Tagged With "Early Life Stress and Mental Health"
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Can a Flavonoids-Rich Diet Buffer the Effects of ACEs on Depression?
Happy 4th of July Weekend to all our US based Community members! For the rest of us it's a regular Friday where we can research and expand our knowledge. Today the focus is on diet and how it can play a role in buffering the effects of Adverse Childhood Experiences on depression. It is the work of Alison Tan and her colleagues, published under the title " Adverse childhood experiences and depressive symptoms: Protective effects of dietary flavonoids " in the Journal of Psychosomatic Research...
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The Pain of "215"
Hi everyone. We hope you're taking care of your spiritual, physical and mental health, wherever you are in the world. This has been a sombre week with the news of the discovery of the bodies of 215 precious children on the grounds of a residential school in Canada. Words cannot express the incredible pain those families must have felt for years, knowing nothing of the whereabouts of their babies. To have the revelation come at this time, during all that the world is experiencing and with the...
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Mental Health and School Reopening for the Caribbean
Good Monday morning everyone. We hope the weekend was refreshing. So across the world there continue to be diverse reports on the way countries are coping with Covid-19. In the Caribbean, there has been a sense of relief after the USA indicated that it will donate millions of doses of Covid-19 vaccines to the region and Latin America. As a consequence, there have been hopeful statements that schools may reopen in September 2021, after having been shuttered since February and March 2020 in...
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Five Years On - 5 Ways to Boost Your Resilience at Work
Hello. It's Wellness Wednesday everyone and we're bringing you a Harvard Business Review article from 5 years ago. Don't worry, it's relevant for today even more than the author could have imagined at the time. The author, Mr. Rich Fernandez, was a director of learning and organization development at Google, eBay and J.P. Morgan Chase. Rich began by writing, "Many of us now work in constantly connected, always-on, highly demanding work cultures where stress and the risk of burnout are...
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ACEs Screening and Precision Medicine
In news from California, USA, funds have been provided for a new initiative that will study 300 mother-child pairs to screen for Adverse Childhood Experiences as part of a precision medicine multi-disciplinary approach. "Currently, the only screening method for ACEs involves questionnaires for parents and caregivers. But screening rates are generally low in pediatric practices, and the questionnaires are not able to identify which babies and children are having a toxic stress response. The...
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Do Higher ACEs Score Cause Worse Covid-19 Effects?
Hi and a good Therapeutic Tuesday morning to you all. As the world sees a light at the end of the tunnel to the nightmare of Covid-19, more and more research is being published to reveal who may have been more severely affected by it and why. During the initial surge of the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers at Mount Holyoke College and Virginia Commonwealth University examined a sample of 236 people in the U.S. to assess the impact of the pandemic on mental health, well-being and substance use.
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Profiles and behavioral consequences of child abuse among adolescent girls and boys from Barbados and Grenada
Hi everyone. Can you believe that we are at the end of July this weekend? Time is flying! For this Food for Thought Friday we have a study titled " Profiles and behavioral consequences of child abuse among adolescent girls and boys from Barbados and Grenada " by Agata Debowska, Daniel Boduszek, Nicole Sherretts, Dominic Willmott, and Adele D. Jones of the University of Sheffield and University of Huddersfield. It is published in Child Abuse & Neglect, (Volume 79, May 2018, Pages 245-258)...
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ADHD in first- and second-generation immigrant children: A nationwide cohort study in Sweden
Hi everyone, it's Food For Thought Friday again and we are excited to bring to you this study from Europe on ADHD prevalence in children and adolescents. The reason is that some of the respondents in this study are of Caribbean heritage! With the paucity of Caribbean research in this area, we are always on the hunt for global research that includes respondents from or in the Caribbean. Ahem, in case you missed it, that was a subtle ask for you to share whatever research you may come across...
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Promoting positive parenting for families in poverty: New directions for improved reach and engagement
Good Friday morning everyone. How was your week? I am sure we are all looking forward to the weekend. As we set things up for this week's "Food For Thought Friday", we want to examine an area which was excluded from the original ACE study of 1998 - that is, the consideration of poverty. It has been an area of criticism of the original study especially where researchers desiring to replicate it want to address the needs of persons living in cramped urban conditions. There is a 2017 study done...
