Tagged With "Ph.D. students and mental health"
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College students, seniors and immigrants miss out on food stamps. Here’s why. (calmatters.org)
All told, roughly 1.6 million Californians are not getting help from the fede ral Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as CalFresh here, even though they are eligible. That means 28% of people with poverty-level budgets didn’t receive the food assistance they needed, according to 2017 state data . At the bookends of adulthood, college students and seniors increasingly struggle to pay their bills yet they are among the groups most likely to miss out on the food stamps they qualify...
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Concordia University Launches Trauma & Resilience Curriculum [businesswire.com]
PORTLAND, Ore.--( BUSINESS WIRE )--More than 25 percent of American youth experience a serious traumatic event by their sixteenth birthday, and many children suffer multiple and repeated traumas, according to the National Child Traumatic Stress Network. This trauma affects children learning in the classroom. Beginning January 2018, students in Concordia University-Portland’s College of Education can complete an MEd in Curriculum & Instruction with a concentration in Trauma and Resilience...
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Count your way to calm: A simple breathing technique to help you stay present (SDSU Student Health 101)
One of my favorite things about meditation is how uncomplicated the practice is. When my life gets hectic or my mind feels overrun with racing thoughts, the simplicity of meditation can be a huge relief. There’s a scientific basis for this feeling: Meditation reduces activity in parts of the brain associated with mind-wandering and unhappiness, according to a 2011 study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . When I teach meditation, I try to keep my instructions concise so as...
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Declaring support and visibility for Native students in higher education (Indian Country Today)
Native students face the highest rates of inequity in higher education because of systemic and structural barriers On February 6, the American Indian College Fund released a report identifying eight powerful declarations that colleges and universities should do to better support Native students and make them visible at their institutions. This work was in response to a college tour incident at Colorado State University, after which made many Native students and families questioned who...
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Department of Counseling and Behavioral Health & Trauma Conference
Thomas Jefferson University's newly formed Department of Counseling and Behavioral Health has generated its first-ever newsletter . If you're interested in trauma-informed training and education , or if you simply want to stay abreast of the work of some great clinicians, researchers, advocates and aspiring professionals, please have a look. The Community and Trauma Counseling program currently has Art Therapy options and is launching two new specializations and certificates this summer: (1)...
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Doctor-patient role-playing featured in ACEs Connection webinar
On an ACEs Connection webinar on Monday, Dr. Andrew Seaman, an assistant professor at Oregon Health & Science University, showed how he navigates his students through the science of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). And, in an unusual twist for a webinar, Seaman and O’Nesha Cochran, a peer mentor with the Mental Health Association of Oregon, role-played doctor-patient interactions to show how to develop the skills to communicate with patients with high ACE scores. About 90 people...
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Doctor-patient role-playing featured in ACEs Connection webinar
On an ACEs Connection webinar on Monday, Dr. Andrew Seaman, an assistant professor at Oregon Health & Science University, showed how he navigates his students through the science of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). And, in an unusual twist for a webinar, Seaman and O’Nesha Cochran, a peer mentor with the Mental Health Association of Oregon, role-played doctor-patient interactions to show how to develop the skills to communicate with patients with high ACE scores. About 90 people...
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Economics Students Analyze Childhood-Trauma Data for Free Health Clinic [community.bowdoin.edu]
When professor John Fitzgerald asked students in his advanced economics class this semester —Economic Evaluation of Public Programs — whether any would like to volunteer, for no academic credit, to help a local healthcare clinic analyze some of its patient data, three students promptly signed up. Oasis Free Clinics was seeking help to compare information it had about some of its patients’ childhood histories — in particular, the traumas they may have experienced in youth — with information...
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Families, Not Just Students, Feel The Weight Of The Student Loan Crisis [npr.org]
By Elissa Nadworny, National Public Radio, September 4, 2019 For many college students settling into their dorms this month, the path to campus — and paying for college — started long ago. And it likely involved their families. The pressure to send kids to college, coupled with the realities of tuition, has fundamentally changed the experience of being middle class in America, says Caitlin Zaloom, an anthropologist and associate professor at New York University. It's changed the way that...
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Film teaches students the dangers of toxic stress [The Parthenon]
Photo by Douglas Harding, The Parthenon. Marshall University students and community members watched the documentary “Resilience” and discussed the science of toxic stress and its impacts, Tuesday, Nov. 2, in the Memorial Student Center. “Resilience,” a documentary based on recent medical studies linking heart disease to adverse childhood experiences, was released in 2016 and directed by James Redford, who also directed the 2015 documentary “Paper Tigers.” To read the rest of this post by...
