Blog

What you can’t see, can hurt you. I'm grateful to Carolyn de Lorenzo for her Bustle post on Complex PTSD (C-PTSD), featured in the July 2 ACEsConnection Daily Digest: What Is Complex PTSD? There Isn’t Nearly Enough Awareness Around This Illness. She defines it as trauma "experienced over extended periods of time... before the age of 18 without reliable adult support.” Yet digging further, the root cause of C-PTSD is usually something deeper, "developmental trauma." Developmental trauma isn't...

From current events to politics, there is no shortage of anxiety-inducing information in the world. At times, it can feel like our senses are being bombarded with worrisome news. How much worry is too much? How can we cope? This can certainly be more difficult for those who have lacked secure attachment in childhood or have experienced trauma during their lives. In fact, those with insecure, avoidant, or disorganized attachment, attachment wounds, or trauma histories will have a harder time...

State ward children fed Prozac like drugs with minimal or no ACEs trained foster families or service providers that understand the self loathing and lack of coping skills so many foster children live with. If elected officials knew the long term costs of tortured children leading dysfunctional lives impacting our schools, public health and public safety, more children could be healed of their trauma & acquire the coping skills required to live a happy life

37% of children overall and 54% of Black children are reported to child protection services in America by the time they turn 18. (American Journal of Public Health 1.17) 6 - 12 million children a year are reported to child protection services each year and in many states, 1/3 of foster children take psychotropic medicines Invite KARA’s INVISIBLE CHILDREN CAMPUS program to a college near you or contact KARA for our Ambassador speaking program to your community.

As we celebrate July 4 th , Independence Day, a day typically filled with cookouts, fireworks, parades, and honor of past sacrifices made, my thoughts are drawn to the 1,000’s of classrooms filled with students seeking their own personal independence. Unfortunately, due to the interruption of trauma in childhood, they have become dependent on the maladaptive responses they have acquired in order to mitigate, compensate, cope and survive the impact of the adversity dealt them. Dysregulated...

If you grew up in a family with a chemically dependent, mentally ill, or abusive parent, you know how hard it is — and you know that everyone in the family is affected. Over time, the family begins to revolve around maintaining the status quo – the dysfunction. Rigid family rules and roles develop in dysfunctional families that help maintain the dysfunctional family system and allow the addict to keep using or the abuser to keep abusing. Understanding some of the family rules that dominate...

Improving the well-being of children and families is a priority for Dr. Rosalind Picard, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who studies “affective computing,” which uses sense technology to increase individuals’ well-being using new ways to understand and respond to emotion. Dr. Picard has developed wearable sensors that reveal an individual’s level of cognitive, emotional, or physical stress loads. To read the rest of this blog by Mona Delahooke, Ph. D. , please click...

Within the last few weeks, I have heard of two more young people dying from heroin overdoses. Tragedies like this are becoming ever more common. Right now, in my opinion, there is a heroin/opiate epidemic going on. It’s spanning all ages, all races, all genders, and all socioeconomic statuses! It doesn’t matter if your town has a Starbucks or a beautiful, organic farmers market. It’s happening. It’s serious. And it’s starting young. What’s worse? Opiates are deadlier faster than many other...

The idea of adding an adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) screening tool to your practice’s workflow can be daunting – which tool, will you have time, does it add enough value? The Child Health and Development Interactive System (CHADIS) is helping to address this challenge by partnering with the National Pediatric Practice Community on ACEs (NPPC) to add an ACEs questionnaire into its system. Join this webinar to learn more about how this collaboration can help support your efforts to...

(Cissy's note: I've known this professor, Alissa Ackerman, for a few years and she's stretched my thinking on restorative justice, sex offender research, and policy and survivor-led advocacy. It's nice to see her work covered more often and more widely). The following is an excerpt published on the California State University, Fullerton website today.

Resilient Communities are Healthy Communities…what’s good for health is good for climate!” Authored by: Judy Robinson and Sara Jensen Carr, Design 4 Active Sacramento Climate change directly threatens the health and well-being of California’s nearly 40 million people. Without intervention at the local, regional, and state scales, these dangers will only become more pronounced in coming years. The Safeguarding California Plan devotes an entire public health chapter to these risks, stating:...

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