Tagged With "brain chemistry"

Where to begin... My heart is full of hope and joy as I watch the trauma-informed schools movement swell across our nation and planet. The science of ACEs is mind-bending to say the least and we are now able to open up a much deeper dialogue about human behavior and health. Ultimately this work is about healing… All. Of. Us. A new consciousness is taking root around ending the “us vs them” construct. The idea is growing that we’re all on this journey together and that no matter where our...

There have been several recent projections about the dramatic impact the spread and devastation of the corona virus, shelter at home, social distancing and economic hardships will have on many, many people of all ages across our globe. Experts are warning of huge increases in depression, suicide, anxiety, substance abuse and other emotional and physical adversities from the virus’s impact on society. Many want to urge legislatures to fund treatment for this future spike. True, the...

What happens when you don’t blame kids for bad behavior? An elementary school in Columbus, Ohio is trying to find out. Click on the link below to read an article from The Atlantic about innovative approaches - based on brain science - to student discipline by teaching self-regulation and impulse control techniques. https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2018/05/ohio-ave-elementary-school-discipline/559952/

Patients would carry soda into Dr. Gerard Clancy’s office, with cigarettes tucked away for after therapy. Often victims of abuse or violent crime, they would seek soothing but risky behaviors to cope. Overweight. Chronic pain. Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Type II diabetes. His former patients will die younger than they should, he said. Clancy conducted therapy sessions until he became president of the University of Tulsa in 2016. At his psychiatry clinic, he saw firsthand how a...

Great resource Cheryl! Thank you so much for sharing this.

Trauma impacts lives on the individual, familial, community and societal level. Historically, we have addressed the resulting symptoms of trauma with treatments of therapy, education, and all too often imprisonment. However, putting preventative factors in place can avert the symptoms, outcome and resulting negative impacts. Prevention begins with understanding how trauma impacts lives and why it impacts our brains and bodies before we can fully understand what we can do to mitigate its...

The Potts Family Foundation through its Raising Resilient Oklahomans initiative partnered this past week with the Ardmore Behavioral Health Collaborative and Ardmore Literacy Leadership to host a very successful virtual screening and discussion of the award-winning documentary Resilience: The Biology of Stress & the Science of Hope. As we always do, the weekend screening period was followed by a moderated panel discussion of professionals, mostly local, who frequently work with children...

Interpersonal trust is a crucial component of healthy relationships. When we interact with strangers, we quickly gage whether we can trust them. And those important social skills may be shaped by our earliest relationship with caregivers. Adolescents who had an insecure attachment to their mothers as toddlers are more likely to overestimate the trustworthiness of strangers, according to a new study from the University of Illinois. “The idea is to understand whether early attachment...

A new resource looks at the preva­lence of trau­ma among youth in the juve­nile jus­tice sys­tem and out­lines ways to pro­tect their men­tal and emo­tion­al well-being. The fact sheet , pro­duced by the Amer­i­can Acad­e­my of Pedi­atrics (AAP), is part of a grow­ing call from child and ado­les­cent health experts to reform long­stand­ing juve­nile jus­tice poli­cies and practices. “Efforts aimed at improv­ing our juve­nile jus­tice sys­tem must extend beyond issues relat­ed to youth arrest...