In the winter, Siphiwe Baleka gets some strange looks as he bikes to work over the icy, snow-laden streets of Springfield, Missouri. He fishtails around corners and does his best to avoid cars—twice he’s been hit, and both times he’s...
She was just 5 months old the first time she and her siblings were taken from a mother struggling with addiction and placed in the care of the state. At times, she was separated from her brothers and sisters. She received neither the glasses...
Police departments around the county are under more and more pressure to diversify. In Oakland, Calif., officials say police-community relations also might be improved by increasing the number of cops who actually live in the city. Margaret...
Even before the unrest in Ferguson, Mo., or the Eric Garner incident in New York City last summer, Charles Ramsey, Philadelphia's police commissioner, called on the federal government to look into how the officers in his department...
This story, "As Arizona Struggles to Fix Foster System, Children Suffer the Consequences" [ http://nyti.ms/1GdjcA7 ], in the 3/24/15 issue of the New York Times, describes challenges in the Arizona foster care system that are not atypical of foster care systems around the nation. It was the subject of the following workshop at the recent Child Health, Education, and Care Summit put on by First 5 California in Sacramento: Understanding and Addressing Toxic Stress in a...
Apparently, Dr. Felitti was not the first to uncover the impact of ACES although his work did advance the field in this arena significantly. The initial groundbreaking discovery of ACES actually occurred in 1961, in the...
While reading the responses to a recent blog post ( Screening for ACES ), an uneasy feeling started to creep up from deep within me. I had sensed a similar reaction in me brewing up in other posts, and it is only by accident that this one served...
New York City first lady Chirlane McCray has unveiled a more modern take on the teen helpline. “NYC Teen Text, a pilot program launched Monday at 10 high schools, allows teens easy and confidential access to a counselor,” McCray...
One of our occasional conversations with thought leaders in education. When it comes to kids and exercise, schools need to step up and focus more on quality as well as quantity. And, says Dr. Gregory D. Myer, they need to promote activities...
The United Nations top investigator on torture has delivered a scathing criticism of juvenile justice practices common in the United States, including routine detention of youths, solitary confinement and sentences of life without parole for...
An Ojibwe woman and independent journalist Mary Annette Pember recently visited Alaska for a series of stories on historical trauma and Native American mental health practices. Pember says the troubled lives of Native Americans reflect their...
My people don’t do psychotherapy. We have friends. We have families. We have pharmacies. Paying strangers to listen to our problems isn’t our style. I’m Persian, made in Iran pre-revolution, born in America mid-revolution,...
The box was the first thing I noticed when I stepped into Hermie Lagpao’s cramped bedroom in her apartment outside Paris. It sat in the center of a room that was cozy by default, because of its size, and made homey by years’ worth...
The bystander effect, which was first identified in the late 1960s, describes a fascinating quirk of human behavior: Our level of altruistic behavior depends, in large part, to the circumstances we find ourselves in. As studies has shown,...
Heart disease is the number one killer of both men and women in the United States, yet it’s long been considered a “man’s disease” in the popular imagination. This perception likely stems, in part, from the fact that...