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Financial literacy can hold key to college success [edsource.org]
Picture this: Sonya, a low-income student at a California high school, receives an acceptance letter from the University of Hawaii. While the tuition is higher than a public university in California, she decides to go to Hawaii, even though it means that both Sonya — not her real name — and her mother would have to take out loans. After two semesters of lackluster grades, Sonya loses her merit-based aid and has a hold on her student account (also known as a bursar’s account ) due to an...
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For Many College Students, Hunger Can ‘Make It Hard To Focus In Class’ (californiahealthline.org)
As students enter college this fall, many will hunger for more than knowledge. Up to half of college students report that they were either not getting enough to eat or were worried about it, according to published studies . “Food insecurity,” as it’s called, is most prevalent at community colleges, but it’s common at public and private four-year schools as well. Student activists and advocates in the education community have drawn attention to the problem in recent years, and the food...
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Fordham University Ethics & Society Master’s Student Working to Eradicate Poverty (socialjusticesolutions.org)
On October 17th, 2017, Omar Lebron, a graduate student of Fordham University’s Master of Arts in Ethics and Society program, moderated the event “Answering the Call of October 17 to end poverty: A path toward peaceful and inclusive societies” at the United Nations in New York to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty. Please read Omar’s thoughts below and watch the video from the event. In ATD (All Together in Dignity) Fourth World Movement,...
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Free Community College Tuition Offered to All San Diego High School Graduates (timesofsandiego.com)
All San Diego high school graduates who are first-time college students can receive free community college tuition under an expansion of the San Diego Promise Program announced Monday. “We’re announcing the ultimate expansion of our program,” said Constance Carroll, chancellor of the San Diego Community College District . “A college education is key to economic advancement.” The district estimates that as many as 3,500 students may be eligible for the program in the 2018-2019 academic year.
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From public housing to college: new national pilot helps low-income students in LA make that journey [edsource.org]
The distance from the Avalon Gardens public housing development in South Central Los Angeles to elite Smith College in western Massachusetts should be measured in more than the 2,900 miles separating them. The housing project near Watts is a cluster of nearly identical pale orange one- and two-story buildings surrounded by a high metal gate installed to keep gangs out. It is home to about 440 low-income, mainly Latino and black, residents whose scramble for economic survival is eased by...
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Georgia Health Students Plan Trauma Informed Care Training Day, Oct. 19, 2019
Home to the Center for Disease Control, Atlanta is a city full of great minds focused on all issues related to public health. Despite this, a group of students and faculty at neighboring health professional schools including Emory School of Medicine, Emory’s Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing, Georgia State University, Morehouse School of Medicine, Mercer University School of Medicine, and the Medical College of Georgia at August University, found that education and awareness around one...
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Global Health Summit on Violence and Abuse at Florida State University
Dr. Vincent Felitti, author of the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE ) study, inspired the Young Parents Team by at the recent Global Health Summit on Violence and Abuse at Florida State University. Our team serves court-involved pregnant teens with histories of trauma, and often trafficking, to help cope and heal. We are grateful for Dr. Felitti’s research that guides our work to change the life trajectory for so many with ACEs. Thanks to FSU School of Social Work Dean James Clark and...
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Health status of adolescents reporting experiences of adversity [Global Pediatric Health]
Photo: Verkeorg/ creativecommons ______________________________________________________________ "This study examines relationships between adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and adolescent health indicators among a sample of 8th, 9th, and 11th graders participating in the 2016 Minnesota Student Survey." Read more about this study in the journal Global Pediatric Health .
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Higher Education: What Do We Mean?
I'll be the first to admit that when I think of the phrase "higher education," certain things come to mind: ivy-clad red brick buildings, crisp fall afternoons punctuated by the staccato sounds of a university drumline rehearsal, and young wide-eyed students hanging on every word from the profound professor who looms large over the time-worn lectern. These stylized visualizations are informed by my own experiences in college, surely, but also by larger cultural narratives that contour the...
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How Free Food Programs at MJC, Stan State are Coming to Rescue of Hungry Students [modbee.com]
By Chrisanna Mink, The Modesto Bee, January 4, 2020 Nancy Carranza, a third-year student at Modesto Junior College, is happy to give back to hungry families. She knows first-hand what it feels like to study with the distraction of a growling stomach. “Sometimes my mom skipped (meals),” Carranza said tearfully. “My mom planned out the month and made things work with food stamps.” [ Please click here to read more .]
