U.S. public schools and the neighborhoods in which they’re located are inextricably tied together. Growing up in economically segregated, low-income neighborhoods comes with a host of disadvantages, one of which is that local schools tend...
A new study has found that a belief in “pure evil” influences our feelings about capital punishment. For the study, Dr. Donald Saucier, an associate professor of psychological sciences at Kansas State University, looked at how...
You look so…well rested,” a woman recently told a friend of mine, upon learning that she had a four-month old. “It was like I didn’t have the right to look well rested—I wasn’t being appropriately...
For years, Franky Price terrified his teachers. As a third-grader, he pantomimed killing other students by sliding his finger across his throat. In fourth grade, he swore at anyone who angered him. The worst moment came one month into fifth...
When I heard this vignette, I realized the full potential of the documentary Paper Tigers to change how people think about childhood adversity and mobilize them to demand trauma-informed practices and policies—in schools, in healthcare and...
Change for children in child protection services will not occur until more of us know the depth and scope of child abuse in our communities. To make this happen, KARA reports on child abuse around the nation. Share our reporting with...
The 2015 issue of Focal Point , a publication of Pathways to Positive Futures , features 11 articles on critical topics about trauma-informed care and its growing relevance in research, official policy, practice methods, and organizational...
Friday marks the 48th anniversary of In re Gault , a landmark Supreme Court ruling in 1967 that juveniles had the right to all the same protections under the law that adult offenders did, like being notified of the charges against them,...
There’s a lyric in Eminem’s “Rock Bottom”, off The Slim Shady LP, that sticks out: “Live half a life and throw the rest away.” You can read it as a description of depression and its impact, how a...
On a sunny spring day at MIT in Cambridge, Mass., students line up at a table grabbing ice cream sundaes, milk and cookies, and, if they're interested, a hug from MIT parents including Sonal Patel. "Yes!" Patel says, "giving away ice cream and...
Abstract Alcoholism is a complex psychiatric disorder that has a multifactorial etiology. Epigenetic mechanisms are uniquely capable of accounting for the multifactorial nature of the disease in that they are highly stable and are affected by...
A new report from Washington State University shows that the amount and type of adversity experienced in childhood by the adult population of a community has a negative effect on the performance and well-being of the community’s children....
I’m a mental health advocate who also lives with mental illness. I experience the symptoms of bipolar disorder just like anyone else would. Bipolar and anxiety disorders cause me to feel depressed, manic, anxious, and a host of other...
It’s not just the right thing for employers to pay attention to their employees’ health and well-being; it’s the right thing to do for the bottom line. According to Gallup’s State of the American Workplace report,...
Wh en you spend a lot of time reading and writing about American families, it’s easy to focus on the bad news: high rates of family instability, widespread financial difficulties in the wake of the recession, expensive ...