Blog

"W hat are friends for?” This isn’t a rhetorical question. Friendship is one of life’s most important features, and one too often taken for granted. The human desire for companionship may feel boundless, but research suggests that our social capital is finite—we can handle only so many relationships at one time. Social scientists have used a number of ingenious approaches to gauge the size of people’s social networks; these have returned estimates ranging from about 250 to about 5,500...

LOS ANGELES (AP) — In a different time, at another place, and under other circumstances, you might have run away from Latisha Valenzuela and Glenda Alvarenga. But at Homegirl Cafe, a Los Angeles breakfast and lunch spot with a Latino twist, the two waitresses welcome you with smiles and friendship. “You alone?” Valenzuela asked when I recently visited. “Don’t worry. We’ll keep you company.” After seating me, she tells me, “you’ll want our cinnamon coffee. We make it ourselves.” She says it...

Japanese-American community leaders are gearing up to commemorate 30 years this week since their activism prompted an official apology from Washington for their wartime incarceration. On Saturday in Los Angeles' Little Tokyo, the Japanese American National Museum and Go for Broke , an educational center that teaches about the Japanese Americans who served with the United States Army in World War II despite their families' incarceration, will hold a number of talks and exhibits to remember...

The new documentary on Whitney Houston, “Whitney,” begins with the voice of the late pop star recounting a recurring nightmare. In this dream, Houston is running from the devil. As exhausted as she becomes from this chase, Houston tells us, she keeps going. She can’t let it catch her. This opening scene foreshadows that the film, directed by Kevin Macdonald, is far from a celebratory portrait of the “How Will I Know” singer. It’s a sad one that shows how drug and alcohol addiction poisoned —...

It’s good, healthy and human to want love and seek it out. We live longer, healthier lives when we feel close to someone safe. Some people feel painfully disconnected, and long to open up to others. But then they stop themselves from reaching out. As therapists, we want to empower people to build more meaningful connections. For all of us, healthy relationships matter . In fact, deep relationships are essential to life as a healthy human being. For trauma survivors, the act of deepening...

August is National Breastfeeding Month! We’ve created new fact sheets and infographics, as well as updated state-specific breastfeeding resources, to help you learn more about the importance of enacting policies that support breastfeeding. Breastfeeding is a healthy practice for both mothers and children, with benefits ranging from decreased morbidity for mother and child to economic and developmental benefits that extend past infancy. However, mothers experience many barriers to...

The National Perinatal Task Force: Building a Movement to Birth a More Just and Loving World - In my 20 years as a public health nurse, I've never seen race called out so clearly in a report like this. Data has shown disparities, however the data was presented in a tidy way — very apolitical, purposely written to not ruffle any feathers or point fingers - " persistent racial gap ". This report written by The National Perinatal Task Force is refreshingly honest and this is important. We need...

There is mounting evidence that children who experience early adversity are at heightened risk for developing physical and psychological sequelae later in childhood; moreover, such sequelae can be biologically embedded, impacting multiple biological systems (including the epigenome), thereby elevating the risk that these effects will persist into adulthood. Two common forms of adversity that affect tens of millions of children each year are maltreatment and removal from parental care and...

United States Army Command Sergeant Major Gretchen Evans' life changed forever in 2006. This was her ninth combat tour since joining the Army in 1979. It was early spring, Afghanistan, and snow still peaked the mountains, but the chill in the air was beginning to shudder into the warmth that heralded the time for going home. One instant shortly before departure would change her homecoming from routine to medically urgent. While taking enemy fire, a nearby rocket blast left Evans with a...

Read about Feeling Good MN, an organization working to prevent and treat childhood trauma in Central Minnesota, and learn more about other local resources here !

Activating the Neural Circuits of Kindness, Caring, and Love Practical Neuroscience for Transformation Dr. Rick Hanson presents a FREE eight-part video series— The Compassionate Brain —that explores effective ways to change your brain and heart and life. In each interview, Dr. Hanson is joined by a world-class scholar/teacher, including Richie Davidson, Dan Siegel, Tara Brach, Dacher Keltner, Kelly McGonigal, Kristin Neff, and Jean Houston. They discuss different ways to use the power of...

Pediatrics, August 2018, VOLUME 142 / ISSUE 2 by Adam Schickedanz, Neal Halfon, Narayan Sastry, Paul J. Chung BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) include stressful and potentially traumatic events associated with higher risk of long-term behavioral problems and chronic illnesses. Whether parents’ ACE counts (an index of standard ACEs) confer intergenerational risk to their children’s behavioral health is unknown. In this study, we estimate the risk of child...