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They’re labeled thugs, treated like throwaways and classified by some as “superpredators”: teenage boys and girls who seek sanctuary in gangs, commit violent crimes and end up in the criminal justice system. Not only are they physically locked up, but these children are caged in emotional turmoil. Childhood friends, teachers, school counselors, social workers, lawyers and judges are all baffled as to why these kids would choose a lifestyle where they risk getting shot and killed. Analyzing...

People who have been diagnosed with a chronic, serious mental illness often do not fully understand the importance of health care maintenance. Health care maintenance in the mental health field means finding a psychiatrist and a therapist who are qualified to meet the individual’s needs. Many times, other mental health (social workers, caseworkers, etc.) and medical health workers (general practitioners, specialists, etc.) need to be involved as well. Over time, people who accept the need...

Pediatricians are being told to ask patients about more than just how they’re feeling. They’re being told to ask them if they're financially healthy. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) released a set of recommendations today that urge pediatricians to screen their patients for poverty. The goal is to reduce the health problems that many times come along with poverty, including obesity, asthma, poor language development, injuries, depression, and psychiatric disorders. Dr. Ben...

"Having access to tertiary care mental health services, for example, is not a predictor of good outcomes," says Dr Perry. "It's about connection to community, culture, family."

A&Q is a special series that inverts the classic Q&A, taking some of the most frequently posed solutions to pressing matters of policy and exploring their complexity. Any American with even a glancing familiarity with the news can rattle off the progression, a litany of place names transformed from cities and towns into metonyms for gun violence: San Bernardino, Colorado Springs, Umpqua, Charleston, Fort Hood, Navy Yard, Sandy Hook, Aurora …. That doesn’t even take into account the...

CCPR: Dr. Moreno, please tell us a little about your background. Dr. Moreno: I am a pediatrician and adolescent medicine specialist. My primary areas of research are social media and problematic internet use. CCPR: What exactly is Internet addiction and where did the idea of it come about? Dr. Moreno: A lot of the early literature used the term “Internet addiction” as something that was synonymous with other addictive behaviors. In some research they would take a scale, for example, for...

A new study shows that depression and anxiety may be associated with a reduced chance of pregnancy and live birth following in vitro fertilization (IVF). While the findings are complex regarding the role of antidepressants in this connection, the researchers say that the results ultimately point to depression and anxiety as the main underlying factors. Within the last few decades, antidepressant treatments, particularly selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors (SSRIs), have increased both in...

When Nicole Roundtree lost her cleaning job at the Milwaukee County Secure Juvenile Detention Center in June, she and her 2-year-old son Elijah ended up living in her car. For more than five months, the pregnant 29-year-old mother searched for shelter and work without success. Finally in early December, she found Nia Imani Family Inc. , Milwaukee’s only long-term transitional living facility for homeless women and children, through an online search. “When we moved in, my son and I were...

Bitcoin was conceived as a modern solution to an ages-old problem: How can two parties agree on and verify an exchange of value? In this sense, Bitcoin is an effective technology, in that it trains the massive processing power of distributed personal computers on the same situation that paper currency was built to resolve. But in important ways, Bitcoin transposes some of the shortcomings of traditional currency onto the digital realm. It ignores a whole host of questions about the potential...

In a 2014 report , the White House noted the immense potential of information available in large, public datasets to improve people’s lives. But these data are far too complex to use unless they’re filtered, curated, and presented in way that’s easy to grasp. To that end, the White House just kicked off its Opportunity Project , which offers several user-friendly data-based tools to help Americans gain knowledge they need to climb the economic ladder. “Using this data, we can put transit...

To say that the recommendations about women and alcohol issued last month by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention received a drubbing would be putting it lightly. Intended to help prevent fetal-alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD), the CDC guidelines urge women not only to stop drinking during pregnancy or while trying to become pregnant, but also to avoid alcohol altogether if they are sexually active and not using birth control—irrespective of their parenting intentions. As Julie...

This year’s conference has something for everyone! Opening the conference, Echo’s Co-Executive Directors will be joined by some very special guests, including Anne Hudson-Price, an attorney from Public Counsel. Anne will be speaking about the legal action taken by Public Counsel to bring trauma-informed services to Compton School District. “You have to address trauma in order to do anything about the achievement gap,” she says in this article . In addition to featuring the Public Counsel,...