Tagged With "Malibu High School"
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12 Myths of the Science of ACEs
The two biggest myths about ACEs science are: MYTH #1 — That it’s just about the 10 ACEs in the ACE Study — the CDC-Kaiser Permanente Adverse Childhood Experiences Study . It’s about sooooo much more than that. MYTH #2 — And that it’s just about ACEs…adverse childhood experiences. These two myths are intertwined. The ACE Study issued the first of its 70+ publications in 1998, and for many people it was the lightning bolt, the grand “aha” moment, the unexpected doorway into a blazing new...
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5 things people are doing to help the victims of the California fires.(upworthy.com)
On Sunday night, flames swept into Santa Rosa and other cities across the region with little warning . At least 24 people have been confirmed dead , with hundreds displaced and nearly 300 still reported missing . Meanwhile, hundreds of residents from hotel owners to teachers and students to local government officials to relief workers are marshalling help those to affected. Here's what they've been up to in the days since the devastation began. 1. Farms are taking in displaced animals, and...
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How a natural disaster led one town to do something about its ACEs, past and future
Tracy Franke, principal of Darrington Elementary School, a K-8 school with 300 students, had heard about CLEAR, and called Dr. Christopher Blodgett, who runs the program, to arrange a visit from Turner. “We were hurting,” says Franke. “Our students and staff needed some tools to get through the trauma.”
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How Health Professionals Perceive Health Impacts of Climate Change
Health Implications of Climate Change: a Review of the Literature About the Perception of the Public and Health Professionals By Julia Hathaway & Edward W. Maibach Summary Through a systematic search of English language peer-reviewed studies, we assess how health professionals and the public, worldwide, perceive the health implications of climate change. Recent Findings Among health professionals, perception that climate change is harming health appears to be high, although selfassessed...
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How Parents and Teachers Can Calm Kids' Getty Fire Anxiety [latimes.com]
By Sonali Kohli and Nina Agrawal, Los Angeles Times, October 29, 2019 During this Santa Ana wind season, 12-year-old Nicholas Ladesich tends to go to bed worrying about what might burn overnight. He often has dreams of waking up in his old house that burned down in the Woolsey fire last year. But he awakens instead in the living room of the one-bedroom guest house he shares with his brother and parents. He demands that his mom turn on the news to monitor possible fires while his 15-year-old...
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How to help children recover from the trauma of disaster [theconversation.com]
In any culture, children hit by a natural disaster will see family members undergo huge amounts of stress and worry. They may be forced to live in temporary accommodation, and experience many changes to their usual routines and social circles. And on top of all this, many treasured possessions – including family pets – may be lost or damaged forever. For many children, this can result in high levels of anxiety and emotional trauma . This can inevitably lead to changes in a child’s behaviour,...
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How Two Local Communities Are Fighting Back Against the Trauma of Global Climate Change
In Alertnet: February 24, 2018 By Ruben Cantu, program manager for community trauma, mental health and violence prevention at Prevention Institute , and ITRC Steering Committee Member Found at: https://www.alternet.org/environment/global-climate-change-causing-local-trauma-heres-how-two-communities- We must build resilient communities before disaster strikes. Communities around the globe are feeling the effects of climate change, from scorching heat waves and out-of-control wildfires to...
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Hurricane Florence first responders receive free trauma/resilience training
In a webinar offered this morning by Elaine Miller Karas , executive director of the Trauma Resource Institute in Claremont, CA, leaders from several North Carolina ACEs Connection communities affected by flooding and other damage by Hurricane Florence learned more about trauma response and how to better help their communities find resilience. Karas, who was delivering her Community Resiliency Model (CRM) training at Duke University in Durham, NC, offered the free training and provided...
