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County supervisors are looking to change the way L.A. County responds to gun violence, by treating it as a public health issue. A unanimously approved motion introduced by 3rd District Supervisor Sheila Kuehl, and Mark Ridley-Thomas of the 2nd District, adds more control on guns in the county and starts a plan to create an Office of Violence Prevention. The Department of Public Health and the county’s CEO Sachi Hamai have 90 days to create the plan that outlines staffing and resources need...

Something big happened last Sunday evening – big for countless individuals who are struggling in their lives, but also big for our society. Thanks to Oprah Winfrey , the world was introduced to the concept of developmental trauma ( on CBS 60 Minutes ). Oprah calls this a “game changer”. As she writes: “This is one of the most life changing stories I’ve ever done. I hope it starts a Revolution in helping people.” A similar game changer occurred in the early 1980s when Post-Traumatic Stress...

I was 31 when I became a mother. Many years after what I thought was enough time to get away from my abusive childhood. My life was turned upside down after my first child was born. I breast fee him, Not knowing what to expect from my body. The physical feeling of milk letting down and vaginal blood rushes was something I had ignored since my childhood. Then I did not have control of my body as my step father sexually abused me. It was the first of having memories flood my mind of my...

The Guardian reports today that "Facebook has been forced to apologise after it spent hours suggesting bizarre, vulgar and upsetting searches to users on Thursday night. The social network’s search suggestions, which are supposed to automatically offer the most popular search terms to users, apparently broke around 4am in the UK, and started to suggest unpleasant results for those who typed in “video of”. Multiple users posted examples on Twitter, with the site proposing searches ... " here...

Interest in trauma-informed care (TIC) is growing rapidly in the United States and internationally. In the 60 Minute segment on this topic , aired Sunday, March 11 th , Oprah Winfrey and Dr. Bruce Perry described trauma-informed care and gave examples from Saint A’s agency. Oprah stated that the story of trauma-informed care “has had more impact on me than practically anything I’ve ever done.” She added “…it is so important to me, and I believe to our culture, that if I could dance on the...

Mady Ohlman was 22 on the evening some years ago when she stood in a friend's bathroom looking down at the sink. "I had set up a bunch of needles filled with heroin because I wanted to just do them back-to-back-to-back," Ohlman recalls. She doesn't remember how many she injected before collapsing, or how long she lay drugged-out on the floor. "But I remember being pissed because I could still get up, you know?" [For more on this story by MARTHA BEBINGER, go to...

Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents raided Wilmer Catalan-Ramirez's home on the southwest side of Chicago just weeks after the father of three was shot and left partially paralyzed while leaving a restaurant. During the raid, agents slammed him to the floor and cuffed his hands behind his back, aggravating the injuries that he had suffered to his head and shoulder. ICE didn't have a warrant for Catalan-Ramirez, but instead targeted him because the Chicago Police Department had...

Casey Family Programs , a national grant maker in the child welfare field, has launched the Community Opportunity Map, a tool that allows users to see localized indicators connected to community health and maltreatment prevention. “We hope the tool will be used by community members, policymakers, child welfare leaders, city government officials and other stakeholders to build hope and promote well-being for families and children,” said the foundation, in a statement announcing the map. Using...

Hate in America is on the rise. There are currently nearly a thousand known hate groups in the United States—an increase of 4 percent just this past year, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). At the cusp of this are white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups, which have surged the most, according to the most recent data . Furthermore, there is evidence that hateful acts have proliferated since Donald Trump began his presidential campaign . How can we make sense of this growth in...

On Wednesday, thousands of students around the United States answered a national call to action by walking out of class. But while the initial ask from Women's March Youth EMPOWER called for students, teachers and school administrators to exit their school buildings for 17 minutes to demand "gun reform legislation, "yesterday's protesters did not rally behind a uniform message. While many students held to a general demand for more gun laws, others went different routes. For example, students...

“I’m going to fail. This is a total sham.” “I’m not smart enough to do this. Why did I ever think I could?” “Why is no one else having this problem? Everyone is doing better at this than me.” Sound familiar? That is what we sometimes say to ourselves when things don’t go well at work and we’re feeling nervous or inadequate. Maybe we’ve missed a deadline, embarrassed ourselves during a presentation, or snapped at a colleague, and these thoughts come up relentlessly, wreaking havoc with our...

Black folks have a gift for complicating the stories that Americans like to tell about themselves. Our presence, for instance, makes it hard to accept the notion that the United States was “conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” It’s a comforting myth and a useful one as well. Abraham Lincoln put it to good use when he spoke those words at Gettysburg, rallying the Union in a time of crisis. But, as history, this foundational myth was...