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he tragedy of suicide occurs on a daily basis at the rate of one death every 40 seconds, but it often doesn’t hit the news until high-profile celebrities become a part of the fray. Celebrity deaths over the last few years have pierced an illusion that they have it all. The passing of celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain and fashion designer Kate Spade sparked increased awareness because they were household names. In the US suicide rates have increased by 25% since 1999. With these tragedies comes...

Married people who fight nastily are more likely to suffer from leaky guts -- a problem that unleashes bacteria into the blood and can drive up disease-causing inflammation, new research suggests. It's the first study to illuminate this particular pathway between bad marriages and poor health, said lead author Janice Kiecolt-Glaser, director of the Institute for Behavioral Medicine Research at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. The study appears in the journal...

At this women’s prison in upstate New York, puppies are proving to be more than just woman’s best friend. “They make you feel like you’re worth something,” says Dunasha Payne, an inmate at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility. “And they make you wake up every day, that you have a purpose in life and that you’re not just a prisoner.” Payne is part of Puppies Behind Bars , a program that teaches inmates to train puppies as service animals for veterans and first responders suffering from PTSD.

Last fall, as the GOP and the Trump administration worked overtime to sell the American public on its package of tax cuts, Kevin Hassett, chair of the president's Council of Economic Advisors, made a bold prediction : The average American household would see their annual income increase by $4,000-$9,000 due to the legislation's business tax cuts. Hassett also said he expected to see "an immediate jump in wage growth." And while most in the GOP were hesitant to go quite as far as Hassett, the...

We are thrilled to announce the premiere of Wrestling Ghosts , a documentary about breaking the cycle of trauma, at the LA Film festival on Sept. 27th. “Incredible. Haunting and strange and beautiful and incredibly moving.” -Dan Cogan, Founder Impact Partners Wrestling Ghosts follows the epic inner journey of Kim, a young mother who, over two heartbreaking and inspiring years, battles the traumas from her past in order to create a new present and future for her and her family. In this...

Do you remember when weekly news stories of our children being traumatized, tortured and killed became the new normal? If our children had a voice and vote, which they don’t, I believe they would all ask for the right to grow up in safe homes with healthy parents, and be able to learn in high-functioning schools. Our never-ending cycle of child tragedies begs the bigger question, which we pose in our book Anna, Age Eight: who are the real monsters here? Is it the parents who inflict these...

When the history of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) prevention is written 100 years hence, we wouldn’t be surprised if the conclusion comes down on the side of technology connecting us in profound ways that leads to a compassionate society that prioritizes all its children. As someone who is often referred to as the "IT guy" on ACEs prevention projects, I love technology. But before I start gushing about the promises of technology, a sober assessment is in order, especially when it...

Boots Riley’s debut film, Sorry to Bother You, offers a renewed sense of urgency in how we respond to the racist and capitalist divides that impact us all. Satirical, dystopian, part sci-fi. Emotionally and intellectually, it’s everything we didn’t know we needed. Cassius “Cash” Green represents many unemployed young Black males looking for work and their subsequent climb to the top after they finally land a job. After getting a low-level telemarketing position, Cash learns the secret to how...

There was just one student in the Boulder Valley School District’s teen parent program last year. She graduated in May, and and the district spent the summer turning the program’s nursery into a child care center for staff . In the Englewood district just south of Denver there were no students in the teen parent program last year, and in the western Colorado city of Montrose, the long-standing charter school for pregnant and parenting teens was newly closed because of dwindling enrollment.

When Carmen Rodriguez was two years old, his grandmother would put him in a makeshift baby carrier and take him into the fields as she picked produce. Growing up, he traveled from Chicago to Texas, North Dakota and California with his migrant farmworker family, picking melons, potatoes, strawberries, lettuce, and corn. The first meal he ever cooked was bean and cheese burritos, strapped to the radiator of the family car to keep them warm. His home base was a rough neighborhood in Chicago,...

Some federal employees working in science-related jobs say they've seen policy shifts in the past year that harm America's most vulnerable populations, from the reorganization of the Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Environmental Justice to the reported focus on "all Americans" (rather than specific risk groups, a common practice in public-health research). These results come from a survey conducted by the Union of Concerned Scientists, an advocacy group that has opposed several...

Adversity is part of life: Loved ones die. Soldiers deploy to war. Patients receive terminal diagnoses. Research on how adults deal with adversity has been dominated by studies claiming the most common response is uninterrupted and stable psychological functioning. In other words, this research suggests that most adults are essentially unfazed by major life events such as spousal loss or divorce. These provocative findings have also received widespread attention in the popular press and...