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Standing in the warden's office at Pelican Bay, the notorious maximum security prison in Crescent City, California, I don my dark green stab-proof vest and accompany public information officer Lieutenant Christopher Acosta and Associate Warden Rawland Swift (who has since retired) to the Security Housing Unit, or SHU. Acosta is curt and bulldoggish, with a smooth, bald head. Swift is affable and mustachioed, wearing a casual short-sleeved shirt and jeans. "It's been a long week," Swift...

Transgender kids often have it rough. In a world that isn't crazy about people's differences, and often metes out severe consequences for such dissimilarities, trans children can find themselves targets of mental and physical attacks. (In one of the most egregious cases, an 18-year-old agender child was set ablaze on a bus in Oakland , California.) Fortunately, parents can help, basically just by being parents: According to a new study , trans kids whose parents support them in their gender...

“Don’t worry, pregnancy isn’t an illness,” said my midwife, smiling affectionately as I worried about my lack of morning sickness. She must have been well acquainted with the limbo of early pregnancy, the constant fluttering between hope and fear. Two days later, doubled over on the toilet and clutching a hot water bottle as I watched dark clots of blood drip into the pan, it felt very much like an illness. I knew something was desperately wrong. The largest lump of tissue—what I believe to...

The times when I’ve pulled fistfuls of hair out of my head in the shower, my life wasn’t particularly stressful—or at least, it wasn’t until my hair started coming out. Then, of course, I assumed I was either balding or belatedly inheriting my family’s matrilineal thin hair. Faced with the stark reality of my hair-related vanity, I would try to comfort myself with the fact that I could at least wear fun wigs. You know, the natural cycle of things. But the explanation for this actually lies...

Robbin Sotelo Redd, Executive Director of the Tarpon Springs Housing Authority and the Local Community Housing Corporation and Vice-Chair of the Peace4Tarpon Board of Directors, likes to tell the story of the preemie hats. A retired woman in the community saw a poster in the library for Peace4Tarpon and began attending the group’s meetings. She realized that she had suffered trauma, beginning with her premature birth, and she wanted to heal that wound. So she knitted 64 preemie hats, one for...

Robert Augustin, (left to right) Katharine Bensinger and Maria Andrino of Metropolitan Family Services' Parenting Fundamentals program Katharine Bensinger founded a program called Parenting Fundamentals at an agency called Community Counseling Centers of Chicago nearly two decades ago. The program had been providing parenting education classes to low-income people for almost a decade when Bensinger attended a speech by Dr. Robert Anda , co-principle investigator of the CDC-Kaiser Permanente...

This is a topic I have written about before, but not in this forum. Whac-a-Mole is a carnival game. You hold a hammer, and try to pound a mole back into its hole. Depending on the complexity of the game, you have a number of holes to monitor (nine is a common number) and you can learn to anticipate patterns. The theory is that whacking one mole back in lets it pop up somewhere else. I have used this analogy to discuss public policy choices to try and eliminate certain behaviors (symptoms)...

Childhood abuse and poverty may raise the risk of health problems in adulthood, a new study suggests. "Childhood disadvantage has long-term health consequences -- much longer than most of us realize," said study author Kenneth Ferraro, a professor and interim head of sociology at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind. "A novel aspect of this study is that childhood disadvantage was linked to the onset of new health problems decades later," he said in a university news release. The...

In many Spanish-speaking communities throughout major U.S. cities, people struggling with substance addiction turn to unlicensed rehab groups, programs offering therapy ranging from testimonies to intensive—and sometimes harsh— residential regimens. Of murky historical origin, these rehab groups borrow from Pentecostal Christianity and self-help culture, and frequently provide help to those unable to access more mainstream care. Often using the name and adapted logo of Alcoholics Anonymous,...

“When people ask me, ‘Would you like a piece of cake?’ My answer is ‘No, you take the piece and give me the rest of the cake,” said Midland woman “Lisa” of the years she was stuck in a cycle of compulsive overeating before she joined Overeaters Anonymous (OA) and found help. “When all the candy’s on sale after Halloween especially, that bag of candy bars would be literally calling my name.” Before a binge, something would overcome her and she would lose any ability to control herself, she...

Join me and my guests, John Brooks and Nancy Newton Verrier, on “About Health.” Monday March 7th from 2-3PM on KPFA.org or 94.1FM. We will discuss, The Girl Behind the Door, A Father’s Quest to Understand His Daughter’s Suicide , by John Brooks. It provides a profound look into adoption, teenage suicide, and attachment issues. When John and Erika’s daughter Casey jumped off of the Golden Gate Bridge in 2008, John began to unravel a heartbreaking truth—Casey had been in pain since birth,...

This post is first in a series of stories from youth about their experiences of homelessness and resiliency. Thank you to each of the authors who have so generously shared personal details of their lives for the benefit of others. We are inspired by their courage and hopes for the future. We must learn from their stories and partner with them to implement effective, meaningful solutions. When I was 21, I was living in a group home run by the Department of Children and Families (DCF) in the...