Tagged With "Long Term Coping Skills"
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ACEs_Toolkit.pdf
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In the Return to "Normalcy" in 2021
Okay, so we all are hearing of the end of life as we have come to know it for the past 14 months. The social isolation, physical distancing, mask-wearing, business shutdowns, country lockdowns, and travel bans are what we in the region have endured since March 2020. The disruption of life from Covid-19 is expected to come to a close as more than one vaccine has been approved and is being used in the Caribbean. As we adults relish in the return to school of our children, our return to gainful...
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How Caribbean Parents Can Hurt Their Children
Growing up in the Caribbean (Trinidad and Tobago) in the 1970s - before the age of enlightened parenting - meant that I was raised in a strict culture. Whenever there was an infraction by us children, there would be verbal and often physical "retribution". This culture did not only exist in the immediate home but also extended to our visits to our grandparents. (It was easy to understand where my mother had received her parenting style when I witnessed my grandmother disciplining me and my...
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Trading Sex as a Minor is Sex Trafficking
Okay, so I want to share this article with you about the link between ACEs and sex trafficking in the USA. It is titled, " Youth Arrested for Trading Sex Have the Highest Rates of Childhood Adversity: A Statewide Study of Juvenile Offenders ". However, I need to explain something to you (i.e. vent) first... The researchers and article publishers use the term "arrested for trading sex" because in the early part of the century (c. 2014) that was the unfortunate state of the law in the USA...
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Question of the Month - Is Child Adversity Linked to Ethnicity?
Hi Community! Here in Trinidad and Tobago, we are probably more diverse in terms of ethnicity than many of our Caribbean neighbours - a callaloo of sorts (Remember the national anthem proclaims: "...Here every creed and race find an equal place..." ) Well, research overseas shows that there is a difference in how children experience adversity based on their ethnicity. In the USA in particular, there are neighbourhoods that are predominantly white and others where the majority of persons are...
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Young Black Men's Mental Health During Covid-19
Research from the UK suggests that men from racialised backgrounds are reporting higher levels of mental distress during the pandemic compared to white men (Proto et al., 2021). Contributing factors include bereavement, loneliness and worries about coronavirus and misinformation.
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Building a Multi-System Trauma-Informed Collaborative.
Since the effects of childhood trauma do not play out in isolation, an effective response to child trauma should benefit not only children but the communities in which they live. This feeds into what we know from studies about factors that impact a child's growth - they occur within the family, community and also are climate-related. Multiple studies reveal the extremely high percentage of youth in contact with the law and under the care of social services who have been exposed to violence...
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UK 'Punishing Abuse' Report Finds Many Justice-Involved Youth have Trauma Histories.
A published study from West Midlands in the United Kingdom, titled "Punishing Abuse", has confirmed what many have long suspected - many youth are being punished in the criminal justice system for acting out in the aftermath of childhood trauma. It looked at 80 youth, 67 of whom were male, and many of whom were of Black, Asian or Minority Ethnic (BAME) heritage. They included White and Black Caribbean youth, some of whome were born in and others whose parents came from the Caribbean island...
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How Trauma Affects the Body.
In a post on the website, Aces Aware, California paediatrician, Dr. Eric Bell shares how he and his family experienced Trauma after the death of a pet, which was a close member of their family. As a doctor, he was aware of his physical, emotional and other symptoms and is able to clearly articulate these as well as the benefits he and his family derived from implementing protective factors, stress-busting strategies and using other resilience building tools. We love how he is able to use his...
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Is There A Link between ACEs and Human Trafficking?
Today is March 25th and - just in case you have no clue why that date is significant to us in the Caribbean - it marks the anniversary of the Slave Trade Act of 1807 by which the British Parliament abolished the trade in slaves in the British Empire. (If you are not a student of history, you can read the Wikipedia version here .) True, the abolition of the institution of slavery itself occurred nearly 30 years later but this 1807 legislation was a proverbial "nail in the coffin" for slavery...
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Is Parenting Post-Covid A Catch-22?
Harvard Business Review published an article 3 years ago examining how parents' careers impact their children's development. Post-2020 - when many parents were forced to work from home and homeschool their offspring while trying to be productive and attend innumerable Zoom meetings - one wonders what the authors would think of the way forward. The truth remains that quality time for our children is indispensable to their healthy upbringing. Yet 2020 also brought financial difficulty to many...
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The Power of a Hug
The past year has taken a heavy toll on millions of us around the Caribbean. In order to stem the spread of covid-19 we were asked by our regional governments to essentially change who we are. We forsook the beach and river limes, bar scene and house parties in an effort to play our part to keep everyone safe. Even with our relatives and in our Faith practices, we had to abide by strict protocols and refrain from hugging, kissing and showing affection in the way we as Caribbean people...
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'A lot of grief and anxiety' for kids, youth after living with COVID for 1 year, says psychotherapist. [CBC article]
Around the world, the 1 year anniversary of Covid-19 interrupting our lives was observed in different ways. For many, the concern is for the children and young people who are experiencing Covid-19 as an adverse childhood experience. The clinical observations of a Canadian psychotherapist may well be true for the Caribbean region as it relates to how children are coping one year on. Alyssa Strachan, based at the Delton Glebe Counselling Centre in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada has been helping...
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Wellness Wednesday - Examining the Mental Wounds of Covid-19
Good day and welcome to this week's Wellness Wednesday! We are sharing this article from The Atlantic titled, 'What Happens When Americans Can Finally Exhale. The pandemic’s mental wounds are still wide open.' It's been discussed a bit in recent times especially as the USA (and other nations) see the light at the end of the tunnel out of Covid-19. As some Caribbean territories are experiencing severe spikes in cases of Covid-19 infections and deaths, we long for the time when this is...
