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Mike Lamb, Washington, DC Executive Director of Turnaround for Children , alerted me to this interesting Cover Story in The Christian Science Monitor about how Scott Gordon, chief executive officer of Mastery Charter Schools comprised of 21 charter schools in Philadelphia, has shifted his “no excuses” approach to a “trauma-informed” approach to discipline. The article by Sarah Garland reports: Classrooms and hallways are still orderly, but suspension is now a last resort. Mastery instead...

About 406,000 Texans with mental illness and substance abuse disorders could have health insurance if the state expanded Medicaid, according to a new report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Monday. Texas is one of 20 states that have not expanded Medicaid coverage, opting out of many provisions of the Affordable Care Act. “Today’s report shows that Medicaid expansion is an important step Texas can take to address behavioral health needs, including serious mental illness...

Amanda Hensley started abusing prescription painkillers when she was just a teenager. For years, she managed to function and hold down jobs. She even quit opioids for a while when she was pregnant with her now 4-year-old son. But she relapsed. Hensley says she preferred drugs like Percocet and morphine, but opted for heroin when she was short on cash. By the time she discovered she was pregnant last year, she couldn't quit. "It was just one thing after another, you know — I was sick with...

How do you fix a problem if you don't know its size? Many states — including some that have been hardest hit by the opioid crisis — don't know how many of their youngest residents each year are born physically dependent on those drugs. They rely on estimates. Pennsylvania is one of those states. Ted Dallas , head of Pennsylvania's Department of Human Services, calls the information he's working with "reasonably good." "Data is never pristine when you're dealing with 2.7 million people," he...

“What are you hiding?” the elder asked Rose Domnick. It was a simple question in response to Domenic’s request for help overcoming her mysteriously growing, incapacitating fear. But Domenic was stunned by the query and involuntarily blurted out that she had been sexually abused repeatedly as a child. Now in her 50s, she had told no one except a visiting Catholic priest who’d come to her Yup’ik village church many years ago. “When I was 11 years old, I told this priest about the abuse...

The authorities have released pictures of men implicated in the Brussels bombings, one of brusswhom is thought to be still at large. But does the current media analysis mislead as to who is ultimately responsible? A new study, recently published by Sofia Pinero Kluch from the Gallup public opinion research company, based in Washington, DC, and Alan Vaux, a psychologist at Southern Illinois University, USA, has uncovered some novel and even shocking findings, in a survey of attitudes to...

Near the front door of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation hangs a quilt that tells the stories of several lives—stories of love, spirit, and joy—tragically cut short because of HIV/AIDS. Every six months for the past 14 years, we have had the privilege of displaying a different section of the AIDS Memorial Quilt at our headquarters, and the profound honor of getting to know these individuals through the moving patchworks created by their loved ones. Every time a new section arrives, I stop...

In my writings and videos I often write and speak about mindfulness. In talking about mindfulness I emphasize the present moment, yet I am aware of how our past and our future work together. The definition of mindfulness instructs us to live in the present moment, nonjudgmentally. “Nonjudgmentally” means we need not put a value judgment on the present moment. We are simply to experience the moment. The minute that we think this is a good moment or a bad moment, we have judged the moment. The...

A couple posts ago, I wrote about a neat and very effective new tactic I just learned for healing stress . Oddly, I learned about this technique, called “completing the cycle,” in a book called “ Come As You Are: the Surprising New Science That Will Transform Your Sex Life ” by Dr. Emily Nagoski. As I’ve kept reading, I’ve kept learning more surprising new things. In fact, I just finished a section that describes how our ancient reptilian limbic brains prefer to deal with stress. I have...

Downtown, sprawling factories are constant reminders of this city’s past life. A few decades ago these massive buildings were owned by tobacco companies and bustling with blue-collar workers. After the tobacco business contracted in the second half of the 20th century, and factory jobs disappeared or were relocated, the buildings—and much of Durham’s downtown—were abandoned. Now, the city is in the midst of an ongoing, carefully orchestrated plan to boost the economy. These vast spaces are...

Last October, a video of School Resource Officer (SRO) Ben Fields ripping a young African-American student from her desk and slamming her to the ground went viral, fueling another round of intense outrage at excessive use of force by government agents against African-American civilians. In South Carolina, where the incident took place, there were protests and counter-protests . Most major media outlets covered the affair, showing the video from multiple angles and debating whether to blame...

…And this 'sneak preview' is for ACEsConnection members only! So if you have friends, family or co-workers who want to see Resilience , a documentary that looks at the birth of the CDC-Kaiser Permanente Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study and how it spawned a movement across the world , please ask them to join our network by going to ACEsConnection.com and clicking on Join Now! Or, you can invite them to join -- here’s how . The event is set for 6 p.m. PDT (3 p.m. HAST, 5 p.m. AKDT, 7...