Blog

Heidi Aylward spent much of 2015 going to doctor’s appointments for back and joint pain, dizziness, swelling of the legs and feet, high blood pressure, elevated platelets, heart palpitations and extreme fatigue. 2016 isn’t looking much better. She’s worn a heart monitor, had a bone marrow biopsy and continues to have blood work. She holds down a job as a full-time project manager, tends to her daughters, home and pets. But she feels like her body is falling apart. “I’m not going to make it...

A new report by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) provides state-by-state results on adolescents (ages 12-17) who experienced at least one major depressive episode in the past year. Based on combined 2013 and 2014 data, the report shows the prevalence of major depressive episodes among adolescents residing in various states – from a high of 14.6 percent (annual average) in Oregon to a low of 8.7 percent (annual average) in the District of Columbia.

I love Black people. I love us so much. I have so many friends who work in the anti-racist space. I worry for our wellbeing when we are inundated with racism. Continuing to engage in confronting racism in the online space can mean taking a risk with your brain and psychological wellbeing. All of the interactions and conversations in the online space, can be received as micro-aggressions andrace-based traumas. Though the work of creating a better racial digital landscape is all of our...

Youngstown, Ohio, created quite a stir a decade ago when it unveiled a novel plan for the city: It would stop trying to return to its glory days as a city of 170,000 people and instead embrace the idea that maybe smaller is better. The Youngstown 2010 plan reoriented the former steel-mill town toward providing services to the neighborhoods with the most people, converting abandoned land into green space, and supporting the burgeoning healthcare industry. In doing so, it hoped to keep the...

This brief explores the practice of “kinship diversion,” in which children are placed with relatives as an alternative to foster care. Also referred to as informal or voluntary kinship care or safety plans, its use varies across the country. In this brief we present findings from an in-depth review of kinship diversion in one state. Interviews and focus groups revealed common themes among agency caseworkers, kinship caregivers, and court personnel around the reasons for using kinship...

Alton Sterling, a 37-year-old black man, was shot and killed by police in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, this week. The officers were responding to an anonymous 911 caller, who said “a black male who was selling music [CDs] and wearing a red shirt [had] threatened him with a gun,” National Public Radio reports . The story garnered national attention, protests, and a Department of Justice investigation after a bystander’s video circulated, showing the officers seemingly pinning Sterling, then...

Politics are more polarized and acrimonious than ever. But one public health concern — the nation’s epidemic of prescription painkiller abuse — is uniting some unexpected bedfellows. There is Patrick Kennedy, former Democratic congressman from Rhode Island, who has since made a career of advocating for mental health treatment since leaving the House in 2011. And there is Newt Gingrich, the former Republican speaker of the House of Representatives and 2012 presidential candidate, who recently...

When Kelsey Sisavath enrolled as a freshman at Lincoln Alternative High School in Walla Walla, Washington, in the fall of 2012, her mother was struggling with drug addiction. Kelsey herself was using meth. The multiple traumas in her life included a sexual assault by a stranger at age 12. She was angry, depressed, and suicidal. Her traumatized brain had little room to focus on school. Today, much has changed in Kelsey’s life. She graduated from Lincoln this spring with a 4.0 GPA while also...

The Veterans Administration has issued a news release updating their knowledge base about Veteran suicide. [ LINK HERE ] While news about suicide is never good, I am heartened to read that the VA is developing "Predictive Modeling" for the purpose of identifying those Veterans who have a high risk of attempt. I explained the model I believe should be followed in place of the existing programs, but did not think of Predictive Modeling to describe it. We have a lot of data that we can use to...

At our country’s 240th birthday, I am reminded of our forefathers’ preamble to the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” While history has uncovered the blatant shortcomings of this dictate, the rights to one’s liberty, or freedom, seem particularly important to highlight now. With nearly...

In 1852, the abolitionist Frederick Douglass asked an audience what the Fourth of July should mean to a population of enslaved African Americans. Forty-eight years later, still pondering the question of “independence” for the formerly enslaved, a group of black researchers attempted to quantify the answer in sociological terms. Among this study group was the noted scholar W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington , a man normally billed as Du Bois’ intellectual rival. Together, they worked...

Lois Thetford, a physician’s assistant in the UW’s MEDEX Northwest program, is currently developing a course for the UW’s Health Sciences program that focuses on homelessness. The two-credit class will be offered during winter 2017 and will feature input from staff members of the health sciences. The class will explore homelessness through various lenses, such as “homelessness and racism,” to give students a better understanding of the reality of homelessness for those that live it. Thetford...