The Department of Children and Families is beginning improvements at its secure juvenile justice programs, including the Connecticut Juvenile Training School, to more effectively identify youth needs to offer more responsive services to meet...
The female prison population has increased 646% in the past three decades, primarily due to inmates receiving sentences for nonviolent, low-level offenses. The United States imprisons more women than any other country, all at the taxpayer’s...
July 17, 2014: the day Eric Garner died on Staten Island. The 43-year-old African-American father of six suffered from cardiac arrest after two police officers administered a chokehold. The crime: selling loose cigarettes. The entire...
A 20-year retrospective study, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and published in the July 2015 issue of the American Journal of Public Health , suggests that kindergarten students who are more inclined to exhibit “social...
On Monday, Newsweek’s Lauren Zanolli reported on the rising suicide rate in Greece. As the country has fallen into economic instability, so too, it seems, has the mental health of an increasing number of Greek citizens....
TL;DR: Modern technology has the potential to contribute significantly to the healing, resiliency, happiness and community of people exposed to adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) - and generally disrupt the way we think interpersonal support...
This terrifying research points to yet another reason that it is critical to reboot and rebuild how our communities function. "...people with the most self-control and resilience have the highest likelihood of defying...
The Sandra Bland story I wrote about yesterday got me looking more into jailhouse suicides. Before I go on, a quick caveat: As I mentioned in my post, the Bland story is still new, and there’s a lot we’re still learning. So I...
Girls are the fastest-growing segment of the juvenile justice population. Despite the significant progress that juvenile justice advocates have made over the past few decades to spread awareness about the school-to-prison pipeline, to increase...
The Annie E. Casey Foundation is throwing new weight into its campaign to close state juvenile correctional centers nationwide, saying they’ve effectively become “youth prisons” where teens are prone to being...
On the bus ride to work this morning, I found myself thinking about the extraordinary contributions of the ACEs framework. Soon my thoughts led to the necessary inclusion in this framework, of systemic structures, such as racism and other forms of...
“Everybody has times in their lives when they’re like, ‘Why has this happened to me?’ And from everything I’ve been through I’ve gotten to the point where it’s like, it happened, so what?” says Lena,...
You have certainly chosen one of the most challenging jobs on the planet. Saving children from toxic homes & helping them heal and develop the coping skills necessary to live a functioning life. How do you manage to deal with so many families (and children) at one time? We all live with the troubled institution that is Child Protection and the lack of awareness, concern and resources our community makes available to abused and neglected children. ...
By Kristin Magaldi Excessive stress has a variety of different health repercussions , but researchers are finding that, for pregnant women, stress can affect the quality of life of their baby. In a new study , David Olson and a...
Secrets are keeping us sick. Specifically, secrets related to past trauma are wreaking havoc on the bodies and brains of those who have been victimized at some point in life. To be clear, trauma does not necessarily mean that something horrific...