Blog

[Ed. note: This blog is cross-posted from the Walla Walla Valley, WA, group, about how the Children's Resilience Initiative wanted to reach a new audience for their work. This new 15-second video ad they created will be shown before every movie in the local 12-theater complex, for a total of 1,642 times during October. It plays with other ads, such as those from the local hospital.] Effectively communicating a message in 15 seconds can take hours to formulate. After spending weeks, months...

Abstract Meditation is becoming increasingly practiced, especially for stress-related medical conditions. Meditation may improve cellular health; however, studies have not separated out effects of meditation from vacation-like effects in a residential randomized controlled trial. We recruited healthy women non-meditators to live at a resort for 6 days and randomized to either meditation retreat or relaxing on-site, with both groups compared with ‘regular meditators’ already enrolled in the...

In the United States, geography affects everything from economic mobility to lifespan. In a paper published earlier this year , the economist Raj Chetty and a number of co-authors explored the life expectancies of the rich and poor. They found not only a staggering rich-poor life expectancy gap, but also that the life expectancies of the poor vary greatly depending on location, with low-income people in certain cities living approximately five years longer than those in other cities. The...

Plagued by very public allegations of user bias , Airbnb, the polarizing , popular home-rental platform vowed to enact tougher measures against hosts who discriminate against potential guests. In a sweeping internal report released on Thursday , the San Francisco company formally reckoned with the claims. “An increasing number of Airbnb hosts and guests have voiced their concerns about being discriminated against when trying to book a listing because of their race, sexual orientation or...

[Photo by Juhan Sonin ] Non-pharmacologic strategies and tactics to ease a child's pain may help expedite treatment and improve care in this challenging population, clinicians said here. With both increased pressure to decrease waiting times in the ED and minimize the use of pharmacologic therapies due to the opioid abuse crisis, providers have been forced to get creative, according to presenters at the annual Pain Week conference. This may mean turning to certain behavioral and...

It could be any of us. Any of our kids. Any of our nieces or nephews. Our grandkids. The students in our class. Our friends' kids. Our neighbours' kids. Our co-workers' kids. The list goes on... The fact is, mental illness impacts more of us than we realize. The reality is, one in five Canadians will experience mental illness in their lifetime. Did you know that 10 to 20 per cent of Canadian youth are affected by a mental illness or disorder? Sadly, only one out of five children who need...

When the Reed family  — Becca (51), James (57), and their son Drew (26) — decided to re-gain their health through a radical change in diet and exercise, they entered into their project with cautious optimism. Honestly, they didn’t have much to lose. But they never could have imagined how quickly results would follow. In just two months, despite several challenges in the gym , Becca and James have each lost over 25 pounds. Drew, who is still recovering from the gastric bypass surgery he had...

With more than 500 pages to work with in his upcoming autobiography, “Born to Run,” legendary rock artist Bruce Springsteen found room to speak about both his continued struggles with depression as well as the shadow mental illness has cast over his life. “I was crushed between sixty and sixty-two, good for a year and out again from sixty-three to sixty-four,” Springsteen details in his book. “Not a good record.” Springsteen expounds on mental illness, both his own and within his extended...

Having law enforcement officers in schools is not a new concept. The first school resource officer (SRO) was assigned to a school in Flint, Michigan, in the 1950s. But after several high-profile acts of school violence, such as what occurred at Columbine High School and Sandy Hook Elementary School, SROs are more commonplace than ever before. In 2003, there were nearly 20,000 SROs. The National Center for Education Statistics recently estimated that in 2013 there were as many as 30,000. As...

McLennan County leaders are creating a new position aimed at getting individuals with mental health issues the help they need and reducing costs associated with processing them through the judicial system. After the start of the fiscal year Oct. 1, county commissioners will vote to move $50,000 into a fund for a coordinator position that would expand District Attorney Abel Reyna’s pretrial diversion program. Anticipating the potential expansion, commissioners included a $1 placeholder in the...

Few topics stir more controversy in this country than guns. Mass shootings and urban gun violence inflame public passions. Gun control measures divide our political leaders, and elections often hinge on candidates' views of guns. I struggle with issues related to firearms every day, but in a different way. To me, it's not about politics or elections. It's part of my daily job. As a mental health provider, I have to ask all my patients about guns. I spend many of my days and nights caring for...

Stacy Overstreet, PhD., will be discussing Data-driven Strategies to Guide the Implementation of Trauma-Informed Approaches at the Resilience Summit, November 2-3 in Chicago. Abstract: Successful implementation of trauma-informed schools must build consensus for trauma-informed approaches and establish organizational capacity for and commitment to such approaches. The presentation will describe the implementation and impact of professional development training on teacher attitudes toward...