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The missing piece in the response to climate disruption—preparing humans to cope with the trauma and toxic stress it causes—was the focus of a recent Conference on Building Human Resilience for Climate Change sponsored by the International Transformational Resilience Coalition (ITRC) . About a hundred mental health professionals, emergency response and disaster management officials, and others from education and faith communities gathered in Washington, DC, for the two-day event. Bob...

Last week, Lady Gaga disclosed she has been living with PTSD for years. The trauma that caused it is rape. She wrote about the diagnosis, how it impacts her and why she has disclosed now. It's not easy to own this diagnosis or the symptoms that come along with it for a lot of reasons. There's still a lot of shame, stigma and confusion about struggling with pain, especially emotional or physiological pain, and a lot of denial about the causes of traumatic stress. In adults as well as in...

The white prefab housing blocks dropped in a field next to a highway bypass here don’t look like much. But the project known as Startblok Riekerhaven is an innovative housing experiment—and social experiment—worth watching. Since July, more than 550 young adults under the age of 28 have been living here. Half of them are Dutch, including students and others without the means to afford Amsterdam’s high rents. The other half are refugees, recently arrived from the Middle East, Africa and...

America’s surging economic inequality has been blamed for everything from crony capitalism to the displacement of once good-paying jobs by globalization and new technology. But according to a major recent study, the real culprit in both the growing gap between the rich and poor can be traced to the neighborhoods in which we are born and raised. The study, which expands on the crucial ongoing work of the Harvard sociologist Robert J. Sampson and included in a larger economic mobility report...

Well news fans, to mix metaphors, the ball is now squarely in your court. “Fake news” is everywhere. For instance: Millions voted illegally for Hillary Clinton . Protesters were paid to disrupt Trump rallies . Pope Francis endorsed Donald Trump . And one that turned up just days before the election: Clinton was behind the murder-suicide of an FBI agent involved in her private email debacle . That’s just a partial list of “stories.” All unequivocally false. And now, there’s a “fake news”...

Imagine a world where vacant lots blossom into gardens, where an abandoned rail line becomes a vibrant, mural-lined trail—and, perhaps most important, where more than 200 community partners, from local government to business, worked together to make it happen. If you lived in Brownsville, Texas, you wouldn’t need to imagine it, because you’d be living it. So how do the rest of us get there? The same way Brownsville did: by starting with local health data to pinpoint your community’s needs,...

Adverse Childhood Experiences, such as abuse and neglect, have life-long effects on both mental and physical health. But recognizing, and working to prevent them, can begin to break that pattern. That’s what a new educational program in Sonoma County hopes to do. [For more of this story, written by Bruce Robinson, go to http://radio.krcb.org/post/educating-fellows-counter-adverse-childhood-experiences#stream/0]

The first day of his first semester at the University of California, Berkeley, Danny Murillo walked into the Cesar Chavez building and saw a white man with tattoos on his arms. Something about the man felt familiar. He could tell from the tattoos that the man was, like him, from Los Angeles, and he was around his own age, mid-thirties, but it was something else that he recognized. He went up to the man and said, “Damn, I feel old around all these youngsters.” The man said, “Yeah, me, too.”...

The painful and stressful social experiences associated with a mental illness diagnosis are a central reason why such people turn to drugs and alcohol. For many years substance use disorders and mental illness were generally construed as issues that were best treated separately. It was common that patients in psychotherapy for mental health issues, upon revealing significant substance use problems, would be referred out for substance use treatment and told to return when their substance use...

This one study explained spots where we’ve gotten stuck, despite the therapy. Despite the pets. Despite the supportive community and the trail of talented therapists my kids and I had accessed for the past many years. This was where my own story begins.

Here's an allegory I love that eloquently addresses the need for proactive endeavor. It's called The Upstream Rescuer . I found it on the Prevention Institute's website and did some editing. While walking along a river, a passerby sees someone drowning. After pulling the person ashore, the rescuer notices another person in the river in need of help. Before long, the river is filled with drowning people, and more rescuers are required to assist the first. Sadly, some people are not saved, and...

It is time for us to integrate and act on... what we currently know about how our young can flourish in our schools. We can begin to create places where children thrive and grow into their potential. We know the growth needs of all humans. 4 Universal Growth Needs- Circle of Courage Model • Belonging- Am I important to somebody here? • Mastery- Am I good at something here? • Independence- Can I influence my world here? • Generosity- How can I share my gifts to help others here? 1.