June 2016

Out-of-school suspensions dropped 20 percent nationally in recent years, but students of color and students with disabilities are still more likely to face harsh discipline than their peers, according to new federal data . The Department of Education said Tuesday the drop in suspensions from the 2011-12 to 2013-14 school years shows more schools are finding alternative ways to address nonviolent student behavior. [For more of this story, written by Sarah Barr, go to ...

A new study by the University of Toronto (U of T), found the lifetime prevalence of suicide attempts among adults who had been exposed to chronic parental domestic violence during childhood was 17.3% compared to 2.3% among those without this childhood adversity. "We had expected that the association between chronic parental domestic violence and later suicide attempts would be explained by childhood sexual or physical abuse, or by mental illness and substance abuse. However, even when we...

Policy changes meant to improve access to mental health care are among the many notable revisions included in the Affordable Care Act. And new evidence suggests those changes did just that: A recent paper by Timothy Creedon and Benjamin Le Cook in the latest edition of Health Affairsconcludes that mental-health treatment rates for people with “serious psychological distress” increased significantly in 2014. Unfortunately, those gains weren’t equally shared, and a substantial racial gap in...

Every day, when I am walking to work, or just walking through the streets of downtown Washington, I encounter homeless people on the street. The homeless cover many categories, but prominent among them are those with serious mental illnesses. They know no boundaries of race or education; there was a prominent story last year in the Washington Post of a homeless man with schizophrenia who told a judge that he didn’t need a lawyer, that he was a lawyer. When the judge reacted with bemused...

Back in 2014, Rep. Paul Ryan sponsored a hearing entitled “War on Poverty: A Progress Report” and California Congresswoman Barbara Lee requested that Chairman Ryan allow Tianna Gaines-Turner — a mother and anti-poverty activist who has struggled with poverty and homelessness — to testify. Ryan refused to change the witness list, but he did allow her written remarks to be entered into the record . In this letter, Gaines-Turner follows up on her original statement in advance of Rep. Ryan’s...

Imagine how an infant, looking out from her crib or her father’s arms, might see the world. Does she experience a kaleidoscope of shadowy figures looming in and out of focus, and a melange of sounds wafting in and out of hearing? In his Principles of Psychology (1890), William James imagined the infant’s world as ‘one great blooming, buzzing confusion’. But today, we know that even very young infants have already begun to make sense of their world. They integrate sights and sounds ,...

Note: What Makes the Stanford Case So Unusual is a great article, though I'd argue, that it's also totally typical. The actions of offenders are minimized. The actions of victims are scrutinized. The legal process itself re-traumatizes - which is not exactly just. The privilege of being white, wealthy and male is undeniable. The results, for the victim, despite the physical evidence, witnesses and minimum sentencing requirements show why so few women come forward to prosecute. The statement,...

This headline is by a blog writer, Charles Pulliam-Moore, that summarizes a research study demonstrating this dreadful statistic.

Just before 6 p.m., a prison transport van pulled up to a state mental hospital in central Maryland. Inside were two deputies and James Geeter, a 77-year-old man arrested for trespassing at a library in Prince George’s County — and so mentally incompetent that a judge ordered treatment before he could face the charges. Four hospital staffers, including the clinical director, met the deputies at the door that night last month and turned them away. The psychiatric facility was full. The...

On June 8, purple-gowned seniors at Riverside High School in Durham, North Carolina, will line up to accept their diplomas as their families look on with pride. But 19-year-old Wildin David Guillen Acosta won’t be among them. Acosta won’t be absent because he doesn’t care enough, or because he didn’t make the cut. Acosta will miss graduation because he has been locked up in a Georgia jail since January, when Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested him on his way to school. (In...

Austin startup Aunt Bertha has landed $5 million to continue building out its database of social services. The company's website lets people find and apply for social services across the United States. That means people in need, case managers and social workers can access government and charitable services by topic and zip code in seconds. The basic service, which is free, provides information including the location, hours and reviews of the services, as well as tools to connect with the...

The city of Chicago, in partnership and with input from hundreds of key stakeholders, unveiled their strategic plan, Healthy Chicago 2.0 which will guide it's work through 2020. One key outcome is to become a trauma-informed city. Our collaborative has been working closely with the health department and will continue to collaborate and maximize resources to make this vision a reality. We are grateful for the support of all our partners and the department in particular for naming this...