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Its news to no one that the Great Recession caused tremendous suffering and mental anguish among families struggling to pay their bills, keep their jobs or find new ones. Less noted, however, has been what such a massive economic collapse has meant for the mental health of children. Did kids growing up over the past decade see their mental health measurably worsen, or were parents largely able to buffer their kids from the stresses of a tanking economy? New evidence comes in the form of a...

When it’s three o’clock in the morning and you’re anxious, the whole world doesn’t exactly fall apart, but stretches endlessly before you. On one such night recently, I sat in a ball on the desk chair in my home office and breathed rapidly but quietly, so as not to wake my husband sleeping in the next room. My mind, incapable of holding one thought for more than a few seconds, communicated in zaps and bolts that traveled down my spine. A car drove by outside and I thought about how much I...

If you live in a neighborhood that is saturated with fast-food restaurants and bodegas but does not have a grocery store, you are probably going to find it very difficult to stick to a healthy diet. It would likely be similarly hard to manage your finances and build wealth without a bank branch in your neighborhood. Unfortunately, that is exactly what an increasing percentage of households in the United States are being told to do: manage their finances and build wealth without access to a...

Today is Part 7 in a five-week, 25-part series exploring solutions for police brutality in America. The problem of police brutality is actually deeply entrenched and amazingly complicated. Most of the factors that ultimately lead to fatal encounters happen long before the actual incidents ever take place. Police brutality has no quick fixes. No one single solution will solve the problem. Instead, it must be tackled from dozens of different angles, but as a part of one comprehensive plan.

[Photo by Ali imran zaidi ] Speaking for my gender, there are two qualities that define most men: We seldom like to ask for help, and we do not like to talk about our feelings. Combining the two -- asking for help about our feelings -- is the ultimate affront to many men's masculinity. We like to think of ourselves as strong, problem-solver types. But when it comes to emotional and mental issues, men need to quit trying to bottle up their feelings and tough it out, says Darshan Mehta, M.D.,...

Imagine you’re the manager of a café. It stays open late and the neighbourhood has gone quiet by the time you lock the doors. You put the evening’s earnings into a bank bag, tuck that into your backpack, and head home. It’s a short walk through a poorly lit park. And there, next to the pond, you realise you’ve been hearing footsteps behind you. Before you can turn around, a man sprints up and stabs you in the stomach. When you fall to the ground, he kicks you, grabs your backpack, and runs...

The scene opens with me on a bathroom floor in the first days of 2016, cradling a knife and threatening to kill myself, but it starts much earlier, months and months before, when I moved from North Carolina to the Bay Area and felt my small-town axis shift with the violence of an earthquake. Sometimes it takes a radical re-configuring of the landscape — the sorts of tremors that expose our tenderest parts — to show us what was really dormant all along. For those, like me, who have...

Efforts are underway in figuring out how to best provide care for children who have experienced trauma in their lives, with regional expert organizations looking at one of Long Beach’s very own health care providers for guidance. Experts from First 5 LA, the California Community Foundation, the California Endowment and the Ralph M. Parsons Foundation are among a group of organizations that recently announced a collective effort to advance a comprehensive approach to trauma-informed care in...

Hours before the concert started, Demi Lovato’s fans filled a room on the second floor of the venue. In this bar-turned-conference room, they would spend the next hour hearing stories about self-worth, emotional setbacks and fresh starts. Lovato, who took her mental-health advocacy to the Democratic National Convention’s stage Monday, has also taken it on tour with her. She has invited the man who she credits with saving her life, a personal-development coach in Los Angeles, to travel the...

Tsoku Maela is not used to the spotlight. But ever since he began sharing images of his “ Abstract Peaces ” series ― a collection of surreal self-portraits that represent his ongoing experience with depression and anxiety ― he’s begun to think about what it means to raise awareness of himself and the countless other people who struggle with mental illness. Born in Cape Town, South Africa, Maela started producing his self-portraits back in 2014, after experiencing a “ perplexing medical...

Physical neglect is the most common form of child maltreatment. According to the Minnesota Department of Human Services, "neglect is usually a failure of a child's caregiver to provide needed food, clothing, shelter, medical or mental health care, education or supervision." It is often found in families struggling with extreme poverty, substance abuse, mental health issues or family violence. Failure to protect a child from dangerous conditions or exposing a child to certain drugs during...

Youth who feel connected to their families have a better chance of developing and achieving their goals. And this is certainly true for teens returning home after incarceration, when family reunification is a crucial element for successful reentry. But just being back together under the same roof isn’t enough to guarantee a favorable outcome, even when everyone yearns for positive change. In fact, too many teens return home from residential placement to well-meaning families who haven’t...