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In response to rising rates of depression among students and increased demand for therapy, many American universities have been ramping up their mental-health services . These colleges surely want to take care of their students, but it has other benefits too: Mental-health disorders can hinder educational outcomes, lowering grades, delaying students’ graduations, and causing students to drop out. So, as with a lot of other things involving higher education, some colleges are finding...

If one of my children were a drug addict, what would I want for him? I would want what any parent would: for his addiction to be treated as a health problem, not a criminal matter, and for him to have every kind of help possible to get him off drugs. Until that happened, I would want him to be able to manage his addiction and live a normal life by taking methadone or another substitute opioid. And until that happened, for him to stay as safe as possible from overdosing, developing H.I.V., or...

California is overhauling its substance abuse treatment system for low-income people, embarking on a massive experiment to create a smoother path for addicts from detox through recovery. The state is the first to receive federal permission to revamp drug and alcohol treatment for beneficiaries of Medicaid, known as Medi-Cal in California. Through what's known as a drug waiver, state officials will have new spending flexibility as they try to help people get sober and reduce social and...

Welcome to RWJF's Pioneering Ideaspodcasta podcast for people interested in exploring cutting-edge ideas and emerging trends. We seek to inspire new thinking, spark aha! moments and cultivate rich, ongoing conversations. Join us each episode as we talk with visionary thinkers in and outside of health care and discover together new ways to build a Culture of Health. [For more go tohttp://www.rwjf.org/en/library/collections/pioneering-ideas-podcast.html]

America’s middle class has been steadily shrinking since 1971, and now this segment of the U.S. population is around the same size as the layers above and below it combined, a new analysis by Pew Research Center finds. It’s “a demographic shift that could signal a tipping point,” Pew says. Pew Research Center In 2015, middle-income Americans (adults in a three-person household with annual income between $42,000 and $126,000) made up about half of the U.S.

After a year of news stories that produced photos that can often be difficult or disturbing to view, I thought I’d take the time to compose an essay of uplifting images from the past year. The following are images of volunteers at work, expressions of love and compassion, families and friends at play, and assistance being given to those in need. Alternate titles considered were “The Good Side of 2015,” “The Better Angels of Our Nature,” or simply “News...

Well, it’s that time of year again. The most difficult period for you if you belong to an emotionally neglectful family. So what is Childhood Emotional Neglect (CEN)? And now that you’re an adult, how can you tell if your family has it? Childhood Emotional Neglect (CEN): When parents fail to respond sufficiently to the child’s emotional needs. CEN can be extremely invisible, subtle and unmemorable when it happens to you as a child. You may not remember it...

Three days before his release from the Barnstable County Correctional Facility, Ryan Lonergan received a powerful injection, intended to change his life. He took the shot willingly, because he knew that for 28 days afterward, the drug, Vivitrol, would make it impossible to get high on the Percocet that had been his life’s downfall. Now, Lonergan would not have to decide each day whether to use drugs. Vivitrol made the decision for him, and cleared a path to recovery. [For more of this...

As a publication that wonders why people do what they do, we write a lot about self-control here at Pacific Standard.Here's what we know: Self-control is greatly influenced by emotions ; conservatives may have more of it; and reminding kids about goals can help them learn it . Now, researchers have found a new piece to the self-control puzzle: According to a forthcoming study in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, humility—the ability to tolerate failures without...

It's not exactly news that the wealth gap between the richest and poorest Americans is really more of, well, a gorge. California, for example, has one of the highest levels of income inequality in the nation, with both the largest population of the super rich and record levels of poverty (when the cost of living is considered). With an eye toward more national trends, Pacific Standard looked at data released this week by the Census Bureau's Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates program.

Resilience is defined as “the ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change”. In other words, it is the ability to not let a bad situation define us. Being resilient is a very important characteristic that we as a society must teach our children, especially with all the violence that is going on. Lately however, studies have been focusing on prevention rather than intervention. Preventing bad things from happening instead of intervening and fixing them later...

I was elated to hear about Donna's Childhood Disrupted last summer, since I had been writing a memoir on healing from loss and unexplained illness (MCS) via the mind-body connection and working with the inner child. I was really sick with the chronic symptoms of nausea, lightheaded-ness, and brainfog. I had a young child and a part-time job I barely held on. I found integrative medicine, which helped me cope, but even that wasn't enough. One day after a holistic method...