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Hundreds of prisoners live in solitary confinement in Los Angeles County jails. On average, they spend at least one year in a cell the size of a wheelchair-accessible bathroom stall, leaving only a few times a week, one at a time, for showers or exercise. Meals arrive through a slot in the cell door. Between the long hours in isolation and the steel doors, a prisoner might go days, or longer, without looking another person in the eye. Solitary confinement costs taxpayers 2 to 3 times more...

When I first came to Baltimore, I had a series of "listening tours." One of the most poignant experiences was with a group of youth — some no more than 8 years old. I asked them to share the single biggest issue on their minds. Their answers shocked and saddened me; the biggest problem these children saw was mental health. They didn't say those words, but what they spoke about was trauma — trauma of watching people they loved being shot and killed; trauma of not knowing whether they would...

“Everyone here is either bullying someone or being bullied. The teachers say if you have a problem, go see them — but they do nothing about it.” “They say they have a zero tolerance for bullying which is A COMPLETE LIE. People are bullied, they try to get help, and then they get NO HELP and continue to get bullied.” “I think that the school should be more controlling on cyber-bullying. They are not aware that their students are being bullied or harassed on social media.” “I wish that the...

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) is awarding up to a total of $38.6 million in Resiliency in Communities After Stress and Trauma (ReCAST) over the next five years to help people and communities recover from, and build resiliency to trauma. ReCAST grants help communities provide services and supports to youth and families exposed to trauma through natural or man-made disasters or civil disturbances. The grants promote resilience and equity through...

Across the United States, up to one in five children suffers from a mental disorder in a given year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This equates to more than 17 million young people who meet criteria for disorders that affect their ability to learn, behave, and express their emotions. Giving children access to mental-health resources early in their education, however, can play a key role in mitigating negative consequences later in life, said David Anderson, the...

How can we use insights from cutting-edge science to improve the well-being and long-term life prospects of the most vulnerable children in our society? This is both a critical challenge and a powerful opportunity to affect the trajectories of millions of children in the United States and around the world. It is a question of particular importance to those who make or affect public policy. This paper shows how the science of child development can be leveraged to strengthen and improve the...

October 17, 2016 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...

What serious topic can bring more than 200 people together for two and a half hours on a weeknight? It's something that has major effects on health an life expectancy, but is not routinely screened or treated by physicians. It's something that anyone can encounter at any point in their lives. And it's something that can affect the quality of living for an individual and a community. In a word, it's trauma. On Oct. 5, several community and state agencies together hosted a forum called, "...

There was good news on the education front last week when state education officials released data showing that high school graduation rates climbed in most of Shelby County and in Tennessee last year. The state rate inched up to 88.5 percent this spring, compared to 87.8 percent at the end of the 2014-2015 school year. The Shelby County Schools graduation rate increased from 75 percent in 2014-15 to 78.7 percent in 2015-16. Bartlett City Schools increased from 85.5 percent to 88.6 percent.

A police officer pulled over Darius Mitchell, an African American, one late night in Jefferson Parish, Louisiana for breaking the speed limit. The police officer smelled weed in Mitchell’s car and called for a drug-sniffing canine to search the vehicle against his consent. They were looking for pounds of weed, according to American Civil Liberties Union lawyers, but only found a single bottle of the opioid pain medication hydrocodone , apparently prescribed to his child’s mother. But this...

"It’s President Obama 's voice we hear first. “So let’s look at the statistics,” he says. “The United States is home to 5% of the world's population but 25% of the world’s prisoners. Think about that.” Which is what “13th,” Ava DuVernay ’s smart, powerful and disturbing documentary, proceeds to make us do. As persuasively argued as it is angry, and it is very angry, “13th” follows that statistic with another, equally unsettling one. African Americans make up 6.5% of the American population...

As we learned from the CDC-Kaiser Permanente ACE Study , negative childhood experiences are often kept secret, downplayed, or repressed because of our powerful desire to put such things behind us. Unfortunately, our minds and our brains don’t work that way. Patterns can play out automatically, no matter how hard we try to be original and create our own realities. Just as it is important to know family medical history (e.g., diabetes or tuberculosis) it is equally important to know about our...