Back in June 2015, Gloucester, Massachusetts, police chief Leonard Campanello announced that his officers would no longer arrest drug users who approached them seeking help . Photo by nathanmac87/Flickr . Instead, the department announced...
“As everyone knows, depressed people are some of the most boring people in the world,” Mindy Kaling writes in her bookIs Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? “I know this because when I was depressed, people fled. Except my...
Nearly 80% of U.S. employers now offer workplace health promotion programs aimed at improving the health and productivity of their workers. The most comprehensive of these programs—mainly at larger companies—have employees doing...
Jane Lazarre was pacing the hospital waiting room. Her son Khary, 18, had just had knee surgery, but the nurses weren’t letting her in to see him. “They told us he would be out of anesthesia in a few minutes,” she remembered....
Children who have been abused or exposed to other types of trauma typically experience more intense emotions than their peers, a byproduct of living in volatile, dangerous environments. But what if those kids could regulate their emotions?...
An inmate who was learning to fight California’s wildfires was killed by a guard Sunday during a riot at the prison where he was being trained, officials said this week. Jonathan Velarde, 23, was in the thick of a 45-person riot that...
The most telling number in a new report on how states decide who is a juvenile and who is an adult in the justice system isn’t necessarily 18 or even 17 or 16. Instead, consider the number four. That’s the number of states that have...
The transition to college — it’s a big one. Teens are suddenly faced with new freedoms, living arrangements, relationships, responsibilities and stress. Parents across the country are spending this month preparing their children for...
Safety is what everyone we talk to in Englewood wants — safety and respect from the police. They are not willing to settle for a false choice of one or the other. On June 29, Mothers Against Senseless Killings (MASK) took a novel...
After living in 14 different foster-home placements, 14-year-old Alex (name changed) said she felt depressed and isolated. Like the estimated 400,000 -plus other children currently living without a permanent family in the foster care system,...
For 22 years, Homer’s annual Run for Women, later the Breast Cancer Run, has raised awareness of breast cancer. Sponsored by Kachemak Bay Family Planning Clinic, this year the annual August run supports another of its programs, youth services,...
The membership of ACEsconnection represents a new wave of thinking about health and social problems. Unfortunately, this new thinking has not yet permeated policy discussions in Washington, particularly in the mental health arena. I hope...
We were 14 years old when a police officer led us out of our school in handcuffs. We hadn’t committed a crime, and were dedicated students who maintained clean disciplinary records. But we could no longer abide by the shared-custody...
First in a three-part report on solitary confinement use in U.S. prisons. In the yard at Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia, gray-haired men make their way up to a small stage. A towering stone prison wall rises overhead. One by...
Imagine a society where everyone has the means and opportunity to make choices that lead to the healthiest lives possible––a society where health is valued by all, and no one is excluded because of chronic illness or other...