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How Louisiana's Richest Students Go To College on the Backs of the Poor [hechingerreport.org]
By Emmanuel Felton, The Hechinger Report, October 30, 2019 Rodney Woods was on the fence about applying to Nicholls State University, a four-year public institution a 20-minute walk from his mother’s house in Louisiana’s Bayou Region, a rural area of the state dotted with sugar cane fields and mud-colored swamps. He had been on campus a few times. Both he and his mother loved to practice their photography skills among the long-slung red-brick buildings clustered around the school’s tidy...
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How One Minnesota University More Than Doubled its Native Student Graduation Rate [hechingerreport.org]
By Caroline Preston, The Hechinger Report, February 6, 2020 Charles Golding looked for two things when he was researching colleges: a top economics program and a connection to his native culture. A Google search led him to the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, a state flagship school with prize-winning economists and a history of indigenous activism. The university’s Department of American Indian Studies, founded in 1969, is the oldest such program in the country, and it’s located in the...
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How Parents Can Identify Mental Health Problems in Their College Kids [Health.USNews.com]
As a parent, you’ve watched your child grow from infancy to adolescence and now your son or daughter is entering a whole new world. While most kids will get through college just fine, others find themselves on a different, more precarious path. According to the latest results from the National College Health Assessment , many college students experience mental health difficulties. More than 1 in 5 felt overwhelming anxiety in the 12 months prior to the survey. In addition, 18 percent felt...
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How people cope with difficult life events fuels development of wisdom, study finds (oregonstate.edu)
How a person responds to a difficult life event such as a death or divorce helps shape the development of their wisdom over time, a new study from Oregon State University suggests. For many, the difficult life event also served to disrupt their sense of personal meaning, raising questions about their understanding of their world. These disruptions ultimately lead to the development of new wisdom, said Carolyn Aldwin , director of the Center for Healthy Aging Research in the College of Public...
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How We Build Resilience At College And At Home [forbes.com]
By Marvin Krislov, Forbes, August 27, 2019 There is a mental health crisis on America’s college campuses. Increasingly, today’s students are lonely. More and more of them are anxious. Many are experiencing depression. And that’s leading them to college counseling centers at ever-increasing rates. One major recent study showed that 75% of current college students say they need help for emotional or mental health problems. Most colleges and universities are determined to support their students...
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If You Feel Thankful, Write It Down. It's Good For Your Health (npr.org)
"I think just over the last few years there's been more of a trend to focus on gratitude," says psychologist Laurie Santos , who teaches a course on the science of well-being and happiness at Yale. Gratitude is being endorsed by wellness blogs and magazines . You can buy different kinds of specific gratitude journals, or download apps that remind you to jot down your blessings. And noting your gratitude seems to pay off: There's a growing body of research on the benefits of gratitude.
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Introducing NEW Becoming Trauma-Informed & Beyond Community
Earlier this year @Dawn Daum wrote to us when she was ready to share ACEs science with people in the organization she works in to make a case for moving towards more trauma-informed care for the benefit of the staff and those they serve. She was frustrated because almost all the training and resources she found were geared towards schools, clinical staff or to organizations working with children and families rather than ACE-impacted adults in the workplace and who are...
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Is There a Smarter Way to Think About Sexual Assault on Campus? [newyorker.com]
If I were asked by a survey to describe my experience with sexual assault in college, I would pinpoint two incidents, both of which occurred at or after parties in my freshman year. In the first case, the guy went after me with sniper accuracy, magnanimously giving me a drink he’d poured upstairs. In the second case, I’m sure the guy had no idea that he was doing something wrong. I had joined a sorority, and all my social circles were as sloppy, intense, and tribal as the Greek system—the...
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Is your school a buffer zone against toxic stress?
The challenge of the fast pace and the strain of living in the 21 st century is the chronic stress of keeping up with volume of information, expectations and adverse experiences that leads to stressors of daily living. Adults have become good at adjusting to and compartmentalizing these stressors. Children and adolescents however are struggling to keep up and are in fact caving under the weight of the stresses. In addition, many children lack adequate nurturing and supports needed to give...
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JED Foundation and UMass offer new guide: College to Career: Supporting Mental Health
"Investigators from The Jed Foundation (JED) and the University of Massachusetts Medical School examined the literature in education, business, psychology and sociology regarding the college-to-career transition. Knowledge gained informed a national survey of 1,929 college seniors, recent graduates and employers exploring specific challenges to the transition, as well as existing strategies to support young adults and their emotional health. Data from the literature review and the survey...
