September 2016

Sitting safely at the computer in his Chicago home, Ross Ritchell believed he was going to die. The 75th Ranger Regiment veteran didn’t know how or why — he just knew death would come before he could finish The Knife , a war novel influenced by his military experiences during a three-month period between 2007 and 2008. Dying before finishing was unacceptable, so Ritchell wrote like it was an act of survival. “It was almost like I couldn’t write fast enough,” Ritchell says. “It almost felt...

Robbin Taylor picked up a bottle of corn oil, its contents completely solidified. "I don’t know what temperature vegetable oil freezes at," she told an interviewer from WBUR in February 2015 . (The answer: 12 degrees F.) "And that was in the kitchen near the stove"—what should have been the warmest place in her house. Taylor was living with her daughter and granddaughter in Dorchester, the Boston neighborhood with the city’s highest concentration of poverty . Taylor had been unemployed for...

According to a recent report from the Department of Education, one out every eight students in America missed three weeks or more of school during the 2013–14 academic year. (The number among older students is even more dramatic, as 20 percent of all high school students missed three weeks or more.) The results indicate that chronic absenteeism — which is defined as missing 10 percent of a school year for any reason — affects students across the entire country, among all races, and has an...

Teaching is one of the most stressful occupations in the country, but introducing organizational and individual interventions can help minimize the negative effects of teacher stress. The Issue This research brief examines causes of teacher stress, its effects on teachers, schools, and students, and strategies for reducing its impact. Key Findings Forty-six percent of teachers report high daily stress, which compromises their health, sleep, quality of life, and teaching performance. When...

Thanks to Samantha Sangenito for sharing research about holocaust survivor children with schizophrenia on ACEsConnection. The source of schizophrenia is an important issue we should address as a member of the ACEs community. Although you can find advocates who state that there is no relationship between childhood adversity and schizophrenia, the research is starting to show that those diagnosed with schizophrenia actually have a higher rate of childhood adversity that the general population.

Suicidal thoughts do not just appear in a person’s mind. It may seem that someone has no reason to feel suicidal, but depression is a very real illness, regardless of circumstance. For others, there are certain factors that contribute to an increased risk of suicide. Certain groups of people, such as middle-aged men, youth in child welfare settings such as foster care or the juvenile justice system, veterans, and American Indians/Alaska Natives, for instance, experience a higher rate of...

A young woman in her 20s works 18 to 20 hours a day, including weekends, until she suffers a mental breakdown. A man in his 50s toils similar hours, averaging only three hours of sleep a night, until he collapses from a brain hemorrhage. Such are stories of corporate work culture in Japan, where employees are expected to log in an incredible number of overtime hours—often without pay. There’s even a legally recognized term for death-by-overwork: karoshi. The number of compensation claims...

Are we raising our kids in the ways that foster the better side of human nature? While this is a question that many parents have probably asked themselves, it is also the very question that inspired Ross W. Greene’s new book, Raising Human Beings: Creating a Collaborative Partnership With Your Child. Not only does Greene ask us to think more deeply about how we are raising our children, but in many ways, he tells us that we need to reevaluate how we are living our own lives. More than once,...

A strong and loving bond with parents may help protect kids' health for decades, a new study suggests. A well-off home also benefits long-term health, but only if the children also have a warm and healthy relationship with their parents, the Baylor University study found. "Previous research has associated high socioeconomic status with better childhood nutrition, sleep, neighborhood quality and opportunities for exercise and development of social skills. But good parent-child bonds may be...

Results of a new study at the University of Haifa have found that no difference in the risk of developing schizophrenia between second-generations Holocaust survivors and those whose parents were not exposed to the Holocaust. However, an examination of various sub-groups showed that second-generation survivors whose parents were babies during the Holocaust are at higher risk of suffering from a more severe course of schizophrenia. [For more go to ...

At a conference organized by the Institute of Justice in Journalism this week, I attended a presentation by César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández , law professor at the University of Denver and author of the book Crimmigration Law . The term crimmigration, coined by legal scholar Julie Stumpf in 2006, refers to the complex nexus of immigration policy and policing that emerged in the U.S. after 1980. In his book, García explores the rise and consequences of this phenomenon, chronicling how a...

In the early 1960s, Howard E. Butt Jr. was both a prominent Texas business executive and a rising star in Christian preaching. On weekdays, he crisscrossed Texas helping to expand H-E-B, the booming family grocery business. On weekends, he traveled to distant U.S. cities as a preacher on the church revival circuit, appearing alongside his friend, the famed evangelist Billy Graham. He had a loving wife and three doting children. He possessed talent, charm, wit and limitless opportunity. But...