June 2016

At the U.S. Capitol today, United States Senators Tim Scott (R-SC) and Cory Booker (D-NJ) delivered remarks on “the bipartisan commitment to ensure that the effect of incarceration on children and families is not lost in the national debate on criminal justice reform,” as announced by the Annie E. Casey Foundation. Patrick McCarthy, president and CEO of the Casey Foundation, reviewed the findings and recommendations of the KIDS COUNT policy report, A Shared Sentence: The Devastating Toll of...

It's sardine time,” says Aleida Diaz (Elizabeth Rodriguez), scanning the overcrowded cafeteria at Litchfield Penitentiary in the Season 4 premiere of “ Orange Is the New Black .” “We a for-profit prison now. We ain’t people no more. We bulk items.” When the series, created by Jenji Kohan and based loosely on Piper Kerman’s memoir, debuted on Netflix three years ago, interest in subjects like the privatization of prisons was largely confined to academics, activists and journalists. Not...

This story originally appeared in ACES Too High . Although it’s too soon to tell if integrating trauma-informed and resilience-building practices based on adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) sciences is making a difference for the teens living at Home on the Range , a residential treatment center in Sentinel Butte, North Dakota, it’s made a huge difference for the people who work there. They now understand that kids aren’t born bad. “ACEs has enlightened us,” says Mike Gooch, clinical...

[Image by Krzysztof Pacholak ] Even proponents of educational technology admit that a lot of software sold to schools isn’t very good. But they often highlight the promise of so-called “adaptive learning” software, in which complex algorithms react to how a student answers questions, and tailor instruction to each student. The computer recommends different lessons to different students, based upon what they already know and what they still need to work on. Wonderful in theory, but does it...

We hear too little from men about having survived childhood abuse and even less about how that abuse impacts their fathering. This series about fathering as a survivor is helping to change that. The Trigger Points Anthology editors have done a complete interview with Raymond Charles and shared it online. Here's an excerpt. 7. What would you tell another survivor father who is expecting their first child? You have 9 months and counting to help yourself to try and climb out of your own issues...

We hear from Jasmine, who struggled with depression at the University of Chicago. She went to the student counseling center to ask for help (she makes it clear she was not suicidal). They made her get in an ambulance, says Jasmine, “which was really embarrassing.” She was kept in a psychiatric ward for two weeks. She then met with school officials who informed her she had to move her stuff out of her dorm “within 48 hours,” and that she was no longer a student there. “Did you feel it was...

Adolescence is a time of great opportunity, but also turmoil. As many as two-thirds of all teens face the additional challenge of coping with traumatic events such as life-threatening accidents, injuries, illness, disaster, or violence or sexual or emotional abuse and exploitation. That figure rises to closer to 100 percent for those who live in families or communities in which violence, poverty, neglect, racism or discrimination based on gender, gender identity or disability are prevalent.

The lives of children improved by some measures during recent years, but their opportunities still are constrained by persistent family and neighborhood poverty, says the 2016 Kids Count Data Book . The annual report by The Annie E. Casey Foundation looks at measures of child well-being at the state and national level in four categories. Broadly, this year’s findings show gains in education and health — but some setbacks in measures of economic well-being and family and community, according...

[Image by masha krasnova-shabaeva ] Adverse childhood experiences and sleep disturbances interfere with immune system regulation, shows research from the University of Eastern Finland. These changes were observed in a population that already carried a significant burden of psychological symptoms such as depression. Major depressive disorder (MDD), adverse childhood experiences and sleep disturbances are all characterised by increased physical morbidity and changes in the way our immune...

Before I gave birth, I made three calls: one to Oscar, my health-insurance company; one to the New York state exchange through which I receive my insurance, thanks to the Affordable Care Act; and one to Child Health Plus, New York’s “ health insurance program for kids ,” through which my toddler daughter receives her coverage and with which I wanted to enroll my son. No problem, a representative of Oscar assured me. My infant would be covered under my plan for the first 48 hours. No problem,...

One person in 113 was displaced from her home in 2015 by conflict and persecution and is now an asylum-seeker, internally displaced or a refugee, the UN refugee agency says Monday in a new report. In all, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees says in its Global Trends report, 65.3 million people were displaced last year, a new record. Here’s more from the agency: To put it in perspective, the tally is greater than the population of the United Kingdom – or of Canada, Australia and New Zealand...

It’s June, and the third-year students at St. Louis University School of Medicine are getting out of anatomy labs and lecture halls and into their first clinical rotations with patients. The doctors in training can be easily identified by their short, white coats and stethoscopes around their necks. Earlier this month, when those students listened intently to their first grand rounds presentation of the new academic year, it was telling that the topic was toxic stress and children. It was...