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Jenna Fischer visited a college. It didn't go as planned. So now, she wants change. (upworthy.com)
Hate at DePauw University hit a fever pitch in mid-April. And actress Jenna Fischer, of all people, was there to witness the pain, frustrations, and calls for action boil over in real time. The actress, known for her role as Pam on "The Office," was on campus in Indiana on April 17 to meet theater students, participate in a Q&A, and sign copies of her book, "The Actor's Life: A Survival Guide." But the event took an abrupt turn when demonstrators from the school's Association of...
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Latest ACEs science research from PubMed, February 12, 2019
Hair cortisol in the perinatal period mediates associations between maternal adversity and disrupted maternal interaction in early infancy. Nyström-Hansen M, Andersen MS, Khoury JE, Davidsen K, Gumley A, Lyons-Ruth K, MacBeth A, Harder S. Dev Psychobiol . 2019 Feb 12. doi: 10.1002/dev.21833. [Epub ahead of print] PMID: 30747450 elect item 3074 Child maltreatment is mediating long-term consequences of household dysfunction in a population representative sample. Clemens V, Berthold O, Witt A,...
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Living Homeless in California: The University of Hunger (capitalandmain.com)
The true scale of this crisis was revealed last January in a groundbreaking report commissioned by the California State University system. The study found that 11 percent of students on the university’s 23-campuses reported being homeless during the past year. The problem was most acute at Humboldt State, where nearly a fifth of the student body had been homeless at one point the previous year. “In large part, students are homeless because they don’t get enough financial aid,” says Jennifer...
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Meditation on Campus [HuffingtonPost.com]
When the University of North Texas designed and planned their new 130 million dollar student union, all possible options and ideas were on the table. And why not? You only get one chance to build a facility like UNT’s new union, so you better get it right. As the master plan evolved, one idea that made the cut was a dedicated space for introspection. The process was student driven, and the students had spoken. They wanted a meditation room. As unusual as that request may have sounded to...
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Meeting the Growing Need for Behavioral Health Services on Campus [Blog.SAMHSA.gov]
Our nation’s college campuses are experiencing a surge in demand for mental health services. About 1 in 10 incoming freshmen reports feeling depressed frequently . The 2015 Annual Report for the Center for Collegiate Mental Health states that the use of college counseling centers grew by 30 percent , even though enrollment only increased by 5 percent. In addition, students’ concerns are increasingly complex. The percentage of students visiting college counseling centers who have a serious...
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Mental Health, Social Adversity, and Health-Related Outcomes in Sexual Minority Adolescents: A Contemporary National Cohort Study [thelancet.com]
By Background Sexual minority adolescents are more likely to have mental health problems, adverse social environments, and negative health outcomes compared with their heterosexual counterparts. There is a paucity of up-to-date population-level estimates of the extent of risk across these domains in the UK. We analysed outcomes across mental health, social environment, and health-related domains in sexual minority adolescents compared with their heterosexual counterparts in a large,...
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Momentum Grows In Congress To Expand Access To Quality Postsecondary Education For People In Prison [witnessla.com]
By Witness LA, July 8, 2019. Twenty-five years ago, the massive Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, which, among other things, prevented incarcerated students hoping for a college degree from accessing Pell Grants, was signed into law by then-President Bill Clinton, and essentially resulted in the slashing of opportunities for higher education in federal and state prisons across the U.S., a move that, as Mikaol T. Nietzel, president emeritus of Missouri State University,...
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More Adolescents Seek Medical Care for Mental Health Issues [californiahealthline.org]
By Phillip Reese, California Healthline, November 11, 2019 Less than a decade ago, the emergency department at Rady Children’s Hospital in San Diego would see maybe one or two young psychiatric patients per day, said Dr. Benjamin Maxwell, the hospital’s interim director of child and adolescent psychiatry. Now, it’s not unusual for the emergency room to see 10 psychiatric patients in a day, and sometimes even 20, said Maxwell. “What a lot of times is happening now is kids aren’t getting the...
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New bill would require California colleges to let homeless students park overnight (mercurynews.com)
According to several recent surveys, around one in five — or about 400,000 — California community college students has experienced homelessness in the last year. Thousands more are at risk of becoming homeless. Calling that number “shocking, alarming and tragic,” Assemblyman Marc Berman, D-Palo Alto, on Tuesday outlined a new bill — AB 302 — that would force community colleges to allow homeless students to sleep inside their vehicles in campus parking lots overnight. “Shame on us if we turn...
