May 2017

Last week, I had lunch with a friend. As we were walking out, she mentioned that she had to see someone who hadn’t always been kind to her, a relationship that caused her more stress and suffering than anything else. She’d been avoiding the meeting, but now it looked inevitable. “She just makes me so anxious,” she said, gritting her teeth. I’ve been there myself. Lots of times. Seriously toxic relationships call for us to cut off contact altogether; others, though also toxic, seem impossible...

Tyler and Alexis were little when they were placed in foster care. For years, they bounced from house to house. They were scared, lonely and unsure of their future. All they had, literally, was each other. Today they are thriving. Excelling at school, living in a loving home, admired and respected by their peers and contributing to our community as mentors for other young adults. Too many children face difficult circumstances like Tyler and Alexis. All children have unlimited potential, but...

When Kendra Wright was incarcerated for drug-related offenses at Oregon’s only women’s prison, her then-6-year-old daughter, Selene, was placed in the care of Wright’s grandparents. Prohibited from speaking to Selene, Wright cherished what little contact she had: Wright’s grandmother would call her while Selene was in the same room. “It was the only way I could hear her little voice,” Wright said. But in 2013, Wright was accepted to the Family Preservation Project, an initiative then run by...

Evan Cardona, a 1st-grader at Mountain View Elementary in Los Angeles, arrived at the Regional Spelling Bee excited to take on a new challenge. Despite placing first in his school spelling bee, Evan’s success had not come easily. In kindergarten, Evan fell behind and finished the year without knowing many of his first-level words. Doctors had told his mother that, because of complications at birth, Evan would likely experience many developmental delays throughout his life. [For more of this...

On the corner of 7th and P Streets in D.C.’s Shaw neighborhood is a boxy building, with the words “Bread For The City” stenciled across the brick facade. This is a non-profit that provides food, shelter, and legal services for low-income residents. A stone’s throw away is a busy coffee shop and a trendy cocktail bar, both beloved by young locals.Elsewhere in the neighborhood are organic grocery stores, glistening high-end menswear shops, a new movie theater, and a gay sports bars, all...

Riitta Excell wore a pair of homemade wool socks: white with red floral patterns and rounded blue toes. Around her were women sipping tea and enjoying plum pastries and chicken feta pie. They wore homemade wool socks, as well. It was nearly 3 o’clock on a Tuesday afternoon, and Pirkko Fihlman’s living room on the outskirts of Helsinki was filled with black-and-white family photos, porcelain figurines of angels and birds, and embroidered rococo chairs. The clink of tea cups fell silent, and...

For several years now, SSRIs (Selective Serotonin Re-uptake Inhibitors" have been so-called first rank treatments for not only Depression (at least for certain degrees of severity) but for PTSD -- such as from psychological trauma. This is especially important to re-consider now, after not only the Culverhouse meta-analysis previously discussed on this site; but also after some recent research from Jakobsen et al from Denmark

“Am I normal?” Robert, a 24-year old programmer, asked me a few months into our work together. “What makes you ask that question right now?” We had been talking about his new relationship and how he was feeling good about getting more serious. “Well I just wonder if it’s normal to feel as much anxiety as I do.” “What is normal?” I asked him. So, what is normal? According to the dictionary, normal means “conforming to a standard; usual, typical, or expected.” But when it comes to humanity...

(Part 7) Fear begets lies that suppress truth. We Americans take pride in our democracy. Abraham Lincoln aptly described it as “government of the people, by the people, for the people.” At the core of democracy is the power of persuasion, the ability to forge a majority to take a position. But it was also Lincoln who warned us to guard against the dark side of democracy, or what he referred to in his speech on “ The Perpetuation of our Political Institutions ” as “mob law.” Our democracy is...

Maybe you are familiar with the story of Cain and Abel ? It's hard to think of a Bible story that has more potential triggers for retraumatization or difficult feelings for children from hard places and circumstances than this story of jealousy, murder, and judgment! So, when it came time to teach a lesson on this story in chapel service at Intermountain , a residential treatment center for severely emotionally disturbed and traumatized children, I had a fair amount of trepidation. As the...

According to mental health charity Mind , one in 6 adults experiences a mental health problem, such as stress, anxiety, or depression, each week. That’s 5.3 million workers across the UK. It’s having a huge impact on employees. Mind’s survey found 42 percent of staff have thought about resigning over workplace stress, and 14 percent have done so. [For more of this story, written by Tom Wadlow, go to ...

Imagine a California without youth prisons because we don’t need them anymore. Young people would still make mistakes, some of them tragic. But instead of being taken from their families and schools, they would receive community-based counseling, mentoring, job training and opportunities that build on their strengths, enabling them to become productive adults. The limited number of youth at risk of harming others would go to small, secure therapeutic residential treatment centers near their...