April 2018

The hard work of Native advocates and leaders to call attention to the ongoing problem of missing and murdered Native women in the United States may finally be gaining traction. In states across the country, lawmakers are giving the issue more attention in recent months. As reported by Rewire.News , a December 2017 Office of the Inspector General report revealed damning information regarding the Department of Justice’s failure to meet some of the most basic mandates of the Tribal Law and...

Imagine you are the tightfisted potentate of a small republic, plotting the least expensive way to care for subjects in fragile health who depend on your beneficence. You could watch while your subjects who are elderly or disabled (or both) scramble to find and pay for healthy meals. And you could open your checkbook each time one of these subjects lapses into a health crisis that calls for a trip to a hospital's emergency department in an ambulance. But you might just try feeding these...

A month ago on a college campus in Newburgh, N.Y., an unusual group gathered to talk about gun violence: community leaders, social service providers, the police chief, the district attorney, a staff member of the United States attorney’s office — and 11 of the most dangerous individuals in Newburgh. A few years ago, this town of 30,000 had the highest rates of violent crime and homicide in New York State. The gathering — the seventh since October 2015 — was part of the city’s response: its...

A federal court has ruled, for the first time, that the federal government is obligated to meet the mental health and wellness needs of Native American students as part of its educational obligations to those children. The families of nine children, who are members of the Havasupai tribe, filed a lawsuit against the federal government in January 2017 for failing students who attend Havasupai Elementary, located in the remote village of Supai in the Grand Canyon. The federal government had...

Read more of this article by Kathleen Martens in the APTN National News .

I'm so grateful to have received seven 5-star reviews on Amazon of my book “Don't Try This Alone: The Silent Epidemic of Attachment Disorder” at https://www.amazon.com/dp/1976120128#customerReviews Samples: “ The world needs this book! Until now, all the books on this I've seen are by therapists… I've wanted to hear what it was like from behind the eyeballs of someone who has done the work.” “ Full of the scientific why of trauma... A must read. Am buying copies for friends.” “ As an...

Without music, I'd have been dead long ago. So I'm especially happy that several reviewers of my book "Don't Try This Alone: The Silent Epidemic of Attachment Disorder" have picked up on the role of music in my healing. “I'm glad to read about the role of music in healing that this book describes,” writes L.S. “When Kathy writes about how she sang Handel's 'Messiah' every year forever, it reminds me how my dad used to take the family to 'Messiah' every year... So healing...” “She shares her...

Join the SAMHSA-HRSA Center for Integrated Health Solutions (CIHS) and nationally-recognized speakers for this webinar to learn more about trauma and its impact, hear the case for adopting trauma-informed approaches, and walk through a methodology for implementing trauma-informed care. April 18, 2018 1:00 - 2:30 PM ET Presenters: Linda Ligenza, LCSW, Clinical Services Director, National Council for Behavioral Health; Karen Johnson, LCSW, Senior Director, Trauma-Informed Services, National...

This most recent blog from Sue Jones is a vivid reminder of the many pieces in the healing-from-trauma puzzle. Including having a trauma-informed person to be in it with you, reminding you cognitively that you are safe and also co-regulating your system, reminding you that the sensations in our bodies may feel real, but they are not true. "When the traumatic memories that have lived in our bodies for years or decades present themselves to us, the experience can be so frightening, so...

I am very excited to announce a new ACEs Connection community, Trauma-Informed Libraries. @Madeleine Charney and I would like to invite anyone who is interested in bringing trauma-informed approaches to libraries to join in the conversation. We are a collaborative of library professionals and library supporters who seek to share ACEs Science with our institutions, organizations and communities; explore and implement trauma-informed approaches and build community resilience through...

HOWLAND — The story of a mother who dealt with her young child wanting to die because he felt he was causing problems between his parents was a strong message shared with more than 120 people who gathered last week for a childhood emotional trauma conference. Parent Chandra Kelly shared her passion for wanting to help her 5-year-old son who she said was being abused and neglected by her ex-husband and faced many problems. “It’s horrible to have to watch your child go through this and not...

Every week in Murfreesboro, Tenn., Zibin Guo guides veterans in wheelchairs through slow-motion tai chi poses as a Bluetooth speaker plays soothing instrumental music. "Cloudy hands to the right, cloudy hands to the left," he tells them. "Now we're going to open your arms, grab the wheels and 180-degree turn." The participants swivel about-face and continue to the next pose. Guo , a medical anthropologist at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, has modified his tai chi to work from a...