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“Life cannot be lived without loss,” writes Toni Heineman in the opening of “Relational Trauma: Stories of Loss and Hope,” but “perhaps the most insidious loss for foster children is the continuity provided by a single person who keeps them in mind — the one person who can provide a bit of the certainty in a sea of change.” Founder and executive director of nonprofit therapy group A Home Within, Heineman has practiced psychotherapy with adults,...

When officials in four states were asked several years ago what tools they would need to divert youth from the juvenile justice system, a better understanding of trauma was at the top of all their lists. They wanted to help youth with behavioral conditions when they are evaluated for probation but said they couldn’t do so most effectively without understanding how traumatic experiences had affected the adolescents. A new report sets out a  framework for trauma-informed diversion...

I sent this last night. Let me know what you think! Jill Lepore’s article “Baby Doe” in the Feb. 1, 2016 issue , was a very well-written look at the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families. I’m sorry to see that this system is still swinging between the same two tracks of family preservation or child removal, when the trend in helping children who are traumatized takes a very different approach. Lepore touched on that new trend with her descriptions of...

   Pediatrician Renée Boynton-Jarrett was working with young women in Trenton who had become pregnant as teenagers when she understood how poverty, food insecurity, violence, substandard housing and inadequate schools exacted a constant, toxic toll on people’s lives.    “It became profoundly evident to me that there’s a portion of humanity that experiences a chronic, insidious, daily violence and associated high levels of stress,” she said.

The third annual Delaware Trauma Matters conference, held on January 28 at Wilmington University, drew a diverse crowd of 200 from around the state and across many sectors, including healthcare, mental health, education, corrections, and child serving agencies among others. While some said this degree of diversity was unusual in the state, the leader of Delaware’s trauma initiative, Leslie Brower (pictured on the right with Aileen Fink, who serves as community manager along with Brower...

Seven Ways to Help High Schoolers Find Purpose By Patrick Cook-Deegan | January 11, 2016 | 1 Comment Many students go through high school bored and unengaged. Patrick Cook-Deegan explains what a purpose-driven curriculum would look like. Over the past decade, I have had the chance to ask thousands of teenagers what they think about school. I’ve found that the vast majority of them generally feel one of two ways: disengaged or incredibly pressured. One thing nearly all teens agree on...

Having ADHD doesn’t feel like anything. It just feels normal. You feel the way you’ve always felt, and you don’t have anything to compare it to. When you’re growing up with undiagnosed ADHD, it’s not that youfeel a certain way. It’s that you start noticing things. Maybe the first thing you notice is that you’re getting in trouble in school more than the other kids. You hate being bored, and getting into mischief makes things interesting. [For more of...

Chico Unified School District is taking a different approach to behavioral problems in the classroom by training its staff to recognize students who have experienced trauma using the “trauma-informed” approach. In a traditional setting, if a student is acting out or not paying attention, a teacher might reprimand the student, or in some cases address them sharply, Chico Unified director of secondary education David McKay said. Using the trauma-informed approach, a teacher will...

When Jessie and Glenn Close founded their mental illness nonprofit, Bring Change 2 Mind in 2010, all of the focus was on Jessie’s battle with bipolar disorder. Glenn was there to lend her name and support to the effort, but I’m not sure anyone imagined she too suffered. Silently. But, according to a new article in Mashable earlier this week, Glenn was first diagnosed with depression in 2008. Which makes her efforts to help launch Bring Change 2 Mind all the more laudable. Glenn...

As many know, parenting isn't an easy job. It can be hugely frustrating and even lonely trying to figure out what's best for your kid. Should you be a taskmaster or a best friend? Is there a middle ground? The pressures of full-time work and round-the-clock activities can make that question even more challenging to tackle. Dr. Leonard Sax has experience in guiding these relationships as a family physician and psychologist in Pennsylvania. His new book, The Collapse Of Parenting: How We Hurt...

A study in the February 2016 issue of Pediatrics found that among teens previously exposed to violence in their homes or communities , boys may be just as likely as girls to be seriously injured by a romantic partner. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study, " Dating Violence and Injury among Youth Exposed to Violence " (published online Jan. 29), surveyed 1,149 boys and girls between the ages of 11 and 17 in Texas. Its authors said dating violence changes significantly over...

Last June, a woman walking her dog on Deer Island, in Boston Harbor, came across a black plastic garbage bag on the beach. Inside was a very little girl, dead. The woman called for help and collapsed in tears. Police searched the island; divers searched the water; a medical examiner collected the body. The little girl had dark eyes and pale skin and long brown hair. She weighed thirty pounds. She was wearing white-and-black polka-dot pants. She was wrapped in a zebra-striped fleece blanket.