November 2018

A persistent challenge of social movements is to translate early energy and activism into long-term changes in policies and institutions. This struggle is much on the minds of advocates and funders a year after the #MeToo hashtag went viral with a tweet from Alyssa Milano in response to the Harvey Weinstein allegations. Over the weekend, a full-page ad appeared in the New York Times, asking “Where Do We Go From Here?” A letter signed by scores of women’s groups, progressive organizations,...

Sober October has ended and now (hopefully sober) November begins. Fall brings the annual three-fold challenge: Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s. This year, the midterm elections have created a fourth stressor and some of us are barely muddling through. Recent events have been especially terrifying—mass shootings, pipe bombs, a new report of catastrophic climate change, and the ongoing nightmare that is the Justice Department’s current mandate. Recently, Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa)...

Neurosurgeon Edie Zusman , a real-life Doogie Howser who started medical school at 19 and has completed some 6,000 brain and spinal surgeries, said what landscape architects do saves far more lives than what she does. The early prevention of disease reduces the need for surgeries. Prevention is made possible by eating healthy foods and walking and getting exercise in green environments that lower stress and improve well-being. At the ASLA 2018 Annual Meeting , Zusman and a number of...

"Having a history of trauma or loss does not by itself predispose you to have a child with disorganization. It is the lack of resolution that is the essential risk factor. It is never too late to move toward making sense of your experiences and healing your past. Not only you but also your child will benefit." That's a quote from the book Parenting from the Inside Out: How A Deeper Self-Understanding Can Help You Raise Children Who Thrive, which was published fifteen freaking years ago. It's...

Jerry Moe, M.A., Betty Ford Center National Director of Children’s Programs. Justin is the youngest in his family. He’s a remarkable kid who came into the children’s program with a smile, rolled up his little sleeves, and worked intently throughout. This eight- year-old lives in a “looking-good family”, where trouble and stress lurk just beneath the surface. On the third day, Justin stopped me with a very anxious look on his face. “Will you please come with me to my dad’s group this...

[ ..... Reframing our cultural understanding of how trauma works is fundamental to creating institutional and personal strategies for healing that truly work ......... While there is a growing awareness in.....workplaces and communities about the prevalence of trauma in both personal and occupational contexts - including with children - a nuanced understanding of healing is still in the early stages..... ] [ ....“There’s tons of people getting trauma-informed out there ..... But people don’t...

Ebony, a single mother of three, works two jobs to make ends meet and takes in around $11,000 a year. In addition to a part-time job at a beauty supply chain, she works as a communication specialist at a Jackson, Mississippi, nonprofit, a temporary position that could end in December. She’s hoping her employers will keep her on, and she’s doing all she can to inspire them, including showing up for work an hour early. “I want to make a good impression,” she says about showing up to work...

In Tornillo, Texas, in rows of pale yellow tents, some 1,600 children who were forcefully taken from their families sleep in lined-up bunks, boys separated from the girls. The children, who are between the ages of thirteen and seventeen, have limited access to legal services. They are not schooled. They are given workbooks but they are not obliged to complete them. The tent city in Tornillo is unregulated, except for guidelines from the Department of Health and Human Services. Physical...

Recently Unstoppable, a Planned Parenthood initiative that promotes full equality for women and LGBTQ people, released a new animated film by Alexa Lim Haas that brings to life the fundamental belief that your body is your own. Everyday, I is an animated exploration of the ways the trauma and threat of sexualized violence infiltrate the everyday routines of various women. It focuses not on the offenders’ actions, but instead on the longterm reverberations their acts have on their victims'...

VANCOUVER—A local therapist says reframing our cultural understanding of how trauma works is fundamental to creating institutional and personal strategies for healing that truly work. While there is a growing awareness in Canadian workplaces and communities about the prevalence of trauma in both personal and occupational contexts, a nuanced understanding of healing is still in the early stages, says Barbara Allyn, a certified trauma therapist and crisis intervention worker based in...

Penn State Scranton assistant professors of psychology Karin Machluf and P. Douglas Sellers II, along with their colleague, Christopher Aults from King's College in Wilkes-Barre, have found in a study that heart rate reactivity is a biological moderator between peer victimization (bullying) and internalizing problems (anxiety/depression) in adolescent girls. The researchers' paper, titled "Adolescent Girls' Biological Sensitivity to Context: Heart Rate Reactivity Moderates the Relationship...

Quite apart from the known links between knife crime and deprivation and male gender, there seem to be distinct temporal and geographical patterns by age group among young stab victims, indicate the findings. The frequency of stabbings spikes between 1600 and 1800 hours, attributable to incidents occurring on school days, the findings show. And nearly half of injuries (47%) in this age group occurred 1-5 km from home, reflecting the average distance from home to school for children living in...