Blog

A generation ago, depression was viewed as an unwanted guest: a gloomy presence that might appear in the wake of a loss or a grave disappointment and was slow to find the door. The people it haunted could acknowledge the poor company — I’ve been a little depressed since my father died — without worrying that they had become chronically ill. Today, the condition has been recast in the medical literature as a darker, more permanent figure, a monster in the basement poised to overtake the...

The Social Security system is in trouble. It’s not just a future problem; America’s retirement insurance program is in trouble now. The federal government will start dipping into its Social Security savings account this year to help pay retirement benefits to millions of Americans. In 2018, the federal government expects to receive about $2 billion less in payroll taxes and investment income than it will need to pay workers through the Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance program. If...

Earlier this year, policy changes leading to migrant family separations rocked the country, leading to surprise and outrage. How could the United States, founded as a pillar of freedom, even consider a policy that rips children from their families? However, Native history reminds us that family separation is not new to American soil , nor is our government a stranger to it. In 1978, the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) was passed by Congress in order to formally end the policy of removing...

Until Larry Krasner entered the race for District Attorney of Philadelphia last year, he had never prosecuted a case. He began his career as a public defender, and spent three decades as a defense attorney. In the legal world, there is an image, however cartoonish, of prosecutors as conservative and unsparing, and of defense attorneys as righteous and perpetually outraged. Krasner, who had a long ponytail until he was forty, seemed to fit the mold. As he and his colleagues engaged in daily...

On October 13, a group of hundreds of people gathered together to flee their impoverished home country of Honduras in a caravan headed toward the United States, seeking a better life for themselves and their families. That caravan quickly swelled to approximately 7,000 Central American immigrants as it passed north through Guatemala. As of today, most of these men, women, and children have just entered Mexico, yet they remain more than a thousand miles south of the U.S. border. President...

The Trump administration is stepping up aid for infants and mothers caught in the opioid epidemic, promising to help states cope with some of the worst collateral damage of the drug crisis, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said Tuesday. Azar said HHS would partner with states to offer a range of services to mothers with substance-use disorders and the skyrocketing number of newborns dependent on drugs. Those infants, who suffer from a condition known as neonatal abstinence...

Hi! I'm Nadya , and I'm the Founder and Executive Director of PERIOD . My debut book, PERIOD POWER: A MANIFESTO FOR THE MENSTRUAL MOVEMENT , is out today! I hope that this book will act as the cape, crown, and manifesto anyone needs to embrace joining this Menstrual Movement. Get Your Copy of PERIOD POWER It’s almost 2019, and yet, 36 US states still have a sales tax on period products because they are considered luxury items (unlike Rogaine and Viagra), period-related pain is a leading...

[Note: This is most of a keynote presentation I gave at last week's sold-out National ACEs Conference in San Francisco. The energy at this conference was incredible. To all who attended, thank you for doing so. To those of you who weren't able to attend, we hope the posts about the conference give you some idea of the speakers and sessions.] We have come an extraordinarily long way in spreading the word about ACEs science. During the first National ACEs conference in Philadelphia five years...

Liz Huntley framed by a photo of her as a 5-year-old Liz Huntley is a passionate children’s advocate who believes that all children should have access to preschool. It could make a life-changing difference in a child’s life. It did for Huntley. The attorney and author described her childhood to a rapt audience of more than 800 gathered on Oct. 16 for the two-day 2018 National ACEs Conference in San Francisco. She was one of four speakers at a plenary session that touched on foundational...

When Blue Hess was with his biological family, both his parents and their extended family abused and neglected him and his siblings. They had drug abuse problems, and problems with alcohol. According to Blue, his dad would beat and punch him all the time. In the documentary film License to Parent , Blue tells the story of how he was at his father’s house in his room and was hungry. “I was so hungry and I know my dad was in the house but I couldn’t get the food because I’d get in trouble. So...

How high economic inequality negatively impacts nearly every aspect of human well-being—as well as the health of the biosphere. [For more on this collection of stories, go to https://www.scientificamerican.com/report/the-science-of-inequality1/ ]

PANAMA CITY, Fla. (AP) — Amy Cross has a hard time explaining the stress of living in a city that was splintered by Hurricane Michael . She's fearful after hearing gunshots at night, and she's confused because she no longer recognizes the place where she's spent her entire 45 years. "I just know I don't feel real, and home doesn't feel like home at all," Cross said. Health workers say they are seeing signs of mental problems in residents more than a week after Michael, and the issues could...