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One July morning during a research trip to the small New England island of Nantucket, home to pioneering astronomer Maria Mitchell, I had a most unusual experience. Midway through my daily swim in the ocean, my peripheral vision was drawn to what at first appeared to be a snorkel. But as I looked directly at the curious protrusion, I realized it was the long glistening neck of a stately bird, gliding over the nearly waveless surface a few away. By some irresistible instinct, I began swimming...

Every year in the United States, one in 15 children is exposed to intimate partner violence, according to a national survey . Research from a team led by Shelby McDonald of Virginia Commonwealth University finds many also witness abuse of pets in the home, potentially adding to the impacts on their behavior and mental health. The researchers interviewed children between the ages of seven and 12 whose mothers had used domestic violence services in the past year. Of 242 children, one-quarter...

The youth survey recently released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that when it comes to the rates of teenage suicide attempts, young Latinas continue to outpace girls and boys of other ethnic or racial groups in the U.S. Nearly 10 years ago, news stories told of this mostly overlooked national phenomenon among a misunderstood and endangered group but one of the fastest-growing segments of the American population. And major city newspaper editorials called for more...

In 2014, UPenn freshman Madison Holleran leapt to her death from a parking structure on her college campus. Her suicide made national news, and the New York Times decried the " pressure for perfection " causing college students to take their own lives. The article joined a chorus warning of a mental-health crisis at US colleges, pointing to everything from trigger warnings in lectures to long wait times at counseling centers as proof that today's undergrads are vulnerable and easily broken.

Few of us have forgotten the searing images of the impact of Hurricane Katrina on the Gulf Coast, especially how the great American City of New Orleans was left in shambles—a testament to longstanding social and economic problems that preceded the storm and a nation that was unprepared after it occurred. In the decade that followed Katrina—one that included the largest offshore oil spill in U.S. history—recovery across the region has varied, but there have been several success stories. For...

If you landed behind bars for a non-violent drug offense, President Barack Obama wants to set you free. On Wednesday, Obama commuted the sentences of 214 federal inmates, the most granted by a president since the Department of Justice began tracking clemency data in 1900. According to the White House, Obama has granted “more commutations than the previous nine presidents combined.” The Washington Post reports he is issuing an average of seven clemency actions a month (that’s both...

Eight hours of uninterrupted sleep per night—it’s so widely recommended it approaches an axiom. The strange thing is, there’s nothing natural about it. In a landmark 1992 study , Thomas Wehr demonstrated that humans, like many other animals, are naturally inclined to sleep in bouts, separated by periods of activity. Given 10 hours per day of light, instead of the modern sixteen hours of artificial lights-on time, subjects sleep in two symmetrical blocks of several hours each. In the middle...

The theme of trauma was selected for this year’s annual summer Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) Day because “clergy responses to trauma an have a significant impact on our own healing and in healing our communities,” as described in the planning committee welcome letter. Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore hosted the gathering of over 100 pastoral students from the Maryland, Washington, DC, and Northern Virginia region. Planning Committee Chair Ty Crowe, director of the Hospital’s Spiritual...

Suicide is a rare, but emotionally devastating, event. I am sometimes criticized for minimizing its impact. That is not my purpose. Completed suicides number slightly less than 43,000 in 2015. For every suicide, there are a reported 25 attempts. Ideation strikes many more. If we examine the rate of suicide in our country, I believe it can guide us to a greater state of understating about the emotional health of our population. I know determining the results are more difficult, but if our...

Its news to no one that the Great Recession caused tremendous suffering and mental anguish among families struggling to pay their bills, keep their jobs or find new ones. Less noted, however, has been what such a massive economic collapse has meant for the mental health of children. Did kids growing up over the past decade see their mental health measurably worsen, or were parents largely able to buffer their kids from the stresses of a tanking economy? New evidence comes in the form of a...

When it’s three o’clock in the morning and you’re anxious, the whole world doesn’t exactly fall apart, but stretches endlessly before you. On one such night recently, I sat in a ball on the desk chair in my home office and breathed rapidly but quietly, so as not to wake my husband sleeping in the next room. My mind, incapable of holding one thought for more than a few seconds, communicated in zaps and bolts that traveled down my spine. A car drove by outside and I thought about how much I...

If you live in a neighborhood that is saturated with fast-food restaurants and bodegas but does not have a grocery store, you are probably going to find it very difficult to stick to a healthy diet. It would likely be similarly hard to manage your finances and build wealth without a bank branch in your neighborhood. Unfortunately, that is exactly what an increasing percentage of households in the United States are being told to do: manage their finances and build wealth without access to a...