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The happiest places in the world are those where enlightened leaders shifted their focus from economic development to promoting quality of life. “The biggest predictors of happiness are tolerance, equality, and healthy life expectancy,” Dan Buettner, a National Geographic writer and the author of The Blue Zones of Happiness, said Saturday at the Aspen Ideas Festival, which is cohosted by The Aspen Institute and The Atlantic. Buettner’s work found that Denmark, Costa Rica, and Singapore were...

The Radical Monarchs started when Lupita, a fourth grader, wanted to join a Girl Scouts troop. Her mom thought it was a great idea but was concerned that Lupita, who is Mexican American, would be the only girl of color in the troop. Lupita’s mom asked herself: What would it look like to create a social justice troop that focused on girls of color? She casually mentioned the idea to Lupita—and the budding activist would not let it go, begging her mom to get it started. Lupita and her mom...

Last month, I expressed some skepticism about a new study cited by Attorney General Jeff Sessions that blames something called the “ACLU effect” for the 2016 spike in homicides in Chicago. The theory is that an agreement between the city and the civil liberties organization resulted in fewer stops and stop-and-frisks by Chicago police, which caused an increase in violence. You can read the post to see why I don’t find that convincing. So what did cause the increase? And why hasn’t crime...

The Trump administration's “zero tolerance” immigration policy, which led to the separation of children from adults who crossed the border illegally, has fueled a national outcry. Sign up for our ongoing coverage. Send story ideas to tips@texastribune.org. MORE IN THIS SERIES It’s been nearly two months since the Trump administration announced its new “zero tolerance” policy regarding illegal immigration, which federal officials say has led to about 2,000 undocumented immigrant children in...

Every 107 seconds, someone in America is sexually assaulted. The vast majority are adolescent women. Each of us can learn something and do something safely to make a huge difference to reduce risk, prevent trauma, and help more people heal. While victims include men, adult women and children, sexual assault is most prevalent among women of high school and college age: 91% of the victims of rape and sexual assault are female; 9% are male (1) 44% of victims are under age 18 (high school age)...

Pediatricians and school nurses are powerful partners when we intentionally collaborate to improve the continuity of care in the populations we serve. It is the intentionality of relationship building that can bear the most fruitful outcomes to improve the health and well-being of our most vulnerable population, our children. We are far more effective working in concert than in our silos. School communities are looking for guidance, answers, and action to address the explosion of...

By Jazmine Justice-Young/Access Sacramento The term “Post Traumatic Stress Disorder” is defined by the National Institute of Mental Health as a disorder that can develop in people who have experienced a shocking, scary, or dangerous, and overall “traumatic” event. PTSD is most commonly associated with symptoms seen in returning war veterans, but an action brief released on the California Endowment’s homepage redefines the term in a way many services providers seem to overlook. The report...

Is racism an ACE? How about police violence? Outcomes seem to suggest so: "The magnitude of the mental health impairment black Americans experienced from police killing other unarmed black Americans was almost as big as the impairment associated with DIABETES" -Dr. Rhea Boyd. Links within include access to NYT article about the study, the original study, and commentary by Dr. Rhea Boyd.

When I was 12, my mother cornered me in the bathroom of our suburban Vancouver home. “Your teeth are too yellow,” she said, handing me a can of Comet. Though disappointed that little about me ever pleased my parent, I understood from past experience how to get through the current predicament. I sprinkled green powder on my toothbrush and did my best to not let any of it go down my throat while I scrubbed. The things I didn’t do: report her to the authorities; confide in a reliable adult;...

Mike believed he had a good life and felt lucky for all the things he had. He was married to a loving wife, had a good job, owned a nice house and had three healthy kids. Despite all his good fortune, Mike could not shake the nagging feeling that he wasn’t enough: "I should be more successful. I should make more money. I should be where my boss is. I should have a graduate degree. I should have a bigger house. I should have more friends." These were some of the “shoulds” that plagued him...

Four months after he was released from prison, Steven Cave, 36, sat between the couple he calls his parents in Bloomsburg, Pa., and explained how their kindness showed him how to end a lifetime of chaos. “I never was big on words,” he said. That’s because Cave’s earliest memories are of his biological mother using words to mask a perverse pattern of abuse, sending him off with men and women she told him were uncles and aunts. [For more on this story by Micah Danney, go to...

For a thousand years, people have reported feeling better by meditating but there has never been a systematic study that quantified stress and how much stress changes as a direct result of meditation until now. U.S. Army Research Laboratory researchers spent a year collaborating with a team of scientists from the University of North Texas to develop a new data processing technique that uses heart rate variability as a sensor to monitor the state of the brain. Their findings are reported in a...