July 2018

Rates of anxiety and depression among teens in the U.S. have been rising for years. According to one study , nearly one in three adolescents (ages 13-18) now meets the criteria for an anxiety disorder, and in the latest results from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Youth Risk Behavior Survey, 32 percent of teens reported persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness. And there's more bad news, grown-ups: The authors of two new parenting books believe you're part of the...

Raise the banners and strike up the band, because the “ War on Poverty” is won . Mission accomplished! And that means it’s time to hack down the safety net that saved the nation’s poor. That was the head-turning takeaway from a report last week from the White House Council of Economic Advisors that declared the War on Poverty “largely over and a success.” The report diverged sharply from what even other Republicans say about poverty, to say nothing of economists. (“Do these people ever visit...

More than a decade after Jim Wallace moved into a small mobile home community in Duvall, Washington, he said the landlord threatened to sell the property and possibly make everyone leave. Wallace had been living there since 1982. He didn’t want to move. He also didn’t think he could afford to. If he tried to move his 14-foot, single-wide mobile home, it “would fold up like a cardboard box,” he said. Wallace didn’t own the land he was on; like his neighbors, he was renting it. Leaving the...

Julie Davis directs half a dozen volunteers as they unload a 16-foot truck in front of a Nashville duplex. Bunk beds, dressers, lamps and a diaper-changing station come out of the truck; so do boxes with shampoo, books, toys, a kitchen's worth of supplies. Everything going into the empty two-bedroom apartment has been donated to Re-New, a project that Davis, a high-end interior designer, began eight years ago, when she decided to start using her clients' old furniture to help domestic...

As awareness of trauma-informed care has grown in recent years, we’ve stressed the importance offering an authentic healing relationship in our role as therapists. But another core concept deserves more attention: helping clients become aware of, and nurture their authentic self. At this year’s Psychotherapy Networker conference (which I’ve attended almost annually for about the last 22 years) the amazing Brené Brown spoke about her work on authenticity and shame. She beautifully explained...

Want to get certified in Echo's new trauma-informed nonviolent parenting curriculum? For the last 18 years, Echo has been providing sliding-scale parenting classes in Los Angeles. The 10-class series includes the latest science on the brain and childhood trauma and gives parents many tools for creating the kind of safe, stable nurturing relationship we all want with our children and underpins healthy development. Classes are available in English and Spanish. This fall, Echo will be offering...

Crayons can do wonders. Not just to make colorful rainbows and unicorns but as a vital tool used for communication between students and between the student and their teachers and parents. Janai Mestrovich (BS/MS, Family & Child Development, Ashland, OR) incorporates kid art into her SuperKid Power curriculum. Here are several examples from the kids (pre-K and Kindergarten) reflecting goals the kids said they were thinking about or that concerned them. in the first example, a young boy...

Gabriel Browne, a small farmer in Liberia’s Harlandville Township, thought a biofuel project of Buchanan Renewables, a Liberia-based company that produces fuel for energy plants from biomass, would be life-changing for his family and his community. It was — but not for the better. Mr. Browne, a father of seven children, is one of more than three million Liberians who depend on farming for subsistence. A majority are still struggling to rebuild their lives since the nation’s brutal civil war...

A good night’s sleep may be critical for the metabolic health of teenagers. Researchers studied 829 boys and girls, average age 13, who wore electronic measuring devices that tracked sleep time, sleep quality and physical activity over seven to 10 days. They also recorded five factors associated with cardiovascular risk: waist circumference, blood pressure, HDL or “good” cholesterol, triglycerides and insulin resistance. Inadequate sleep was common — 31 percent of the children slept less...

Twenty-six miles above the Arctic Circle, in Kotzebue, Alaska, there's a plain white metal trailer in the center of town that blends in with the snowy tundra during the winter. From the outside, it looks like an office or a perhaps a single-family home, but it's actually a modern-day ice-cellar, or Siglauq, where hunters from across Inuit villages throughout northern Alaska can donate meat to be inspected, packaged, and served in the northernmost nursing home in the United States. "The main...

Therapists can be challenged to know the right tools when working with families with trauma histories. Dr. Scott Sells, the author of Treating the Traumatized Child: A Step-by-Step Family Systems Approach , is offering a free webinar on using feedback loops. Webinar: Convert Trauma Undercurrents Into Feedback Loops: How to Draw Out “Before” and “After” Feedback Loops for Your Clients Date: Tuesday, July 24, 2018 Time: 1:00-2:00 pm, Eastern Standard Time Cost: Free To register, Click here...

Hermelindo Che Coc learned his son was coming home and immediately began to prepare for his arrival. Nearly two months had passed since he’d seen his 6-year-old boy after they were separated at the border while traveling from Guatemala to seek asylum. On Saturday, the father mopped floors and washed bed sheets at the home in the L.A. area where he was staying. He cooked a big pot of chicken soup, his son’s favorite. [For more on this story by ESMERALDA BERMUDEZ, go to...