Blog

By Kelly McGonigal, Image: Screenshot from article, The New York Times, May 24, 2022 It’s no secret that exercise, even in small doses, can improve your mood. Researchers even have a name for it: the feel-better effect . And while any physical activity — a walk, a swim, a bit of yoga — can give you an emotional boost, we wanted to create a short workout video specifically designed to make people happy. What would a “joy workout” look like? I’m a psychologist fascinated by the science of...

By Linda Hall, Photo: Tom E. Puskar/Times-Gazette.com, Ashland Times-Gazette, May 26, 2022 When children are placed in foster care , it's understood they are experiencing trauma. What's not always recognized is their parents are in a hard place, too. Ashland County's courts, area social services and other sectors of the Ashland and Wayne communities are hoping to join forces to promote positive parenting and successful reunification of children in foster care with their birth parents.

By Abby Boshart, Photo: Ryan DeBerardinis/Shutterstock, Housing Matters, May 25, 2022 There have long been gaps in America’s complex web of social programs, but the pandemic highlighted just how limited our social safety net is . This was especially true for the country’s renters, with more than 11 million households already rent burdened , and many working in industries hit hard by layoffs (PDF). But federal housing assistance lacked the funding to stabilize these households before or...

By Laura Gallant, 5/26/22, https://positiveexperience.org/category/blog/ The HOPE National Resource Center (NRC) released a new set of training videos! In the videos, Dr. Sege shares the results of an ACEs (adverse childhood experiences) screening to a parent and child, who are played by Courtney and her son, Henry. The videos show what this conversation can look like without the HOPE framework and with the HOPE framework. They give a side by side look at the difference that the HOPE...

https://blog.uniteus.com/impact-of-social-determinants-of-health Social determinants of health (SDoH) are the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work, and age—and these conditions shape health. Research shows strong connections between the social and economic needs of patients and their health challenges. A new white paper, written by Spencer Pratt, Vice President of Sales Solutions at Unite Us, discusses how health organizations can measurably improve health outcomes, and...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/03/27/mental-health-black-baltimore-bryant/

Kamakshi Hart, solo artist, trauma-informed coach and award-winning creator of ‘Wild At Hart’ (HFF ’18) presents a timely call to action to build the superpower of resilience as a means to navigate a world in trauma. Award-winning creative team Kamakshi Hart, playwright/performer and Jessica Lynn Johnson, director/developer bring Resilient AF: Rising To The Occasion! to The Zephyr Theatre, 7456 Melrose Ave., on June 4, 645p, June 12, 745p and June 19, 7p. FOR TICKETS, SHOW TRAILER AND MORE:...

By Adam Taylor, Amanda Coletta, and Jennifer Hassan, Photo: Jane Barlow/PA Images/Getty Images, The Washington Post, May 26, 2022 A mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Tex., claimed the lives of at least 19 children and two teachers Tuesday in the deadliest school shooting in the United States in almost a decade. The killings came less than two weeks after a mass shooting left 10 people dead at a busy supermarket in a predominantly Black neighborhood in Buffalo. Tuesday’s school...

By Aaron Bolton, Photo: Tony Bynum/KHN, Kaiser Health News, May 25, 2022 As the pandemic was setting in during summer 2020, Justin Lee Littledog called his mom to tell her he was moving from Texas back home to the Blackfeet Indian Reservation in Montana with his girlfriend, stepson, and son. They moved in with his mom, Marla Ollinger, on a 300-acre ranch on the rolling prairie outside Browning and had what Ollinger remembers as the best summer of her life. “That was the first time I’ve...

By Catherine Pearson, Photo: Getty Images, The New York Times, May 25, 2022 A devastating reality of raising children in America today is that parents must be prepared to talk to their kids about mass shootings. It’s a wrenching task, and experts say there are some universal best practices — like avoiding graphic details. Or doing your best to actively listen, rather than trying to take away children’s pain. But the particulars of what families discuss — and how parents respond to questions...

By Robert Klemko, Silvia Foster-Frau, and Shawn Boburg, Image: Screenshot from video by Hadley Green/The Washington Post, The Washington Post, May 25, 2022 The gunman in Tuesday’s elementary school massacre was a lonely 18-year-old who was bullied over a childhood speech impediment, suffered from a fraught home life and lashed out violently against peers and strangers recently and over the years, friends and relatives said. And in the days after his May 16 birthday, he legally bought the...

Police block off the road leading to the scene of a school shooting at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Tex., on Tuesday. (Sergio Flores for The Washington Post) Her killing occurred in Texas three decades before a school shooting in Uvalde claimed 19 children and two teachers. I am shaking as I write this. I am thinking of them. I am thinking of her. I am grieving for their parents. I am grieving again for hers. I am a mother of two trying to make sense of the elementary school shooting that...