Blog

I read this article shared by the Foundation for Excellence in Mental Health Care. It's written by Murad Moosa Khan. To me, it's about the healing power of stories, sharing and truth-telling. It's about the power of witnessing. Donna Jackson Nakazawa writes beautifully about the healing power of listening, in general and in particular about being asked about ACEs. But still, there's so much fear about asking people about ACEs, hesitation and worry and anxiety about if or how to do so.

Principal Macquline King-Morris stepped out of the way of two lines of students heading to the Courtenay Language Arts Center gym. But the stream of elementary-school kids rerouted themselves to deliver hugs, high fives, and huge grins. Creating a pre-k-8 school where every student feels welcome is at the top of King-Morris’s list of priorities. With a student population that is 48 percent black, 35 percent Hispanic, 9 percent white, and 6 percent Asian, Courtenay is one of the most diverse...

Each night before “Greg” goes to bed he brushes and flosses his teeth. Then he double-checks the instructions on the dark brown bottle his nurse gave him before he unscrews the cap and tips five drops of a light-amber, oily liquid onto a spoon. The brew, glistening from the light of the bathroom fixture, is tasteless and has no odor he can detect. But it’s chock-full of bacteria. He sloshes the substance around in his mouth and swallows. Greg hopes that while he sleeps the foreign microbes...

This report from Child Trends and the National Center for Children in Poverty includes a review of the prevalence of early childhood trauma and its effects. The report offers promising strategies for child care and preschool programs looking to help young children who have endured trauma, and presents recommendations for policymakers to support trauma-informed early care. [For more of this story go to https://www.childtrends.org/publications/ecetrauma/]

Los Angeles Unified School Board members have clarified what staff on the district's campuses are supposed to do if federal immigration agents show up at their campus. In February 2016, when they declared L.A. Unified campuses as immigration "safe zones," the board had already directed school employees to alert district higher-ups of any request from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. But in case the implication wasn't already clear, board members passed a resolution Tuesday...

President Trump’s pick to run federal mental health services has called for a bold reordering of priorities — shifting money away from education and support services and toward a more aggressive treatment of patients with severe psychiatric disorders. The proposal has some psychiatrists — a generally liberal bunch — cheering despite their distrust of the Trump administration. [For more of this story, written by Meghana Keshavan, go to ...

Empowering a Community in Building Resiliency Peace4Tarpon, a non-profit community organization committed to educating all sectors of the community regarding the impact of individual and systemic trauma and creating a just, healthy and resilient Tarpon Springs, just announced the recipients of its Building Resiliency Grants. On March 31, nine mini-grants up to $1,000 each were awarded to individuals, schools and organizations which had submitted proposals designed to build resiliency within...

The new program provides videos, activities, storybooks, games and other resources, in both English and Spanish, to help children with their early development. Specific topics include reading and writing, moving your body, exploring emotions, dealing with divorce and helping kids grieve. The program features the Sesame Street Muppets and is primarily sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. [For more of this story go to ...

Every novelist, psychologist, anthropologist and your Aunt Jane have wanted to know this. What motivates people and what’s going on when their behavior is irritating or just plain doesn’t make sense? At Echo, we encourage adults to look beneath the behavior of children and to understand ‘behavior as communication.’ It may be that the child is choosing a way of communicating that is hard for you to deal with but that doesn’t diminish the fact that the behavior is driven by some deep need or...

Please use this PSA to serve the mission discussed below. You can expect Spanish and Vietnamese language versions within a couple of months. We all know we don't want children experiencing violence or abuse or neglect or other forms of Adverse Childhood Experiences, because the more of them a child experiences, the higher the risk that they will experience negative developmental, emotional, behavioral, social, and medical consequences, consequences that can be life-long. But what do want...

May is Mental Health Awareness Month , and that seems as good a time as any for me to break my year-long hibernation to shout this to the rooftops: My child, Alex , was the most amazingly vibrant, feeling, loving, creative force you could imagine. Alex was full of life. Alex committed suicide last year, at the age of 14. I am shouting out my pride to drown out the idea that mental illness is something to be ashamed of. What I am ashamed of are profound shortcomings in awareness about this...

For years, Tony Hillery owned and operated a limousine service in New York City. But after the recession hit, his business dwindled. In 2011 he decided to use his downtime to volunteer at a public elementary school in Harlem — a small step from which an entirely new career took root. The idea for his nonprofit, Harlem Grown , began in the school lunchroom. Hillery quickly recognized a need for good nutrition, ambitious goals and role models. He started recycling, and the kids jumped in to...