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New student group to give hope to those with traumatic childhoods [Minnesota Daily]
H.O.P.E. aims to create a community for students who have gone through adverse childhood experiences. A new student group that started at the University of Minnesota last month hopes to provide support and teach coping mechanisms to students affected by traumatic events during childhood. H.O.P.E. is working to create a community for students with traumatic childhood experiences while raising awareness of adverse childhood experiences. The student organization was founded by research...
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NJ medical school program requires all first-year students to learn about ACEs science
In 2015, Dr. Beth Pletcher, a pediatrician and associate professor specializing in genetics, was at the annual conference of the American Academy of Pediatrics in Washington D.C. when she heard two speakers that forever changed her work with medical students. Dr. Beth Pletcher “I went to two talks on adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) that were so mind-boggling to me that I decided on my drive back to New Jersey that I had to do something about it,”says Pletcher, director of the Division...
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One university’s uniquely compassionate plan for teaching students resilience (qz.com)
In 2013, a group of top-flight colleges including Stanford, Harvard, Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania formed the Resilience Project to pool ideas and resources around building students’ coping skills, including Baylor’s workshop on cultivating grit and a Harvard group that encourages students to reflect on their beliefs about success and failure. Yale last year launched “ Psychology and the Good Life ,” a class about how to find happiness, while Bates is focused on helping...
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OPINION: Black students’ ‘unprecedented and unequal’ college debt should cause alarm [hechingerreport.org]
Today, students from all backgrounds are choosing to go to college, and many borrow money to make that possible. While education debt is of genuine concern for a wide range of students and families, the broad-brush narrative of student debt in this country ignores sharp differences in borrowing across racial and ethnic groups. As a nation, we should be very concerned that African Americans carry a disproportionate amount of higher-education debt. This unprecedented and unequal level of...
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Parent Handouts updated and available In Dari, English & Spanish
The updated parent handouts are now available in Spanish as well as English and Dari. Here's the blog post with links to all three versions of each flyer. All versions of the Understanding ACEs and Parenting to Prevent & Heal ACEs parent handouts can be downloaded, distributed, and used freely. Both flyers were made with generous support from Family Hui, a Program of Lead for Tomorrow, who is responsible for making the Spanish and Dari translations available. These are updates of the...
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Peace4Tarpon and U.F. Make it Real Part 2
Peace4Tarpon has worked with University of Florida for several years now - specifically with the School of Public Health and Dr. Mark Hart's class on Public Health Communication. The subject of his Public Health Communications Master's level class for the past two semesters was Peace4Tarpon. He gave his students a chance to create marketing materials that would actually be implemented - a far cry from creating campaigns that might never see the light of day. We actually used the materials...
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Pennsylvania AG Josh Shapiro: “Protecting Students Is a Must” [phillymag.com]
On Monday night, Drexel University’s Creese Student Center was the site of the second roundtable discussion in Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro ’s ongoing series on college campus safety. Shapiro launched the initiative in August with the broad goal of preventing drug and alcohol abuse, sexual assault, and tragedies stemming from mental health issues on the campuses of colleges and universities statewide. “When parents take their kids to college and drive off in their minivans, of...
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Ph.D. Students Face Mental Health Challenges
Science By Elisabeth Pain Approximately one-third of Ph.D. students are at risk of having or developing a common psychiatric disorder like depression, a recent study reports. Although these results come from a small sample—3659 students at universities in Flanders, Belgium, 90% of whom were studying the sciences and social sciences—they are nonetheless an important addition to the growing literature about the prevalence of mental health issues in academia . One key message for scientific...
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Press Release — New Survey of California Community College Students Reveals More than Half Face Food Insecurity and Nearly 20 Percent Have Faced Homelessness [California Community Colleges]
Press Release — New Survey of California Community College Students Reveals More than Half Face Food Insecurity and Nearly 20 Percent Have Faced Homelessness March 7, 2019 Sacramento — More than half the students attending a California community college have trouble affording balanced meals or worry about running out of food, and nearly 1 in 5 are either homeless or do not have a stable place to live, according to a survey released today. Click HERE to read the press release and click HERE...
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Professor uses her own ACEs story to teach med students how to help traumatized patients
When O’Nesha Cochran teaches medical residents about adverse childhood experiences in patients, she doesn’t use a textbook. Instead, the Oregon Health & Science University adjunct professor walks in the room, dressed in what she describes as the “nerdiest-looking outfit” she can find. And then she tells them her story. “My mom sold me to her tricks and her pimps from the age of three to the age of six,” she begins. “I could remember these grown men molesting me and my sisters. I have...