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School safety, negligence documentation, and a need for a school reform My name is Natalia Garceau. For nine years, I’ve been working at a center similar to the one where Nikolas Cruz was sent to after his expulsion from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. You won’t hear anything from the teachers who work at such centers because they are afraid to lose their jobs and to be taken to court. They have families to feed. By contract, we are not allowed to speak with media about anything...

The research team of the Traumatic Stress Institute (TSI) of Klingberg Family Centers was honored to participate in SAMHSA’s recent national technical experts meeting titled Developing a Measurement Strategy and Metrics for Trauma-Informed Change in Behavioral and Health Settings. Dr. Steve Brown and Pat Wilcox from TSI and Dr. Courtney Baker from Tulane University attended the meeting. The gathering brought together experts and funders from across the US who are implementing and evaluating...

With much on their plates to do prior to taking off for the May 5-9 Annual Meeting of the American Psychiatric Association (APA), Darcy Gruttadaro, Director of APA Foundation’s Center for Workplace Mental Health and Christopher Seeley, the Foundation’s Program Director for School and Justice Initiatives met up with mental health advocate (and my husband) Bill Emmet and me for lunch near the APA’s new office at the waterfront in southwest Washington, DC. Both Gruttadaro and Seeley are...

Want to prevent kids from using drugs and make it stick into young adulthood? Get the community involved and intervene before they're teens, say researchers from the University of Washington. A new, longitudinal study from the UW Social Development Research Group shows that young adults who grew up in communities that used a coordinated, science-based approach to prevention were more likely to have abstained from substance use, violence and other antisocial behaviors through age 21.

For today, there are no doctor's visits. No long afternoons with nothing to do. No struggles over bathing. At the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., a group of older adults — some in wheelchairs, some with Alzheimer's — sit with their caregivers in a semicircle around a haunting portrait of a woman in white. "Take a deep breath," says Lorena Bradford , head of accessible programs at the National Gallery. She's standing before " The Repentant Magdalen " by Georges de La Tour. [For...

Warm, nurturing parents may pass along strategies for building and maintaining positive relationships to their kids, setting them up for healthier, less-violent romantic relationships as young adults, according to researchers. Researchers found that when adolescents reported a positive family climate and their parents using more effective parenting strategies -- like providing reasons for decisions and refraining from harsh punishments -- those adolescents tended to go on to have better...

“I told them we were being taken and I didn’t know where we were going and when we were coming back.” That’s how Kaysie, then 14, recalls telling her friends about the fact that she and her siblings were headed to foster care. What was supposed to be a weekend stay turned into seven years in the system. The words strength and resilience are often used to characterize youth in care. They got through it because they are tough, they’re successful because they have grit. We want to find reasons...

Donald Warne, MD, MPH, is the incoming associate dean of diversity, equity and inclusion at the University of North Dakota School of Medicine and Health Sciences and an Oglala Lakota tribesman. Warne, who grew up in on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, recently spoke about inter-generational trauma and the Third World health conditions he sees in Indian Country at a healthcare journalists' meeting. MedPage Today caught up with him by phone to discuss some of the health...

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — To its critics here, the needle exchange was an unregulated, mismanaged nightmare — a “mini-mall for junkies and drug dealers” in the words of Danny Jones, the city’s mayor — drawing crime into the city and flooding the streets with syringes. To its supporters, it was a crucial response to an escalating crisis, and the last bulwark standing between the region and a potential outbreak of hepatitis and H.I.V. When Charleston closed the program last month after a little more...

Would you describe yourself as a compassionate person? Even if you don’t necessarily see yourself that way, I bet you’re compassionate at least some of the time (e.g., when you’re well-rested and not in a hurry), or with certain people in your life (e.g., with your closest friends). Compassion can be thought of as a mental state or an orientation toward suffering (your own or others’) that includes four components : Bringing attention or awareness to recognizing that there is suffering...

"'... It's very disappointing the illness would be so grossly misdiagnosed in a major motion picture when we know that only 15 percent of women who experience a postpartum mood disorder get treatment because of the stigma and shame associated with it,' Zoblin told HuffPost Canada. 'I think mothers should be made aware going into the movie that it might be triggering.'" Warning: this post and the linked article contain spoilers for the new movie "Tully". The previews for this movie would lead...

‘Healthy Minds OK’ Roundtable Event on May 3 Hosted by Green Shoe Foundation, Oklahoma City County Health Department, INTEGRIS Mental Health, A Chance to Change and Pivot – A Turning Point for Youth A business roundtable discussion and event on the effects of childhood trauma on the state’s health from 4 to 5 p.m. on Thursday, May 3 at the Oklahoma City County Health Department’s Northeast Regional Health and Wellness Campus Auditorium, 2600 NE 63rd St OKC, OK 73111. The free public event...