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Hurricane Irma’s Overlooked Victims: Migrant Farm Workers Living at the Edge [insideclimatenews.org]
Hurricane Irma knocked millions of dollars worth of oranges and grapefruits to the ground. Its high winds mowed down thousands of acres of sugarcane, toppled nursery plants, and decimated the avocado crop. The damage will cost the state's agricultural industry billions, but for the migrant workers who pick these crops and work in the fields, the storm means real hardship that will test lives already on the edge. "If you listen to the news coverage about Irma, you'll hear about damage to the...
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Hurricane Michael: Children Face Stress Of Upended Lives [health.wusf.usf.edu]
When Tiffany Harris and her two children emerged from their hotel after Hurricane Michael roared past, her 3-year-old son pointed to a sea of fallen trees and shattered buildings. "It's broken. It's broken, Mommy, fix it," she recalls her little boy Amari begging. Harris, who lives with her boyfriend, two children, plus her sister and her four children near Panama City, soon learned their town house was uninhabitable. Everything was a total loss after Michael powered inland across the...
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Jakarta Is Sinking So Fast, It Could End Up Underwater [nytimes.com]
JAKARTA — Rasdiono remembers when the sea was a good distance from his doorstep, down a hill. Back then he opened the cramped, gaily painted bayside shack he named the Blessed Bodega, where he and his family sell catfish heads, spiced eggs and fried chicken. It was strange, Rasdiono said. Year by year, the water crept closer. The hill gradually disappeared. Now the sea loomed high over the shop, just steps away, held back only by a leaky wall. With climate change, the Java Sea is rising and...
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Making the Connections Between Climate Change and Sexual and Relationship Violence
“Human relations were laid bare and the strengths and weaknesses in relationships came sharply into focus. Thus, socially isolated women became more isolated, domestic violence increased, and the core of relationships with family, friends and spouses were exposed” – written in response to a major flood in Australia (Dobson, 1994, p. 11). Racism. Sexism. Classism. Immigration status. Violence against LGBTQ communities. These are just a few of the various forms of oppression that the...
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MENTAL TOLL OF CLIMATE CHANGE HITS WOMEN 60% MORE
in OZY, By Stephen Starr July 25, 2019 https://www.ozy.com/acumen/mental-toll-of-climate-change-hits-women-60-more/94796 It’s long been argued that climate change will see our cities flooded, our forests reduced to ash and our weather turn increasingly violent and unpredictable. But research has found that the downside of living in a hotter, less-climate-stable world may not be limited only to buildings, trees and weather: A recently released report suggests climate change may actually...
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Oregon bill takes preventive approach to psycho-social-spiritual impacts of climate change
A hearing will be held on April 3 on a recently introduced bill ( SB 1037 ) to create a task force to determine how to make resilience training available to all Oregonians in response to climate change. Under the bill, an 18-member task force would be created to study aspects of psychological, emotional, and psychosocial resilience education and skills training. The Oregon members of the International Transformation Resilience Coalition (ITRC), including ITRC coordinator, Bob Doppelt, have...
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Post from Carl Anthony and Paloma Pavel about Oakland/SF Bay Area Resilience Efforts
Hello Bob, A few things. We are interested in participating in both initiatives (the statewide steering committee and the statewide policy group), if we can balance them with our other work demands. In the meantime, we want to share some information on other activities in which we are involved (Paloma mentioned these during the conference call today). Could you post these to the forum? Thanks so much! 1.There is a free showing of Demain (Tomorrow) and a panel discussion (with Carl Anthony,...
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Post Traumatic Growth after Natural Disasters - Communication and Connections Help [sciencedaily.com]
A recent study from researchers at the University of Missouri found more communication among family, friends and neighbors who experienced the devastating and deadly 2011 Joplin Tornado was related to more post-traumatic growth. The 2011 tornado in Joplin, Missouri, was one of the most destructive in U.S. history -- killing 161 people, injuring 1,150 and destroying approximately one-third of the city's homes. Individuals who experience such disasters can exhibit a range of mental health...
