Blog

To the casual observer, the offices of the Women and HIV Program at the University of California San Francisco look like any other primary care clinic. There’s a waiting room with vinyl-covered chairs for the clinic’s patients. Staff check in patients from a non-descript desk ringed with a bank of computers. A video screen promotes the clinic’s services. But as you make your way further into a second waiting area, you might meet Pepper, one of the clinic’s volunteer therapy dogs....

Immigrant communities in the United States have always been under siege and used as scapegoats, regardless of who was in power. Post September 11th it was the Muslim community (and those mistakenly lumped in whether Persian or Arabian). Before the most recent threats against Dreamers, women and children immigrating from Central American countries fleeing violence became targets for detention and deportation. The rhetoric during Trump’s campaign and the policies under his Administration...

Across the Western world today, if you are depressed or anxious and you go to your doctor because you just can’t take it any more, you will likely be told a story. It happened to me when I was a teenager in the 1990s. You feel this way, my doctor said, because your brain isn’t working right. It isn’t producing the necessary chemicals. You need to take drugs, and they will fix your broken brain. I tried this strategy with all my heart for more than a decade. I longed for relief. The drugs...

We are hosting a screening of the documentary, Resilience , at the Landmark Theater Opera Plaza in San Francisco this Wednesday evening, Jan. 31, at 7pm. It just so happens that this is the evening after Dr. Nadine Burke Harris will be at Books Inc. at the Opera Plaza promoting and signing her book: The Deepest Well: Healing the Long-Term Effects of Childhood Adversity . So you may want to be at the Opera Plaza two evenings in a row. Please come an join us on Wednesday evening. Tickets for...

Drug overdoses now are the leading cause of death among Americans under 50, largely thanks to a surge in opioid use. Although heroin and fentanyl have dominated the headlines in recent years, the problem started with a flood of prescription painkillers, distributed by some of the country’s biggest corporations. At the urging of his editor, Washington Post reporter Lenny Bernstein set out to learn why millions of pills were being sent to cities and towns across the U.S. – and why distributors...

Last week, a Facebook post from a mom seeking mental health services from her OB/GYN went viral. She was educated and well informed enough to know that her symptoms were likely related to postpartum depression, but the ask for help only added to her struggle. 10 hours later, she left the ER with her infant and list of resources feeling worse. But instead of blaming the "system" that she sought help from, she has decided to embrace it by diving deeper into attempts to utilize it. Jessica...

About six months ago I started a conversation with two of my fellow ACE (Adverse Childhood Experience) Connection friends about the need for a National Platform to expose our network to the general public. As will happen, life and work can get in the way sometimes that keeps an idea from coming to fruition. Now, six months later a door has opened that may not be able to be shut again. Sexual harassment in the celebrity world was the key that opened that door. Yes, it has started a wave of...

“Human relations were laid bare and the strengths and weaknesses in relationships came sharply into focus. Thus, socially isolated women became more isolated, domestic violence increased, and the core of relationships with family, friends and spouses were exposed” – written in response to a major flood in Australia (Dobson, 1994, p. 11). Racism. Sexism. Classism. Immigration status. Violence against LGBTQ communities. These are just a few of the various forms of oppression that the...

Cissy's note: This review of Resilience was shared with me a few weeks ago and I've been thinking about it ever since. I'll be thinking about it more at the next Resilience screening I go to next month. It's written by Lynn Davey, Ph.D . To read entire review, go here . Cissy's note: I wonder if the author has seen Paper Tigers before and what her views of that are? I think I'll ask. I know I reacted more emotionally (in a good way) to Paper Tigers because it shared personal stories showing...

Pediatrician Nadine Burke Harris is a masterful storyteller. I learned in a conversation with her at Wheelock College before her presentation for the Brookline, MA organization Steps to Success , that before she decided to become doctor, Dr. Burke Harris wanted to be an author. Only after the smashing success of her TED talk: How childhood trauma affects health across a lifetime , when she was approached by a literary agent, did she find her way to writing. Her newly released book The...

We don’t see it coming. We are having a moment of intimacy: a moment we’ve been desiring and have been moving towards. And here it is, clothing is coming off and the connection is good and new and hot and then boom—a flashback comes at the tip of a lover’s fingers, the thrust of a tongue, a hand at the throat—suddenly we are pulled back to a moment of terror, violation, or confusion. Our bodies feel caught up in that memory state and cannot register the present moment, can’t tell if we are,...

Sometimes my patients tell me they feel hopeless. They know they repeat self-destructive behaviors. They know they should break away from unhealthy relationships. They are aware of their critical self-talk and the ways they keep themselves small. When my patients lose hope, I hold it for them. Although change takes work, my conviction that the brain and mind heal is unwavering. Everyone knows that the body heals itself. You fall and scrape your knee. Then, if you take care of your wound...