Blog

The scene opens with me on a bathroom floor in the first days of 2016, cradling a knife and threatening to kill myself, but it starts much earlier, months and months before, when I moved from North Carolina to the Bay Area and felt my small-town axis shift with the violence of an earthquake. Sometimes it takes a radical re-configuring of the landscape — the sorts of tremors that expose our tenderest parts — to show us what was really dormant all along. For those, like me, who have...

Efforts are underway in figuring out how to best provide care for children who have experienced trauma in their lives, with regional expert organizations looking at one of Long Beach’s very own health care providers for guidance. Experts from First 5 LA, the California Community Foundation, the California Endowment and the Ralph M. Parsons Foundation are among a group of organizations that recently announced a collective effort to advance a comprehensive approach to trauma-informed care in...

Hours before the concert started, Demi Lovato’s fans filled a room on the second floor of the venue. In this bar-turned-conference room, they would spend the next hour hearing stories about self-worth, emotional setbacks and fresh starts. Lovato, who took her mental-health advocacy to the Democratic National Convention’s stage Monday, has also taken it on tour with her. She has invited the man who she credits with saving her life, a personal-development coach in Los Angeles, to travel the...

Tsoku Maela is not used to the spotlight. But ever since he began sharing images of his “ Abstract Peaces ” series ― a collection of surreal self-portraits that represent his ongoing experience with depression and anxiety ― he’s begun to think about what it means to raise awareness of himself and the countless other people who struggle with mental illness. Born in Cape Town, South Africa, Maela started producing his self-portraits back in 2014, after experiencing a “ perplexing medical...

Physical neglect is the most common form of child maltreatment. According to the Minnesota Department of Human Services, "neglect is usually a failure of a child's caregiver to provide needed food, clothing, shelter, medical or mental health care, education or supervision." It is often found in families struggling with extreme poverty, substance abuse, mental health issues or family violence. Failure to protect a child from dangerous conditions or exposing a child to certain drugs during...

Youth who feel connected to their families have a better chance of developing and achieving their goals. And this is certainly true for teens returning home after incarceration, when family reunification is a crucial element for successful reentry. But just being back together under the same roof isn’t enough to guarantee a favorable outcome, even when everyone yearns for positive change. In fact, too many teens return home from residential placement to well-meaning families who haven’t...

For three decades, I have listened in awe to the brave voices of children, youth and families who have shared, in anguish, their past experiences — experiences that anyone would objectively call “adverse” and ones that can have lasting effects on health and well-being. The seminal ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences) study opened my eyes to how pervasive their stories were and how these findings might influence the development of effective interventions and treatment, especially for...

Follow the Summit Excitement at #ResilientRVA August 3 & 4 of 2016 marked the first ever ACEs and Resilience Summit in Virginia. Offered by the City of Richmond's Department of Social Services in co-sponsorship with the Greater Richmond United Way .... Close to 400 youth, parents, caregivers and professionals across all systems of care joined together to talk about ACEs as a public health issue that affects all of us and requires all of us to get involved in solutions. Local and national...

I am a strong believer in the idea that we absorb things on a conscious and unconscious level. Whether it be through the conversations that we are having, music we listen to, drama we partake in or even our Instagram feeds — whatever we open our souls up to, can affect our mind, moods, energy level and overall mental wellbeing. Since childhood, I struggled deeply with depression and when I began to take on therapy full-time — I began to realize how the issues within my atmosphere had a...

When I told people I was going to my 40th high school reunion, I might as well have said I was jumping off a cliff. Almost across the board, the reaction was shock, though the reasons varied. Granted, I hadn’t been in touch with my classmates, so some degree of surprise was legitimate. But my friends and family also projected their own reasons: high school had been the “worst time of their lives”; that they had never “fit in”; they didn’t want to open their adult lives to judgment. But I’m a...

Last week, The Atlantic reported that the city of Los Angeles is on the verge of implementing a “Ban the Box” initiative that would bar some private employers from asking job applicants about their criminal histories. In the face of growing awareness of criminal justice issues, a number of city and states have passed similar laws in the last few years. (The state of California already has a law on the books that forbids government employers from asking applicants about any criminal history...

Former foster children are almost twice as likely to suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) as U.S. war veterans, according to a study released Wednesday by the Harvard Medical School (HMS), the University of Michigan and Casey Family Programs. This important article by Candice N. Plotkin helps challenge the cultural image that those with PTSD are mainly men traumatized by combat. It was shared on Facebook today. What surprised me though - beyond the headline - is that the article...