We Better Be Out There Marching to End the Trauma By Andrea Blanch and Mariana Chilton We claim to be a social movement of people committed to eliminating the causes and addressing the consequences of violence and trauma. If we are serious, we need to be out there marching on Saturday. To date our movement has largely focused on ACEs – ten common forms of childhood adversity that increase risk for a host of health and social problems. Other forms of “toxic stress” such as poverty and racism...

APHA 2017 ATLANTA - CALL FOR ABSTRACTS - DEADLINE FEB 23 The Mental Health Section of the American Public Health Association (APHA) invites you to submit abstracts for the 2017 Annual Conference in Atlanta, Georgia, November 4 – 8, 20017. Submit your abstract to the Mental Health Section here: https://apha.confex.com/apha/2017/mh.htm Our conference program supports the behavioral health field’s shift towards a population health framework. We recognize that stressors are experienced across...

The membership of ACEsconnection represents a new wave of thinking about health and social problems.  Unfortunately, this new thinking has not yet permeated policy discussions in Washington, particularly in the mental health arena.  I hope...

Andrea Blanch, PhD David Shern, PhD   In June, the Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act of 2015 (H.R. 2646) was introduced by Reps. Tim Murphy (R-PA) and Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX).  Several groups have applauded the bill for...

By David L. Shern, Ph.D. and Andrea K. Blanch, Ph.D.   At the 2015 Annual Meeting of the Society for Prevention Research recently held in Washington, D.C., David Orszag, the former director of the Office of Management and Budget and the...

By Andrea Blanch and David Shern   Two weeks ago, Liberia was officially declared “Ebola free.”   Liberia was ground zero of the Ebola epidemic, with confirmed cases in all 15 counties and almost 5,000 Ebola-related deaths. ...

By David Shern and Andrea Blanch   Nothing garners more public and policy attention to mental illness than mass shootings involving a shooter diagnosed with a mental illness.  Unfortunately, the end result of this attention is almost always...

By Andrea Blanch and David Shern   In Kansas City, local leaders have created an innovative vision for a healthier community .  Healthy KC  is a partnership of the local Chamber of Commerce, KC Blue Cross/Blue Shield, and a number of...

By David Shern and Andy Blanch   In a recent New York Times Op-ed , T.M. Luhrmann expands on a recent paper by the British Psychological Association on redefining mental illness.  She makes several important points about mental health...

By David Shern, Ph.D. and Andrea Blanch, Ph.D. Whenever doing the right thing and doing the smart thing coincide, it increases the chances that something will happen. Elsewhere, we have presented data demonstrating that investments in...

By Andrea Blanch, Ph.D. and David Shern, Ph.D.   It is becoming increasingly clear that toxic stress and trauma play an important role in the development of mental health and addictive disorders. We have recently explored some of the...

By David Shern, Ph.D. and Andrea Blanch, Ph.D. The outbreak of measles in Disneyland highlighted the importance of vaccinating children against contagious diseases.  Vaccinations prevent children from getting ill and from spreading disease to...

By Andrea Blanch, Ph.D. and David Shern, Ph.D. As Thomas Insel, Director of the National Institute of Mental Health wrote in a recent blog , precision medicine is a hot new topic in the research world. The basic idea is simple: Get the “right...

Below are links to some publications that might be of interest.  The first link is to two papers - a research review and an analytic synthesis - that argue for a public health approach to toxic stress and trauma; the second ...