October 2017

When I was a kid, I'd always sink into myself just a bit whenever the issue of racism would come up among my white peers. Of course, I was used to talking about racism in other contexts, specifically with my family; growing up as a black kid in South Carolina, I would've found totally sidestepping the issue largely impossible. For instance, I remember talking with my family about racism when, in 2000, South Carolina lawmakers removed the Confederate flag from the state's capitol dome. I...

The three-year project includes creating and piloting a process for integrating trauma-informed approaches into primary care. The National Council for Behavioral Health is leading the three-year initiative, Trauma-Informed Primary Care: Fostering Resilience and Recovery , to educate health care providers on the importance of trauma-informed approaches in the primary care setting. In July 2017, the National Council convened a multidisciplinary group of 11 health care stakeholders, who serve...

https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2017/10/17/how-to-handle-anxiety-fueled-refusals-to-go-to-school/

Learn how two leading San Francisco-based provider organizations are Implementing Trauma-Informed Care in Pediatric and Adult Primary Care Settings . View a recent webinar featuring Dr. Nadine Burke-Harris, Center for Youth Wellness, and Dr. Edward Machtinger, Women's HIV Program at UCSF. The webinar is part of a series on Putting Trauma-Informed Care into Practice: Lessons from the Field hosted by the Center for Health Care Strategies and made possible by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

PHILADELPHIA—During the 15 months that Allen Woods has been held, awaiting trial, at a federal detention center downtown, he has only seen his six-year-old son once. This has been hard on them both, as they used to spend time together almost every day. Woods would pick his son up from school, take him to T-ball practice—all the things that an involved parent does. “A child that was raised with both parents and one is suddenly taken away—he is going to be confused,” the boy’s mother, Chamira...

The California Psychological Association has sent out an "urgent request" by email to a distribution list of about 13,000 licensed psychologists seeking volunteers to help wildfire evacuees cope with emotional trauma. Jo Linder-Crow, the association's chief executive, said Tuesday the email was sent out a day earlier to licensed mental health providers across California. The email warned of "a tremendous acute and long-term impact" caused by the deadly wildfires and called for volunteers to...

Seventy-five years ago, The Atlantic published an essay by a man named Arthur Morgan. The essay, “The Community—The Seed Bed of Society,” appeared in the February 1942 issue, and was later expanded into a book called The Small Community: Foundation of Democratic Life. Both the essay and the book were arguments on behalf of communities, especially small towns, which Morgan believed had been abandoned by modernity to become “an orphan in an unfriendly world … despised, neglected, exploited,...

During the five years Tony Price roamed the streets and dozed in doorways, the emergency rooms of Sacramento’s hospitals were a regular place for him to sleep off a hard day’s drinking. “A lot of times I would pass out, and then I’d wake up in the hospital,” said Price, 50. About two or three times a month, he would show up at a local emergency department. Sometimes doctors hydrated him with intravenous fluids and sent him on his way. Other times, they kept him a night or two. “I’m kind of...

To get to the core of race in America today, read this new book by James Whitman. Whitman is the Ford Foundation Professor of Comparative and Foreign Law at Yale Law School. Prepare to be as startled as this respected legal scholar was when he came upon a meticulous record of a meeting of top lawyers in Nazi Germany after Hitler's rise to power. Not only did those lawyers reveal a deep interest in American race policies, the most radical of them were eager advocates of using American law as...

THE FEDERAL BUREAU OF PRISONS claims its mission is to “provide work and self-improvement opportunities to assist offenders in becoming law-abiding citizens.” When it comes to undocumented offenders, that’s a lie. The truth is that the BOP discriminates against undocumented people by denying them access to essential drug counseling and job training in prison. As President Trump threatens to lock up even more undocumented immigrants, it’s time for the BOP to reform these exclusionary...

Your child doesn't want to go to school. It's a daily struggle that many parents are familiar with. But what if your child refuses to go to school? Mental health professionals and educators say what used to be considered run-of-the-mill truancy could actually be something else. Some cases of chronic absenteeism are now being called "school refusal," which is triggered by anxiety, depression, family crises and other traumatic events. It can lead to weeks or even months of missed school days.

As a native Californian I knew it was important to be prepared for a natural disaster, however in my mind, I was preparing for an earthquake. Never in a million years did I envision a fire storm, let alone multiple fire storms raging across the state and across my community all at the same time! Before the Northern California fire storm our family felt well prepared for an earthquake, we had our camping gear, nonperishable goods, medications, and more staged in an easy to access location in...