September 2019

By Jeff Grabmeier, Ohio State News, September 17, 2019 Researchers have long known that childhood trauma is linked to poorer health for women at midlife. A new study shows one important reason why. The national study of more than 3,000 women is the first to find that those who experienced childhood trauma were more likely than others to have their first child both earlier in life and outside of marriage – and that those factors were associated with poorer health later in life. The findings...

By Claudia Deschamps, NBC News, September 16, 2019 There are significant long-term effects of not addressing trauma early. Building resilience is key to helping children overcome traumatic events, like a school shooting or a hurricane. Dr. Julie Kaplow, director of the Trauma and Grief Center at Texas Children's Hospital in Houston, leads several initiatives focused on understanding how resilience works and how it can be used to heal trauma. [ Please click here to read more .]

By Laura Santhanam, Public Broadcasting Service, September 16, 2019 A staggering one in 16 women said they were raped by force or coercion the first time they had sexual intercourse, according to a new study of government survey data. Survivors reported higher rates of unwanted first pregnancy, abortion and an array of other physical and mental health problems, study authors wrote in an analysis published Monday in the Journal of the American Medical Association. What does the study say?

By Conor P. Williams and Rosario Quiroz Villareal, LA School Report, September 16, 2019 It was a busy, if often frustrating, summer for the Trump administration’s many efforts to destabilize U.S. immigration policies. Federal judges ruled in August that, under a longstanding legal agreement, the administration was required to provide detained children at the border with “edible food, clean water, soap and toothpaste.” So the administration announced that it would write new regulations to...

Sonoma County ACEs Connection members Allen Nishikawa and Lena Hoffman at California Policymaker Education Day, 2018 Allen Nishikawa, a sansei, or third-generation Japanese American, majored in political science and American history at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where he participated in antiwar (Vietnam) marches. But it was his experience as a military brat — moving from school to school across the U.S. and even to Japan as a child — that shaped his own childhood experiences and...

Dr. Nadine Burke Harris (l) and Karina Chicote, Churchill Fellow from western Australia meet after congressional hearing After watching the hearing on a monitor in the overflow room, Karina Chicote, a Churchill Fellow from western Australia, and I hustled to the hearing room in hopes of speaking to the lead witness, Nadine Burke Harris, MD, the first Surgeon General of the State of California. She was deep in conversation with others, including a young woman who wanted to tell her how...

By Phil Boas, AZCentral., September 16, 2019 Like many of you, I was thinking back last week on the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington, D.C., and remembering where I was when, in the famous description of British novelist Martin Amis, “the second plane, sharking in low over the Statue of Liberty,” delivered the news that we were at war. To my surprise 18 years later, I’m not thinking much about the global war on terror, the Madrasahs, the Islamic bomb or Osama bin Laden. I’ve...

For many of us who grew up with abuse or neglect during childhood, there’s this steep learning curve around PERCEPTION — and by that I mean being able to discern what is true and not true, what is my responsibility and what is not my fault, when I’m in danger and when, maybe I’m just being paranoid. In a family where there is violence, addiction, mental illness or any of the common family stressors that can cause Chronic PTSD, it’s common for parents to distort the truth: “ NO, your dad is...

Mental Health First Aid USA... ALGEE Bear...Assess, Listen, Give, Encourage, and Encourage... learn more... Dear Kindred Spirits: As an author, blogger, child advocate, and mental health champion, my great passion in life during these most valueable retirement years is to help stop the stigma connected with mental health. This goal is especially critical as it relates to the painful tragedy of children growing up in toxic homes where parents suffer with post traumatic stress. Kids inhale the...

Today, I’ve been thinking a lot about beginnings and childhood . I was chatting with some friends the other night about parenthood, and it spurred on these reminiscences I suppose. Now, none of us have children of our own, but I’ve worked as a nanny for many years and a teacher before that. They have their own experiences with little ones in their family. We were tossing ideas around about what types of parents we would want to be – lenient or strict, open or cautious, etc. – but my thoughts...

One way to help build a child's resilience is to help them and the adults in their sphere of influence understand alcohol and other drug use disorders and their impacts of families. Nearly 80 million Americans are affected by someone's drinking (this does not include those affected by someone's other drug use). These nearly 80 million are the wives, husbands, moms, dads, children, brothers, sisters, parents, grandparents, grandchildren, boyfriends, girlfriends, and close friends who are...

Calling all Grandparents raising their grandchildren or "Kinship" caregivers... I have become the full-time guardian of my grandson. In this new role, I have found there is much lacking in regards to support for "Grand Families" and other Kinship caregivers. Often we grandparents and kinship caregivers assume our roles outside of foster care, which presents many challenges. Additionally, for grandparents, the role of returning to parenting a child can be socially isolating, financially...