The woman Barry Berman saw sitting in the dining room of the nursing home was not his mother. Or, at least, she was his mother, but didn’t look anything like her. His mother was vivacious, or she had been until she was felled by a massive...
Diet is one of the key factors of preventing disease and maintaining a healthy lifestyle. It’s no surprise, then, that what you eat can also impact your mental health, and, for people with mental illnesses or disorders, your diet can both...
Richard Ross has been photographing the juvenile justice system for nearly a decade and has visited youth detention centers in more than 30 states. The system, Ross says, can get kids out of immediate danger, but it doesn’t do enough to...
[Psychological abuse: 53% yes, 47% no.] When Dr. Robert Anda began giving presentations about the CDC-Kaiser Permanente Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study after its first publication in 1998, he often asked people in the audience to anonymously fill out a 10-question ACE survey . Someone gathered all the paper polls, tallied the results, and Anda announced the average ACE score for the room. Generally speaking, he found that people in the helping professions had higher...
Believe it or not, although 70 percent of the adults incarcerated in our nation’s county jails lack a high school diploma, only one jail – San Francisco County Jail #5 in San Bruno, CA – offers inmates the opportunity to earn a high...
It took two years of weekly meetings between parents and organizers, but now 12 parent leaders at Cherokee Point Elementary School in City Heights, a mostly low-income urban neighborhood in San Diego with 91,000 residents, are teaching people about...
Violence is both insidious and deadly in our society. Some of us live with it, even daily. For others it glares though headlines. Or it blind-sides us when we are least expecting. We think that violence – how it happens, how it affects us...
In March, Anthony Hill, an Air Force veteran who served in Afghanistan, was shot and killed by a police officer in suburban Atlanta. Neighbors called police when an unarmed Hill was seen wandering around his apartment complex naked. He had been...
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns that the U.S. epidemic of opioid abuse could lead to more severe outbreaks of HIV and hepatitis C nationally, much like the outbreak now seen in Indiana. A health advisory the...
As long as there have been schools and classes, there have been students who don't show up. And educators scratching their heads over what to do about it. In most states, missing a lot of school means a trip to the principal's office. In Texas,...
In 1989, I was 22 years old, and I had just been diagnosed with PTSD stemming from childhood sexual abuse, physical abuse, abandonment, and neglect. What I needed more than therapy or books or experts or support groups was to meet a woman,...
It's always interesting to read a story or hear a conversation talking about trauma-informed principles without ever using the terms. It makes me think about how the conversation could be elevated if trauma-informed care was factored into the...
Adults can have a bigger influence on youths growing up in poor, violent neighborhoods than they may realize, according to a study to be presented Sunday, April 26 at the Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) annual meeting in San Diego....
For Michael Walke, the end of his second marriage led to the binges. “They would be like two- or three-day events, sitting in my chair here,” the retired hospital administrator and amateur actor said as he sat in the front room of...
Each spring, a group of editors from our parent company, ECM Publishers, spends a day at the state capitol in St. Paul, meeting with the governor, legislative leaders and other state officials. We come prepared with our questions, and we learn...