Repeated ‘fight, flight or freeze’ brain-use causes Maria’s natural, neurobiological defenses to develop into deeply ingrained pathways in her young, developing brain — after the immediate threat is gone, the dysfunctional, anti-social behaviors can linger, can frustrate, can be retriggered over many years. Trauma-Informed adults CAN make a difference.
https://www.wakeahec.org/datafiles/49330brochure.pdf ScIence of ResIlIence: Building Adult Capabilities to Promote Early Childhood Mental Health The North Carolina Infant and Young Child Mental Health Association was founded five years ago with a mission to “promote a strong foundation for infants, toddlers, young children and their caregivers through public awareness, advocacy and professional development.” This year’s conference will focus on building adult capabilities – of parents and of...
If there's one problem in the United States more pressing than the staggering number of adults suffering from mental illness, it's the fact that nearly half of them aren't getting treatment for it. According to Mental Health America's recently released annual assessment , about 20% of U.S. adults — or 43.7 million people — have a mental health condition of some kind — and less than half of them are receiving the care they need. Among children and adolescents, the news is worse: Though the...
A group of researchers recently published a commentary in theJournal of the American Medical Association on one of the ways that implicit bias about persons diagnosed with 'mental illness' creeps into the seemingly neutral space of patient electronic health records. They focus on the group of clients who tend to be high utilizers of services at emergency departments and psychiatric crisis centers who “often have financial problems and present with chronic or untreated comorbid psychiatric...
When meeting new people, I'm often asked what I do for work. Depending on how I phrase my answer, I receive very different reactions."I'm a doctor specializing in mental health" elicits fascination. People's faces brighten and they say, "Very cool!" But If I instead say, "I'm a psychiatrist," the conversation falls quiet. They get uncomfortable and change the subject. Mental health has made great strides in recent years. Every week , people across the country participate in walks to support...
Considering the high levels of violence throughout the Northern Triangle (countries of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras) in addition to poverty, food insecurity, political turmoil, and domestic violence, unaccompanied children and families alike leave their countries in search of safety and improved lives. As many of them have ties to relatives and communities in the United States… Central American refugees will continue to try to make their way to the United States…the flows can be...
The first full day of the Adverse Childhood Experiences 2016 Conference, hosted by the Center for Youth Wellness (CYW) and sponsored by the California Endowment, Kaiser Permanente, and Genentech, took place October 20 at the Park Central Hotel in downtown San Francisco and began with an exuberant welcome from the CYW's executive director, Mark Cloutier. "Let's have fun," he shouted, and the 450 participants -- teachers, therapists, doctors, lawyers, and other trauma-informed professionals --...
[ Photo ] Yavapai County’s chapter of Books to the Rescue is hosting one of its first large fundraising events on Saturday, Oct. 22. Titled Boo-ling for Books, the fundraiser will go from 3-to-6 p.m. at Antelope Lanes in Prescott Valley. Books to the Rescue’s mission is to provide first responders with comfort bags so they have tools designed to help reassure children caught in crisis situations. These comfort bags are filled with such things as stuffed animals and children’s books that...
[Photo by Teseum ] When psychiatrist Ghulam Sarwar Sakha first met a 23-year-old woman who had been studying in the northern Afghan city of Kunduz when it was stormed by the Taliban last year, the trainee teacher could not drown out the voices in her head. Locked in her room to avoid the fighting that raged on the streets outside, the student started hallucinating. "'I receive warnings and threats. They say I am bad girl. I don't wear a hijab. They are going to come and get me'," said Sakha,...
When Salem Whit walked through the hallways of their high school in Spring Grove, Pennsylvania, overhearing classmates ask one another, “What is that thing?” happened with nearly enough frequency to become background noise. Unlike the sound of lockers slamming, however, comments about Salem’s gender identity were too targeted for the teen to treat them as white noise. “I actually thought I was inhuman,” Salem recalled when thinking about the years of bullying and harassment they experienced...
About 65 people attended a forum on nurturing children who have experienced domestic violence Oct. 11 at University College at Rockland. The event, titled Getting Through to the Other Side: Nurturing and Guiding Children of Domestic Violence, included presentations from Steve Rowe, president and CEO of Maine Community Foundation and a former Maine Attorney General and Speaker of the Maine House of Representatives; and Sue Mackey Andrews, co-founder and co-facilitator of the Maine Resilience...
Planting the Seeds First Lady Michelle Obama planted the White House Kitchen Garden on the South Lawn in 2009. The 2,800 square foot garden provides locally-grown food for the first family and White House guests. What’s more, the garden is a model for how people like you can grow nutritious food at home. Although the White House Kitchen Garden is a recent addition, there is a long tradition of produce-growing at the White House. President John Adams planned the first vegetable garden on the...
Virginia’s first lady and former Washington Redskin Brian Mitchell visited students at a Woodbridge school last week as part of the kickoff of a school-breakfast initiative. Dorothy McAuliffe, wife of Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D), Mitchell and other dignitaries went to Potomac View Elementary School on Tuesday to promote the Virginia Breakfast Challenge, a statewide competition aimed at getting more students to eat breakfast at school. “I’m here because I think — because I’m a mom first — that...
By carefully tracking 5,000 people after they have experienced a traumatic event, a just-launched NIMH-funded study aims to provide a finely detailed map of the array of factors that play a role in the development of mental disorders that occur in the wake of trauma. Information coming out of the study should provide a much deeper understanding of the mechanisms that give rise to post-traumatic disorders as well as a clearer basis for predicting who will be affected and how best to target...
Schools can utilize school-employed mental health professionals, like school psychologists, to support trauma informed services within a Multi-Tiered System of Support (MTSS) framework, although this requires a commitment to improving ratios rather than only hiring community clinicians to provide intensive services to students in need.