December 2016

A RECENT study by Brighton and Sussex Medical School (BSMS) has revealed that members of black and minority ethnic (BME) groups are facing barriers to mental health services because of a communication breakdown between healthcare users and providers, along with cultural factors, such as an inability to accept mental health problems and stigma. This study was led by Professor Anjum Memon, who said that mental health services are not meeting the needs of BME communities. "Our study has...

“Tell me about a time you made a mistake.” Every young person has been asked this question in a job interview. After all, what better way to assess someone’s work ethic, perseverance and self-reflection than hearing how they learn from failure or just life’s challenges? Ask any seasoned academic, entrepreneur or parent and they will tell you mistakes were invaluable to their personal development and ultimate success. Yet, despite our society’s theoretical value of resilience, when it comes...

Manuel Dircio, 20, a business administration student at Fullerton College boasts a 4.0 GPA. He is also a recovering alcoholic with a history of arrest and incarceration in juvenile detention — not quite what you’d expect from a seemingly model college student with a stellar grade point. Dircio credits the Youthful Offender Wraparound program (YOW), which he says “helped [him] grow successfully.” It’s what’s known as a full-service partnership (FSP) in Orange County, California, that uses a...

The Washington, D.C., jail has big metal doors that slam shut. It looks and feels like a jail. But down a hall in the medical wing, past an inmate muttering about suicide, there's a room that looks like an ordinary doctor's office. "OK, deep breaths in and out for me," Dr. Reggie Egins says to his patient, Sean Horn, an inmate in his 40s. They talk about how his weight has changed in his six weeks in jail, how his medications are working out and whether he's noticed anything different about...

The unusual topic of conversation seems to follow me. At business meetings, dinner parties, and coffee dates, people keep talking to me about their childhood abuse. It makes sense: my story of abuse motivates my work, and I don’t stop talking about my mission to end violence in every home ( TEDTalk ). Because I share my vulnerable story, people open up to me; some tell of severe cases, others of the occasional slap or scream. It must be human nature to diffuse pain and suffering because most...

When Jay Preskenis watches the Ashland High School graduation ceremony each June from his fold-up chair at Lithia Park, he appreciates the walk, diploma handoff and traditional mortarboard toss-up in a way few in the audience — AHS staffers included — can. That’s because as a member of the school’s Student Services Team, Ashland High’s assistant principal knows exactly what some of those students had to overcome in order to arrive at that moment, and even now, only three months into the...

Louisiana is one of a handful of states that still allows corporal punishment in schools— not without controversy. Earlier this month, The Times reported about the use of corporal punishment in Shreveport-Bossier schools, with more than 3,000 combined incidences since 2010, according to district data. That report sparked sharp reactions among both community members and parents. Despite a nationwide call by the Obama administration this month to end the use of corporal punishment as a...

Thanks so much to everyone who was able to join us for the screening of the documentary film, Portraits of Professional CAREgivers: Their Passion. Their Pain. earlier today. It was exciting to see so many of you interested in this very important topic. After the film, the co-producers hosted a Q&A discussion, which was recorded and is available for anyone to listen to. Link is below: ...

Sometimes there’s nothing to do but take matters into our own hands. A reader who is both a mom and a sociologist decided to do just that. After discovering that one of her daughter’s books required some “subversion,” she decided to do a little editing. Here’s to one way of fighting the disempowering messages taught to little girls by capitalist icons... [For more of this story, written by Lisa Wade, go to ...

The Department of Justice announced last week a bundle of prison reforms aimed at easing the transition for ex-prisoners back into the outside world. The measures include the creation of a school district within the federal prison network, reforming halfway houses, and providing funds to ensure that every former inmate is issued a state ID upon re-entering society at large. If that last reform seems surprising, it shouldn’t be: Most people leaving prisons don’t have state identification,...

The road to Kakuma, in the northwestern corner of Kenya, is long and full of potholes. Occasionally, young boys spot our car approaching and quickly begin pouring dirt into these potholes, pretending to repair them — hoping we’ll give them some loose change for the favor. “Do they ever actually fix it?” I ask our driver, John. “No, not really.” But for the occasional four-wheel-drive vehicle belonging to one international agency or another, the road is empty. The only time the road does fill...

Note: Many survivors, activists and parents get lots of free information and research through the National Institute for the Clinical Application of Behavioral Medicine (NICABM). While t he material they share and sell is geared towards clinicians, social workers and health providers, they make videos and articles available to anyone, for free, for at least time-limited periods of time. It's not totally free. You have to share your email about a million times and will be inundated with...