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I didn’t think our relationship would last, but neither did I think it would end so soon. My patient had struggled with bipolar disorder his entire life, and his illness dominated our years together. He had, in a fit of hopelessness, tried to take his life with a fistful of pills. He had, in an episode of mania, driven his car into a tree. But the reason I now held his death certificate — his sister and mother in tears by his bed — was more pedestrian: a ruptured plaque in his coronary...

This infographic from FPG's Race, Culture, and Ethnicity Committee is the fourth in a public awareness series that addresses racial inequity. Please note: What Racism Looks Like was originally designed for a poster format and will require zooming in on some sections to view as a PDF. [To download this infographic, go to http://fpg.unc.edu/resources/what-racism-looks-infographic ]

You have an important deadline at work, and you need take the car to the repair shop. You skip breakfast, drop off the car, and get a ride to your job. By noon your stomach is growling. Just before lunch, your boss walks up and asks you to take care of something urgent. What do you do? We depend on our boundaries help us cope with challenges every day. They are a necessary part of life, but they can be hard to define exactly. What does it mean to have healthy boundaries, and how do you put...

The medical profession now broadly recognizes that there is much more to good health than having affordable access to excellent medical care. In particular, housing difficulties are seen as comprising an important determinant in the underlying health condition of many families, and they often are a factor in acute episodes of illness. Poor living conditions can trigger such developments as respiratory problems and stress-related illness, and many falls and hospitalizations among elderly...

RSVP here for this free awesome event! The Healthy and Ready to Learn Resource and Training Center is excited to present our second annual workshop day. Join us for this FREE event as we look ahead to next school year and discuss new tools and resources to keep students engaged from day one. New workshops, presented by partner organizations across NYC, will focus on reducing health barriers to learning, trauma-sensitive classroom approaches, and attendance best practices. Breakfast will be...

It’s the last week of May, which means thousands of high school students are graduating, crossing the stage and stepping into adulthood while their families break the “no clapping until the end” rule out of sheer joy. Every student overcomes obstacles on their way to graduation, but many do so while dealing with the kind of instability that most adults couldn’t cope with. According to a study by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, the percentage of homeless people in families...

Trauma-informed care investigates how toxic stress and adverse childhood experiences shape a person's life. The first lady and the governor are committed to raising awareness. "We believe in the outcome. We believe we can truly change the way we treat children and families in Wisconsin," said Tonette Walker. She appeared before the Milwaukee Press Club this week with a panel of experts to address childhood trauma. [For more on this story by Carole Meekins, go to...

Therapists can be challenged to know the right next step 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 choosing between crisis stabilization and trauma work. Webinar: The Choice Between Stabilization vs. Direct Trauma Work Technique Arguably the Most Important Decision You Might Have to Make in Trauma Treatment Date: Tuesday, June 19, 2018 Time: 1:00-2:00...

On May 22, I had the opportunity to experience a presentation by DeAngelo Mack on the WellSpace Health Sacramento Violence Intervention Program, Trauma and ACEs. The presentation was at Kaiser Sacramento and was directed to residents in the organization. I have worked with @DeAngelo Mack, @Chris Cooper and @Esmeralda Huerta through Resilient Sacramento for the past few years and have admired their work in the community, this was the first...

Sexual abuse is so personal - it is between two people, not like business fraud for example. If there is no acknowledgment the abuser is saying, “You meant nothing to me when I assaulted you, and you mean nothing to me now because I will not validate your pain and suffering by admitting to what I did, nor give you the satisfaction of my remorse.” It’s hard to heal when the abuser maintains there is nothing to heal from.

With the link between ACEs and health outcomes now firmly established, many people are asking how to help those who have survived ACEs. Often people are seeking written resources. Having developed resilience curricula that were piloted at the University of Maryland School of Public Health and taught to various high-risk populations, I’d like to suggest some resources. As an outgrowth of these trainings, I developed three books that are skills-based and experiential, since information alone...

Researchers with the Boston Reentry Study were one year into their interviews, following 122 men and women as they returned from prison to their neighborhoods and families, when they asked the kind of question that’s hard to broach until you know someone well. They prompted the study’s participants to think back to childhood. “Did you ever see someone get killed during that time?” Childhood violence, including deadly violence, kept coming up in the previous conversations. The references...