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The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors unanimously passed a motion Tuesday that bans the use of solitary confinement — in all but the most exceptional circumstances — in all the county’s juvenile detention facilities. Solitary confinement “doesn’t improve behavior,” said Board Supervisor Sheila Kuehl. “It doesn’t promote rehabilitation. … And [nationally] 50 percent of our young people who commit suicide were in room confinement at the time of their suicide.” Los Angeles County oversees...

Recovery experts Tian Dayton, Ph.D.; Steven J. Wolin, M.D.; Cynthia Morena Tuohy; and Anthony Dekkur, D.O. discuss the impact that mental or substance use disorders often have on several generations of the same family. Parental mental or substance use disorders can affect emotional, social, and behavioral well-being in children, who mature and pass on what they have learned to the next generation. Early intervention can interrupt these intergenerational patterns. To watch the episode, read...

Appearing before the powerful Senate Finance Committee in Washington, DC, recently, Dr. Maggie Bennington-Davis, psychiatrist and chief medical officer of Health Share Oregon, devoted a significant portion of her testimony to the role of adversity and toxic stress during childhood on adult health, both physical and emotional. She explained how Health Share Oregon—that state’s largest Medicaid coordinated care organization—examined the people with the costliest health bills and found them to...

C hronic sickness and staff retention problems among health and social care staff – social workers in particular – along with growing interest in mindfulness and meditation, have put the spotlight on building resilience in the professions. While there is cause for optimism about the benefits of practices such as mindfulness for social workers, it is important to recognise that this will not solve problems such as unfeasibly large caseloads. It is also important that we don’t allow...

The Tennessee Department of Health is observing National Teen Pregnancy Prevention Month in communities across the state this May to raise awareness about the impact of teen pregnancy as well as education and prevention efforts. On Wednesday, TDH will join partners from across the country in celebrating the National Day to Prevent Teen Pregnancy. This observance helps teens understand the consequences of unplanned pregnancy and think about how to best prepare for success in achieving their...

Jane Jacobs was always ahead of her time. In her trilogy of urban works, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Economy of Cities, and Cities and the Wealth of Nations, written in the 1960s and mid-1980s, she not only outlined the key elements of great neighborhoods and effective urbanism, but also predicted the back-to-the city movement. Early on, Jacobs identified the increasingly important role of cities in innovation and economic development. But urbanism was not the only...

A group of scholars at Harvard University is spearheading a campaign to make sure the early-childhood programs policymakers put in place to disrupt intergenerational poverty are backed by the latest science. The idea sounds entirely reasonable, but it’s all too rare in practice, says Jack P. Shonkoff, the director of the university’s Center on the Developing Child and the chair of the National Scientific Council on the Developing Child . That’s because program grants and policies are...

It was the ideal proof-of-concept and a PR coup: a New York Timesarticle that described how the Seattle Police Department used Nextdoor , a community-based social-networking site—a mini-Facebook just for your neighborhood—to find the owner of a stolen camera that officers had recovered. One officer posted a photo of the camera on Nextdoor, and a local user realized it was the same one in a Craigslist lost-and-found post he’d recently clicked on. Soon, the camera and its owner, a photographer...

Around the country people are asking: Is there a better way? These stories explore powerful solutions, and show what prison could be — a place of transformation from the inside out. [Explore the interactive website at http://www.beyondprison.us/introduction/]

In part two of Bill's interview with the Princeton professor, he explains why he believes the Democratic Party should be "challenged to its core" by black voters this November. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ My guest is Eddie Glaude Jr., author of Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul . In the first part of our conversation , Professor Glaude and I discussed the crisis that continues to engulf black America. Eddie...

In It Didn't Start With You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle, Mark Wolynn, director of the Family Constellation Institute and creator of the Core Language Approach, shows how the traumas of our parents, grandparents, and great grandparents can live in our anxious words, fears, behaviors and unexplained physical symptoms—what scientists are now calling inherited family trauma, or “secondary PTSD.” Even if the person who suffered the original trauma has...

I learned about the CDC-Kaiser Permanente ACE Study and 10- questionnaire survey only two years ago, and it’s fair to say I’ve been obsessed with it ever since. I’m a mother, a trauma survivor, an activist and a writer. For years, I’ve written personal essays , profile pieces and a few research-style papers about post-traumatic stress disorder, developmental trauma and interpersonal violence. Yet, something was missing. In my own recovery, I’d often say, in therapy and to friends and lovers,...