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Preparing People for Climate Change in California: Sonoma County Listens and Shares
Last summer Bob Doppelt asked me to join a planning committee for a conference on climate change . I was surprised to be asked as my recent professional expertise is tied to addressing childhood adversity. Bob changed my perspective on the relevance by saying, "Adversity and trauma are the social side effects of climate-related disasters. Imagine the social-emotional impacts on Katrina survivors." The connection was a glimmer in my mind, but I agreed to support a California conference .
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Recommendations for preventing & healing pandemic generated mental health and psychosocial problems
Attached is a set of ITRC recommendations for swiftly organizing community-based initiatives to prevent and heal pandemic-generated mental health and psychosocial problems. If you find the recommendations helpful, please initiate the creation of a resilience coordinating council in your community or region. Please also pass the document on to other organizations and individuals that might find it useful. Thanks--and stay healthy during this stressful time, Bob Doppelt
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Rising from the Ashes: How Trauma-Informed Care Nurtures Healing in Rural America [The Rural Monitor]
By Jenn Lukens April 17, 2019 It was late July 2018 when the Mendocino Complex wildfire broke out in rural Lake County, California. It burned more than 450,000 acres and destroyed 280 structures before it was contained. Ana Santana managed to fill some storage bins with sentimental items – her kids’ blankets, pictures, and art projects – before fleeing her home. Santana is the facilitator of the Lake County Children’s Council and Program Director for Healthy Start Youth and Family Services ,...
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Sonoma County Resiliency Collaborative A Practical Approach to Post-Wildlife Resilience and Wellbeing
The traumatic events of the North Bay wildfires affect our emotional and physical health, social functioning, and overall well-being, both as individuals and as a community. Unresolved, they can damage our health and limit our potential to rebuild a strong community. Join diverse Sonoma County leaders and representatives to participate in dynamic workshop where you will practice tools for effectively addressing personal and team stress after the fires, network with peers, and learn about an...
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Sonoma County schools keep eye on student behavior after wildfires [Pressdemocrat.com]
As Sonoma County students settle back into the classroom routines after winter break, school officials will be watching closely for dips in academic performance and attendance, outbursts and other behavioral reactions as they continue to wrestle with the aftermath of October’s wildfires. Ed Navarro, principal of Rincon Valley Middle School and Santa Rosa Accelerated Charter School, said students showed kindness, camaraderie and support for displaced classmates immediately after the fires.
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Study: Pennsylvanians who live near fracking are more likely to be depressed
The Dailey Climate by Kristina Marusic Jul y27, 2018 Stress and depression are higher among those living closest to more and bigger wells. People who live near unconventional natural gas operations such as fracking are more likely to experience depression, according to a new study. For the study, which is the first of its kind and published today in Scientific Reports, researchers from the University of California at Berkeley and Johns Hopkins University looked at rates of depression in...
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Texas Creates Task Force To Address Students’ Post-Harvey Trauma [houstonpublicmedia.org]
When the clouds darken and rain starts pouring down, many Houston-area elementary school students get nervous and start to sob — a sign of the long-lasting effects of watching the water levels rise during and after Hurricane Harvey. For Donna Wotkyns, a licensed social worker in Houston, that reaction shows exactly why ramping up resources for long-term mental health services for Texas students is necessary. “I’m a big believer in … support groups, getting together multiple children or youth...
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The Capital Region Climate Readiness Collaborative (CRC) first Quarterly Adaptation Exchange in 2018
The Capital Region Climate Readiness Collaborative (CRC) conducted our first Quarterly Adaptation Exchange in 2018 on how Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and trauma can be a detriment to an individual’s physical, social, and mental health that has lasting effects into adulthood. Climate impacts and an individual’s and/or community’s capacity to respond to trauma with resilience is intrinsically tied to access to a support system, resources, and past traumas. The reality is with Climate...
