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Based on a true story, Some Way Home: A Memoir in a Myth is the account of the handling and healing of Dylan, a prototypical foster child. He comes into this world a fairly anonymous character and is soon sent wandering through the government's child protection agencies in search of a home. He lacks a stable family to hold, care, or protect him; so early on, he is subjected to several, significant traumas of abuse and abandonment. He suffers but strives to emotionally survive until his...

As a parent, I often fear that my child is hiding something from me. The feeling is not without reason. I can feel when my child is distressed, even though he wouldn’t say a thing to me. Call it a “ mommy instinct ,” but a mother can sense when something’s not right. A while ago, I noticed that my son was extremely withdrawn. For hours on end, he would stay in his room. It disturbed me a lot. Later, through his teacher, I found out that a kid was bullying him at school. When I asked my son...

By Vincent P. Staupe, Kaiser Permanente, October 9, 2019 Kaiser Permanente has committed $2.75 million to new research to help prevent and mitigate the health effects of adverse childhood experiences, known as ACEs. This effort, led by Kaiser Permanente research scientists, is part of our long-term commitment to improving the total health of our members and the communities we serve. ACEs are traumatic childhood events that occur before the age of 18 across multiple categories, including...

By Karen Feldscher, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, October 8, 2019 In 2011, a massive earthquake struck off the coast of eastern Japan in 2011 and triggered devastating tsunami waves. Roughly 16,000 people were killed, more than a million buildings were damaged or destroyed, and hundreds of thousands of people were left homeless. At the time, social epidemiologist Ichiro Kawachi was in the midst of a national study in Japan aimed at finding the factors that could lead to...

By Center for Health Care Strategies, Inc., October 8, 2019 The Center for Health Care Strategies (CHCS) today announces Advancing Integrated Models (AIM), a national, multi-site demonstration promoting innovative, person-centered strategies to improve care for adults and children with complex health and social needs. Made possible with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and led by CHCS, AIM will assist eight health system and provider organizations in designing and piloting...

By Michelle Tauber, People, October 9, 2019 Nelba Márquez-Greene is not a gun control activist, or a politician, or a pundit. She’s a grieving mom, and she’s working to support other families devastated by tragedy by helping to guide the public conversation on trauma and its aftermath. “There is a constant pressure to hurry your healing,” says Márquez-Greene, one of PEOPLE’s 2019 Women Changing the World. After her daughter Ana Grace, 6, was killed in the 2012 school shooting at Sandy Hook...

While addiction is a “grown-up issue,” it impacts children in ways that are not visible. Sesame Street in Communities tackles parental addiction in a way that is gentle and loving through two sweet and loving characters. Karli is a 6 ½ year old Muppet whose mom has struggled with addiction and had to live in foster care while her mom received treatment. Salia is a ten year old, the oldest of four girls whose parents both went to a 60 day treatment center. Sesame Street welcomes these girls...

October is National Bullying Prevention Month and we'd like to shed some light on this global epidemic that is greatly affecting our youth: 1 in 3 students are targets of bullying 12,000,000 students will be bullied this year 100,000 kids skip school each day because they do not feel safe Learn how experts are tackling bullying through data tracking, relationship mapping, community organizing, and more. Educators will walk away with a real roadmap that they can use and implement right away...

By Zette Harbour, Thrive Global, October 7, 2019 I call it my Resilience Recipe. Some people have recipes passed down through the generations of their family. I guess, in a way, I did too. Only it was a recipe for feeling stressed out, anxious, and depleted. It wasn’t my parents’ and grandparents’ fault that they’d passed this on. It was what had been handed down to them, too. When I entered Jungian therapy at age 25, I began to see the outlines of what I’d inherited and was told for the...

Treatment fails when we provide traumatized families a plan to heal the child’s problems but do not troubleshoot loopholes or practice the plan’s delivery with dress rehearsals. Stuck families need help onboarding a plan otherwise it will fail. The FST (Family Systems Trauma) Model developed a Troubleshooting Countermoves Checklist that allows both the therapist and the family to identify any potential loopholes and “what will you do if?” scenarios to proactively address each one. A...

By Silke Meyer, The Conversation, October 6, 2019 Last month, eight women died as the result of male violence in Australia. Five were within one week. In six of the cases, the alleged perpetrator was a current or former partner. These figures seem all too familiar. This time last year, seven of the nine women allegedly killed by a male perpetrator were in the context of an intimate relationship. And like this time last year, media coverage, national and political outcry remained relatively...

By Jonathan Shannon, Coach, October 7, 2019 Masculinity, as we’re probably all aware by now, can turn nasty with catastrophic consequences for the person affected and the people around them – something Mike Miller knows all too well. Miller is programme director of Reach at The Cabin Group in Thailand, a rehab centre for men struggling with addiction. While Miller believes traditional masculinity – “a set of accepted behaviours for men” – is not all toxic, he thinks there are things that men...