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The letters began arriving in the mailboxes of the sprawling public-housing complex last spring. The Worcester Housing Authority had tried to make residents self-sufficient, the letters said. But now it was taking another step. The letters explained that step in big letters that were hard to miss: “IMPORTANT MESSAGE: Residents Required to Go to Work/Attend School.” As long as they weren’t disabled or over 55, the letter elaborated, at least one member of each household had...

Victoria Borja started doing illegal graffiti in middle school. "It's all on the risk. You know you might get in trouble and just the thought of that makes it even more fun," Borja says. She loved the thrill of putting her work in front of an audience. "It's not just for yourself, but for other people to know how you're expressing yourself, it's like your own art gallery but everyone can see it and it's for free," she says. She was never caught vandalizing property, but she did end up at a...

MOMS (Mental Health Outreach for Mothers) is a multi-neighborhood, community-driven partnership that is developing interventions to meet the mental health needs of single mothers in at-risk neighborhoods. Based in New Haven, Connecticut, the project tests the hypothesis that combining basic needs services with mental health and economic security services for mothers will decrease stress and increase parenting capacity. [For more go...

Recently, mass killings have been front and center in the news. The terrorist attacks in Paris struck a chord worldwide, and similar attacks in Beirut, Baghdad, Mali, Lake Chad, and elsewhere have made the horror seem never-ending. Yesterday marked the three-year anniversary of the Sandy Hook shooting and two weeks ago another shooting in San Bernardino topped a long list of harrowing incidents in the United States. While the political discourse focuses on how to prevent future tragedies...

Women have made great strides in medicine. In what was once a traditionally male profession, women now make up about half of today's medical students. Still, major disparities remain: According to a new study , there are more mustaches—yes, mustaches—than women in leadership positions at top American medical schools. The research is published in the British Medical Journal's " Christmas Issue ," an annual collection of peer reviewed but generally quirky scientific reports.

Even for those who are flexible about location and amenities, finding an apartment can be a serious ordeal. But it only becomes harder for those whose disabilities require very specific features, such as doorways that can fit a walker or a wheelchair or door handles that are easier to grip than knobs. A new report from Harvard finds that more than 7 million renter households have a member with a disability. (According to the Census Bureau , about 57 million Americans, or 19 percent of the...

The American justice system executed fewer people in 2015 than it has in nearly 25 years, and it handed out fewer death sentences this year than it has in almost 40, according to new data from the Death Penalty Information Center. Despite these historic lows, however, racial bias persists among those who were executed. We thought this was an apt time to review the numbers. About equal numbers of blacks and whites are murdered every year in the United States. Yet, in America, the killers of...

Think about the first 18 years of your life. Were you witness to or a victim of substance abuse? Parental separation or divorce? Someone in the household suffering from mental illness? Was your mother battered? Was someone incarcerated? Were you emotionally or physically neglected? Emotionally, physically or sexually abused? There is a name for all of those situations, and Lisa Kruse and Amy Wyant are ready to share their knowledge on it: Adverse Childhood Experiences, or ACEs. Kruse and...

Check out all of the stories posted on Buzzfeed this week about mental health here: http://www.buzzfeed.com/mentalhealthweek [Photo by Andrew Richard/Buzzfeed]

In this series, professionals predict the ideas and trends that will shape 2016. Read the posts here , then write your own (use #BigIdeas2016 in your piece). So here’s the big idea I think will shape 2016: sleep. That’s right, sleep! How much and how well we sleep in the coming year — and the years to follow — will determine, in no small measure, our ability to address and solve the problems we’re facing as individuals and as a society. While our...

Mental health courts have been embraced in many communities, and it's easy to understand why. Rather than sending someone who's mentally ill to an overcrowded jail that is poorly equipped to manage his condition, mental health courts offer treatment and help with housing and other social services. The community saves on the cost of locking someone up and offenders get support to stay healthy and may have their charges expunged. Everybody wins, right? The reality is more complex. Mental...

More school districts around the U.S. are heeding the advice of scientists who have long said that expecting teens to show up to class before 8 a.m. isn’t good for their health or their report cards. The Seattle school board voted last month to adopt an 8:45 a.m. start time beginning next year for all of its high schools and most of its middle schools, joining 70 districts across the nation who adopted a later start time in recent years. The movement still has a long way to go: There...