August 2016

Please take a moment to read the following from Judge Caietti: With the recent events involving the death of San Diego Police Officer DeGuzman, Passport to Life is cancelled for this Friday. The various law enforcement agencies in San Diego County are participating in the memorial service which is being held at the same time as Passport to Life. The security team for Passport to Life is comprised of a variety of law enforcement agencies, including Probation, SDPD, SDUSD PD, SDCC PD, MTD PD...

Honoring J.D. Guzman Greetings. Two memorial services will be held this week to honor Officer Jonathan "J.D." DeGuzman. Community members are welcomed at both services. * A Funeral Mass will be held at 11 a.m. Thursday, August 4, at Corpus Christi Catholic Church. The church is located at 450 Corral Canyon Road in Bonita. * A public memorial service will be held at 11 a.m. on Friday, August 5, at Shadow Mountain Community Church. The church is located at 2100 Greenfield Drive in El Cajon. A...

As a woman who grew up without my biological father as well, who shares the ACE of that absence, I am always interested in any stories about how others experience that reality and navigate through life. As a child. As a partner. As a parent. We happen to have a leader who speaks openly about this particular experience. Before taking office, the President of the United States, Barack Obama, said: ...I had to learn very early on to figure out what was important and what wasn’t, and exercise my...

One July morning during a research trip to the small New England island of Nantucket, home to pioneering astronomer Maria Mitchell, I had a most unusual experience. Midway through my daily swim in the ocean, my peripheral vision was drawn to what at first appeared to be a snorkel. But as I looked directly at the curious protrusion, I realized it was the long glistening neck of a stately bird, gliding over the nearly waveless surface a few away. By some irresistible instinct, I began swimming...

Every year in the United States, one in 15 children is exposed to intimate partner violence, according to a national survey . Research from a team led by Shelby McDonald of Virginia Commonwealth University finds many also witness abuse of pets in the home, potentially adding to the impacts on their behavior and mental health. The researchers interviewed children between the ages of seven and 12 whose mothers had used domestic violence services in the past year. Of 242 children, one-quarter...

The youth survey recently released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that when it comes to the rates of teenage suicide attempts, young Latinas continue to outpace girls and boys of other ethnic or racial groups in the U.S. Nearly 10 years ago, news stories told of this mostly overlooked national phenomenon among a misunderstood and endangered group but one of the fastest-growing segments of the American population. And major city newspaper editorials called for more...

In 2014, UPenn freshman Madison Holleran leapt to her death from a parking structure on her college campus. Her suicide made national news, and the New York Times decried the " pressure for perfection " causing college students to take their own lives. The article joined a chorus warning of a mental-health crisis at US colleges, pointing to everything from trigger warnings in lectures to long wait times at counseling centers as proof that today's undergrads are vulnerable and easily broken.

Few of us have forgotten the searing images of the impact of Hurricane Katrina on the Gulf Coast, especially how the great American City of New Orleans was left in shambles—a testament to longstanding social and economic problems that preceded the storm and a nation that was unprepared after it occurred. In the decade that followed Katrina—one that included the largest offshore oil spill in U.S. history—recovery across the region has varied, but there have been several success stories. For...

If you landed behind bars for a non-violent drug offense, President Barack Obama wants to set you free. On Wednesday, Obama commuted the sentences of 214 federal inmates, the most granted by a president since the Department of Justice began tracking clemency data in 1900. According to the White House, Obama has granted “more commutations than the previous nine presidents combined.” The Washington Post reports he is issuing an average of seven clemency actions a month (that’s both...

Eight hours of uninterrupted sleep per night—it’s so widely recommended it approaches an axiom. The strange thing is, there’s nothing natural about it. In a landmark 1992 study , Thomas Wehr demonstrated that humans, like many other animals, are naturally inclined to sleep in bouts, separated by periods of activity. Given 10 hours per day of light, instead of the modern sixteen hours of artificial lights-on time, subjects sleep in two symmetrical blocks of several hours each. In the middle...

The theme of trauma was selected for this year’s annual summer Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) Day because “clergy responses to trauma an have a significant impact on our own healing and in healing our communities,” as described in the planning committee welcome letter. Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore hosted the gathering of over 100 pastoral students from the Maryland, Washington, DC, and Northern Virginia region. Planning Committee Chair Ty Crowe, director of the Hospital’s Spiritual...

Suicide is a rare, but emotionally devastating, event. I am sometimes criticized for minimizing its impact. That is not my purpose. Completed suicides number slightly less than 43,000 in 2015. For every suicide, there are a reported 25 attempts. Ideation strikes many more. If we examine the rate of suicide in our country, I believe it can guide us to a greater state of understating about the emotional health of our population. I know determining the results are more difficult, but if our...