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The idea that locking up parents can have baleful effects on their children’s health isn’t exactly new. I have written before about research that found links between the incarceration of parents and learning disabilities, developmental delays and behavior problems, even after other variables were taken into account. But a new paper published Thursday in the British journal The Lancet makes clear just how unequal the effects of incarceration can be on families in the United States, which...

State lawmakers are considering a measure to declare youth violence as a public health epidemic. The House Resolution sponsored by Democrat Bruce Franks Jr. of St. Louis calls for the establishment of statewide trauma-informed education. Franks contends PTSD – Post Traumatic Stress Disorder – is a condition that afflicts kids who’ve experienced violence. “The fact that I am 33 and I have been to now 155 funerals, an average of seven funerals since the age of six is not normal” said Franks.

Even for an administration that has made anti-immigrant rhetoric routine, the speech that Attorney General Jeff Sessions gave on Tuesday was shocking in both tone and content. Sessions was ostensibly announcing a set of tough new measures targeting gangs, which he described as “criminal organizations that turn cities and suburbs into warzones, that rape and kill innocent citizens and who profit by smuggling poison and other human beings across our borders.” But in practice, these measures...

In the spring and summer of 2011, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania strapped heart monitors onto test subjects and set them loose on the side streets of Philadelphia. The subjects strolled around two clusters of vacant lots. Some of the lots had received a “greening” treatment from members of the Philadelphia Horticulture Society, who’d removed debris, planted grass and trees, and installed a low wooden post-and-rail fence. The other lots were untreated as a control. After...

The New York Times recently ran a peculiarly pathetic article about yet another victim of the Trump administration that you probably never thought to worry about: the children’s publishing industry . The problem, as the article’s author, Katherine Rosman, repeatedly implies but cannot come out and say, is that Donald Trump is pretty much a walking advertisement for everything we don’t want our children to be. And yet he’s the president. Children are supposed to respect the president. What to...

W hen scientists began tracking the health of 268 Harvard sophomores in 1938 during the Great Depression, they hoped the longitudinal study would reveal clues to leading healthy and happy lives. They got more than they wanted. After following the surviving Crimson men for nearly 80 years as part of the Harvard Study of Adult Development , one of the world’s longest studies of adult life, researchers have collected a cornucopia of data on their physical and mental health. [For more of this...

With national policy likely to compound the income and wealth gap in the coming years, states and localities are fighting back. Across the country, local jurisdictions aren’t waiting for federal action or corporate governance reforms to close the wage gap. In December, for example, the city of Portland, Oregon, passed an ordinance to raise the business tax on companies with CEOs who earn more than 100 times the median pay of their workers. Portland officials said the ordinance is the first...

It’s a warm spring afternoon and Arturo Soriano is in his old stomping grounds—at Teralta Park, a small urban park atop a sunken freeway in San Diego’s City Heights neighborhood. As a teenage gang member in the 1980s, Soriano roamed the park and the surrounding streets before spending the better part of two decades in prison. Now 40, he has returned with a different mission.

In every city, in every community and on every block, an American family struggles with adversity. That’s the thing about a dverse c hildhood e xperiences (ACEs)—they have no boundaries. ACEs transcend race, class, religion, and economic status. They include experiences ranging from extreme poverty or family problems, to experiencing violence, abuse, and discrimination. While the prevalence of ACEs across all demographics are a fact, using hard data to demonstrate the impact in your...

Hello, I'm a writer for a website that features a monthly series of stories that profile individuals who have overcome a variety of childhood and young adults challenges. They vary from bullying to mental health challenges to anything that might make you feel isolated from the rest of the world. What I'm looking for are people who would be willing to be interviewed for this series about their experiences, and how they overcame them. The site is targeted towards a younger audience, and I'm...

Screaming and banging. Shouting and crying. Cussing and fighting. Gang signs and threats. Suicide watches and solitary. Broken hearts and smashed souls. Lost and betrayed childhoods. The burden of these broken lives compel our commitment for reform. Many of the prescribed practices within a facility further the fractures that children bring to custody. Staff shouting, demeaning words, the absence of empathy and guidance delay and disallow the renewal and redemption that we seek for children.

How can it be that a seemingly depressed person, one who shows clinical symptoms, doesn’t respond to antidepressants or psychotherapy? Perhaps because the root of his anguish is something else.