April 2018

Picture this: Sonya, a low-income student at a California high school, receives an acceptance letter from the University of Hawaii. While the tuition is higher than a public university in California, she decides to go to Hawaii, even though it means that both Sonya — not her real name — and her mother would have to take out loans. After two semesters of lackluster grades, Sonya loses her merit-based aid and has a hold on her student account (also known as a bursar’s account ) due to an...

Attorney General Lisa Madigan called on legislators Wednesday to require that state hospitals have a trained medical provider available to treat sexual assault patients. “After years of unwillingness and delay, this bill, if it becomes law, will finally require Illinois hospitals to do what they should have been doing all along,” she said. “I think it should be a moral obligation, but because it hasn’t worked that way, we’ll make it a legal obligation.” Just 32 nurses in Illinois are...

Raised in the System,” the first episode of the new season of HBO’s news-magazine series “Vice,” provides an insightful look at juvenile mass incarceration in the United States, managing a tone that’s both grave and encouraging. Our guide is the actor and activist Michael K. Williams, who played Omar on “The Wire.” Williams grew up in the Vanderveer projects, in East Flatbush, Brooklyn, and has been visiting incarcerated loved ones since age seventeen. In 2014, when Williams was appointed...

Echo Yard, Donovan prison's newest unit, is built around a dirt and concrete lot the size of two football fields. The prairie-flat expanse is bordered by sheer concrete walls, rising 70 feet, with ground-floor doors leading into cell blocks. To civilian visitors, Echo looks harsh. To Anerae “X-Raided” Brown, Echo looks wonderful. “You have to earn your way here,” said Brown, 43, a convicted murderer who logged 20 years in other prisons before entering Echo Yard last November. “This is as...

One massive leak of middle-class Americans’ data seems to have the whole world in an uproar. A firm known as Cambridge Analytica allegedly improperly obtained personal information given to Facebook by 87 million people. Then, according to The New York Times , “The firm, which was tied to President Trump’s 2016 campaign, used the data to target messages to voters.” Americans gave this information to Facebook voluntarily. Now that Facebook apparently failed to keep it secure, some Americans...

Ste’Vante Clark has seemed consumed by grief since the March 18 shooting of his younger brother Stephon Clark. At the funeral, he took the microphone and led the crowd in a fierce chant of his brother’s name. When his rage subsided, he became anxious and fidgety. “They’re talking about walking me out already, they’re talking about kicking me out of my brother’s funeral,” he told attendees at his brother’s funeral. “They’re all in here for money, the Christians have never looked out for us,...

“I’m taking a break from the news.” It’s a refrain I hear more and more often. Last week, Dan Rather sent out a tweet saying that “even I feel I need a break” from the news sometimes. His remedy: a walk in the woods. Last year, the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism found that over a third of American respondents avoid the news, the main reason being the “depressing nature of the content itself.” The solution isn’t to soften the news, of course. But if journalism provided a more...

When someone asked me, “Do you treat men?” I realized I needed to openly address mental health concerns and challenges specific to men. From a trauma-informed point of view, there’s not much difference in the course of therapy when working with either men or women. What is different, if anything, about therapy for men? As therapists, we need to be aware of how men may show up differently than women in therapy. Cultural beliefs, norms and expectations shape how men experience emotions and...

Excerpt from the New York Times Magazine. Full article here . "The reasons for the black-white divide in both infant and maternal mortality have been debated by researchers and doctors for more than two decades. But recently there has been growing acceptance of what has largely been, for the medical establishment, a shocking idea: For black women in America, an inescapable atmosphere of societal and systemic racism can create a kind of toxic physiological stress, resulting in conditions —...

Several Spartanburg County service providers and nonprofit organizations know the importance of working together to create a healthier community, especially for the community’s youngest generation. On Monday, a group of agencies and entities that comprise the Spartanburg Partners in Prevention kicked off a month of awareness for the prevention of child abuse and sexual assault. April is national Child Abuse Prevention Month and Sexual Assault Awareness Month. The prevention group, which...

Josette Manning is secretary of the Department of Services for Children, Youth, and their Families. This month is Child Abuse Prevention Month. For the past 35 years since the first national designation by President Reagan, April has been a time to recognize that child abuse and neglect are problems in every state and community in our country. It is also a time to remember that each of us can make a difference and actually take steps to prevent child abuse. Research shows that two...

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — KOAT is taking a look at childhood trauma and how it impacts New Mexicans as adults. There’s a tool used to gauge how bad a person's trauma is and how likely they are to abuse alcohol or drugs, or suffer from depression. As a young girl, Linda Griego Chavez said she learned how to disappear. She said it was her way of surviving. “My father was schizophrenic and my mother was bipolar,” she said. [For more on this story by Royale Da , go to...