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On Sunday, February 17, educators and immigrant rights advocates, organized by Teachers Against Child Detention, are hosting a Teach-In for Freedom in El Paso, Texas. El Paso is a U.S.-Mexico border city 30 miles from the now-closed Tornillo Detention Center that, until recently, held 3,800 children. The Teach-In for Freedom, initiated by 2018 Teacher of the Year Mandy Manning, is one part of the TACD’s Call to Action. In addition to the Teach-In for Freedom, during which educators and...

Binge drinking in adolescence has been shown to have lasting effects on the wiring of the brain and is associated with increased risk for psychological problems and alcohol use disorder later in life. Now, researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago Center for Alcohol Research in Epigenetics have shown that some of these lasting changes are the result of epigenetic changes that alter the expression of a protein crucial for the formation and maintenance of neural connections in the...

This story is part of a series about how schools, teachers and students are coping with the immigration crisis. PATCHOGUE, N.Y. — Wilda Rosario’s support groups for immigrant students at Patchogue-Medford High School usually start out with lots of laughter. That’s just how teenagers are, she says. But it doesn’t take too long for conversations to turn serious with this group of kids, most of them children seeking asylum from violence in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala. During an...

See previous 74 interviews: Criminologist Nadine Connell on the data on school shootings, Teacher of the Year Nate Bowling on the push to arm educators, and more. The full archive is right here . D rama students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School were in the middle of rehearsal when the shooting began. With a “code red” blaring over the intercom, drama teacher Melody Herzfeld and her students sought shelter in a nearby storage closet. The February 2018 shooting in Parkland left 17 dead...

A new study by researchers at Yale and Georgia State University found that explicit gender stereotypes may bias physicians’ assessments of children’s pain. The team found that under identical clinical circumstances and identical reactions of pain, a male child was rated as experiencing more pain than a female one. Led by philosophy and psychology joint doctoral student Brian Earp GRD ’22, the paper was published on Jan. 4 in the Journal of Pediatric Psychology. “Pain is an inherently private...

How can you tell when you meet a truly happy person? What signs do you look for? What indicates to you that someone is truly content with their life and themselves? Genuinely happy people: [For more on this story by Rachel Fintzy Woods, MA, LMFT, go to https://blogs.psychcentral.com/cultivating-contentment/2019/01/26-characteristics-of-truly-happy-people/]

ACEs, Adversity's Impact Early adverse life events, severity of trauma linked to irritable bowel syndrome Traumatic stress can lead to depression when it interferes with daily activities, study finds Transgender identity and experiences of violent victimization, substance use, suicide risk, and sexual risk behaviors among high school students - 19 states and large urban school districts, 2017 California's new surgeon general changed the way we understand childhood trauma Trauma before we can...

It turns out the old saying about sticks and stones breaking bones but words never hurting is bunk. According to research newly published in the peer-reviewed Early Childhood Research Quarterly, emotional bullying in the preschool years hurts quite a lot. When a child both bullies and gets bullied, the findings are especially clear: Depression symptoms begin to appear as early as age 3. Depression in early childhood increases the risk of depression in later childhood, which predicts...

M errit Jones grew up in West Columbia and Cayce, South Carolina, and for most of her childhood, she attended predominantly low-income public schools in Lexington County. Jones was a sophomore in high school when her mother, a local school board member, transferred her to River Bluff High School in a larger neighboring district. While still struggling, Jones’s new district had better resources and far less poverty than her old one. Some 70 percent of students in the district where she grew...

On Dec. 3 , a 28-year-old black mother lost her parental rights to her four children – ages 1 to 9 – in a Minnesota courtroom, just outside the Twin Cities. Instead of opening presents with their mother, the children spent Christmas with a white family two hours away. Across the country, black parents – like this mother, whom we will call Jane R. to protect her privacy – are more likely to lose custody of their children than their white, Asian and Latino peers. While African Americans...

By K. Hecht, A. Hosack, & P. Berman Oh no she came too early! My parents are going to really give it to me. What am I going to do? Claire wanted to see the nurse badly. She had so many questions. Why did the nurse have to come at 9 a.m.? This was hours before Claire’s parents usually got up. Claire rushed to open the door hoping her parents hadn’t heard the doorbell. As the Nurse came in, she looked around at the dirty living room and noticed empty beer bottles everywhere. Claire noticed...

This new technical assistance tool from the Center for Health Care Strategies (CHCS) offers a variety of approaches for screening adults and children for adverse childhood experiences and trauma, including examples of screening protocols used at several provider practices that have embraced trauma-informed care.