June 2019

By ChangeLab Solutions. Shared Use Addresses a Common Problem For the nearly 15,000 Tongan Americans who live in Salt Lake County, Utah, a survey by the local chapter of the National Tongan American Society found two key culprits causing low rates of physical activity within the community. First, the survey uncovered that most residents did not have access to essential resources like gym memberships, exercise equipment, or even safe sidewalks. And second, the survey revealed that residents...

By Fran Smith, USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism, June 18, 2019. A spike in suicides among teenage boys in the United States, reported Tuesday in JAMA, is the latest evidence of a public health crisis that continues to get worse. The suicide rate for boys ages 15 to 19 jumped dramatically in 2017, reaching its highest point in a generation. Although boys have historically had higher suicide rates than girls, a study in JAMA Network Open in May showed the gap has narrowed as suicide...

By Carol Graham, Los Angeles Times, June 17, 2019. To make America happy again, society has to figure out how to make our country whole. Understanding what divides Americans – and what gives them hope — could be critical to improving their well-being and the nation’s. By tracking patterns in well-being, and creating programs based on the results, we can take steps toward tackling the malaise that afflicts many of us, including the physically and mentally stressed, the jobless, the aging and...

Earlier in the year, I wrote a blog post about one of my newest students who was saving food that was served in school to bring home to her family. The 4-year-old girl, a recent immigrant from Guatemala, was storing food in her pants pockets instead of eating at school. Here is a link to the blog post: Pockets Filled With Chicken and Other Social Determinants of Health Yesterday, I was privileged to see this little girl welcome the guests for the end of year celebration as the students move...

The other day I was the guest on Amee Quiriconi’s podcast ONE BROKEN MOM, which is focused on parenting, kids and the effects of trauma on how we manage it all. It was so fun talking with a fellow traveler, helping to get the word out about how we heal from Childhood PTSD. You can check out One Broken Mom here. You can take my online course, “ Healing Childhood PTSD” here .

By Judith Lewis Mernit, USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism, June 13, 2019. More African American men and women suffer from hypertension than any other ethnic group in the U.S. — and many of them don’t even know it. Defined as a systolic blood-pressure reading of greater than 120, hypertension presents few or no symptoms. But it kills, all the same. High circulatory tension “was the leading cause of death and disability-adjusted life-years worldwide,” according to the American College...

Looking for tools to help your organization or community integrate a trauma-informed and resilience-building approach? At Origins, we offer training courses to support you from your aha moment to your action plan. It all starts with The Basics, a 90-minute online training that will provide you with an overview of the key concepts behind a trauma-informed approach. When you’re ready to move from aha to action, sign up for The Resilience Champion Certificate, a self-paced 6-week online training...

“In this bright future you can't forget your past.” -Bob Marley What if the roots of public education in this country provided us with a vision for creating trauma-responsive environments for all students? Lately I have been reflecting on why the principles and practices of creating trauma-informed/trauma-responsive environments in school settings connected with me deep down in my bones. It was a visceral feeling, a sense of validation and resonance in both my head and my heart. The science...

By John-David Ritz, Apolitical. Over 1,500 suicides and 15,000 suicide attempts are reported annually in Sweden. In order to tackle this, Stockholm’s care services have introduced the Psychiatric Emergency Response Team (PAM) – an ambulance dedicated only to mental health care. It’s the first of its kind in the world, essentially an emergency response therapy room that can travel at 70 miles per hour. As it speeds across the city, PAM looks like the conventional ambulance. On the inside,...

With David Remnick, The New Yorker Radio Hour, May 24, 2019. Late in the Civil War, the Union general William T. Sherman confiscated four hundred thousand acres of land from Confederate planters and ordered it redistributed, in forty-acre lots, to formerly enslaved people—a promise revoked by President Andrew Johnson almost as soon as it was made. More than a hundred and fifty years later, the debate on what America owes to the descendants of slaves, or to people robbed by the legal...

The science of resilience is clear: The social, political and natural environments in which we live are far more important to our health, fitness, finances and time management than our individual thoughts, feelings or behaviors. When it comes to maintaining well-being and finding success, environments matter.

This blog tells the story of Claire and her son Davy; it will give you a window into Claire’s thoughts, feelings, and behavior. The people in this blog were created by Dr. Pearl Berman based on her thirty years of experience in the field of child abuse, neglect, sexual abuse, and exploitation. If there are any similarities between the people discussed in the blog, and actual people who are living or deceased this is coincidental. By A. Hosack, P. Berman & K. Hecht We are going to be...