The senior author of this study, Dr. Kent Kiehl of The Mind Research Network in Albuquerque, New Mexico, commented on the findings: “As policymakers grapple with the high societal, human, and budgetary costs of violent crime and...
While ACEs occur in all income groups, some stressors such as community violence and food insecurity are acute for families living in poverty and contribute to ACEs. Nearly 800 Baltimore school children were followed in a ground-breaking study for a...
Has anyone read the article by Ian Parker in the June 2 New Yorker profiling Edward St. Aubyn, whose four so-called Melrose novels, the last one titled Mother's Milk , are based on his horrific childhood, starting with a father regularly...
Here are several excellent letters to the editor in response to the May 25 New York Times editorial “ End Mass Incarceration Now .” One letter points out a missing truth in the editorial---that many people in prisons today have...
Maternal depression places infants’ development at risk. Helping young parents reduce stress and find social supports will reduce ACEs. The authors looked at the impact of parenting stress and social support on depression among African American...
A new study finds a link between prenatal maternal stress and the development of symptoms of asthma and autism in children. Scientists have been studying women who were pregnant during the January 1998 Quebec ice storm since June of that year and...
The objective of this study was to measure the additional risk posed by ACE exposures on poor health outcomes among current smokers. .....A key finding of this study is that only among smokers with the High ACE group did the results show significant...
While the conditions described in Bangui, in the Central African Republic (CAR), are extreme, the multi-faceted approach to treatment---addressing the impact of physical and psychological conditions---applies to traumatized families here in the...
In a recent study, published in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry , PTSD patients allowed to choose between therapies ended up costing about $1,622 less on average per patient per year compared with patients who were assigned treatment. Among...
[Photo: Rudy Salinas, PATH] David Bornstein, who does the NYTimes Fixes column, takes a long look at 100,000 Homes Campaign, which, for its incredible success, required innovative cross-sector collaboration in each city that participated. It's a great example of collective impact at work, and communities that are becoming trauma-informed can probably find a few pieces of gold here. Sometime in June, the 100,000 Homes Campaign — an initiative launched four years ago to...
[ Luis Argerich photo] Tony Platt, visiting professor of justice studies at San Jose State University in California, wrote this post about the 50 years he's been involved in trying to reform the prison system. Recently, with a steady decline in the prison population and cutbacks in prison construction reported nationwide, the American penal binge seems to have reached a point of exhaustion, primarily the result of fiscal necessity. Some commentators are so encouraged by these...
As director of the Mental Health and Recovery Board of Ashland County, OH, Steve Stone has been leading efforts for the organization to become trauma-informed. He created the Ohio ACEs Network group on ACEs Connection, and has been active...
[Darren Rollinson photo] With 22% of the general population having an ACE score of 3 or higher, Dr. Vincent Felitti has said that there aren't enough therapists for the millions of people who need help, nor can they all afford it. Here's an interesting story from NPR about how Harville Hendrix, author of "Getting the Love You Want" and several other self-help books, is trying to do something about that. At a church in South Dallas, in one of the poorest parts of town, the room is...
[Prevalence of obesity in women 20 years or older, 2013] Since one of the consequences of childhood adversity can be obesity, it's interesting to read this report about how obesity is increasing world-wide. We tend to think of obesity as a rich-country problem, but for several years now evidence has been building that the public-health hazard is assailing low- and middle-income countries as well, even as these same countries struggle with high rates of malnutrition . In perhaps the...
[Susannah Kay photo] ....a new study finds that the more he cares for his offspring, the more a father's brain looks and behaves like that of a mother engaged in the everyday care of a child. In fact, say the Israeli authors of the study, the very practice of caregiving, whether by a mom who is her child's primary caregiver, a dad who steps in to help or a gay father raising a child with no woman in the picture, activates a recognizable "parental caregiving' neural network." Their research...