July 2018

Toward the end, the pain had practically driven Elizabeth Martin mad. By then, the cancer had spread everywhere, from her colon to her spine, her liver, her adrenal glands and one of her lungs. Eventually, it penetrated her brain. No medication made the pain bearable. A woman who had been generous and good-humored turned into someone hardly recognizable to her loving family: paranoid, snarling, violent. Sometimes, she would flee into the California night in her bedclothes, “as if she were...

Research suggests that early childhood education primes young minds for academic and social success. And yet in much of the country, many parents struggle to find any day care at all. To get more young children into high-quality programs, an increasing number of cities and states are imposing academic standards and other rules on child care providers and using public money to expand access to them. At least 16 states now offer preschool programs to more than a third of 4-year-olds, up from...

Marcia Lowry, the crusading child welfare attorney, works out of an office on Hardscrabble Road. She didn’t name this leafy suburban New York lane, but it suits her reputation: The slew of big-ticket settlements she’s secured against large foster care systems made her one of the nation’s most respected, winning and – in some quarters – loathed attorneys for vulnerable youth. Now, thanks to significant new funding from an anonymous Tulsa-based foundation, her small legal aid firm A Better...

I'm a victim of the multi-generational effects of trauma, including poverty, alcoholism, mental illness, and food insecurity. Growing up in North Philadelphia, I lived in various houses with inhumane conditions. Houses that were without heat and or running water. Unsanitary houses where we had to use shoe boxes for toilets. Houses that smelled of mold and mildew, sometimes without electricity. At times there was a lot of darkness—I can't be in the dark, bad things happened in the dark. When...

(Cissy's note: We have over 150 communities on ACEs Connection. This is a global movement with a growing international community. We are thrilled to have two more amazing ACEs Connection Community Managers to work with, learn from, and support. Please meet @Elizabeth Perry, @Denise Connors & welcome them as they launch the Atlantic Canada ACE & TIP Network ). We in Atlantic Canada are interested in advancing ACE Awareness & Trauma Informed Practice...

What began in 2017 as an inquiring to SAMHSA’s National Center for Trauma Informed Care Director, Dr. Joan Gillece, to host a webinar of cities becoming trauma-responsive, surprisingly brought a response that Johnson City has emerged as a leader in creating a community system of care. Join Becky Haas, Dr. Andi Clements and Dr. Joan Gillece as we co-host this free event on September 5 th in Johnson City, Tennessee. Our hope is that this event can accelerate other cities towards development of...

The day a gunman fired into a crowd of 22,000 people at the country music festival in Las Vegas, hospital nursing supervisor Antoinette Mullan was focused on one thing: saving lives. She recalls dead bodies on gurneys across the triage floor, a trauma bay full of victims. But “in that moment, we’re not aware of anything else but taking care of what’s in front of us,” Mullan said. Proud as she was of the work her team did, she calls it “the most horrific evening of my life” — the culmination...

First, let me situate you: doors clanging, people yelling, guards barking. The noise in prison is non-stop, and nighttime is often louder than daytime, because at night many inmates cry out, haunted by their trauma. I often felt like joining them. For the first three years, the cacophony in here drove me absolutely bonkers. I walked around like a zombie — neither dead nor alive. I had a long beard and no one to talk to. My hygiene was so bad that a newfound friend counseled me on the...

This piece combines and updates two posts from spring 2018. During the summer, it's safe to assume children are using technology more than usual. Managing all that bleeping and buzzing activity causes anxiety in many parents. Here's a roundup of some of the latest research, combined with some of our previous reporting, to help guide your decision-making around family screen use. [For more on this story by ANYA KAMENETZ, go to...

Donn Trenner, 91, estimates that two-thirds of his friends are dead. “That’s a hard one for me,” he said. “I’ve lost a lot of people.” As baby boomers age, more and more folks will reach their 80s, 90s — and beyond . They will not only lose friends but face the daunting task of making new friends at an advanced age. [For more on this story by Bruce Horovitz, go to https://khn.org/news/feel-like-the-last-friend-standing-heres-how-to-cultivate-new-buds-as-you-age/ ]

Following an investigation by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting, officials in Arizona are calling for the closure of a Phoenix office building used by a government contractor to hold immigrant children. Neighbors first saw immigrant children being ushered into the vacant Phoenix office building, which is leased by defense contractor MVM Inc., on June 4, Reveal reported Friday. Although it’s unclear how long children remained in that office, neighbors report they didn’t see...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) include stressful and potentially traumatic events associated with higher risk of long-term behavioral problems and chronic illnesses. Whether parents’ ACE counts (an index of standard ACEs) confer intergenerational risk to their children’s behavioral health is unknown. In this study, we estimate the risk of child behavioral problems as a function of parent ACE counts. METHODS: We obtained retrospective information on 9 ACEs...