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When Maya Terrell saw the anti-smoking television commercial, she knew she would never try a cigarette. It featured an ex-smoker with a hole in her throat where her larynx used to be. “I was like, ‘Never!’” recalled Terrell, 18. “I was scared.” Besides, she said, smoking is just plain gross. “My friends don’t smoke cigarettes,” said Terrell, of Sacramento, Calif. “It’s nasty.” Terrell is emblematic of a generation of teenagers who appear more knowledgeable about the risks of tobacco — and...

Excerpts here but watch the entire video if you have time. Although it doesn't talk specifically about ACEs it's about the two branches of ACEs . TMD: So we don't usually put our business in the streets. Let's just put that out there. But I have to tell you the statistics. Black women are dying at alarming rates, and I used to be a classroom teacher, and I was at South Atlanta High School, and I remember standing in front of my classroom, and I remember a statistic that half of black girls...

Anita Beaty sees enemies on all sides. Following years of litigation, the emergency overflow homeless shelter that Beaty operated in downtown Atlanta for 20 years will close on August 28. She says that the local government and business community has been after the property at the plum intersection of Peachtree and Pine Streets from the day it opened in 1997. City council members, the last three mayors, Atlanta police, the 1996 Summer Olympics—Beaty fingers all of them and more as forces...

$271,318 . That’s how much California expects to spend per youth this year on its failed state youth correctional facilities, the Division of Juvenile Justice (DJJ). This amount of money could drastically improve a young person’s education, well-being and development opportunities. To give perspective, a four-year undergraduate education at Stanford University costs approximately $276,000. Instead, the money is being squandered on DJJ’s dangerous and poorly designed facilities, which have...

I have just moved house. I never handle moving house very well. I’m the most settled I’ve ever been with family and friends around me, yet when I move house, I become very anxious and feel depressed and overwhelmed by it. I decided to take three weeks off work this time, to allow myself the time and space to manage this move. Now that I have a four-year-old daughter, I wanted to approach my emotions with curiosity rather than fear and take the time to reflect each day to try and find out why...

In one of New York City’s large family homeless shelters, we saw a gaunt, young mother holding her 4-day-old baby who lay limp in her arms. With sunken eyes, the mother watched a YouTube video about mixing formula, while her own mother tried to coach her on the telephone. The young mother told us she had eaten only a single McDonald’s hamburger in the past three days. This was just one of the more than 12,000 families in a city shelter system that is built on a scale not imagined elsewhere.

Prison populations in the United States have been falling for nearly a decade, but the country still incarcerates a greater percentage of its population than any other developed nation. Decades of harsh public opinion and prison-happy politicians ratcheted up sentencesbeginning in the 1970s, leading to unsustainable growth in prison and jail populations. But falling crime rates, tight budgets, and changes to state and federal sentencing laws reversed the trend in 2009, and prison populations...

There are not enough mental health care providers in Marathon County to help all the students who could be treated in schools. But this fall a new, grassroots collaboration will start to put more counselors in schools to help improve kids' mental health. Lee Shipway, a social worker and co-executive director at Peaceful Solutions Counseling in Wausau, realized the need last year after she sent a therapist into the Edgar School District. Edgar officials decided students needed someone on site...

Excerpt from article by Julia Lurie interviewing Dr. Nadine Burke Harris. MJ: What public health responses to this epidemic would you like to see happen? NBH: We’d like to see every pediatrician in America screening for adverse childhood experiences, and making sure that children who are exposed to ACES are getting the care that they need so that we can do prevention. It’s the old saying: “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” Full article and reminder that we are speaking with...

This article highlights some innovative practice originating from my undergraduate Alma Mater: Iowa State University. AMES, Iowa – Most states mandate that domestic violence offenders complete some type of batterer intervention program, but the success rates are often quite low. That is why the results of a new method developed by an Iowa State University professor are so promising. Amie Zarling, a clinical psychologist and an assistant professor of human development and family studies at...

In one of New York City’s large family homeless shelters, we saw a gaunt, young mother holding her 4-day-old baby who lay limp in her arms. With sunken eyes, the mother watched a YouTube video about mixing formula, while her own mother tried to coach her on the telephone. The young mother told us she had eaten only a single McDonald’s hamburger in the past three days. For more: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/give-homeless-kids-chance-better-services-shelters-article-1.3298301 We can't...

Anxiety can present as fear, restlessness, an inability to focus at work or school, finding it hard to fall or stay asleep at night, or getting easily irritated . In social situations, it can make it hard to talk to others; you might feel like you’re constantly being judged, or have symptoms such as stuttering, sweating, blushing or an upset stomach It can appear out of the blue as a panic attack, when sudden spikes of anxiety make you feel like you’re about to have a heart attack, go mad or...