Blog

By Karen Zraick, The New York Times, October 19, 2021 The New York City Board of Health declared racism a public health crisis on Monday, passing a resolution that directed the Health Department to take steps to ensure a “racially just recovery” from the coronavirus pandemic. The resolution called on the department to work with other agencies to root out systemic racism within policies, plans and budgets on a wide range of matters that affect health, including land use, transportation and...

By Robert Hansen, Everyone's Internet News, October 24, 2021 On October 5, 2021, Samual Nathaniel Brown, co-founder of the Anti-Violence Safety and Accountability Project (ASAP), creator of the 10P program, and author of the constitutional amendment proposal, The California Abolition Act (ACA 3), recently became one of the first along with 24 other men to graduate with a bachelors in communication from Cal State LA’s Prison B.A. Graduation Initiative on the yard at California State Prison...

By Mad In America, October 23, 2021 From Chronic Illness Trauma Studies blog: “If you’ve heard of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and have a low score (such as 1 or ‘zero ACEs’), you may still suspect that trauma has somehow affected your health but feel like your doctors and the research are missing something important. Or you may have a high ACE score and feel that it was the emotional abuse or neglect that was the hardest. In other words, you recognize that your childhood was...

When there is alcohol or substance abuse in the family, it is often a central theme around which the entire family is organized. For the most part, treatment is often just with the individual and does not actively involve the entire family that is traumatized. What is our point of entry and how do we approach the parent and child without scaring them away? This free webinar by Dr. Sells is for professionals who want concrete tools to bridge the gap from individual to family trauma treatment...

This April we have been focused on childhood sexual abuse (CSA), a crime that can cause long-term harm even as the child grows into adulthood. 1in 4 women and 1 in 6 men alive in the United States today were molested sexually before the age of 18. This means there are more than 42 million adult survivors in the U.S. Today we will explore together the long-term effects that childhood sexual abuse has on, not only children, but to the adults they become. A Short Recap It would be remiss of me...

Healing the Heart Through the Creative Arts, Education & Advocacy Hope, Healing & Help for Trauma, Abuse & Mental Health “ Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars”. Kahlil Gibran The Surviving Spirit Newsletter October 2021 “Don't Quit” by John Whittier When things go wrong as they sometimes will, When the road you're trudging seems all uphill, When the funds are low and the debts are high And you want to smile, but you...

America-Our Children Need Us Across the country, communities are coping with the consequences of social injustice : poverty, racism, inequity, violence, isolation, and economic segregation. These challenges undermine the capacity and well-being of our nation’s most precious resource, our children. (1) We have to speak up “When you see something that is not right, not fair, not just, you have to speak up. You have to say something; you have to do something. John Robert Lewis_ American...

There is a global movement within Indigenous communities toward decolonization (Hill, Lau, & Sue, 2010). In fact, for many Indigenous Nations Western psychology serves as a modern form of colonization perpetuating oppression and marginalization (Hill, Pace, & Robbins, 2010; Mohawk, 2004). When considering the treatment implications for Native American women who are survivors of sexual assault, as approximately 56% have experienced sexual violence in their lifetime (National Intimate...

I’ve packaged my best, tried-and-true stress management techniques from the past three decades of work with students, patients, and private clients into my flagship course, Less Stress Now. Dr. Felitti, the Co-Principal Investigator of the ACE Study, endorses this course as an effective treatment solution for ACEs and toxic stress. Read on to learn more.

By Dasia Moore, The Boston Globe, October 13, 2021 When Felicia Love found out she was expecting her second child, she knew she needed a care provider who would make her feel safe. Love was in her early 30s, but the news transported her back to her teenage years, when she first became a mother. “It was a really scary experience for me. I felt really unsupported. I had so many questions that went unanswered,” she recalls. Love’s children are now 24 and 8, raised in her home state of Rhode...

By 1,000 Days, October 2021 In this update to our 2019 report, The First 1,000 Days: The Case for Paid Leave in America , we present the latest research and data from the last two years on the opportunity to reduce racial and ethnic disparities in maternal and child health through the passage of a universal, comprehensive paid family and medical leave policy in the United States. [ Please click here to access the report .]

By Helen Thomas, EdSurge, October 8, 2021 Years ago, before I became an educator, I took a contemporary Native American studies course as one of my first college classes. For the final research assignment, I choose to explore the disproportionate rates of suicide among Native American youth—an issue that impacts nearly all tribal communities, including my own, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. From that assignment I learned that understanding trauma can help us better address complex behavioral...