Blog

To my colleagues working on, for and with trauma survivors — I've posted a guest post in the blog area of my professional website because I wanted to be able to share a piece of writing by a friend that I hope will have value to others as we grapple with our feelings around what Dr. Christine Blasey Ford is experiencing - what it means, and what we are called to do. As you'll see, my friend chooses to write under a pen name - I trust you will understand that the current climate and realities...

To create conditions for community wellbeing we must look back – at continuing, historic influences – and forward – to the major forces that shape current and future priorities. The Visualizing Wellbeing series explores the state of wellbeing in the United States through a collection of data visualizations. Each week we will explore one vital condition that comprise our framework for community wellbeing , developed in partnership through the Well Being Legacy Initiative . Humane Housing The...

We are just beginning the clean up and recovery from Florence. The effects of the storm will be with us for the foreseeable future. But our resilience is showing. Neighbors checking on one another, organizations delivering emergency supplies, and people sharing hot meals prepared and donated by volunteers. We will get through this. https://www.citylab.com/amp/article/570193/?__twitter_impression=true

DeVonte Jones began to show signs of schizophrenia as a teenager. His first public episode was nine years ago at a ballgame at Wavering Park, in Quincy, Ill. "He snapped out and just went around and started kicking people," says Jones' mother, Linda Colon, who now lives in a Chicago suburb. The police were called. Jones was arrested, charged with aggravated battery and placed in Adams County Jail. Colon says Jones had no recollection of what happened. [For more on this story by CHRISTINE...

The Arkansas Department of Education announced Wednesday that it has been awarded a $9 million grant from the Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Administration to develop and support school-based mental health programs in the state. ADE will receive approximately $1.8 million each year for five years to fund the Advancing Wellness & Resilience in Education program, which will: Develop comprehensive school mental health programs in three pilot locations: Texarkana School...

Please forgive the snarky title. I want to address something pervasive that I see in the business and personal growth community and I have strong feelings about it. I was on Facebook the other day reading a piece by yet another business leader telling me to just simply let go of my fear of being visible. I’ve seen hundreds of versions of this created by well-meaning leaders, coaches and healers of all kinds. Sound familiar?

For Emily Griffey, policy director of Voices for Virginia’s Children , some small print in the bipartisan budget act passed by Congress last February was cause for celebration. The legislation, known as the Family First Prevention Services Act (FFPSA), was the first significant reform of child welfare financing in a generation. And unlike previous federal funding, which helped maintain the foster care system through subsidies for room, board and other services, the new law pays for...

Anyone who has interacted with young children knows that tantrums can be hard to manage! Children are still growing in their ability to manage emotions, and they need patience and guidance along the way. The Zero to Three website can provide tips and strategies for helping children work through these difficult emotions, and help parents and caregivers stay level headed in the face of them. Acknowledge what your child is feeling. It is never wrong for a child to feel angry or sad, but you can...

Death rates from drug overdoses in the U.S. have been on an exponential growth curve that began at least 15 years before the mid-1990s surge in opioid prescribing, suggesting that overdose death rates may continue along this same historical growth trajectory for years to come, according to a University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health analysis published today in Science. The type of drug and the demographics of those who die from overdoses has fluctuated over the years. When...

The change can be baffling to many parents: Their young girls are masters of the universe, full of gutsy fire. But as puberty sets in, their confidence nosedives, and those same daughters can transform into unrecognizably timid, cautious, risk-averse versions of their former selves. Over the course of writing our latest book , we spoke with hundreds of tween and teen girls, who detailed a striking number of things they don’t feel confident about: “making new friends,” “the way I dress,”...

For two decades, the number of children behind bars in the U.S. has been on the decline—but the racial disparity has been dramatically worsening, with black youth several times more likely than their white counterparts to be incarcerated. A little-known Justice Department agency is supposed to tackle this problem: the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention , which has been mandated by Congress since 1988 to try to shrink the racial gap by providing grants and training to local...

The recent sexual assault allegations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh have raised many questions, but by far one of the most discussed is the relevance of age. As described by Christine Blasey Ford, Kavanaugh was 17 and she was 15 at the time of the alleged incident. Now both are in their 50s. Do events that happened during adolescence still matter to a person well into adulthood? How should we think about sexual assault from a person’s teenage years decades later? Political...