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Chronic stress increases a blood-based hormone called acyl-ghrelin for years after the initial traumatic stressor exposure in some adolescents, and those with elevated levels of the hormone are more likely to develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and to experience more severe cases of the condition, according to a study conducted by researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and published August 20 in JAMA Network Open . ...

Prof Naja H Rod, PhD , Jessica Bengtsson, MS , Esben Budtz-Jørgensen, PhD , Clara Clipet-Jensen, MS , Prof David Taylor-Robinson, PhD , Prof Anne-Marie Nybo Andersen, PhD , et al. Published: August 15, 2020 DOI : https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(20)30621-8 Background Childhood is a sensitive period with rapid brain development and physiological growth, and adverse events in childhood might interfere with these processes and have long-lasting effects on health. In this study, we aimed to...

By Meghan Holohan & Tony Bauer, August 14, 2020, TODAY. As an emergency room nurse, Kristin Dorow thought she understood the complexities of her job. Each shift brought a different, and sometimes exciting, challenge but she felt adept at quickly assessing and treating a patient. When COVID-19 patients started flooding her Austin, Texas area hospital, work — and life — started getting tougher. “It’s just this physical and mental exhaustion … (I'm) constantly going through in my mind, ‘Is...

Robin is a brilliant, passionate, and vocal school nurse with almost two decades of experience as a New Jersey school nurse in the Camden City School District. She is the Legislative Co-Chair for the New Jersey State School Nurses Association and she joined us last week for A Better Normal community discussion about back-to-school (or not) plans families are facing this school year. Robin serves as faculty in the School Nurse Certificate Program at Rutgers University-Camden School of Nursing...

Monica McCasklill, left, and her daughter Kena Johnson, at their home in Greenwood, Missisppi. They respectively lost their grandmother and great grandmother, Ethel Huntley, to Covid-19. Huntley lived in a nearby nursing home and the family allege failings in her primary care. Photograph: Rory Doyle/The Guardian. By Oliver Laughland, The Guardian, August 5, 2020 Poor access to healthcare, failed political leadership and the endurance of segregation and racism have contributed to a surge in...

The organization Zero To Three estimates that in the U.S., a child is taken into the child welfare system every six seconds. “Many of society’s most intractable problems can be traced back to childhood adversity. Being in the child welfare system increases the likelihood of more adversity and criminality. Baby court is a proven approach to healing the trauma of both child and parent, and breaking the cycle of maltreatment,” says Mimi Graham, Ed.D ., director of the Florida State University...

Victor J. Dzau, M.D., Darrell Kirch, M.D., and Thomas Nasca, M.D. August 6, 2020 N Engl J Med 2020; 383:513-515. DOI: 10.1056/NEJMp2011027. The Covid-19 pandemic, which had killed more than 60,000 Americans by May 1, has been compared with Pearl Harbor and September 11 — cataclysmic events that left indelible imprints on the U.S. national psyche. Like the volunteers who flooded into Manhattan after the World Trade Center attacks, the health care providers working on the front lines of the...

The organization Zero To Three estimates that in the U.S., a child is taken into the child welfare system every six seconds. “Many of society’s most intractable problems can be traced back to childhood adversity. Being in the child welfare system increases the likelihood of more adversity and criminality. Baby court is a proven approach to healing the trauma of both child and parent, and breaking the cycle of maltreatment,” says Mimi Graham, Ed.D ., director of the Florida State University...

By Rachel K. Walker, July 23, 2020, Medium. In recent weeks, professional nursing organizations such as ANA, AACN, Sigma Nursing, ONS, AAN, APHA and NLN released statements of solidarity voicing an “[end] hatred, discrimination, and racism in every form.” Some of these organizational statements were more direct than others. Practically none but the Nursology Theory Collective provided a description of specific resource investments or other steps being taken towards greater accountability to...

By Michael Lewis, July 30, 2020, Bloomberg. Notes From A Pandemic: A California county’s efforts to stop the spread has also become a battle with the public’s denial. Erica Dykehouse will wait for minds to change. The Humboldt County Public Health department in California is inside what used to be a juvenile jail. The offices are former prison cells. A few of the doors still have the small windows with the sliding panels that allowed guards to observe prisoners. The basement is a dungeon,...

By Ryan White, Center for Health Journalism, July 23, 2020 Harvard’s Jack Shonkoff, a luminary in the field of early childhood, has spent years showing that events in the earliest years of life have profound implications for how budding brains develop, and in turn, shape a child’s later potential at school and work. Now, Shonkoff says it’s time to connect the brain to the rest of the body. “The message now is to say that there is a revolution going on in molecular biology and genomics and in...

“In order to cope,” writes Mary Trump, “Donald began to develop powerful but primitive defenses, marked by an increasing hostility to others and a seeming indifference to his mother’s absence and father’s neglect….In place of [his emotional needs] grew a kind of grievance and behaviors—including bullying, disrespect, and aggressiveness—that served their purpose in the moment but became more problematic over time. With appropriate care and attention, they might have been overcome.”