April 2016

Human brains simplify information under stress. Largely out of awareness, we have a tendency to categorize experiences into extremes of good and bad, black and white, right or wrong. Most of life, however, happens in the gray areas. We lose the subtleties that are always there if we are too quick to know. When I take something personally or feel stung by something someone said or did, I try to remind myself to get curious about other meanings, other ways of understanding the moment. For...

As the connection between exposure to trauma and long-term health conditions becomes clear, the health care sector is beginning to focus on how to best care for patients with a history of trauma. For many people, trauma may increase their risk of serious health issues leading to poor health outcomes and higher medical and social service costs. Health care providers can address patients’ traumatic experiences and their associated health effects by implementing trauma-informed approaches to...

The Attitudes Related to Trauma-Informed (ARTIC) Scale is the first psychometrically valid measure of TIC published in the peer reviewed literature. It measures service providers’ attitudes favorable or unfavorable toward TIC. Get more information and join a FREE webinar about the ARTIC.

In the UK, nearly 10,000 young women are diagnosed with breast cancer every year and the treatment for many is mastectomy – the surgical removal of one or more of their breasts. It's easy to assume that the effect on their body image will be negative, and UK guidelines currently state that all mastectomy patients should be told about options for reconstructive surgery. However, a key message to emerge from a new survey of young women who have undergone mastectomy is that there is huge...

If you're a regular listener to the Standard, you may remember Courtney Meeks . She's homeless and pregnant. When we met her in January, Meeks was standing at the corner of a busy intersection in Austin asking drivers for money. Back then, she thought she was really close to giving birth. Some of her other uncertainties were also part of the story we aired. Listeners responded in force. Many of you wrote saying Ms. Meeks should get in touch with local nonprofits and ask for help. Joy Diaz...

For decades, Cassandra Steptoe felt like she couldn't talk about her HIV diagnosis with anyone. "I couldn't forgive myself for getting HIV," says Steptoe, who spent much of her early adult life in and out of jail for shoplifting and burglaries linked to her IV drug use. "But someone told me a long time ago, if you are looking for a reason to feel shame, you can always find it. I learned to look for something else: forgiveness." It wasn't until Steptoe, now 59 and a grandmother, was in her...

Alcohol, Cannabis , trauma? Cannabis, or marijuana, has been deemed the "gateway" drug for years, carrying the stigma that its use is a pathway for potential abuse/use of "harder drugs". Although the studies have shown that alcohol as the actual gateway drug Cannabis is still attributed to drug use. What is hardly mentioned is the fact that trauma, sustained over long periods of time, actually alters the brain's prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for risk taking behaviors, moral...

Disparities between the health of whites vs. that of minorities in the United States are wide and pervasive, and have been for decades. Some of the largest and most persistent health gaps are between whites and blacks. Black Americans experience significantly higher rates of cardiovascular disease, HIV, certain cancers, diabetes, asthma, and infant and maternal mortality than white Americans do. On average, white Americans live three years longer than black Americans; in high-poverty...

On a Sunday that took its sweet time warming up, Ariana Velasquez sat down in a bustling school cafeteria to write thank-you letters to a few people who are rich, not so rich or maybe not even close to rich. To the Mexican immigrant with three kids in local schools, they're just people who care. "I don't know who they are, just their names," Velasquez said at Santee Elementary in East San Jose. Lifting an ink pen, she put her words to paper in Spanish. "I just think a personal letter says it...

Every parent’s worst nightmare. These are the words one mother used in a magazine article to describe her child having schizophrenia. When hearing her daughter’s diagnosis, another mother blurted out that she’d wished she had leukemia or some other disease instead. Even after the doctor told her that schizophrenia is much more treatable than leukemia, she said she’d still prefer leukemia. * We see schizophrenia as a devastating diagnosis. We assume that our loved ones are doomed to a...

Are you coping with cancer, either as a patient or a caregiver? If so, you’re almost certainly under a tremendous amount of emotional stress — a state that has been shown to weaken the immune system , which is the last thing you want. Your inclination may be to stay home and nurse your troubles in private. But newly published research points to a far better choice: Head out to choir practice. A British study of cancer patients and caregivers found a mere 70 minutes of singing not only lifted...

The federal government debuted a program on Monday to provide housing for the very poorest residents in America. The National Housing Trust Fund is a new affordable-housing program, one that creates permanently affordable housing for extremely low-income households. Julián Castro, Secretary for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, announced that $174 million in allocations for the National Housing Trust Fund would be available soon. He and other officials from HUD, along...