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Two police officers watched Christopher Araujo pace back and forth, a gun in his waistband. Araujo was in Texas, but his mind was in Iraq. “I’m here to help, bro,” one of the officers said. “You need to stay outside the wire,” Araujo snapped back, his perimeter secured. The pistols stayed in the holsters. “I can get you in touch with some care,” one of the officers calmly said. “Why don’t you come on out?” Araujo snapped out of his daze: “Yeah, I can do that.” The Roy Butler Training Academy...

Childhood adversity can activate the human stress response system, which is primarily made up of the hormones/chemicals cortisol and adrenaline. In the developing brain of a child, prolonged activation of the stress response system can cause these chemicals to actually become toxic. Think of that – a child’s brain being bathed in toxic chemicals due to abuse, neglect, or chaotic household dysfunction. It’s called toxic stress. It’s real, not imagined, and it’s physiological, potentially...

Childhood trauma might promote faster cellular aging in people, a new study suggests. Adults who had experienced stress as kids appeared to have an increased risk of shorter telomeres, which are found at the ends of a person's chromosomes. And that might increase the risk of illness and early death in adulthood, said lead researcher Eli Puterman. He is director of the Fitness, Aging & Stress Lab at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. Puterman added that the increased...

Alex Sanchez knows the temptations of joining gangs for young Central American immigrants. He fled to the United States in 1979 as an unaccompanied minor (he was 7, his brother 5) to escape the Salvadoran civil war. Eventually he got involved in gang violence, went to prison and was deported before returning to the United States illegally. He was granted political asylum in 2002 and in 2006 became the executive director of Homies Unidos , a nonprofit violence- and gang-prevention...

A project called How is the world feeling? is aiming to use an iOS and Android app to conduct the world’s largest study of mental health over a one-week period starting on October 10. The aim is to gather data from ordinary people to identify patterns in emotions, then to open-source anonymized data to mental health professionals in a bid to devise approaches to reducing suicide rates … The app is designed to take seconds to use, asking people to select an emotion, select how strongly it is...

My first thought when I saw the headline “Chicago Police Department announces plan to hire nearly 1,000 new officers” on the WLS-TV website was, “Is it really more police officers that we need on our streets?” The mayor of Chicago recently announced the city will hire 1,000 more police officers over the next two years to combat violence, in particular gun violence in its urban core. Though police officers are critical to a neighborhood and city’s sense of safety, I would argue that more cops...

Buffy and Ernie Goodban watched helplessly for months as a mood disorder took control of their 14-year-old daughter Andrea. In March, she flooded the family’s North Carolina home, causing more than $40,000 in damage. But more importantly, her mother said, “She was hurting her brothers; she was threatening to harm herself. One day, she ran for the scissors as she was saying she was going to cut her wrists.” That’s when the Goodbans rushed Andrea to the nearest emergency room, and that’s when...

A family-centered, school-based intervention in pre-kindergarten programs developed at NYU Langone Medical Center, known as ParentCorps, has a positive and lasting impact on mental health and academic performance, according to new research published online October 3 in JAMA Pediatrics. A study of close to 800 low-income black and Latino children enrolled in pre-k in New York City public schools found that children who attended programs with ParentCorps had fewer behavioral and emotional...

Disciplinary polices have come under fire across the country with the revelation that thousands of preschool students are suspended or expelled each year–an issue that can be improved with professional development in social-emotional learning, according to new study. Researchers at Vanderbilt University found that teachers trained in using the Pyramid Model, an approach based on positive behavior support in developing children’s social-emotional competence and preventing and addressing...

The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy is releasing a document outlining suggested language for government agencies — and those they pay — to use when referring to people addicted to drugs and alcohol. “Drug abuser,” for example, should be replaced with “person with substance use disorder.” Even the idea of trying to get “clean” is discouraged; patients are instead to be said to be “in recovery.” The recommendations are aimed at reducing stigma against individuals with...

Mattie McQueen was about five years old when her mother offered a surprise: “Let’s all go for ice cream.” McQueen and three of her siblings scrambled out to Mom’s old blue station wagon. They talked, on the way, about what flavor of ice cream they’d get, till Mattie noticed they weren’t traveling the usual route to Dairy Queen. “Don’t worry,” her mom replied. “We’re going for ice cream.” Minutes later, she parked and led them into an office waiting room. “I’ll be right back,” she said. She...

Many adult assumptions and practices related to children take for granted that when kids misbehave, the reason is that they’re not sufficiently motivated to follow the rules. The solution, therefore, seems obvious: Ramp up the incentives or consequences tied to the desired behavior. The child psychologist Ross Greene upends this conventional wisdom. He disputes the notion that, as he puts it, “Kids do well if they wanna.” Instead, he maintains: “Kids do well if they can.” When adults see a...