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Tonight, countless acute mental-health patients desperate for help will arrive at their local emergency room only to be detained under guard for days as they wait for suitable psychiatric care. It’s a crisis of health-care delivery that, at a minimum, would benefit from the leadership of a national task force to develop solutions for a problem caused by poor funding for community care. The issue of mental-health patients being “boarded” in emergencies rooms, whether they arrive there...

By a handful of indicators—unemployment rates, overall economic growth, even average hourly earnings—the U.S. economy isn’t doing so badly right now. And yet, when it comes to the number of Americans who go hungry, it’s almost like the recovery never happened. The U.S. Department of Agriculture defines food security as "access by all people at all times to enough food for an active, healthy life,” and in 2006, the year before the housing market stumbled, the USDA estimated that fewer than...

When I became a new mother, I was prepared for a lot—but nobody told me that parenting when you have experienced childhood abuse can feel like walking back into a war zone as a soldier with PTSD. Before becoming a mother, I could physically re-shift focus away from what was triggering me—take a walk, journal, call a friend, distract myself with music. Once a parent, I could no longer rely on old methods, no matter how effective. I couldn’t run away from, drown out, or excuse myself from the...

The philosophy of trauma-informed care is becoming more and more embedded in the philosophies and practices of child-serving agencies. When a child experiences a single traumatic event and is fortunate enough to be surrounded by supportive and nurturing adults, that trauma can generally be assessed and usually treated effectively with the help of parental support. When a traumatized child responds with internalized distress such as sadness, depression or anxiety, our systems appear to...

Elena was 11 years old when a gang member in her home country, Honduras, told her to be his girlfriend. “I had to say yes,” Elena, now 14, explained. “If I had said no, they would have killed my entire family.” Elena knew the risks because one of her friends, Jenesis, was also asked to be a gang member’s girlfriend, and declined. Elena happened to see the aftermath, as Jenesis staggered naked and bleeding away from gang members. “She had been raped and shot in the stomach,” Elena recalled in...

After we thought Uber had killed it , stranger danger is back again, and in an unlikely form. Pokémon Go is well on its way to being the most successful augmented-reality application, especially among kids, but adults like it too — because it is obviously awesome . Yet some parents have blanched at the idea of theirs kids wandering the streets hunting for an Oddish, often alongside childless grown-ups hunting for the same creature. It’s easy to imagine defenseless youngsters, their heads in...

This is one necessary and important contribution written by Dawn Daum. When I became a new mother, I was prepared for a lot—but nobody told me that parenting when you have experienced childhood abuse can feel like walking back into a war zone as a soldier with PTSD. Before becoming a mother, I could physically re-shift focus away from what was triggering me—take a walk, journal, call a friend, distract myself with music. Once a parent, I could no longer rely on old methods, no matter how...

When a foster youth encounters a psychiatrist, chances are high that s/he will get medicated. Traumatized foster youth are often prescribed powerful psychotropics due to exhibiting a wide variety of “normal reactions to abnormal events”, such as despair, agitation, anxiety and self-harm. The practice has been well documented; foster children are prescribed psychotropics at a 2.7 to 4.5 times higher rate than non-foster youth[1]. The National Center for Youth Law aptly summarizes the problem...

My name is Kelley. I remember having my first suicidal thought at the age of 13. At that time, I had discovered that my brother was gay and my sister and father completely abandoned him just because he was gay. I had been molested by a female when I was young and this information about my brother made me wonder if I was going to be gay, too. At the time, I had no clue how a person became gay. I went on to have tragedy after tragedy strike in my life. To name just a few, I have lost two...

Working out has become synonymous with weight loss or maintenance. That is, we assume that people only work out — that we should work out — to lose weight or to maintain our weight. This is often why exercise is thought of as a chore. As a necessary evil. As a punishment for eating dessert or consuming too many carbs or fat grams. As a way to burn calories. And nothing else. No wonder many of us don’t want to do it. Our days are busy as it is. We have so many responsibilities as it is. Why...

Over the past two years, the Center for Youth Wellness and H2O productions , (based at Leadership High School in San Francisco) have worked in partnership to implement a research study on Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) that utilizes principles of community based participatory research (CBPR). CBPR is a framework of research that emphasizes collaboration among partners and highlights the voice of community in identifying research topics of interest and solutions to resolve identified...

In April, a safety net unraveled for hundreds of thousands of Americans when a federal provision linking food assistance to a work requirement eliminated many people’s access to supplemental nutrition assistance (SNAP) benefits. Since the provision came into effect on April 1, SNAP participation rates have dramatically decreased. New data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture show that, in April alone, SNAP participation declined by 773,000 people—the largest single-month drop, according...