible, then you can find coping...

On most mornings these days, Bari Greenwood’s 4-year-old daughter wakes up in her bunk bed, gets dressed by herself and eagerly waits to be taken to daycare. For most 4-year-olds, these moments in a daily routine would hardly be worth mentioning. But Greenwood recounts them with the wide smile of a proud mother, for each is a hard-fought victory and a sign of remarkable progress. Greenwood adopted her daughter in July 2015 but had cared for her for more than a year before that, when Child...

Bullying is a serious public health problem, with significant short- and long-term psychological consequences for both the targets and perpetrators of such behavior, and requires a commitment to developing preventive and interventional policies and practices that could make a tangible difference in the lives of many children, says a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. The programs that appear most effective are those that promote a positive school...

Building affordable housing in low-poverty neighborhoods can greatly improve the lives of poor households who get to live there without compromising developers’ bottom lines . But in which neighborhoods does affordable housing produce the greatest good, economically speaking? [For more of this story, written by Tanvi Misra, go to http://www.citylab.com/housing/2016/05/which-neighborhoods-win-by-building-affordable-housing/481209/]

In the last few years, several episodes of violence and shocking police brutality have brought the fragility of black lives into the light of national media coverage. But at the same time, another important—and, perhaps, equally complicated—story is emerging: African Americans, and young black men in particular, are on average living much longer than they were just two decades ago. The decline in mortality has been especially dramatic among young African American children and teenagers. The...

Imagine this scenario: A young Muslim leaves home to travel to Syria to join ISIS. Thousands of young men from Europe have done exactly that in the past two years. But here's the twist: Imagine that just weeks after arriving, the young man realizes he's made a terrible mistake. What does he do now? If he's American, his options are few. Even attempting to travel to Syria to join ISIS is considered providing support to a terrorist organization, a federal offense that carries a sentence of 10...

Black Americans See Gains in Life Expectancy - The New York Times It is a bitter but basic fact in health research: Black Americans die at higher rates than whites from most causes, including AIDS, heart disease, cancer and homicide. But a recent trove of federal data offered some good news. The suicide rate for black men declined from 1999 to 2014, making them the only racial group to experience a drop. Infant mortality is down by more than a fifth among blacks since the late 1990s, double...

On May 3, Partnership with Children hosted a panel discussion, “Poverty, The Brain and Mental Health: How Stress Affects Learning, and the Science Behind It,” in collaboration with the American Museum of Natural History and Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. Mary T. Bassett, MD, MPH, Commissioner, New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, was joined by Partnership with Children Executive Director Margaret Crotty and other experts in the fields of neuroscience...