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Resilience and Children in Residential Care - What the Data Shows
Hi everyone. The recent discovery of the bodies of 215 children at a residential school in Canada has led to an explosion of discussion online and many calls for the federal government of Canada to implement a series of recommendations from a previous national commission to investigate similar issues. Also arising are discussions on the state of residential care for children as a whole and the degree to which such institutions are properly addressing the inherent needs of the children under...
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Mental health of jail inmates within the prison of Ducos, Martinique – a cross-sectional descriptive study
Happy Food for Thought Friday, everyone! As we approach the weekend, we want to share with you some research from the Caribbean island of Martinique. Martinique is a French overseas administrative district in the Caribbean, with a population of about 400,000 inhabitants. Its only prison is located in the city of Ducos. The study was done by R. Arnal et al and published in Revue d'Épidémiologie et de Santé Publique (Volume 66, Issue 3, May 2018, Pages 201-207)...
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Wellness Wednesday - The steps that can help adults heal from childhood trauma
Hi everyone! This Wellness Wednesday we are looking at an article written by Shanta R. Dube, Associate Professor, School of Public Health, Georgia State University. In writing in 2107, she focused on the fact that ACEs can be a cycle that is hard to break if we only deal with it from the perspective of the child. "Prevention is the mantra of modern medicine and public health. Benjamin Franklin said it himself: “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” Unfortunately, childhood...
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What Do We Do Once We Realize the Prevalence of Adversities?
When people hear about the mental and physical health risks of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and toxic stress, one of the first questions is, “What do we do about this?” Awareness of the prevalence of adversity and the impact of stress on the brain and body leads to the possibility for prevention and response. Whether you are acting within a family, agency, organization, business or community, the next steps should be taken knowing that we will all work together to bring about change.
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Adversities. Resilience. Gratitude.
Adversity can be a powerful word especially when you are a Trauma Counsellor aware of ACEs. This revolutionary study on the impact of our Adverse Childhood Experiences has provided us with so many answers as to why we are the way we are. At least it did for me and the people I work with every day. It has also raised many important questions. One being, how can one build resilience through past adversities? How did I do it? Having done the ACE test and getting a maximum score of 10 on it, I...
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California PACEs Connection initiatives spark new connections in regional meeting
Among PACEs Connection initiatives around the country, it’s well known that our social network is something like a bustling, giant town square where people share ideas, resources and any number of conversations about how to prevent childhood adversity and promote positive childhood experiences. On May 14, PACEs Connection assembled a virtual town square gathering of PACEs initiatives in California, where we have 58 initiatives sparking action all across the state. Speakers at the gathering,...
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Research into Effects of Child Maltreatment on Males
Hi everyone. We hope your weekend was restful and you were able to view "Wrestling Ghosts" after we shared this Watch Party opportunity last week. Since we wanted you to have the chance to catch the documentary, we deferred our usual " Food for Thought Friday " post (based on a research article to review) to today, Monday While it is USA-based, this paper looks at how child maltreatment, especially child sexual abuse impacts males into adulthood. This is a very under-served area of study...
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Wrestling Ghosts Watch Weekend on PACEs Connection (June 11-13th) & Zoom Discussion with Director Ana Joanes on June 15th at 7p.m. EST.
Wrestling Ghosts is the fourth and final film in the Transform Trauma with ACEs Science Film Festival series. The film can be watched, free of charge, on PACEs Connection from Friday, June 11th through Sunday, June 13th where it will be streamed all weekend. The streaming will be followed by a Zoom discussion with Wrestling Ghosts Director, Ana Joanes, and the co-sponsors of the Transform Trauma with ACEs Science Film Festival (CTIPP, PACEs Connection, & the Relentless School Nurse) on...
