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On the recommendation of Mayor Kevin Faulconer, the San Diego City Council on Tuesday approved a variety of regulatory changes intended to boost the supply of affordable housing. As a licensed clinical social worker, this is an extremely important decision for both me and my clients. Recently, I assisted a blind and physically disabled woman who lives in central San Diego. She showed me a letter stating that her rent is about to double, but her Section 8 voucher is not. My heart sank. To...

Millions of women gathered across the world to strike, protest, party and pay tribute to women's achievements to mark International Women’s Day on Thursday. The message was spelt out that much work still needed to be done to achieve global gender equality. To watch this Guardian News video and more, please click here.

If it weren’t for the rats, I wouldn’t be writing about epigenetics and meditation. Epigenetics is one of those scientific subjects that, after a solid and respectable start, jumped the shark. It burst into the scientific mainstream in the last decade or so with fascinating, even paradigm-shifting, discoveries in how genes operate, offering explanations for mysteries from why identical twins differ in the inherited genetic diseases they develop to how our physical environment and social...

What causes depression and anxiety? I have been a practicing psychologist and psychoanalyst for almost 40 years and have seen hundreds of patients suffering from both. In my experience, some factors are obvious. People who suffer from depression and anxiety have experienced stresses and traumas in their development that predispose them to mood disorders. Garden-variety psychodynamic theory teaches us that issues involving loss, neglect, guilt, and rejection usually figure prominently in the...

March 4, 2018 (El Cajon) – The city of El Cajon has dropped charges against a dozen people who allegedly violated the city’s temporary ban on feeding homeless people in public places. Activists, including a 14-year-old minor, defied the ban in January, sharing food with homeless people at Wells Park. They were issued misdemeanor citations and ordered to appear in court. The city’s ban was lifted January 23 rd under a sunset clause when the county ended its emergency public health declaration...

After 17 people, mostly teens, were shot and killed by another teen last week in Parkland, FL, what seems to be a real movement is growing, propelled by kids devastated by their friends’ deaths and wanting to prevent such a massacre from ever happening again. Their rallies and marches and lie-downs probably won’t have much effect in the short-term, as some of the Parkland teens learned as they witnessed — and some of them wept during — a recent lightning vote by state lawmakers along party...

The City of San Diego has announced a new program that provides day jobs and transportation for homeless people. Councilmember Scott Sherman says the program, called “Wheels of Change,” could help address one aspect of a multifaceted issue. A van will pick up 10 to 12 people at a time and take them to do jobs like weed-pulling, brush abatement and litter cleanup. Sherman says this will make city employees available for other jobs while helping people get on their feet. It may also help...

SAN DIEGO (CNS) - The city's library director said Wednesday she is proposing the elimination of fines for overdue library books in an effort to restore access to literacy resources in low-income communities, where as many as 57 percent of cardholders have been barred from checking out books because of outstanding bills. The problem with fines doesn't end with equity issues. The San Diego Public Library spends more than $1 million each year in staff time and other costs to collect about...

Over the past decade, Dr. Nadine Burke Harris, the founder of the Center for Youth Wellness , in Bayview Hunters Point, San Francisco, has emerged as one of the country's strongest voices calling for a national public health campaign to raise awareness and a sense of urgency about the devastating and potentially lifelong health effects of childhood trauma. Since the original research on adverse childhood experiences , known as the ACE Study, was published in 1998, a growing body of evidence...

Dr. Nadine Burke Harris had one of those rare and amazing "aha!" moments a decade ago when reading a scientific paper. Researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had found that the more traumatic events a person suffered in childhood - things like physical, emotional or sexual abuse, mental illness in a parent, divorce, neglect and domestic violence — the more likely he or she was to also suffer from chronic stress-related health problems like heart disease, obesity...

"If you want to change the world, go home and love your family." Mother Teresa February's emphasis on love and friendship is a great time to ponder how our relationships with family and friends can affect our personal health, both for better and worse. Until fairly recently, the medical field has under-appreciated the connection between nurturing relationships and health. The impact of close personal relationships on health now is moving to the forefront in medical practice, particularly in...

With the Trump administration's blocks on arrivals from certain countries, the number of refugees resettling in San Diego County so far this fiscal year dropped 96 percent from last year. San Diego has resettled 40 refugees so far in fiscal 2018. During the same time last year, more than 1,100 refugees arrived in the county. To read more of Kate Morrissey's article, please click here.