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The Case of Juliana v. U.S. — Children and the Health Burdens of Climate Change [NEJM.org]
Renee N. Salas, M.D., M.P.H., Wendy Jacobs, J.D., and Frederica Perera, Dr.P.H., Ph.D. On June 4, 2019, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals will hear oral arguments in Juliana v. United States to determine whether the case will proceed to trial in district court in Oregon. Nearly 4 years ago, 21 children and adolescents between 8 and 19 years of age, including Kelsey Juliana from Oregon, filed suit against the federal government, charging that the government’s inaction on addressing climate...
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The Environmental Burden of Generation Z [washingtonpost.com]
By Jason Plautz, The Washington Post Magazine, February 3, 2020 The teenagers pour off buses near Denver’s Union Station under a baking September sun. Giggling with excitement at skipping out on Friday classes, they join a host of others assembled near the terminal. Native American drummers and dancers rouse the crowd, and there’s a festive feeling in the air. But this is no festival. The message these young people have come to send to their city, to their state, to the nation — to the world...
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The life-changing class teaching Texas kids resilience after Hurricane Harvey [qz.com]
Every family that went through Hurricane Harvey has a story. When the storm made landfall in Texas in August 2017, it displaced thousands, killed more than 80 people , and caused damages that are expected to reach more than $150 billion . Elvia, a mother of two from the Houston neighborhood of Pine Trails, was grateful to get through the hurricane with her family safe and her house intact. But they lost their two cars in the flooding and had to evacuate their neighborhood. Elvia, a detention...
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The silence of school leaders on climate change (hechingerreport.org)
By the time wildfires tore through his home county of Sonoma, California, Park Guthrie was already convinced that the clock on the climate catastrophe was running out. In 2015, Guthrie, a sixth-grade teacher and father of three, had approached the superintendent of the school district where he worked, hopeful she would sign a resolution endorsing action on climate change. He says he got nowhere. But after attending an advocacy event in Washington two years later, and hearing that the U.S.
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Tomorrow's Doctors Will Diagnose the Mental Toll of Climate Change
The Daily Dose, July 22, 2019 by Carly Stern https://www.ozy.com/fast-forward/tomorrows-doctors-will-diagnose-the-mental-toll-of-climate-change/95540 First-year medical student Anna Goshua was interviewing an emergency room physician in March to learn more about the job when she heard about a patient who had come all the way from Puerto Rico to that ER in Massachusetts for health care. Hurricane Maria had wiped out all prospects of the patient seeking care at home. A surprised Goshua pored...
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UC Berkeley Event: Climate Climate Change: The Defining Health Challenge and Opportunity of the 21st Century
This coming Wednesday, The Lancet Countdown will release its first annual report tracking climate change and health indicators across five key domains (including Mental Health) on November 1 ( live in Berkeley , or via Livestream ). (Report attached below.) All of the speakers could and should be invited to the upcoming California Preparing Individuals for Climate Change Conference. Unfortunately, I am unable to attend. Climate Change: The Defining Health Challenge and Opportunity of the...
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Using the Climate Crisis as Catalyst to Increase Wellbeing
I wrote this article for Meeting of the Minds, which brings urban leaders together. It explains the recommendations of the ITRC for using the climate crisis as a transformational catalyst to enhance personal, social, and ecological wellbeing. Found here: https://meetingoftheminds.org/building-transformational-resilience-to-cope-with-climate-disruption-28559 A year after Hurricane Maria ravaged Puerto Rico in 2017, many residents continue to struggle with mental illness. One suicide...
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Want to Survive Climate Change? You’ll Need a Good Community [Wired.com]
In the summer of 1995, a blistering heat wave settled over Chicago for three days. It killed 739 people, making it one of the most unexpectedly lethal disasters in modern American history. No statistical models of the heat wave predicted such a high death toll. Researchers in the American Journal of Public Health reported that their analysis “failed to detect relationships between the weather and mortality that would explain what happened.” Just as mysterious as the number of fatalities was...
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Webinar: Building Resilient Communities with Elaine Miller-Karas
This webinar will explore integrating a biological based model to reduce the impacts of toxic stress for children and adults. It is a model both for prevention and to use in the aftermath of adverse event.
