Blog

A father in county jail is ordered to take a parenting class, but isn’t too enthusiastic about it. As part of the class, he learns about the ACE Study, and does his own ACE score. “Oh my god!” he announces to the class. “I have 7 ACEs.” His mother’s an alcoholic. His dad’s been in and out of jail. He himself started dealing drugs at age 11, and doing drugs at 14. “I’ve got two kids at home experiencing the same things I did,” he says. The light bulb goes on. A few days after a woman who’s...

School suspension rates have risen in recent years. And since the punishment is linked to more severe problems later in life, such as dropping out of school or ending up in prison, researchers at Stanford University have been looking for ways to prevent it. Researchers asked one group of math teachers to complete a 45-minute online activity about how important it is to respect and humanize students. Meanwhile, another group of math teachers read about how to use technology in the classroom.

Twenty years ago this month, Redwood Children’s Services placed its first foster child with a foster family. Camille Schraeder, the executive director and founder of what she expected to be “just a little foster family agency,” had just received her license on April 22, after taking out a line of credit on her new house to lease office equipment. She had just left Trinity School, a facility for troubled youth under the Southern California parent company Guadalupe Homes. Trinity was based on...

A card for Mother’s Day takes time to pick out. For a person who grew up living with domestic violence, it takes even longer. There is so much they want to say, but Hallmark hasn’t quite captured the language. If I were to write one, I would probably start out with, “On this Mother’s Day, I want to tell you something that I never told you. ‘I’m so sorry that you grew up living with domestic violence.’” Because most who do, don’t even know that they experienced Childhood Domestic Violence I...

School counselor Pam Turner-Bunyon had been warned: This new, incoming student had a dark profile and was prone to very erratic behavior. "When he first came to us, he ran out of the building, the first day — the very first day — instead of coming in, he ran," she said. Turner-Bunyon learned what happened and immediately took off, dashing out into the crime-prone streets that surround the school. "I found out he was running so I went and chased him down, and coaxed him back in and we worked...

States that spend more money on social services and public health programs relative to medical care have much healthier residents than states that don’t, a study out today by a prominent public health researcher found. The study comes as the Obama administration prepares to fund its own research to support the idea that higher social service spending can improve health and lower health care costs. Last week, the Department of Health and Human Services proposed a long-awaited rule that will...

In 1986, California state assemblyman John Vasconcellos came up with what he believed could be “a vaccine for major social ills” like teen pregnancy and drug abuse: a special task-force to promote self-esteem among Californians. The effort folded three years later, and was widely considered not to have accomplished much. To Kristin Neff, a psychology professor at the University of Texas, that’s not surprising. Though self-esteem continues to reverberate as a pop-psych cure-all, the quest for...

This U.S. presidential election cycle has been filled with anger. Fist-fights in Chicago. Protesters plucked out of rallies by police officers. Hurled accusations : Mexican immigrants as “rapists,” war-tattered refugees as agents of ISIS. Much of the hostility is a function of Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee who has encouraged violence among his supporters and seems to exhale insults and epithets with every breath. There have been as many explanations given for...

Sure, if I were in charge at Red Mountain High School in Mesa, Arizona, I would’ve been angry at Hunter Osborn, a football player who decided, on a teammate’s dare, to expose himself. He did it during a team photo as dozens of teammates lined up in the bleachers. True, he was only 18 at the time, the knucklehead. And no, the photo isn’t all that graphic. The penis partly peeking out the top of number 42’s waistband is less noticeable than Waldo in one of his illustrated spreads. But that’s...

Has anyone heard of a state psychiatric hospital that is screening for ACEs or employing trauma-informed practices? Thanks!

Evidence is mounting that opioid pain medication may have played a role in the death of pop legend Prince. While the medical examiner hasn’t yet released the results of the autopsy and toxicology tests in this case, opioid overdose in middle age is all too common . In 2013 and 2014, according to the The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, people ages 45 to 64 accounted for more than 40 percent of all deaths from drug overdose. Prince died on April 21 at his home and music studio...

The primary method that doctors and hospitals use to track patient health history is failing to capture critical behavior and mental health data. A study released in April by the Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute compared the electronic health records (EHRs) to the insurance claims of some 5,500 patients. The focus of the study was on patients with depression or bipolar disorder who received care from Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates, part of Atrius Health. The research is a...