December 2019

Photo caption and credit: Frank Kros, President of the Kros Learning Group, explains The N.E.A.R. Science to the group. The Maryland General Assembly held an event to inform them about how to make trauma informed policy decisions, and informing them about the consequences of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACES). (Paul W. Gillespie) ____________________________________________________________ If adverse childhood experiences were eliminated entirely, rates of depression could plummet, heart...

By Phil Davis, The Baltimore Sun, December 2, 2019 Growing up in a Cecil County trailer park, Ray Lynn has been shaped by tragedy. Lynn went from seeing drug addiction firsthand in his neighborhood as a child to tackling the problem as a police officer decades later. “I can name you friends that are dead because of it," he said. Lynn, 44, also saw his brother and sister burn to death in a house fire when he was 19, he said. It’s what led him to become a volunteer firefighter and, later, a...

I want to turn your attention to the special issue of Child Maltreatment that was just released, on Understanding Neurobiological Implications of Maltreatment: From Preschool to Emerging Adulthood. Not so long ago, we began to understand the connections between child abuse and psychological and behavioral outcomes. Now, as the authors note, we are beginning to “unravel the neurobiological process that underlies the effect of adverse rearing environments on human development across the life span.