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Dr. Bessel van der Kolk is an expert in the field of childhood trauma. His career, spanning nearly 40 years, has been spent dedicated to study and treatment of traumatic stress in civilian populations. Much of Dr. van der Kolk's research has focused on how trauma has a different impact at different stages of development, and that disruptions in care-giving systems have additional deleterious effects that need to be addressed for effective intervention. Read more about Dr. Bessel van der Kolk...

My clients aren’t running around town wearing “I’m a trauma survivor” t-shirts. Of course they aren’t. Who wants to announce that bad things happened to them? No one! And yet, unfortunately, many live with the aftereffects of trauma every day and don’t know it. Trauma is what happens to your nervous system after you’ve felt unsafe and scared, and powerless to escape or protect yourself. If a person can’t eventually resolve that sense of danger, that person’s nervous system is likely to...

Like many of you, I’m a bit out of sorts and somewhat disoriented right now. Our collective mental health is deteriorating during Covid-19. Recent stats report an increase from 20-40% of adults struggling with mental illness since the advent of the pandemic. Maternal mental health is particularly at risk. Helping children with distance learning, navigating exposure to the news, trying to keep life a bit “normal”, keeping family members fed and supplied, juggling career and income loss, all...

Kids are resilient. Kids bounce back. Tell that to Dave Brethauer , a performance coach in Chicago, who told Genetic Literacy Project that he spent the better part of his adult life “fighting to find” himself following the trauma he experienced as a child. “From the time I was five till 14 I had an abusive stepdad in my life,” he said. To cope, he found himself turning to alcohol, sex, overeating, and exercise addictions – anything to steer his mind away from the memories and pain that...

By Ann Forsyth and Jennifer Molinsky, Housing Matters, November 4, 2020 It’s unclear where baby boomers, America’s largest generation, will choose to live as they age. Will they want to stay in their homes or move to assisted living facilities? Will they want to stay in the communities where they raised families or seek different types of communities and climates? Because of this age group’s size, their housing choices will have major implications for local housing markets. Already,...

By Paige Williams, The New Yorker, November 2, 2020 On January 13, 1919, as the third wave of the so-called Spanish-flu pandemic began, the governor of Ohio, James Cox, delivered his inaugural address. Propagandist bulletins from the U.S. Public Health Service had called the virus “a very contagious kind of ‘cold,’ ” but Cox used his speech to note the “appalling” number of fatalities—the United States ultimately lost some six hundred and seventy-five thousand people. The federal government...

From Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, October 8, 2020 If you’ve wondered why many more Black and Brown people get COVID-19 and die of it than other people in the United States, Leandris Liburd might tell you a story about someone you already know. Leandris might call her “Marjorie.” Marjorie could be that cashier you chat with or your grandfather’s favorite nursing aide in a long-term care center. Marjorie is Black, about 47, and despite following public health guidance as best...

By Christina Santiago, California Health Report, November 5, 2020 While I was on call in the pediatric emergency department of Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, three firefighters rolled in a gurney with little girl strapped in — but she didn’t look injured. Unlike most kids arriving in an ambulance, she had no obvious injuries, no cervical collar to support her neck, no signs of bleeding and she was alert. Tracy looked to be about 4 years old and was so tiny compared to the gurney. Her...

First-year medical student Sean Sweat "didn't want to tiptoe around" issues of race when she sat down with 11 of her classmates to write a new version of the medical profession's venerable Hippocratic oath. "We start our medical journey amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, and a national civil rights movement reinvigorated by the killings of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery," begins the alternate version of the oath, rewritten for the class of 2024 at the University of Pittsburgh...

Resiliency can help us overcome the life-altering effects of adverse childhood experiences or repeated trauma in adulthood. It can also speed up healing and give us the strength to conquer our traumatic histories. In this article, we shall explore together the definitions of complex trauma, resiliency, and how resiliency can help treat complex traumatic stress disorder.

By Xenia Shih Bion, California Health Care Foundation, November 2, 2020 For the past 15 years, Bay Area resident Sonja Summerville Trotter has cycled in and out of homelessness. As with so many others, there wasn’t one single event or cause that led to her living on the streets. Her life has been complicated by post-traumatic stress disorder from painful experiences that included surviving a rape, and she has been in and out of addiction treatment and jail. In March, Summerville Trotter left...

By Michele Chabin, Jewish Telegraphic Agency, November 3, 2020 Peyton Barsel was 9 years old when her father, Alex Barsel, died of a heart attack at the age of 42. The shock and grief were like a tsunami that threatened to drown her family. “My mom is an incredible woman and parent, but when you are 40 and suddenly lose your life partner, that’s a lot to grapple with, especially with a 9-year-old and a 5-year-old,” said Peyton, now 18. “She did the best she could, but for quite a while I...