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Many people who struggle with addiction often struggle with a mental health disorder, as well. The most common mental health disorders include depression and anxiety, which afflict more than 8 million adults in the United States. Certain substances can bring out mental illness more intensely than others: for example, alcoholism, a depressant, can worsen a person’s depressed state. While humans are all susceptible to feelings of sadness every now and again, depression is more of a lingering...

By Jane C. Hu, Outside Online, December 3, 2020 When Aimee Gray woke up on a Sunday morning in October 2017, she decided she was finally going to get a new pair of shoes. She’d worn holes in her favorite Skechers, so when she and her husband headed into town for groceries, she stopped in the shoe store and treated herself to two new pairs. As they drove back to the home they rented on Bennett Ridge Road, in the hills southeast of Santa Rosa, California, her husband remarked on the strange,...

Trauma impacts lives on the individual, familial, community and societal level. Historically, we have addressed the resulting symptoms of trauma with treatments of therapy, education, and all too often imprisonment. However, putting preventative factors in place can avert the symptoms, outcome and resulting negative impacts. Prevention begins with understanding how trauma impacts lives and why it impacts our brains and bodies before we can fully understand what we can do to mitigate its...

By Ali Tadayon and Sydney Johnson, EdSource, January 4, 2021 C alifornia school districts and cities that are grappling with unequal internet access among their students during the pandemic are taking it upon themselves to solve the problem. Early on, schools often gave individual hotspots to students who don’t have the means to access the internet at home. But service can be patchy and expensive. So, some communities — San Jose, West Contra Costa County, Kings County and Oakland among...

By Chandra Thomas Whitfield, Kaiser Health News, January 6, 2021\ It would be the last hike of the season, Jessica Newton had excitedly posted on her social media platforms. With mild weather forecast and Colorado’s breathtaking fall foliage as a backdrop, she was convinced an excursion at Beaver Ranch Park would be the quintessential way to close out months of warm-weather hikes with her “sister friends.” Still, when that Sunday morning in 2018 arrived, she was shocked when her usual crew...

The Community of Practice (C of P) is an interdisciplinary, online platform for adults who are important to children. Among other topics, we explore how systems, environments, and documentation shape early childhood learning and wellness. We grow our ability to be curious about children's full-being, inherent wisdom by being curious about our own ways of knowing and inquiring. We are peer accompaniment with each other - support for the supporters of children, families, and communities. Join...

We're excited to share this behind-the-scenes story of how the Ready4K team collaborated with First 5 Del Norte to create the country's first trauma-informed text message support program! Hear directly from Angela Glore, executive director of First 5 Del Norte, about how she and her partner organizations worked together to connect the dots between community health goals and early learning opportunities. It's a fascinating story of how this rural community set out a big, hairy, audacious goal...

Chloe Yang, 1/6/21, positiveexperience.org/blog Happy New Year from the HOPE National Resource Center! In the new year, you can expect to see even more workshops, partnerships, and resources from the HOPE team. We look forward to another year of engaging with you, learning from our conversations and collaborations, and bringing HOPE to families and children across the nation. In this post, we’ll share some upcoming events and developments to watch out for in the near future. 2021 National...

My dear friend, Linda, is currently recovering from her second heart transplant due to congenital heart failure. This time she received a kidney, as well. We have been friends for decades and I have learned tremendous life lessons from her as I watched her face death many times. I’ve translated this wisdom to my own life and it has helped me move through the murder of my young son in his first grade classroom at Sandy Hook Elementary School. I also use what I’ve learned to effectively manage...

In Spring 2021, the Traumatic Stress Institute will convene a 12- to 16-month Pilot Learning Collaborative for organizations serving individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) that are interested in implementing trauma-informed care (TIC). TSI is uniquely positioned to convene this Learning Collaborative having helped more than 70 organizations across North America embed TIC into the fabric of their organizations. For detailed information about the Learning...

By Laura Mucha, United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), January 2021 Why is love so important in childhood? In this ground-breaking new series by UNICEF, Laura Mucha – author, poet and children’s advocate – interviews some of the world’s leading experts to find out. The series sets out to cover how adversity impacts us as children and the adults we become, what we can do to protect and improve young people’s mental health, and why safe and loving relationships are so vital for children’s...

By Zinzi D. Bailey, Justin M. Feldman, and Mary T. Bassett, New England Journal of Medicine, December 16, 2020 In the 5 years since one of us published “#BlackLivesMatter — A Challenge to the Medical and Public Health Communities” in the Journal, 1 we have seen a sea change in the recognition of racism as a durable feature of U.S. society and of its high cost in Black lives. Elected officials, corporate leaders, and academics alike use the slogan “Black Lives Matter,” which has also been...