December 2015

Nature is good for the soul. Walking in the woods can help with depression , and reminders of the natural world such as plants and scenes of wild places can make us more cooperative ,  less impulsive , and just plain  nicer . There's even evidence that time spent in green spaces helps children's cognitive development . On top of that, the authors of a new study report, it might also have something to do with strong communities and lower crime rates. "Although a considerable...

During the early 1990s, New York City had a sky-high number of kids in foster care. Now, it’s safely keeping them with their families. Elisa Izquierdo was conceived in a Brooklyn, N.Y., homeless shelter and born with cocaine in her bloodstream in late 1980s. Her mother, Awilda Lopez, went on week-long drug binges and cashed welfare checks to feed her crack addiction. Two of Lopez’s other children lived with relatives, removed from the home by the court system. Social workers...

For Rev. Donna Allen’s congregation in West Oakland, the New Revelation Community Church is a place to share with other African-Americans and to find support when facing life’s small and big crises. And for Allen, one of the most important messages is that their community has too often ignored the scourge of mental illness. “They’ll describe being very depressed, like ‘I don’t want to go on. I don’t want to get out of bed, I don’t want to live...

The Bank of America corporate center and the Duke energy center are the jewels of Charlotte’s skyline. These buildings and many others only went up in the last 25 or so years, when the city started its celebrated transformation . It’s now the second-largest banking center in the U.S., and recovering steadily after the recession .Between 2010 and 2013, the population growth here was second only to Austin, and in the next decade or so Charlotte might become the fastest-growing...

Jim, a 37-year-old male client, married with two young children but currently separated from his wife, recently entered sex addiction treatment with the following concerns: I started therapy a few years ago, ostensibly to deal with my anger . But the real reason I sought help, unknown to my wife, was that I literally could not stop myself from seeing prostitutes and sensual massage workers. Over the preceding two years I’d had hundreds of encounters with sex workers, some of them...

Missouri is home to some of the strictest requirements on abortion in the U.S., including a 72-hour waiting period and mandatory, state-directed counseling. Missouri is also home to some disturbingly high gun crime rates. St. Louis and Kansas City each rank in the top 10 U.S. cities with the highest rates of gun violence, and a recent report showed that toddlers shot more people in Missouri than in any other state. [For more of this story, written by Lindsay Toler, go...

He wasn’t even planning on submitting Resilience to the prestigious Sundance Film Festival, says James Redford, whose documentary  Paper Tigers has been screening to sold-out audiences around the U.S. this year. But late this summer, he shuffled some papers aside on his desk, and there was the application. It was due the next day. What the heck, he thought. I’ll submit it, as I have every other film I’ve made, but I won’t tell anyone. Why get people’s...

More people who are overweight or obese may get screened for diabetes under guidelines released Tuesday by a panel of prevention experts. As a result, insured people whose blood sugar is higher than normal now can be referred to nutrition and exercise counseling without paying anything out of pocket for it. "Obesity and overweight have been risk factors all along for diabetes," says Dr. Wanda Filer, president of the American Academy of Family Physicians. "But we haven't had guidelines that...

“And I soon gathered that being perceived as dangerous is a hazard in itself. I only needed to turn a corner into a dicey situation, or crowd some frightened, armed person in a foyer somewhere, or make an errant move after being pulled over by a policeman. Where fear and weapons meet — and they often do in urban America — there is always the possibility of death.” —Brent Staples, “Just Walk on By: Black Men and Public Space,” a 1986 essay in Ms.

Michael Nash’s 30-year career as a jurist has mostly been focused on trying to make life better for Los Angeles County’s children. He is widely credited by lawyers, child advocates and other judges as having measurably improved the juvenile courts in Los Angeles, where he spent two decades serving alternately as the presiding judge of the Los Angeles Juvenile Court and supervising judge of the Juvenile Dependency Court — the latter oversees the fate of Los Angeles foster...

Every morning, the familiar routine plays out in hundreds of thousands of classrooms: A teacher looks out over the desks, taking note of who's in their seats and who isn't. On any given day, maybe there are one or two empty chairs. One here, one there. And that all goes into the school's daily attendance rate. But here's what that morning ritual doesn't show: That empty desk? It might be the same one that was empty last week or two weeks ago. The desk of a student who has racked up five, 10,...

Did you know that 90 percent of people who receive services from behavioral health organizations have experienced trauma? People with mental illnesses and addictions whose trauma goes unaddressed have greater mental health problems and increased risk of heart disease, suicide, and substance abuse. The National Council for Behavioral Health is currently accepting applications for the 2016-2017 Trauma-Informed Learning Community. This is an exciting opportunity for mental health and substance...