Janyne McConnaughey, Ph.D., retired from a forty-year career in education while healing from the attachment wounding and trauma she experienced as a child. During therapy, she wrote her way to healing and now is redeeming her story by helping others to understand the lifelong effects of childhood trauma and insecure attachment.
[Editor's note: Dr. Harise Stein at Stanford University edits a web site -- abuseresearch.info -- that focuses on the health effects of abuse, and includes research articles on ACEs. Every month, she will post the summaries of the abstracts and links to research articles that address only ACEs. Thank you, Harise!! -- Jane Stevens] Feng JY, Hsieh YP, Hwa HL, Huang CY, Wei HS, Shen AC. Childhood poly-victimization and children's health: A nationally representative study. Child Abuse Negl. 2019...
In a house called “Johanna’s House” on a tree-lined side street in Vallejo, Calif., four women are filling out the adverse childhood experiences (ACE) survey given to them by Maria Guevara, the founder of Vallejo Together, an organization that serves homeless residents in Vallejo. The house was named for Johanna Dilag, a homeless woman who was found dead along with her dog.
Lakeside, Arizona resident Mike had originally heard about the book through the ACEs Connection Daily Digest. He was curious and realized that a community forum was taking place in Santa Fe during his family’s visit to New Mexico’s capital. Slipping away for a few hours to attend the forum, he learned about the tragic death of an eight-year-old named Anna and how it became a catalyst for radically rethinking and reinventing child abuse prevention. There in Santa Fe he heard the authors of...
There is still time to apply for courses in the final two sessions of the 2019 Summer Peacebuilding Institute (SPI) . In addition, due to many visa denials for international applicants, we have several partial scholarships still available . SPI 2019 courses offer the skills you need personally and professionally to make your community, organization, and/or the world a better place. Join us for an exciting time of shared learning across national boundaries. All courses available for training...
Amy Gardner, Washington Post , May 24, 2019. Last year, an army of paid workers with stacks of voter registration forms fanned out in Memphis, Nashville and other parts of Tennessee to persuade African Americans to vote. They walked the parking lots of grocery stores and laundromats, stood outside church services, and cajoled revelers on party buses and at nightclubs. By October, the Tennessee Black Voter Project took credit for turning in more than 90,000 voter registration applications —...
Ann Tenbrunsel, Medical Xpress , May 17, 2019. Why don't good people report bad things? By the time the Harvey Weinstein scandal broke in October 2017, my co-authors, McKenzie Rees of Southern Methodist University and Kristina Diekmann of the University of Utah, and I had already been knee-deep in reviewing more than 200 research articles on the topic of sexual harassment for almost two years. Our review eventually would become our paper, "Sexual Harassment in Academia: Ethical Climates and...
Everyone’s brain and emotions get dysregulated sometimes, and almost everyone is able to eventually re-regulate. But if you grew up with abuse, neglect or other trauma during childhood, you may get more dysregulated more often, and have a harder time bouncing back, leaving you with a lack of focus and coordination, overblown (or deadened) emotions, and difficulty connecting and communicating appropriately with others. In this video I talk about what dysregulation feels like — if you know...
Are you ready to lead transformative change for children and families in California? Strategies 2.0, at the Child Abuse Prevention Center in Sacramento CA, is looking for a Senior Training and Technical Assistance Specialist who will help grow knowledge and networks for professionals working with families--through impactful consulting to collaborations and organizations, training to direct-service teams, and regional movement-building among family-building and community-building leaders.
Knowledge regarding the impact of trauma on individual health and behavior has become more mainstream in health care over the last several years. However, the effects of trauma on groups, organizations, and entire systems of care, are not as widely understood. The Center for Health Care Strategies (CHCS) recently spoke with Sandra Bloom, MD, associate professor of health management and policy at Drexel University’s Dornsife School of Public Health and co-founder of the Sanctuary Model , to...
Cultural sensitivity is crucial for providers to build trust with patients of all different backgrounds. Failure to do so may lead to poorer health outcomes for individuals with low incomes or from racial or ethnic minority groups. Service providers can actively engage in a variety of strategies to educate themselves about different cultures and make more accurate diagnoses. These strategies include asking themselves questions about their own privilege, the individual needs and identities of...
Taylor Walker, Witness LA , May 17, 2019 On Wednesday, the Laura and John Arnold Foundation, through its Arnold Ventures company, announced $17 million in funding to further reduce the nation’s 1.5 million-person prison population, as well as to boost prison data collection and research, to “reorient prison cultures,” to improve prison conditions for those inside, and to improve reentry services for people exiting the prison system. In the United States, where nearly 25 percent of the...
Courtney E. Martin, The New York Times , May 15, 2019 Does anyone deserve to be poor? It’s a question, I realize, at the heart of the enduring economic inequality in the United States. It’s part of what makes reporting on it, much less finding solutions for it, so challenging. Over the last three weeks, I wrote about the racial wealth gap — offering first a context for thinking about the gap between whites and people of color, then describing a move in California to stop charging recently...
Ed Yong, The Atlantic , May 17, 2019 In 1996, a group of European researchers found that a certain gene, called SLC6A4, might influence a person’s risk of depression. It was a blockbuster discovery at the time. The team found that a less active version of the gene was more common among 454 people who had mood disorders than in 570 who did not. In theory, anyone who had this particular gene variant could be at higher risk for depression, and that finding, they said, might help in diagnosing...
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report on May 22 on the challenges that states face in their efforts to support children affected by trauma. The findings were based in part on interviewing state and local officials in six states (Colorado, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Ohio, Washington, and Wisconsin) along with questionnaires to 16 states. The request for the report was made by two Illinois members of Congress, U.S. Senator Dick Durbin and Congressman Danny Davis, and...