My involvement with Topper Academy began when the vice-mayor told me that a new principal was coming to the alternative high school and she asked if I would reach out to her regarding trauma-informed education. So, I invited Melanie Riden-Bacon (Mrs. RB ) to attend the four-hour, trauma-informed training. I noticed by the end of the training that she had tears in her eyes.
Since President Trump announced his plan to address the national opioid crisis on March 19, drug policy experts have tried to unpack the president’s promises, and gauge where this "new" approach will take us. One writer, Vann R. Newkirk II, who covers politics and policy at The Atlantic, analyzed Trump’s opioid plan from the viewpoint of Americans of color , the very people who were devastated by the “War on Drugs” declared by former President Richard Nixon in 1971. It’s important to ask how...
After 15 years of estrangement following the birth of her son, Paulette found her ex, Steve, creeping back into her life. Steve used kind gestures: buying her flowers, cooking for her and her son, Luke, and fixing up her kitchen and patio. Eventually, Steve succeeded in getting Paulette to let her guard down and to fall in love with him. Months later, in August of 2015, Paulette and Steve were married. But Paulette quickly learned that Steve wasn't all romance—in fact, he was controlling,...
At the turn of the 20th century, prominent physicians who were trying to understand where mental illness comes from seized on a new theory: autointoxication. Intestinal microbes, these doctors suggested, are actually dangerous to their human hosts. They have a way of inducing “fatigue, melancholia, and the neuroses,” as a historical article in the journal Gut Pathogensrecounts. “The control of man’s diet is readily accomplished, but mastery over his intestinal bacterial flora is not,” wrote...
THURSDAY, March 29, 2018 (HealthDay News) -- Obesity rates in children have been rising for years, and the consequences of that extra weight may be showing up in cancer cases. A new review found that certain cancers associated with people over 50 now affect people at younger ages more frequently. And obesity may be to blame. Of the 20 most common cancers in the United States, the study found that nine are occurring in young adults. Approximately one in four new thyroid cancers were diagnosed...
Advocates in Washington state are cheering the recent passage of a newly signed bill that aims to bolster the state’s efforts to divert youth from the juvenile justice system by broadening the types of cases eligible for diversion and strengthening the network of community-based service providers. A major aim of Senate Bill 6550 is to ensure Washington’s kids can receive supportive services closer to home, which has been shown to decrease recidivism in juvenile offenders. It also provides...
Mortality rates and trends in the United States due to drug use disorders have increased nationally since 1980, and while rates due to alcohol use disorders and self-harm have decreased, they are on an upward trend since 2000. These rates, including those due to interpersonal violence, also vary drastically in terms of geography, down to the county level, according to an analysis of data from 1980 to 2014. The analysis, led by Laura Dwyer-Lindgren, PhD, an assistant professor at the...
A dose of reality has moved two influential food gurus to reassess their preaching and write self-help memoirs on their lifelong meditative journeys. In striking contrast to their previous best-selling books — Geneen Roth's Women Food and God and Ed Espe Brown's Tassajara Bread Book — these slim, kindred volumes of accumulated wisdom contain no definitive answers, no foolproof recipes for improving your relationship with food and yourself. There is no recipe, agree Roth and Brown. (In fact,...
For months, Rural Opportunity Institute co-founders Seth Saeugling and Vichi Jagannathan have gathered Tarboro community members , interviewed families and leaders, and analyzed research around intergenerational trauma in a Pattillo Middle School office. “Where we’re headed is to really identify where is the leverage?” Saeugling said. “What’s the North Star and how can we all start rowing in the same direction when it comes to trauma and trying to provide healing opportunities?” On Tuesday,...
CHICAGO—Americans hear a lot these days about the country’s urban-rural divide. Rural counties are poorer; urban ones richer. Rural areas are losing jobs; urban ones are gaining them. People with a college education are leaving rural areas. They’re moving to urban places. Behind this divergence lies a straightforward story: The twin forces of globalization and technological change are enriching a handful of big urban areas, while resources are drained from the heartland, leaving it often...
I stand at the door on my way to school, tears rolling down my face. A long skirt grazes my small, thin legs; a knot clenches in my stomach. It’s the first day of school, maybe second or third grade. Every year, my family insists I wear a dress or skirt to school on the first day, presenting myself as the proper female student. I am not. What I didn’t know then — and what I am just now starting to explore — is that my discomfort on those first days of school was about more than just clothes.
It has been proposed that drug related deaths in Scotland, which have been rising since the 1990s, can be attributed to the social, economic and political contexts of the 1980s. Findings from research published today in BMC Public Health add support to this idea and here, lead author of the study Dr Jane Parkinson, discusses the delayed consequences that policies and resulting social conditions have on health and what current drug policy in Scotland can do to support this generation. 2016...
Tony McGuire- a member of Community Resilience Initiative in Walla Walla Washington, and an instructor for Walla Walla Community College at the Washington State Penitentiary- had divided his Building Maintenance class into random groups where white supremacists may be working on the same team as Native Americans. This choice was intentional; “there’s no affiliation on a job site, so you don’t get that here,” Tony told his students. Yet not long after the start of such teamwork, tools began...
People often ask me why I wrote # ChildhoodDisrupted . As a science journalist specializing in the intersection of neurobiology, immunology and emotion, I’d spent 20 years writing about the immune system and the human brain. When I came across the CDC’s # ACE Study (Adverse Childhood Experiences Study), it struck me like a lightning bolt. I realized that after 20 years of writing about how we become ill and how we heal, I had been missing a huge piece of what can cause disease. Chronic...