February 2017

This story occurred in the early part of the AIDS epidemic. In 1991, I was part of a coalition working to develop local home care options for AIDS patients. This was before the first AIDS treatment drugs became available, so the prognosis for someone with AIDS was not good. They got sick. If they recovered, they were likely to get sick again soon. Back then, HIV disease was still an unfamiliar and frightening illness, even for medical personnel. The general public was concerned about...

Wendy Ellis wanted to know what made some children thrive and others suffer, even when both had been exposed to the same cascade of adversities. She yearned to unlock that mystery on the population level. It was the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) study Ellis stumbled upon while board president of Childhaven, a childhood trauma treatment program in Seattle, that began to shape her inquiry. “The science gave me a vocabulary, a way to understand certain things I had seen in childhood. I...

As recognition of the widespread impact of trauma increases, the desire to provide trauma-informed care is at the forefront of a movement to build resilience and prevent and mitigate the impact of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs). Given the growing momentum for change and the need to bolster awareness of promising practices in trauma-informed care, the Illinois ACEs Response Collaborative researched over 300 programs to develop this Environmental Scan Report. The goal of the Scan was to...

From California Newsreel : Dear Friends and Colleagues, Will you take The Raising of America User Survey? We want to hear from those who have used The Raising of America to broaden the conversation around early childhood! With thousands of events and screenings across the nation, it is time to evaluate how the series is being used -- what's working, what isn't -- and the impact it is having. The survey is 35 questions, will take about 20 minutes to complete, and is anonymous. Please take the...

The Sesame Workshop hopes the friendly faces of Sesame Street characters will help refugee children navigate the complex social and emotional effects of trauma and displacement. The organization is teaming with the International Rescue Committee, a global humanitarian organization, to "deliver transformative early learning and social-emotional support to millions of refugee children in Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, and Syria," it said in a news release Thursday: "Of the 65 million displaced people...

Do you have a history of trauma (i.e., abuse, neglect, psychological or emotional chaos growing up, etc)? Trauma can include a host of experiences, too many to name here. But trauma is a powerful consequence of emotional and psychological chaos. What I mean by this is that despite whatever the traumatic situation entailed, the result is often chaos in the mind and emotions of the person who experienced the traumatic event. In fact, our perceptions of the event itself could lead to symptoms...

You’re anxious. You have been dealing with anxiety for a long time and you are starting to wonder whether or not you need to talk to a counselor about what you are experiencing. You feel that talking to a counselor would help, but you don’t want to blow your issue out of proportion. You don’t want to seem weak or incapable of handling your own business, but this is really bothering you. How do you know when it’s time? Don’t worry, there are a lot of people who are or have been in your shoes.

As a couples’ therapist specializing in anger and resentment, I was overwhelmed with distress calls during the recent election cycle. The vitriol and pervasive negativity of the campaigns, amplified by 24-hour news and social media, created a level of stress and resentment that intruded into many people’s intimate relationships. I even named it: “election stress disorder.” Yet, as bad as it seemed in those days, there was an end in sight: Nov. 8. Alas, from Nov. 9 onward, we’re now having to...

Young people who have grown up in care are far more likely to die in early adulthood than other young people, Freedom of Information figures reveal. They show 90 people who left care in the UK between 2012 and 2016 died in the years when they would have turned 19, 20 or 21. Care leavers make up 1% of the population at these ages, but make up around 7% of the deaths. The government says it is investing £10m in support for those leaving care. While an exact comparison is difficult, the...

Children spend hours in school sitting at their desks, learning lessons, taking tests. There's often not much time for everyone's favorite part of the day: recess. Yet the Centers for Disease Control recently released a report that is urging schools to provide 'more' time for recess. State Impact Ohio's Mark Urycki reports on the resurgence in recess. [For more go to ...

The percentage of students at Washington, D.C., public schools who graduate from high school in four years is at an all-time high. But at 69 percent, the district’s graduation rate is well below the national average, which is north of 80 percent. So in a move that mirrors a broader national conversation about how to help kids who have more than a few obstacles in front of them succeed, the district this year put what it’s calling “pathway coordinators” into its schools to make sure kids at...

Just over a year ago, Wikipedia was at a crossroads, although the company didn’t yet know it. As a business and institution, the online encyclopedia was doing quite well: On January 15th, 2016, Wikimedia Foundation, the parent company of Wikipedia, celebrated its 15-year anniversary with a conference and party at its San Francisco headquarters. With more than 38 millions articles in 289 languages, the website once regarded by academics as a morass of sort-of facts had now become the world’s...