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“Am I normal?” Robert, a 24-year old programmer, asked me a few months into our work together. “What makes you ask that question right now?” We had been talking about his new relationship and how he was feeling good about getting more serious. “Well I just wonder if it’s normal to feel as much anxiety as I do.” “What is normal?” I asked him. So, what is normal? According to the dictionary, normal means “conforming to a standard; usual, typical, or expected.” But when it comes to humanity...

(Part 7) Fear begets lies that suppress truth. We Americans take pride in our democracy. Abraham Lincoln aptly described it as “government of the people, by the people, for the people.” At the core of democracy is the power of persuasion, the ability to forge a majority to take a position. But it was also Lincoln who warned us to guard against the dark side of democracy, or what he referred to in his speech on “ The Perpetuation of our Political Institutions ” as “mob law.” Our democracy is...

Maybe you are familiar with the story of Cain and Abel ? It's hard to think of a Bible story that has more potential triggers for retraumatization or difficult feelings for children from hard places and circumstances than this story of jealousy, murder, and judgment! So, when it came time to teach a lesson on this story in chapel service at Intermountain , a residential treatment center for severely emotionally disturbed and traumatized children, I had a fair amount of trepidation. As the...

According to mental health charity Mind , one in 6 adults experiences a mental health problem, such as stress, anxiety, or depression, each week. That’s 5.3 million workers across the UK. It’s having a huge impact on employees. Mind’s survey found 42 percent of staff have thought about resigning over workplace stress, and 14 percent have done so. [For more of this story, written by Tom Wadlow, go to ...

Imagine a California without youth prisons because we don’t need them anymore. Young people would still make mistakes, some of them tragic. But instead of being taken from their families and schools, they would receive community-based counseling, mentoring, job training and opportunities that build on their strengths, enabling them to become productive adults. The limited number of youth at risk of harming others would go to small, secure therapeutic residential treatment centers near their...

A new study in Cape Breton has found that people living in poverty and those dealing with mental illness or addiction are in need of a different kind of health-care system, one that reaches out to meet them where they are. The study was done by researchers at Cape Breton University and the Ally Centre in Sydney, which provides primary health care for vulnerable people. Researchers interviewed 52 people. Of those, 38 per cent were homeless. Margaret Dechman, a sociologist at CBU, told the...

For African-Americans, the isolation of living in a racially segregated neighborhood may lead to an important health issue: higher blood pressure. A study published Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine suggested blacks living in such areas experienced higher blood pressure than those living in more diverse communities. Moving to integrated areas was associated with a decrease in blood pressure, and those who permanently stayed in localities with low segregation saw their pressure fall on average...

It’s 1880. The Civil War ended 15 years ago. Three years ago, federal troops withdrew from the South. Now, children of black and white workers of similar economic standing are able to climb up the economic ladder at the same pace. So by the start of the next decade, the median black worker earns more than around 30 percent of the nation’s labor force. Of course, that scenario isn’t real. It’s a counterfactual from a new working paper published in the National Bureau for Economic Research, by...

A bill working its way through the state legislature would create a state-funded program to help new mothers in the first few months and years after the birth of their children. The CalWORKs Baby Wellness and Family Support Home Visiting Program would spend $100 million to offer home visits from nurses or social workers to new mothers who are living in poverty. Support for home visiting programs is grounded in research that has found regular postpartum home visits can improve the health of...

This is a good day, Samantha tells me: 10 on a scale of 10. We’re sitting in a conference room at the San Marcos Treatment Center, just south of Austin, Texas, a space that has witnessed countless difficult conversations between troubled children, their worried parents, and clinical therapists. But today promises unalloyed joy. Samantha’s mother is visiting from Idaho, as she does every six weeks, which means lunch off campus and an excursion to Target. The girl needs supplies: new jeans,...

TRAUMA INFORMED PRACTICES COACH JOB SUMMARY: The Trauma Informed Practices Coach position is a two-year grant funded position, with the potential for extension, with Los Angeles Education Partnership. This project is designed to support and implement a trauma-informed school environment in selected K-12 schools both within and outside of California through a partnership with Kaiser Permanente. A central component of this project’s approach to a trauma-informed school environment is to embed...

In a study released today in the Journal of Adolescent Health , researchers at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) found that young men of color treated for violent injury in CHOP's Emergency Department overwhelmingly identified a need for mental health care. At intake and during the course of their case management through CHOP VIP, youth identified their needs and goals for recovery beyond the treatment of their physical injuries. Click on the links below to see how these data help...