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Upcoming Livestream on Father's Day - ACEs & The Father Wound
Many men and women around the world are nursing a Father Wound and it is negatively impacting their health, eroding their self-confidence and crippling their ability to form healthy relationships, among other things. For such persons, the word "father" does not represent the definitions outlined in the title image. Rather, it brings to mind memories of hurt and pain, or thoughts of abandonment and neglect, or simply a void. So, on Father's Day, at 2pm Eastern Standard Time we want to address...
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Reminder - Livestream on Father's Day - "ACEs & The Father Wound"
Hi everyone, it's the Father's Day weekend! If your dad is in your life and you love him, try to do something different for him this year. Socks and ties are so 20th Century. You can take him to "Lunch and a Movie" - or Livestream, on us! Yup, you can share with your father the link to our YouTube channel and you and he can tune in for our riveting discussion on Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and The Father Wound. Date - Sunday 20th June 2021 Time - 2:00 p.m. EST Where - On YouTube of...
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Wellness Wednesday - Resilience Prescription
Hi everyone and welcome to another Wellness Wednesday! Today we have an account from a psychiatrist who, after many years studying trauma and the experiences of trauma victims, had the misfortune to become one himself. In a rather dramatic turn of events, Dennis S. Charney was shot by a former co-worker and survived to write about it and to grow from the experience. In his own words, he describes how the situation challenged him to dig deep and uncover the resilience he needed to take him...
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Wellness Wednesday - A Self-Care Resilience Resource
Hi everyone. On this Wellness Wednesday, we are pleased to share with you a resource from the USA to help implement self-care towards building resilience. The American Academy of Pediatrics, California Chapter 3 has developed a visual resource adapted from the ACEs Aware Self-Care tool . The handout is print-ready and available in English , Spanish , Amharic , Arabic , Chinese , Farsi and Vietnamese . Please see the attachment to this article for the English version. We will add it to the...
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ACEs Handouts - ACC.pdf
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ACEs Infographic - ACC.pdf
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How Does Historic Trauma Impact Blacks Swimmers?
Good Monday morning everybody! It's warm weather time in the global North and the "wet season" here in the Caribbean. In times before 2020, this would have signalled a lot of beach and river bathing in Trinidad and loads of people headed to Tobago to enjoy the more attractive beaches there. Now, beach-going and sea-bathing are restricted as part of the current national State of Emergency. With those thoughts in mind, that may explain why this recent article from an African American mother...
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About Our Livestream Guests
Are you ready? It's almost time! Yes, we are 2 hours away from the start of our Father's Day Livestream titled, "ACEs & The Father Wound - A Cross Cultural Discussion" . Join us for the discussion via this link - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgeVx3-3EFo With us today will be Mr. Mark Nicoll, Dr. Kenneth Niles, Queen Mother Dianne Sears and Dr. Joanne Spence. Dr. Spence will do double-duty as moderator for this afternoon's discussion. Their bios are below so you will have some context...
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How to (Mentally) Prepare for Hurricane Season
Hi everyone! We are well into the Hurricane Season for 2021 and today Trinidad and Tobago was put on a Yellow Alert due to the passage of a weather system. For those interested in learning more about the possibilities of the hurricane season, try to register for the Pre-Hurricane Conference 2021 put on by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies ( IFRC ). It runs from Wednesday 23rd to Friday 25th June 2021. While there is great value in developing a Disaster Plan...
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Gwyneth Paltrow x Nadine Burke Harris: How Does Childhood Trauma Impact Health Outcomes? [goop.com]
From Goop, June 16, 2020 “You can’t grow up Black in America and not feel outraged by the terrible health disparities that are still going on every day,” says Nadine Burke Harris, MD , the first surgeon general of California. GP got on a video call with Harris, who is an expert on adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). Her book, The Deepest Well , explores the connection between adversity, trauma, and toxic stress in childhood and health outcomes later in life. Much of her work focuses on...
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It's time to heal childhood trauma!
A consensus of scientific research demonstrates that cumulative adversity, especially when experienced during childhood development, is a root cause to some of the most harmful, persistent, and expensive health challenges facing our nation. But there is hope. We can take action now to change and save lives. The impacts of ACEs, trauma, and toxic stress are treatable. Start by watching the short educational video below. For more information please visit: https://aceovercomers.org/...
