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Service members suffering from PTSD often feel like they’re wearing a mask. Melissa Walker asks them to make one. Walker, an art therapist and healing arts coordinator with the National Intrepid Center of Excellence ( NICoE ) at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center runs an art therapy program in which service members returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan with PTSD or a traumatic brain injury (TBI) are asked to make papier-mâché masks to express their feelings.

You may have heard that we are born with all the brain cells we’ll ever have. That’s not completely true. After we’re born, the brain continues to develop new cells until around age 2. At that point we mostly have all the brain cells we’ll ever have. However, there’s even an exception to this. There’s a portion of the brain called the hippocampus that is thought to be able to produce new cells with memory and learning. Since science hasn’t yet found...

In a new analysis investigating the effects of postnatal depression (PND) on parenting behaviors, researchers have found perplexing results regarding the effects of the hormone oxytocin on mood in new mothers. Oxytocin, sometimes known as the “cuddle hormone” plays an important role in labor and breast-feeding. It also appears to have significant effects on parenting. The findings show that new moms with naturally higher levels of oxytocin tend to have fewer symptoms of...

Before unloved daughters can begin to heal, they need not only to be able to recognize that they are wounded but also to see how the wounds shape their behaviors. It may seem counterintuitive but this is a process that can take years, not a single epiphany. As one daughter, 39, told me: “ My relationships have been a disaster. Lovers and friends alike complain that I’m too needy, too clingy, and they feel smothered. When they pull back, I cling even more. My therapist pointed...

Solitary confinement consists of placing an inmate alone in a locked room or cell, with minimal or no contact with people other than staff of the correctional facility. A variety of terms are currently used to describe solitary confinement, especially when discussing detained youth. Seclusion. Secure Housing Unit. Special Intervention Unit. Disciplinary Room Time. Segregation. Room confinement. Medical isolation. Reflection time. However, in the eyes of a child locked alone in an empty cell...

Happy New Year! The Board of Supervisors has designated January as the fourth annual Positive Parenting Awareness Month in Santa Cruz County. As in years past, I’m using this month’s column to reflect on the importance of positive parenting and encourage families to use local resources that support parents, such as the Triple P — Positive Parenting Program. If you have a parenting question for next month’s column, please email me at triplep@first5scc.org. Raising...

Before one brick is laid, developers, in most cases, have to examine whether the structure they want to build would damage the environment in any way. You can’t simply plop a block of condos down on a space if it would make it harder for certain native bird or plant species to live there. But what if those condos would make it harder for certain people native to that area to live there also, namely by reducing the level of existing affordable housing? That’s the question behind...

We all love babies. We are wired, both men and women, to lean in, connect eye-to-eye, and utter cooing sounds and silly words that make us, and them, smile. We take – and post – endless pictures; we brag pretty much to anyone who will listen. Even politicians love them: Who among us can remember the last time a politician running for office declined to smooch the forehead of a grinning baby? So how is that we also fail to meet their needs at such staggering proportions in this...

Please welcome Jennifer Hossler, who is the new community facilitator for the Mobilizing Action for Resilient Communities (MARC) Project for the ACEs Connection Network. A social worker by trade and a humanitarian at heart, Jennifer has 18 years of experience working with traumatized children and families in a variety of settings. She spent the majority of her career working as a child welfare worker in Minnesota and California.   A Minnesota native (and a diehard Minnesota Vikings fan...

SAMHSA's Center for Behavioral Health Statistics and Quality invites you to provide feedback for the launch of a new endeavor at the National Registry of Evidence-based Programs and Practices (NREPP). In addition to reviewing programs received during the open submission process, NREPP will conduct independent literature reviews to add programs with strong evidence bases to the registry. SAMHSA welcomes comments from community organizations; clinicians; practitioners; advocates; researchers;...

Social ties are as important to your long-term health as exercise and healthy eating, a new study suggests. "Our analysis makes it clear that doctors, clinicians, and other health workers should redouble their efforts to help the public understand how important strong social bonds are throughout the course of all of our lives," study co-author Yang Claire Yang, a professor at the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill, said in a university news release. For the study, the...

When Jack O'Connor was 19, he was so desperate to beat his addictions to alcohol and opioids that he took a really rash step. He joined the Marines. "This will fix me," O'Connor thought as he went to boot camp. "It better fix me or I'm screwed." After 13 weeks of sobriety and exercise and discipline, O'Connor completed basic training, but he started using again immediately. "Same thing," he says. "Percocet, like, off the street. Pills." Percocet is the brand name for acetaminophen and...