October 2018

I’ve never been sure what to expect when meeting someone who’s just tried to take his own life. But I’ve learned to stop expecting anything. Sometimes, the person in front of me barely speaks, staring right through me, lost in a deep catatonic depression. Sometimes he or she can’t stop talking, breathlessly describing what happened as if we’re gossiping at brunch after an hour of SoulCycle. Yesterday, my patient, a 20-something graduate student, swallowed a jumble of unmarked pills, hoping...

In fives states over the last five years, voters and lawmakers have downgraded felony drug possession to a misdemeanor. California was the first in 2014, with Proposition 47. Then came Utah (HB 348) and Connecticut (HB 7104) in 2015, and Alaska (SB 91) and Oklahoma (State Question 780) in 2016. A new report from the Urban Institute looks at the effect of these reform laws on prison populations, economics, and communities and how other states might fare if they followed the lead of CA, UT,...

The world has only a dozen years to act to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius, and stave off the most catastrophic effects of climate change, according to the latest report from the United Nation's top climate science panel out Monday. Without rapid and drastic action, climate change will expose hundreds of millions more people to heat waves, sea-level rise, more extreme weather events—and, according to a new study published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of...

It goes like this . On her walk to work, a driver wolf-whistles at her. She sits in a meeting and gets interrupted when she speaks. She is also told, with a hint of surprise, that she’s pretty articulate. She vents on social media and is told by strangers to go back to the kitchen. She frowns at this—and is told to smile more. These little hits of everyday discrimination are the daily realities for many women and people of color, says Danielle Beatty Moody , a psychology professor at the...

As a woman and a mother, I’ve experienced the past few weeks on a handful of levels. I’ve been reminded of the dark experiences of my youth—even those of us who were never raped or assaulted still remember close calls or unpleasant encounters. Hearing Christine Blasey Ford’s story, I thought of my 4-year-old daughter and the ways I can prepare her to survive in this misogynistic world. But most pressingly, after witnessing Kavanaugh’s and Trump’s outbursts, I’ve considered my 7-year-old son.

One in three teenagers say they know someone their age who has been hit, punched, choked or otherwise physically hurt by their partner. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says one in three young women will be abused before they reach 25 years old . Such statistics prompted the domestic violence prevention group Saving Promise to launch a campaign Monday to raise awareness of the effects of the abuse, especially on people in their preteens to their 20s. The campaign, Don’t Just...

Frank Field (Letters, 28 September and 5 October) and Sebastian Kraemer (Letters, 3 October) are right to highlight the £750m cut to services to support vulnerable families. This is indeed a national disgrace, but has gone under the wire partly due to Brexit. Home-Start and Sure Start were truly progressive initiatives, now thoroughly undermined by these cuts. In 2011, Graham Allen and Iain Duncan Smith published a cross-party governmental report, Early Intervention: Smart Investment,...

Last February, I was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Two weeks later, it was removed by an incredibly skilled surgical team at UCSF. They did the surgery Friday afternoon and I walked out (slowly) Sunday morning. The surgery was the easy part. The months of dealing with steroids, radiation and chemotherapy were miserable. (My hat is off to those before me who’ve gone through this; to those who come after, I wish you a speedy recovery and a good sense of humor.) Thank goodness I have great...

In this extended Law and Justice interview with Scotsman, Kevin Neary, founder of Aid & Abet, we discuss the challenges of safely transitioning from prison back into society, childhood trauma, addiction, offending behaviour, recovery, the need for comprehensive, relationship-based community supports where basic needs are met, the utility of the Adverse Childhood Experience evidence, neuroscience developments and the ACE Aware Nation movement in Scotland, the fact that his family were...

The Brett Kavanaugh vote is barreling forward, but regardless of its outcome, Christine Blasey Ford and survivors like her will be left with the legacy of what they experienced. Ford testified that Kavanaugh assaulted her, which she said contributed to lifelong anxiety, phobia and PTSD-like symptoms. Many survivors of sexual violence report lasting depression , anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder . But new research published Wednesday in JAMA Internal Medicine draws a clear link not...

Violence perpetrated by youth continues to have far-reaching costs for society: It contributes to injury, community dysfunction, poor physical and mental health, lost economic output and premature death. In the United States, an average of 12 young people die from homicide every day, and homicide remains the third leading cause of death among youth 10 to 24 years old. Beyond the impact of youth violence on health and longevity, youth violence also contributes to behavioral and mental health...

As California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) prepares to leave office at the end of the year, the last round of child welfare legislation under his watch includes a new law to ease the path of relative caregivers under the Continuum of Care Reform (CCR), the major child welfare initiative developed during his time as governor. The Continuum of Care Reform is designed to reduce the state’s reliance on congregate care by placing more foster children with families, including more with relative...