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Explore the Role of Culture in Healing with La Maida Project
La Maida Project is thrilled to share videos from our recent webinar series “Exploring the Role of Culture in Healing”. We had an great audience turn out and robust dialogue with our panel of guest speakers including Ken Epstein, PhD LCSW , leader in trauma-informed systems transformation, Anil Vadaparty , CEO of child-welfare agency McKinley, and Omid Naim, MD , integrative psychiatrist and founder of La Maida Project. In these webinars we discuss the role of leadership in trauma-informed...
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Building a Restorative Restart to School in the Fall
As we look towards the reopening of in-person instruction in the fall, planning and reimagining for a restorative restart to our school systems that emphasizes student and educator mental health is a priority. In addition, there is a windfall of one-time funding coming to districts from federal and local funds for just this purpose. Recently a wise educator said to me, ‘you know, if you want to get to the hearts and minds of school leaders to make changes for the fall you need to do so by...
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Trauma's epigenetic fingerprint observed in children of Holocaust survivors [www.sciencedaily.com]
Date: September 1, 2016 Source: Elsevier Science Daily The children of traumatized people have long been known to be at increased risk for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and mood and anxiety disorders. However, according to Rachel Yehuda from the James J. Peters Veterans Affairs Medical Center at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai who led a new study in Biological Psychiatry , there are very few opportunities to examine biologic alterations in the context of a watershed...
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Good Bye Elsa!
Hi everyone, We hope the past weekend was a fun one for the folks in the USA celebrating the Fourth of July. In the Caribbean, it was a mixed affair as the season's first Hurricane, named Elsa, tore through the region, doing considerable damage to Barbados - often untouched by these systems - and causing flooding in several other territories. As these small island states continue to grapple with fluctuating Covid-19 infection rates, disrupted economies due to border closures, internal...
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"Historical Trauma in America" series starting July 15.
Hi everyone, it's Monday! So I know, not everyone is excited about Mondays. However, this is a very good Monday as there were no serious tropical systems that impacted the Caribbean over the weekend. (We could not say that last week after Hurricane Elsa battered several of our sister and brother islands.) Climate related events are but one of the challenges our Caribbean region faces. Another huge issue is inherited trauma from the centuries of genocide, conquest, enslavement, exploitation...
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How Have Children and Families Fared During Covid?
Hi everyone, It's Friday or as some say, Fri-yay! Today we want to share some additional research info with you and it is based on US data for the past year. Essentially, the desire was to understand how children and families have been coping since the onset of Covid-19. Recently, KidsData released the latest data from the "Family Experiences During the COVID-19 Pandemic" questionnaire. These data are the second wave of findings from the multi-wave questionnaire. As the COVID-19 pandemic...
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5 ways to create compelling messages about childhood trauma using data
When presented strategically, data can help tell an important story about childhood trauma. Here are a few tips for presenting numbers in ways that advance efforts to reduce adversity, promote resilience, and improve health outcomes.
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When Self-Care Doesn't "Work"
You can't fail at self-care. If something isn't helpful, maybe you haven't yet found your own way.
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"Machete" Star Talks About His Childhood Experiences
Hello everyone. If you are into corny action-comedy movies, then you know the person whose picture adorns the cover image for this post. None other than Mexican-American actor, Danny Trejo, the star of the "Machete" series. Back in the day, I had read that Trejo was a former gang-banger, former drug addict and was formerly incarcerated. However, I never heard his story until recently. He has written a book detailing some of his highlighted experiences but shares how, after giving the...
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Connecting the Dots between Overdose Prevention and Adverse Childhood Experiences
Hi everybody. As you may know there have been many persons who have sought to dull the pain of childhood trauma through the use of narcotics, some becoming addicted in the process. In an effort to explore solutions to this dilemma, we are happy to share with you an upcoming webinar on ACEs and Addiction. "Adverse Childhood Experiences, or ACEs, are shown to increase the risk of chronic health conditions including substance use disorder. These ACES, frequently experienced as “trauma” in early...