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Webinar: Building Transformational Resilience for Climate Change Traumas and Toxic Stresses
Live Webinar: Building Transformational Resilience for Climate Change Traumas and Toxic Stresses Monday, October 28 th , 2019 12:00-1:30 PM PDT You will learn: how climate change creates personal, family, and community traumas and toxic stresses; how those traumatic stressors trigger feedbacks that expand and aggravate ACEs and many other person, social, community, and societal maladies; why current approaches are woefully inadequate to address what is already occurring and rapidly steaming...
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Webinar Slides and Recording: The Human Impact of Climate Change
Recorded live November 13, 2019. Find the slides attached below. Speaker: Elaine Miller-Karas, MSW, LCSW, Executive Director and Co-founder, Trauma Resource Institute. Guest: Kelly Doty, MA, Strengthening Families Program Manager, Youth for Change Host: Carey Sipp, Southeast Community Facilitator, ACEs Connection. Climate change emergencies are real and the human toll during and in the aftermath impact children, teens and adults. This webinar will hear from Kelly Doty, a survivor, who lost...
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Webinar Slides and Recording: Transformational Resilience for Climate Change Traumas and Toxic Stresses with Bob Doppelt
Recorded live October 28, 2019. Find the slides attached below. The webinar recording: You will learn: how climate change creates personal, family, and community traumas and toxic stresses; how those traumatic stressors trigger feedbacks that expand and aggravate ACEs and many other person, social, community, and societal maladies; why current approaches are woefully inadequate to address what is already occurring and rapidly steaming toward us and why prevention is the only realistic...
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Webinar Slides and Recording: Transformational Resilience for Climate Change Traumas and Toxic Stresses with Bob Doppelt
Recorded live October 28, 2019. Find the slides attached below. The webinar recording: You will learn: how climate change creates personal, family, and community traumas and toxic stresses; how those traumatic stressors trigger feedbacks that expand and aggravate ACEs and many other person, social, community, and societal maladies; why current approaches are woefully inadequate to address what is already occurring and rapidly steaming toward us and why prevention is the only realistic...
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ACEs Science 101 (FAQs)
What are ACEs? ACEs are adverse childhood experiences that harm children's developing brains so profoundly that the effects show up decades later; they cause much of chronic disease, most mental illness, and are at the root of most violence. ...
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Addressing Mental Health in a Changing Climate: Incorporating Mental Health Indicators into Climate Change and Health Vulnerability and Adaptation Assessments
Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON M5T 3M7, Canada Published: 22 August 2018 Abstract A growing number of health authorities around the world are conducting climate change and health vulnerability and adaptation assessments; however, few explore impacts and adaptations related to mental health. We argue for an expanded conceptualization of health that includes both the physiological and psychological aspects of climate change and health. Through a review...
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American Climate: Personal Stories of Shattered Lives
Rising temperatures are strengthening the destructive force of wildfires, hurricanes and floods, putting tens of millions of Americans at risk. Tens of thousands of Americans are already paying a high price, their lives shattered by climate calamities. Here are twenty-one of their stories. Found here: https://insideclimatenews.org/american-climate
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Children are highly vulnerable to health risks of a changing climate [sciencedaily.com]
Young children are far more vulnerable to climate-related disasters and the onus is on adults to provide the protection and care that children need. In a paper published in PLoS Medicine, researchers at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health and Columbia University Irving Medical Center set out some specific challenges associated with the impacts of climate change on the world's 2.3 billion children and suggest ways to address their under-prioritized needs. "Children and...
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Climate change and mental health: risks, impacts and priority actions
This is one of the better assessments of the psychological and psychosocial impacts of climate change, though it neglects some key issues. International Journal of Mental Health Systems, October 2018, by Katie Hayes et al. Abstract Background: This article provides an overview of the current and projected climate change risks and impacts to mental health and provides recommendations for priority actions to address the mental health consequences of climate change. Discussion and conclusion:...
