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In case you didn’t see the announcement, Prevent Child Abuse America's back-to-school campaign launched this month. We are encouraging people to go to https://share.preventchildabuse.org/ to add their photo and show how they are growing a better tomorrow for all children. You’ll have the option to leave the default caption or add your own content. After the photo and caption are added you can easily share it on any social platform and get your network to do the same. This campaign will run...

https://psychcentral.com/ptsd/adverse-childhood-experiences-post-traumatic-stress-disorder

By Anna Flagg, The New York Times, August 30, 2021 Black Americans die at higher rates than white Americans at nearly every age. In 2019, the most recent year with available mortality data, there were about 62,000 such earlier deaths — or one out of every five African American deaths. The age group most affected by the inequality was infants. Black babies were more than twice as likely as white babies to die before their first birthday. [ Please click here to read more .]

By Deanna Hoskins and Zöe Towns, The Washington Post, August 25, 2021 These days there is more reporting on the harms of mass incarceration and mass criminalization than ever before. More journalists are on these beats . Stories about conditions in police stations, jails and prisons are getting more space on the page. Entire journalism outlets are dedicated to critically tracking the criminal justice system. Yet when we scroll through our news feeds and Twitter, or turn on the radio or news...

By Elizabeth Cohen, John Bonifield, and Justin Lape, CNN Health, August 28, 2021 For the first time in decades, the director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention -- the nation's top public health agency -- is speaking out forcefully about gun violence in America, calling it a "serious public health threat." "Something has to be done about this," CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said in an exclusive interview with CNN. "Now is the time -- it's pedal to the metal time." This...

By Juan Carlos Castillo and Michael Fitzgerald, The Imprint, August 25, 2021 Damali Flippin, a mother of a 6-year-old girl, had been living in Washington, D.C., for years not knowing where to find emotional and social support. With her family living far away, the pandemic deepened those needs. “To be candid, I’d been feeling very depressed and just, you know, anxious and not motivated,” she said in a recent public meeting held over videoconference. Her desolation continued until the day an...

By Tyler Kepner, The New York Times, August 29, 2021 Roberto Clemente won two championships with the Pittsburgh Pirates, one when he was young and the other near the end of his brief life. For the first, in 1960, everyone else on the World Series roster was white, except for two teammates at the end of the bench. The second roster, in 1971, was much different. Fifty years ago on Wednesday — about a month before the start of a postseason he would make his own — Clemente found himself batting...

In August 2021, the California Evidence-Based Clearinghouse for Child Welfare officially added the Attitudes Related to Trauma-Informed Care (ARTIC) Scale to their list of evidence-based measurement tools for child welfare. The ARTIC Scale received an assessment rating of “ A – Psychometrics Well-Demonstrated ,” the highest rating offered by the CEBC. Read more

When thinking about the start of yet another unpredictable and unprecedented school year, the word that keeps repeating itself in my head is “grace.” The dictionary defines grace as “a disposition to or an act or instance of kindness, courtesy, or clemency.” Kindness, compassion, lenience, and mercy. Grace for the educators and all student support staff, grace for our administrators. Grace for our youth, grace for our families, grace for the school board members and policy makers. Our own...

From International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies, August 2021 As human beings, our physical and mental health cannot be separated from the environments in which we live. Climate change, if left unaddressed, is projected to have catastrophic consequences on the mental health of entire populations. This ISTSS Friday Fast Facts series will feature ISTSS’ recent work to highlight the intersections among global climate change and trauma. Look for new materials every Friday in August 2021.

By Sara Darnell, Children's Book Association, July 20, 2021 Psychologists everywhere have noticed an uptick in children experiencing anxiety, stress, confusion, and other issues that have come as a result of 2020. We should note that these are completely normal things for children to experience, but what is the best way to work through these feelings? Many psychologists have turned to children's books to teach young readers how to deal with their emotions. [ Please click here to see the list .]

It might seem odd that President Theodore Roosevelt, who was described as “aggressive,” ”over-engined” and had a talent for delivering insults, would be hailed as a proponent of nurturing relationships. But that’s exactly how Dr. Andrew Garner referenced him in describing a paradigm shift in policy by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). “They don’t care what you know until they know that you care,’” said Garner, referring to a quote often attributed to Roosevelt. Garner , who is a...