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Racism as an Adverse Community Experience
By Christina Velez, The Relationship Foundation July 15, 2021 Have you ever questioned the ways that racism and trauma intersect? As a person of color, I know I have. Racism is a core determinant of health which often leads to social inequities. From watching PBS’s video on “Mental Fitness for Resilience-The Trauma of Racism” it was interesting to learn how racism and trauma, often converge in inseparable ways. Dr. Terri D. McFadden, a general pediatrician, and professor at Emory University...
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Free Webinar: Trauma and Nutrition
Proper nutrition is a key ingredient in rewiring your client's traumatized neural pathways. Research shows that nutrition is often not part of trauma treatment. Nutrition and trauma are on two different planets. This free webinar training by Dr. Sells is for professionals who want to understand why nutrition and trauma are not typically linked in treatment and how to bridge this gap with step-by-step tools, case examples, and handouts. Wednesday, July 21 12 - 1 pm EDT Click HERE to register...
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Five Ways to Protect Your Emotional Health Post-COVID [greatergood.berkeley.edu]
By Bethany Teachman, Greater Good Magazine, July 15, 2021 You’ve been waiting…and waiting…and waiting for this amazing, magical day when you could return to “normal life.” For many people in the U.S., it feels like that dim light at the end of the pandemic tunnel is becoming brighter. My 12- and 14-year-old daughters now have their first shot, with the second one soon to follow. I was euphoric when the kids received their vaccinations, choking up under my mask at the relief that my family...
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Trauma and COVID-19: Addressing Mental Health Among Racial/Ethnic Minority Populations Webinar
The Office of Minority Health (OMH) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) cordially invites you to join a national audience of mental health professionals, health advocates and educators, health care providers, public health professionals, and OMH partners and stakeholders for an upcoming webinar: Trauma and COVID-19: Addressing Mental Health Among Racial/Ethnic Minority Populations July 29, 2021 | 12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m. ET As part of the OMH observance of National...
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What HOPE Adds [positiveexperience.org/blog]
By Bob Sege, 7/22/21, positiveexperience.org/blog Summertime offers a chance to pause and reflect. This past year our team has had the good fortune to meet with, teach, and learn from dozens of organizational leaders and well over 10,000 participants from around the country and beyond. HOPE resonates with the values and work of so many other programs, organizations, and frameworks. At the same time, HOPE coalesces many years of research, thinking, and practical experience. What does HOPE...
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Report: Preventing Gun Violence With a Public Health Approach [aecf.org]
By The Annie E. Casey Foundation, July 20, 2021 Public health strategies in Atlanta and Milwaukee have prevented gun homicides over the past several years, according to a new report by the Annie E. Casey Foundation. Often referred to as community-based violence interventions, the safety approaches implemented in the two cities involve examining the root causes of conflicts, interrupting situations likely to result in shootings and promoting community-wide healing. The report, Improving...
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PACEs Champion Dwana Young navigates community-driven ACEs healing centers in New Jersey
In 2020, New Jersey, a state with about 9 million people spread over the rural countryside and dense urban areas like Newark, launched a new entity: the NJ Office of Resilience (NJOR). The NJOR is unusual because it is a public-private partnership. It brings together three private foundations as well as the NJ Department of Children and Families to provide community-driven strategies for preventing, treating, and healing from ACEs. Like a ship’s navigator laying out a course on charts, Dwana...
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Simone Biles, ACEs and PCEs [positiveexperience.org/blog]
By the HOPE Team, 7/28/21, positiveexperience.org/blog Like so many people, we spent part of the weekend transfixed by the 2021 Tokyo Olympics. Despite COVID, no crowds, and troubles with the Tokyo organizing committee, the athletes dazzled us with their speed, endurance and grace. In particular, Simone Biles seems superhuman – a woman who seems to defy gravity and performs gymnastic feats that had been thought to be impossible. She wears her past on her body and outfit: her collarbone bears...