October 2017

Just after lunchtime, on a blistering summer day in Washington, D.C., cultural psychologist Yulia Chentsova-Dutton is showing me the stars. They’re on her computer screen at Georgetown University, and labeled disturbingly: insomnia, anhedonia, headache, social withdrawal, chronic pain, and more. Each star represents a somatic or emotional sensation linked to depression. Chentsova-Dutton’s father was an astronomer. She’s found a way to use what he studied, the night sky, to understand her own...

Cissy's note: This has been an exceptional series. Here's more about the entire series and an excerpt from the most recent essay. In collaboration with Rise magazine , Jezebel is publishing a series of articles written by parents affected by the child welfare system. This post, the third in the series, features narratives by LaQuana Chapelle and Lashonda Murray, two mothers who themselves grew up in foster care. In New York City, an estimated 25 to 40 percent of mothers with children in...

Register now for "Bruised Reeds and Smoldering Wicks" - A study of trauma-informed ministry and compassionate care for children from hard places and situations. Join us for the morning to hear from Rev. Dr. Chris Haughee, chaplain for Intermountain Residential Services in Helena, Montana. Chris’ professional work with children who have lived through significant trauma, his own personal experience as an adoptive father of two and his work with the Adverse Childhood Experiences ACEs study led...

One of the resources shared with participants in the Sept. 13-14 convening of First Spouses in Milwaukee to address trauma was a series of state information sheets that featured data on ACEs prevalence and ACEs/trauma-informed/resilience-building initiatives. These one-pagers provided a succinct summary of state highlights on trauma that in some instances were well known to the First Spouses but for others, provided new information. In partnership with state trauma leaders, ACEs Connection...

We Were Eight Years in Power , the new book by Ta-Nehisi Coates, is not precisely new. It’s a collection of eight articles Coates wrote for the Atlantic, starting in 2007 during Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, concluding this year with the start of Donald Trump’s administration, and including some of Coates’s greatest hits, including his much-lauded 2014 article “The Case for Reparations.” What’s new is that each of the eight articles isintroduced by an essay in which Coates lays out...

In this graphic, each colored square represents a day in which at least one mass shooting took place in the United States.

Fifty-nine people are dead from the worst mass shooting in recent U.S. history. As happened after Omar Mateen killed 49 people at a nightclub with a gun, or after Dylann Roof killed nine African Americans with a gun, or after Adam Lanza killed 26 children and teachers with a gun, or after James Holmes killed 12 moviegoers with a gun, the call for action from some policy makers has centered on one commonality between these events: All of the killers had brains. “Mental-health reform is the...

Jeremy Richman’s life, and his career as a neuroscientist, took a radical turn Dec. 14, 2012, when his daughter, Avielle, was one of 20 children who died in a mass shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. He and his wife founded the Avielle Foundation, dedicated to funding research into how violence and compassion are fostered in the brain. Richman spoke Tuesday at St. John Fisher College. Below is an edited transcript of a telephone interview earlier that day. [For more on this story by Justin...

On the corner of Washington and Decatur streets in Montgomery, Alabama, a visitor can feel history pressing in from every side. Just down the street is the church where Martin Luther King Jr. and others planned the Montgomery bus boycott. Two blocks away sits the First White House of the Confederacy, where Jefferson Davis once lived. But although the city is crowded with historical markers—including, by one count, 59 Confederate memorials, and a similar number devoted to the civil-rights...

All children have incredible potential, most with parents, teachers and other adults in their lives who want the best for them. Unfortunately, many schools, particularly those that serve children with the greatest need, face obstacles that limit children's educational success -- rote curriculums, insufficient support for teachers and scant extracurricular options, to name a few. Educators, parents and policymakers have long acknowledged such obstacles, but we now know that there is another...

Investing in children’s health is a sound economic decision with a long-term impact on achieving sustainable human, social, and economic development. The Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky’s Investing in Kentucky’s Future initiative was designed as a partnership with local community health coalitions to reduce the risk that today’s children will develop chronic diseases as they grow into adults. The Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky is a statewide nonprofit organization working to address the...

How do children become delinquent? Well, there are many theories about that! In one of the most rigorous reviews of juvenile criminal justice records, the Adverse Childhood Experiences in the New Mexico Juvenile Justice Population study revealed that the frequency of early abuse, neglect and family chaos of incarcerated youth reaches staggering rates, skyrocketing above national averages. Join our Free WEBINAR next Friday (the 13th) where Robbyn Peters Bennett will discuss the research with...