Christmas is about giving for the sake of giving, opening our hearts, and sharing what we have. That our children trust us enough to share their longing and to let us hold their pain, is a bittersweet gift. It may not be what we hoped to find under the tree, but it is real.
Sherri Lee’s toilet started flooding in late September. Less than a month later, the unfinished basement in her South Philadelphia apartment was a full-blown health hazard. “It actually ended up pushing out feces,” said Lee during a recent visit to the Snyder Avenue row home she shares with her family. A white utility sink on the opposite end of the room backed up too, sending raw sewage onto the floor and all over Lee’s clothes. [For more on this story by Aaron Moselle, go to...
All in prison for years, if not decades. All for killings that happened in Duval County when they were still kids. It's a problem with a high cost. Taxpayers spend more than $2.3 million a year to house, feed and care for them. Communities lose even more. There was Jose Lau, a Chinese immigrant who was delivering food on the Westside when he was fatally shot. Grady Williamson was stabbed in the chest for the $3 he had on him. Timothy Robertson gave a light to a stranger and ended up dead.
The Acting Cook County Public Guardian filed a class-action lawsuit Thursday on behalf of hundreds of children and teenagers in state care who have been held in psychiatric hospitals after they had been cleared by doctors for release, calling the practice inhumane and unconstitutional. The Illinois Department of Children and Family Services has a constitutional responsibility to ensure that children in the department’s care, whose lives are already marked by trauma, are not unnecessarily...
I'm a psychotherapist with an expertise in childhood sexual abuse and was asked to participate in an interview series about " How To Optimize Mental Wellness During Stressful Family Gatherings." Not everyone's holiday is filled with comfort and joy. If you come from a family where you experienced ACES, the holidays can be difficult. Here's an excerpt from the article with five tips that will help. Managing mental health in high stress situations is challenging and although holiday gatherings...
Since covering Puerto Rico in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, I’ve noticed the underlying current of violence against women increasing under the weight of recovery. Almost biweekly now, my social media shows a news article from the island about women who are found dead, with the common refrain, “otra más” (yet another). It appears, as Grist’s Greta Moran writes, that “as the world heats up, it’s also becoming more violent,” particularly for women. We know by now those who are already...
Resistance to the North Dakota Access Pipeline at Standing Rock brought greater media and public attention to Native peoples and our struggles with environmental injustice. It also provided a means for the public to express fears over the environmental threats posed to the Earth by unchecked corporate and governmental exploitation of fossil fuels. Native Americans, however, have been hollering for generations about the global impact of fossil fuels and the poisoning of water, land, and fish...
How does the quality of where we live affect our children’s development? The impact of housing and neighborhood quality on physical health has long been studied in the public health field, but studies that aim to assess those same impacts on mental health are less common. This study examined the relationship between the physical quality of housing and neighborhoods and their interactive effect on the mental health and motivation of children from elementary school through young adulthood.
Twelve-year-old Talayia Richardson wore a lovely flowered sun dress that complimented her milk chocolate-colored skin; her long black hair was perfectly coifed; the sun seemed to burst across her smiling face as DC Attorney General Karl Racine (D) introduced her at a 2018 youth roundtable organized with Ward 6 DC Council member Charles Allen (D). Showcasing local winners of the “Do the Write Thing” essay contest, the event featured voices of students from traditional and charter schools,...
Last fall, an 8-year-old boy I’ll call Mateo came to the pediatric clinic in South Los Angeles where I was working. He was thin, with sun-parched skin and very quiet. He seemed fearful of everyone and everything. His mother brought him in because his feet were hurting. When I removed Mateo’s tattered tennis shoes and socks, his feet were inflamed and the skin was flaking off the soles. His toes were covered in black eschars, pieces of dead tissue. I couldn’t believe he was able to walk. I...
In November 2018, five people were stabbed to death on the streets of London in the space of six days . Three of the victims were teenagers. That spate of killings followed a summer filled with harrowing reports of knife violence. After several years of decline, knife offences in England are on the rise again. According to the most recent crime figures from the Office of National Statistics , offences involving a knife or a sharp instrument are at the highest level ever recorded, at almost...
Jamal was in a good place. He was enrolled in a program that employed him while he was earning his high school equivalency degree. He enjoyed the work — doing landscaping all over the city. He had made good friends, he liked having money in his pocket, and he was doing something positive. Until he was shot in the face. Jamal, then 24 years old, was shopping for a shirt after work in downtown San Francisco when a car pulled up to the curb next to him. The window rolled down, and the passenger...
by Amy Wright Glenn https://www.phillyvoice.com/impact-verbal-abuse-children/?
This post originally appeared on the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Culture of Health Blog . There’s no bus service in his small town in rural North Carolina, so Dean* drives 10 miles to The Free Clinics ("Clinics") in Hendersonville every couple of weeks whenever he has money for gas. Staff there helped him find affordable medications and treatments for cancer and for his shoulder, which he injured by falling 20 feet on a construction site. He’s unable to read due to learning...
Their titles vary — community health worker, care navigator, community paramedic, peer specialist — but the core benefit they provide to patients is the same: a knowledgeable care provider, often with lived experience, and an advocate for better health.