January 2016

Like most families, mine has been busy ending one financial year and beginning another. As soon as the Christmas decorations are removed, we begin collecting records for the coming tax season, reviewing last year’s expenditures and preparing for next year’s needs. If you own a small business, you probably create a profit and loss statement and a balance sheet to reflect your current position. Wage earners sit around kitchen tables and make plans based upon past performance and...

In the Navajo culture, teachers are revered as "wisdom keepers," entrusted with the young to help them grow and learn. This is how Tia Tsosie Begay approaches her work as a fourth-grade teacher at a small public school on the outskirts of Tucson, Ariz. For Navajos, says Begay, your identity is not just a name; it ties you to your ancestors, which in turn defines you as a person. "My maternal clan is 'water's edge'; my paternal clan is 'water flows together,' " she explains. "Our healing...

Service members suffering from PTSD often feel like they’re wearing a mask. Melissa Walker asks them to make one. Walker, an art therapist and healing arts coordinator with the National Intrepid Center of Excellence ( NICoE ) at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center runs an art therapy program in which service members returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan with PTSD or a traumatic brain injury (TBI) are asked to make papier-mâché masks to express their feelings.

You may have heard that we are born with all the brain cells we’ll ever have. That’s not completely true. After we’re born, the brain continues to develop new cells until around age 2. At that point we mostly have all the brain cells we’ll ever have. However, there’s even an exception to this. There’s a portion of the brain called the hippocampus that is thought to be able to produce new cells with memory and learning. Since science hasn’t yet found...

In a new analysis investigating the effects of postnatal depression (PND) on parenting behaviors, researchers have found perplexing results regarding the effects of the hormone oxytocin on mood in new mothers. Oxytocin, sometimes known as the “cuddle hormone” plays an important role in labor and breast-feeding. It also appears to have significant effects on parenting. The findings show that new moms with naturally higher levels of oxytocin tend to have fewer symptoms of...

Before unloved daughters can begin to heal, they need not only to be able to recognize that they are wounded but also to see how the wounds shape their behaviors. It may seem counterintuitive but this is a process that can take years, not a single epiphany. As one daughter, 39, told me: “ My relationships have been a disaster. Lovers and friends alike complain that I’m too needy, too clingy, and they feel smothered. When they pull back, I cling even more. My therapist pointed...

Solitary confinement consists of placing an inmate alone in a locked room or cell, with minimal or no contact with people other than staff of the correctional facility. A variety of terms are currently used to describe solitary confinement, especially when discussing detained youth. Seclusion. Secure Housing Unit. Special Intervention Unit. Disciplinary Room Time. Segregation. Room confinement. Medical isolation. Reflection time. However, in the eyes of a child locked alone in an empty cell...

Happy New Year! The Board of Supervisors has designated January as the fourth annual Positive Parenting Awareness Month in Santa Cruz County. As in years past, I’m using this month’s column to reflect on the importance of positive parenting and encourage families to use local resources that support parents, such as the Triple P — Positive Parenting Program. If you have a parenting question for next month’s column, please email me at triplep@first5scc.org. Raising...

Before one brick is laid, developers, in most cases, have to examine whether the structure they want to build would damage the environment in any way. You can’t simply plop a block of condos down on a space if it would make it harder for certain native bird or plant species to live there. But what if those condos would make it harder for certain people native to that area to live there also, namely by reducing the level of existing affordable housing? That’s the question behind...

We all love babies. We are wired, both men and women, to lean in, connect eye-to-eye, and utter cooing sounds and silly words that make us, and them, smile. We take – and post – endless pictures; we brag pretty much to anyone who will listen. Even politicians love them: Who among us can remember the last time a politician running for office declined to smooch the forehead of a grinning baby? So how is that we also fail to meet their needs at such staggering proportions in this...

Please welcome Jennifer Hossler, who is the new community facilitator for the Mobilizing Action for Resilient Communities (MARC) Project for the ACEs Connection Network. A social worker by trade and a humanitarian at heart, Jennifer has 18 years of experience working with traumatized children and families in a variety of settings. She spent the majority of her career working as a child welfare worker in Minnesota and California.   A Minnesota native (and a diehard Minnesota Vikings fan...

SAMHSA's Center for Behavioral Health Statistics and Quality invites you to provide feedback for the launch of a new endeavor at the National Registry of Evidence-based Programs and Practices (NREPP). In addition to reviewing programs received during the open submission process, NREPP will conduct independent literature reviews to add programs with strong evidence bases to the registry. SAMHSA welcomes comments from community organizations; clinicians; practitioners; advocates; researchers;...