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PACEs Connection: Not just another social network
At last week’s fabulous HOPE Summit, one person told me that they didn’t realize all the things that PACEs Connection does.
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Criticizing ACEs in Peer Reviewed Professional Journals Impairs Child Abuse Treatment
Criticizing ACEs in Peer Reviewed Professional Journals Impairs Child Abuse Treatment Jeoffry B. Gordon, MD, MPH May 23, 2021 As a family doc practicing in San Diego I was privileged to hear Dr. Vincent Felitti talk about his inspired development of the ACEs questionnaire and its association with many adult mental and physical diseases directly from him only a few years after his original insight. Yet, although I had a lively clinic and learned how to manage a vast array of medical...
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Barbados Research into Childhood Malnutrition and Maltreatment.
Happy Friday everybody! As you know, with that comes some weekend reading for you. Today, we are sharing a report from research conducted in Barbados that links childhood malnutrition and maltreatment to personality disorders which persist into adulthood. It is the work of Rebecca S. Hock and her colleagues using data from the 47 year longitudinal Barbados Nutrition Study. Published in Psychiatry Research (Volume 269, November 2018, Pages 301-308), the work, " Childhood malnutrition and...
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Mental Health and School Reopening for the Caribbean
Good Monday morning everyone. We hope the weekend was refreshing. So across the world there continue to be diverse reports on the way countries are coping with Covid-19. In the Caribbean, there has been a sense of relief after the USA indicated that it will donate millions of doses of Covid-19 vaccines to the region and Latin America. As a consequence, there have been hopeful statements that schools may reopen in September 2021, after having been shuttered since February and March 2020 in...
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Research into Effects of Child Maltreatment on Males
Hi everyone. We hope your weekend was restful and you were able to view "Wrestling Ghosts" after we shared this Watch Party opportunity last week. Since we wanted you to have the chance to catch the documentary, we deferred our usual " Food for Thought Friday " post (based on a research article to review) to today, Monday While it is USA-based, this paper looks at how child maltreatment, especially child sexual abuse impacts males into adulthood. This is a very under-served area of study...
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ACEs Handouts - ACC.pdf
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Gwyneth Paltrow x Nadine Burke Harris: How Does Childhood Trauma Impact Health Outcomes? [goop.com]
From Goop, June 16, 2020 “You can’t grow up Black in America and not feel outraged by the terrible health disparities that are still going on every day,” says Nadine Burke Harris, MD , the first surgeon general of California. GP got on a video call with Harris, who is an expert on adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). Her book, The Deepest Well , explores the connection between adversity, trauma, and toxic stress in childhood and health outcomes later in life. Much of her work focuses on...
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Building a Restorative Restart to School in the Fall
As we look towards the reopening of in-person instruction in the fall, planning and reimagining for a restorative restart to our school systems that emphasizes student and educator mental health is a priority. In addition, there is a windfall of one-time funding coming to districts from federal and local funds for just this purpose. Recently a wise educator said to me, ‘you know, if you want to get to the hearts and minds of school leaders to make changes for the fall you need to do so by...
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5 ways to create compelling messages about childhood trauma using data
When presented strategically, data can help tell an important story about childhood trauma. Here are a few tips for presenting numbers in ways that advance efforts to reduce adversity, promote resilience, and improve health outcomes.
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PACEs Champion Dwana Young navigates community-driven ACEs healing centers in New Jersey
In 2020, New Jersey, a state with about 9 million people spread over the rural countryside and dense urban areas like Newark, launched a new entity: the NJ Office of Resilience (NJOR). The NJOR is unusual because it is a public-private partnership. It brings together three private foundations as well as the NJ Department of Children and Families to provide community-driven strategies for preventing, treating, and healing from ACEs. Like a ship’s navigator laying out a course on charts, Dwana...
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When Cyclones Party In Your Backyard
Happy "Fri-yay" to everyone! Over the past week ago, the world was shocked out of its focus on evolving virus strains when the media launched an all-out assault on our sensibilities with headlines that screamed " Code RED for humanity !" What they were referring to was not an alien invasion or zombie apocalypse but the report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ( IPCC ) that the climate crisis was propelling us to a point where, even with our best efforts, we would not be able...
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There are no perfect parents!
"Parenting is a learned skill, but society says as parents we can only talk about the good things that happen while parenting. It judges parents based on the child’s behavior, clothing and their school attendance. Children are judged by their parent’s behavior, clothing and choices. There is no shortage of blame, shame and judgment to go around. So what happens when a parent has a high ACE score and they want to truly prevent their children from having the same? What happens when they want...
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How Every Child Can Thrive By Five - Molly Wright
"What if I was to tell you that a game of peek-a-boo could change the world?" asks seven-year-old Molly Wright, one of the youngest-ever TED speakers. Breaking down the research-backed ways parents and caregivers can support children's healthy brain development, Wright highlights the benefits of play on lifelong learning, behavior and well-being, sharing effective strategies to help all kids thrive by the age of five. She's joined onstage by one-year-old Ari and his dad, Amarjot, who help...
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Brain scans of Black women who experience racism show trauma-like effects, putting them at higher risk for future health problems [theconversation.com]
By Sierra Carter , Georgia State University , the Conversation, September 15, 2021 Black women who have experienced more racism throughout their lives have stronger brain responses to threat , which may hurt their long-term health, according to a new study I conducted with clinical neuropsychologist Negar Fani and other colleagues. I am part of a research team that for more than 15 years has studied the ways stress related to trauma exposure can affect the mind and body. In our recent study...