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By Gillian Flaccus, Photo: Nathan Howard/Associated Press, The Press Democrat, February 21, 2022 The young mother had behaved erratically for months, hitchhiking and wandering naked through two Native American reservations and a small town clustered along Northern California’s rugged Lost Coast. But things escalated when Emmilee Risling was charged with arson for igniting a fire in a cemetery. Her family hoped the case would force her into mental health and addiction services. Instead, she...

By Kaytee Gillis, Illustration: Kaytee Gillis, Psychology Today, February 19, 2022 Children who experience trauma and dysfunction in their household often struggle to learn the same boundaries and behaviors that so many others seem to take for granted. As a child is growing and developing, they look to their caregivers as examples of how to interact with the world around them. If those caregivers behave in dysfunctional or unhealthy ways, chances are high that children will learn to mimic...

By Michael Tubbs, Photo: Santiago Mejia/The Chronicle 2021, San Francisco Chronicle, February 23, 2022 California is a state of contradictions. We are the richest state in the country, but we have the highest poverty rate. We’re home to some of the most successful companies in the world, with more billionaires living here than all but two countries , but we have more homeless residents than anywhere in America. It doesn’t have to be this way. California’s poverty problem is a policy choice,...

The best way to drive home a point is through the sharing of stories. This week on the Less Stress in Life Podcast, we finished a 4-part series on resilience. Physical resilience, emotional resilience, mental resilience, and spiritual resilience each had their own episode. You can click on this link or find it on your favorite podcast channel. As with all our series, we look for a story to share about someone’s experience with the to help our readers and listeners apply the concepts. Nicole...

In this episode of Transforming Trauma, our host Emily is joined by our guest, Muhammad (Moe) Kathrada. Moe is based in Malaysia and is an adolescent and family trauma therapist and also works in the field of addiction. He is passionate about supporting the young people he works with to have opportunities for connection, stability and recovery – and developing the capacity for more intentional living through connection. Moe defines complex trauma as “anything that disconnects somebody from...

Join us Wednesday, March 9th at 9:15 - 10:30 AM ET Agenda: · Commissioner welcome · National debate about whether to screen for ACEs in the clinical setting. · Risks associated with ACEs screening in pediatric primary care settings · ACEs through an equity lens Click Here To Register! Christine Norbut Beyer, MSW has been Commissioner of the NJ Department of Children and Families since 2018. She is redefining the agency as a prevention-focused, child and family serving department, with a...

By KK Ottesen, Photo: George Takei, The Washington Post, February 15, 2022 George Takei, 84, is an actor, activist — particularly on social media — and author. His recent graphic novel, “ They Called Us Enemy ,” chronicles his early life in the internment camps for Japanese Americans during World War II. Feb. 19, 2022, marks 80 years since President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which ordered all Japanese Americans on the West Coast and the western part of Arizona to be...

By Meredtith Kolodner, Photo: Malik Rainey/The New York Times, The Hechinger Report, February 18, 2022 A fter years of inflexible debt-collection practices that have burdened SUNY students with punitive payment schedules, high interest and crippling collection fees, New York State officials are promising change. The board of trustees of the State University of New York system voted last month to review the way it collects student debt at all 64 SUNY campuses, and the interim chancellor,...

By Eliza Anyangwe, Photo: SDCoret/CNN, CNN Health, February 22, 2022 On Wednesday, a new study in The Lancet revealed that more than a quarter -- 27% -- of women around the world, aged 15-49, have experienced domestic violence from a male intimate partner at least once in their lifetime. That's approximately one in four women. And the abuse starts young: 24% of 15- to 19-year-olds had experienced violence. The study used estimates based on data capturing the responses of 2 million women...

By Amy Westervelt, Photo: Jessica Lutz/Reuters, The Guardian, February 18, 2022 T his week a peer-reviewed study confirmed what many have suspected for years: major oil companies are not fully backing up their clean energy talk with action. Now the PR and advertising firms that have been creating the industry’s greenwashing strategies for decades face a reckoning over whether they will continue serving big oil. The study compared the rhetoric and actions on climate and clean energy from 2009...

By Audrey Gray, Photo: Audrey Gray/Inside Climate News, Inside Climate News, February 13, 2022 The Parc Chanot exhibition space in Marseille, France, early last September was a sea of slim-tailored suits tapered tight at the ankles. Diplomats and agents consulaires floated through pavilions, vibing protocol. After a one-year Covid delay, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, which gathers members from more than 160 nations every four years for an olympics of environmental...

By David Marchese, Photo Illustration: Bráulio Amado/The New York Times, The New York Times, February 18, 2022 Since the Yale cognitive scientist Laurie Santos began teaching her class Psychology and the Good Life in 2018, it has become one of the school’s most popular courses. The first year the class was offered, nearly a quarter of the undergraduate student body enrolled. You could see that as a positive: all these young high-achievers looking to learn scientifically corroborated...