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In a previous post , I explained that this fall I worked with the children on understanding and interpreting the Lord's Prayer. The Lord's Prayer, or "Our Father," posed many interesting opportunities to discuss themes that each and ever one of us struggle with. It was a challenge preparing a lesson for children with emotional disturbance dealing with complicated teachings in scripture. It was an exercise in combatting "Christian-ese" and the simple Sunday school answers (you know... when in...

(Ted Talks) Ted X Helena, Montana brought us Judge James Reynolds who is a presiding judge for Drug Treatment Court in Helena, Montana. There have been many articles of Justice System Reform, and Juvenile's; Pipeline to Prison crisis. This Ted talk informs us how empathy and restoration as a grounds for recovery brings hope and a second chance to those whom society would generally have written off as a life long criminal. We can see Trauma Informed Care in action, and although this work is...

Health care professionals increasingly recognize the detrimental impact of trauma on patients’ lives and health outcomes. As a result, there is burgeoning interest in the use of evidence-based trauma treatments and the delivery of trauma-informed care. Five leading complex care organizations across the country recently sought to train their staff in a variety of evidence-based trauma treatment approaches: Seeking Safety ; Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing ; and Attachment,...

This video was first posted in 2015, and has had more than 11.5 million downloads. Grace Harris, an ACEs Connection member from Santa Rosa, CA, just reminded me of it today. I hope many of those people who've watched this video are physicians and people who work in substance abuse clinics, so that we all understand that the solution to our substance abuse problems is to make sure we all live in Rat Park. If you haven't a clue as to what I'm talking about, take six minutes to watch this, and...

Climate change is taking an obvious physical toll on earth: from depleted farmland to the rise of toxic pollution to the degradation of long-stable ecosystems to the disappearance of biodiversity and endangered species. But looking beyond the physical, experts are also trying to sound the alarm about the quieter, more insidious effects of climate change : namely, that global warming is threatening the emotional health of humans worldwide. “We see a sense of despair that sets in as inevitably...

On January 2, 1979, Dr. Rafael Osheroff was admitted to Chestnut Lodge, an inpatient psychiatric hospital in Maryland. Osheroff had a bustling nephrology practice. He was married with three children, two from a previous marriage. Everything had been going well except his mood. For the previous two years, Osheroff had suffered from bouts of anxiety and depression. Dr. Nathan Kline, a prominent psychopharmacologist in New York City, had begun Osheroff on a tricyclic antidepressant and,...

Chicago is in dire need of solutions for its violent crime. A cognitive behavioral therapy program has been able to help keep teenage boys from acting out on their impulses. AUDIE CORNISH, HOST: Seven hundred sixty-six. That's how many people were murdered in Chicago last year. The city's on pace to match that number this year. Plenty of community organizations are looking for ways to stop the violence. NPR's social science correspondent, Shankar Vedantam, has the story of one program that's...

Many thanks to Sonoma County for sharing the following announcement! The National Center for Fatality Review and Prevention announces an upcoming Webinar on: Applying the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) Framework to Fatality Review and Prevention WHEN: March 8, 2017, 2:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m. ET Webinar will be recorded and posted with the slides on the NCFRP website: www.ncfrp.org Opening Remarks : Bethany Miller,* M.Ed., MSW, Health Resources and Services Administration Director of Injury...

Rise magazine is written by parents who have faced the child welfare system in their own lives. Many people don’t know that the majority of children who enter foster care return home to their parents–and that most children in care wish for a lifelong relationship with their parents, whether they live with them or not. Helping parents is fundamental to helping children in foster care. Three parents have joined together to write this excellent article on why bringing the science of toxic...

I recently read Markowitz and Rosner’s Children, Race, and Power . This book is a recount of Dr.’s Kenneth and Mamie Clark Northside Center in Harlem in the late 1940’s. Their journey while valiant was met with much heartbreak. Fast forward 70 years and it doesn’t appear that much has changed. Dollars continue to be wasted, and the contentment with the status quo and lack of outcomes seems a close resemblance to today. We can say we have the best intentions and well-meaning hearts, but...

This post originally appeared at The Nation . At dusk, Thomas Goodwin, a worn but upbeat man in his mid-50s, drives his car into a parking lot in central Santa Barbara. There, he settles his young daughter to sleep in the back of a second vehicle — a van lined with her clothes — while he dozes in its front seat. The family has been sleeping and living out of the van for almost a year. The Goodwins are not alone. In Santa Barbara, over 500 people sleep every night in their vehicles, unable to...

Amidst the noise of the national political landscape, it is important to remind ourselves that February is Black History Month. While this month serves to celebrate the accomplishments of black people in America, it is also a reminder of how inequality has, and continues to, plague many black communities. Health inequity constitutes one of the many systemic forces that perpetuate the marginalization of the same community we celebrate for its undeniable contributions to American society. In...