Blog

By Anita Sircar, Los Angeles Times, August 17, 2021 My patient sat at the edge of his bed gasping for air while he tried to tell me his story, pausing to catch his breath after each word. The plastic tubes delivering oxygen through his nose hardly seemed adequate to stop his chest from heaving. He looked exhausted. He had tested positive for the coronavirus 10 days ago. He was under 50, mildly hypertensive but otherwise in good health. Eight days earlier he started coughing and having severe...

New Guidance: California's Mandated Reporting Requirements and ACE Screening We are pleased to share this joint letter from the California Department of Social Services, the California Department of Health Care Services, and the Office of the California Surgeon General providing clarifying guidance on the responsibilities of health care clinical teams who conduct screenings for Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) in the context of the state’s mandated reporting requirements. The Child Abuse...

By James F. Smith, Harvard Kennedy School, August 2, 2021 The COVID-19 pandemic increased negative emotions across the world. People reported poor mental health and behavior problems including sleeping less, consuming more drugs and alcohol, struggling to concentrate, and fighting more with loved ones. Over the past year, researchers from scores of countries joined together to study whether interventions to mitigate negative emotions and increase positive emotions could improve psychological...

By Alejandra Londono Gomez and Alycia Hardy, Center for Law and Social Policy, August 18, 2021 It is no secret that the cost of child care is unbearable for most families. In many states, the monthly cost of child care often exceeds the average mortgage payment and the annual cost is higher than in-state college tuition . Historically, this cost has fallen to parents and providers as the child care system has been significantly underfunded. The lack of funding exacerbates the structural...

By Eleonora P. Uphoff, Chiara Lombardo, Gordon Johnston et al., PLOS ONE, August 4, 2021 Abstract Introduction Although most countries and healthcare systems worldwide have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, some groups of the population may be more vulnerable to detrimental effects of the pandemic on mental health than others. The aim of this systematic review was to synthesise evidence currently available from systematic reviews on the impact of COVID-19 and other coronavirus...

Are you struggling with building trust, empathy and engagement in your community project? Are you looking for new ways to uncover and uplift the voices of people with lived experience in your work? In our upcoming virtual workshop, Introduction to Using Theatre for Social Change , we are shining the light on how theatre can be an effective tool to explore the issue you're working on in a new way and bring people together in a way that is fun, engaging and gets results fast. Join us on...

By Zenobia Morrill, Mad in America, August 3, 2021 “Colonial thinking runs deep in psychiatry” is the premise of a new open access paper that was just released in Anthropology and Medicine. A group of psychiatrists from the Critical Psychiatry Network (CPN) argue that decolonizing the field requires genuinely confronting and rooting out the racist assumptions at its core. The team, led by psychiatrist Pat Bracken , propose critical thinking strategies for decolonizing psychiatric curricula...

By Eric Moskowitz, Bostonia, July 28, 2021 Near the end of the strangest school year of her life, Julia, a Newton North High School freshman, found herself scrolling an Instagram feed full of her friends posting COVID-vaccine selfies. Some boasted that they felt like superheroes, newly powerful. One said she could finally exhale, calling it her “first deep breath” in over a year. Neither captured what Julia was feeling as she worked up the nerve to get her first shot. “I was really nervous...

Many of you joined us for The Wisdom of Trauma film premiere and have asked us how to continue the work on healing trauma. Join us for this special 4-day live online interactive workshop with Dr. Gabor Maté and Betsy Polatin where we discover the wisdom of our wounds in leading us back to wholeness. Trauma shapes our lives. It shapes the way we live, the way we love and the way we make sense of the world. It is at the root of our deepest wounds. Virtually all our afflictions, mental...

By Madeline Holcombe, CNN Español, 17 Agosto, 2021 Los brotes de covid-19 a principios del año escolar han enviado a muchos estudiantes nuevamente a la cuarentena, pero los expertos en salud dicen que la convulsión académica se puede abordar si más líderes locales se suman al uso de mascarillas en las aulas. Los expertos han delineado las formas más seguras de mantener las escuelas abiertas y libres de brotes, dijo el lunes la Dra. Leana Wen, analista médica de CNN. Si los estudiantes van a...

By Russell Contreras, Axios, August 13, 2021 The number of people who identify as Native American or Alaska Native alone grew by 27.1% to 3.7 million people over the last decade, according to the U.S. Census. Why it matter: The spike in the number of people who solely identify as Native American or Alaska Native mirrors the steady rise of the population since 1890, when Indigenous people were nearly wiped out in the U.S. The Native American population was reduced to fewer than 250,000 people...

By David Daley and Gaby Goldstein, The Guardian, August 13, 2021 T he United States is becoming a land filled with “democracy deserts” , where gerrymandering and voting restrictions are making voters powerless to make change. And this round of redistricting could make things even worse. Since 2012, the Electoral Integrity Project at Harvard University has studied the quality of elections worldwide . It has also issued biannual reports that grade US states, on a scale of 1 through 100. In its...