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Climate Change Isn’t Just Frying the Planet—It’s Fraying Our Nerves “We kind of lose our cool.”
Rowan Walrath, Feb 18, 2019 Mother Jones Over the last year, Rebecca, a 35-year-old woman living in Washington, DC, had been losing sleep over the seemingly endless flow of apocalyptic environmental news. She fretted about the Trump administration’s loosening of emissions regulations and the United Nations’ dire predictions about climate change. In October, she sought help from a psychiatrist who put her on an antidepressant. “It sort of saps your emotional reserves,” she says, “this...
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Disability and Disaster Response in the Age of Climate Change [psmag.com]
Throughout the morning of Sunday, August 27th, Angela Wrigglesworth kept her concerns off social media because she didn't want to worry her parents. But as the waters slowly rose into her Brays Bayou home in Houston, she discovered that emergency services were overwhelmed, dealing with more urgent crises than even the flooding in her neighborhood. Finally, a little after noon, she posted on Facebook: "There is water in our home and we need to get out at some point soon. ... If you know of...
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Does Climate Change Cause More War? [theatlantic.com]
It’s one of the most important questions of the 21st century: Will climate change provide the extra spark that pushes two otherwise peaceful nations into war? In the past half-decade, a growing body of research—spanning economics, political science, and ancient and modern history—has argued that it can and will. Historians have found temperature or rainfall change implicated in the fall of Rome and the many wars of the 17th century . A team of economists at UC Berkeley and Stanford...
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'Ecological grief': Greenland residents traumatised by climate emergency
Greenland Islanders are struggling to reconcile impact of global heating with traditional ways of life, survey finds The Guardian Dan McDougall in Ilulissat and Tasiilaq, Greenland Mon .12 Aug 2019 The climate crisis is causing unprecedented levels of stress and anxiety to people in Greenland who are struggling to reconcile the traumatic impact of global heating with their traditional way of life . The first ever national survey examining the human impact of the climate emergency, revealed...
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Finding Resilience in the Midst of Hurricane Florence
Avis and her brother, Bruce, have seen some hard knocks in their lives. At 60, she's his sole caretaker. She's taught school, worked as a receptionist, always worked, or wanted to work. Since she started caring for her brother, full-time work has seemed hard to find. He was born with autism 51 years ago. They share her little house in Pamlico County, North Carolina, where she now hopes to be called in to substitute teach, and he looks forward to her home cooked meals. Their lives revolve...
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Fires Take a Toll on Students; Some Districts Rethink Suspensions (Podcast) [edsource.org]
By EdSource, November 4, 2019 From Sonoma County to Simi Valley, fires forced hundreds of thousands of Californians out of their homes in October. In this week’s podcast, reporter Sydney Johnson shares what she found at evacuation centers in Santa Rosa and Petaluma, where she spoke with college students worried about how they will make up lost time. Also, with a big decline in out-of-school suspensions for disruptive behavior, some districts are looking at ways to transform how they handle...
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Florida Governor's Wife announces mental health aid for Panhandle after Hurricane Michael
Photo credit: Florida's Governor's Office The story below illustrates the urgent need to proactively build psychological and psycho-social-spiritual--Transformational Resilience--for climate change related disasters. It describes how the mental health impacts of these disasters often becomes most acute months after a disaster occurs, which is long after mental health first aid and other disaster mental health services have ended. Prevention is the only solution, and the focus must be on...
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From not Having Kids to Battling Anxiety: Climate Change is Shaping Life Choices and Affecting Mental Health [usatoday.com]
By Elizabeth Lawrence and Elinor Aspegren, USA Today, August 14, 2019 Revelle Mast wanted to be an architect when she was a kid. She changed course in high school, deciding to pursue chemical engineering to address the threat of climate change. But, last year, she made another life decision: to go into politics. “I realized about a year ago that was not feasible on the time scale that climate change is happening,” Mast said. “Nine months ago, I quit my engineering job and went full time into...