Blog

You might assume that how you view yourself affects your mental health — now, and in the future. If you have a negative sense of your worth, low self-esteem , or a sense of victimhood, it can be hard to see your own role in that self-image ; and how it's been shaped by early trauma or harmful life experiences. That can make it more difficult to build greater mental health and well-being. On the other hand, if you have a strong sense of your value and "presence" in the world, and strong self-...

1. WHO? 
 Those who believe every child deserves to grow up safe, healthy and empowered to succeed in school. 2. SAYS WHAT? 
 Our students and families are traumatized. They need family-friendly services to survive, heal and thrive. We need a strategic plan at the state, county, city and school board levels to prevent and treat high rates of ACEs and trauma. We must look at the root causes of ACEs in order to make measurable and meaningful progress. 3. TO WHOM? School board members and...

If you are one of the millions of adults who grew up affected by traumatic experiences during your childhood, you may have tried therapies that promised to help you calm your emotions, change your thinking, and respond to stress like normal people do. But chances are, you're still affected by past trauma. Things like abuse, neglect, and exposure to parental addiction can and do impact the brain and nervous system. This in turn can can trigger problems ranging from ADHD to depression to...

Current events this week are extremely triggering and traumatic for many. Here are a few tips from a trauma psychotherapist.

Whenever I hear a new accusation against Brett Kavanaugh , I know that my next few days at work are going to be especially rough. I’m a therapist who treats many victims of sexual abuse, and since the Kavanaugh sexual assault allegations have exploded, I know each new story will lead to a call or text begging for an emergency session by a re-traumatized patient. (Kavanaugh denies the allegations.) Studies conducted by the National Violence Against Women Prevention Research Center Medical...

At 88, I remain a competitive runner, always sprinting the last hundred yards of a race to cross the finish line with nothing left to give. The finish line of my life is drawing close, and I hope to reach it having given the best of myself along the way. I’ve been training my body to meet the demands of this final stretch. But, I wonder, should I have asked more of my mind? I have no trouble taking my body to a gym or starting line. I’ve done a good job convincing myself that if I didn’t...

The UK’s first school for children who have experienced early-life trauma such as neglect or abuse and are currently being failed by the education system could open within two years. The short-stay school would provide children aged four to seven with therapy and education to prepare them to rejoin mainstream schooling. The proposed Your Place academy in Norwich has had input from leading psychiatrists and psychologists and aims to create a template that could be copied elsewhere. [For more...

Parents who have experienced adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), such as abuse, neglect, or household dysfunction, are more likely than parents without these experiences to have children with behavioral health problems, according to an analysis of data from several large, nationally representative surveys of US households that addressed ACEs and children’s behavioral problems and diagnoses. Of the more than 2500 children for whom researchers had data, one-fifth had a parent who reported...

Female physicians continue to face myriad challenges in medicine ranging from implicit bias to gaps in payment and promotion to sexual harassment. So it is not surprising (though it’s still appalling) that although equal numbers of men and women now graduate from medical school, only a small fraction of female physicians become medical leaders. Currently in the US, only 3% of healthcare CEOs are women, 6% are department chairs, 9% are division chiefs, and 3% are serving as chief medical...

The thing about something like fatphobia is that it touches every part of your life. It shapes what you desire. It molds your personality. It changes the trajectory of your dreams. You lose sight of which part is you and which part is it. I mean honestly that's true for all of us for one reason or another. You never get to know what your story could be if it hadn’t been touched by gender education or racism or all those years that someone made fun of your knees or a lifetime of being told...

NEW YORK , Oct. 2, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- With reports of discrimination and hate crimes on the rise, psychiatrists and other mental health professionals say they feel compelled to retool their practices as "safe spaces" where they can better attend to the needs of traumatized patients. This is the main conclusion of a report from psychiatrists at NYU School of Medicine and the University of California San Francisco , publishing online Oct. 2 in The American Journal of Psychiatry. After the...

The JPB Research Network on Toxic Stress , led by Dr. Jack Shonkoff, is working on developing biological and behavioral markers for adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and resilience that they believe will be able to measure to what extent a child is experiencing toxic stress, and what effect that stress may be having on the child’s brain and development. The JPB Research Network on Toxic Stress is comprised of scientists, pediatricians and community leaders, and is a project of the Center...