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“We treat people’s solutions as problems.” Vincent Felitti MD, eminent author of the original ACE’s (Adverse Childhood Experiences) study, often makes this point when discussing how we focus on eliminating people’s desperate means of coping, without recognizing their adaptive functions. When addressing substance abuse (the most common method of tolerating overwhelming fear and pain) do we commit the same error of attempting to control the “solution” while largely ignoring the underlying core...

National Pediatric Practice Community on Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) Dr. Nadine Burke Harris and the Center for Youth Wellness team invite you to attend the launch of the National Pediatric Practice Community on ACEs (NPPC) . NPPC is a network of medical providers focused on integrating ACEs screening and a toxic stress framework into pediatric medical practice. We will be kicking off the NPPC with an informational webinar on Monday, May 8th, 2017 at 12 noon (PST) . Webinar...

The wealthiest men in San Diego County can expect to live almost a decade longer than their poorest counterparts. That’s one of the findings from the Health Inequality Project , a report written by researchers from Stanford, Harvard and MIT. In 2014, the most recent year available, a 40-year-old San Diego County man in the top quarter of income earners could expect to live to almost 90. A man of the same age in the bottom quarter of income would only expect to live to 80. That gap is...

Criminal prosecutions against police for acts of force in the line of duty are rarely successful. Two years ago this month, 25-year-old Freddie Gray died from a neck and spinal injury he sustained while under arrest in Baltimore, Maryland. Six officers were charged—with violations ranging from misconduct to what’s known as “second-degree depraved-heart murder”—but ultimately, none were convicted. The officers were permitted to handle administrative work pending an internal investigation by...

“Indicators of poor mental health among adults — for example, serious mental illness among men, major depressive episodes among men and women, and recent serious psychological distress among women — have been found to be higher in large rural counties than in small, rural, suburban and urban counties,” Lara R. Robinson, PhD, from the National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities at the CDC, and colleagues wrote. “Most studies examining children’s mental health in rural and...

Chicago is touting a first-of-its-kind requirement for high school students — and it’s raising plenty of eyebrows. Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced a proposal last week to withhold high school diplomas from students without concrete post-graduation plans. The plan has been called “ cruel and appalling ,” “ absurd ,” and a “ half-baked ” attempt to “micro-manage.” This attempt would demand students to prove, with acceptance letters, that they are set up for one of six post-high school plans:...

This report and accompanying policy brief show that there is good reason to pursue the measurement of social-emotional learning (SEL) and school culture/climate (CC) as a way to better understand student and school performance. Using data from California's CORE districts, we show that SEL and CC measures demonstrate reliability and validity, distinguish between schools, are related to other academic and non-academic measures, and also illuminate dimensions of student achievement that go...

Students stressed out over impending college acceptance and rejection letters drop by a teacher’s class to spend time brushing the therapy dog in her class just to calm their nerves. At another campus, a first grader practices reading aloud while absentmindedly playing with the ears of a therapy dog that visits his class once a week. Man’s best friend is playing an increasingly important role in maintaining student mental health as more becomes required of students to succeed academically.

It turns out that Making America Great Again involves rolling back drug policy and enforcement to the 1960s. The first step in such a reversal involves denying science. The second step involves ginning up the racism. The final step involves reviving mass incarceration. Attorney General Jeff Sessions made it clear in a speech in Richmond, Va on March 15, that enforcement is now the primary tool in responding to drug abuse, and, apparently, casual use. I realize this may be an unfashionable...

“An experience makes its appearance only when it is being said,” wrote Hannah Arendt in reflecting on how language confers reality upon existence . “And unless it is said it is, so to speak, non-existent.” But if an experience is spoken yet unheard, half of its reality is severed and a certain essential harmony is breached. The great physicist David Bohm knew this: “If we are to live in harmony with ourselves and with nature,” he wrote in his excellent and timely treatise on the paradox of...

There was a lot of interest in the impact of the Compton lawsuit on trauma-informed education. Given so many requests for the PowerPoint, I thought it would be better if I just attached the presentation to this blog. I love a bunch of eyes looking at things before I deliver them so I would appreciate it if you could give me some feedback on the material. In addition, as mentioned previously, PESI is sponsoring the delivery of a full days worth of trauma-informed training through a video tape...

As you know, April is National Child Abuse Prevention Month. On April 6, I was a keynote speaker at a fundraiser for a Children’s Advocacy Center in Oregon. This was the second time I‘d been asked to speak at a fundraiser for a Children’s Advocacy Center, and I was truly honored to help in this way. They expected 400 people, and I talked about my sexually abusive childhood and the evolution of my healing journey. I never appreciated the role of a Children’s Advocacy Center, until I worked as...