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Please welcome Jennifer Hossler, who is the new community facilitator for the Mobilizing Action for Resilient Communities (MARC) Project for the ACEs Connection Network. A social worker by trade and a humanitarian at heart, Jennifer has 18 years of experience working with traumatized children and families in a variety of settings. She spent the majority of her career working as a child welfare worker in Minnesota and California.   A Minnesota native (and a diehard Minnesota Vikings fan...

SAMHSA's Center for Behavioral Health Statistics and Quality invites you to provide feedback for the launch of a new endeavor at the National Registry of Evidence-based Programs and Practices (NREPP). In addition to reviewing programs received during the open submission process, NREPP will conduct independent literature reviews to add programs with strong evidence bases to the registry. SAMHSA welcomes comments from community organizations; clinicians; practitioners; advocates; researchers;...

Social ties are as important to your long-term health as exercise and healthy eating, a new study suggests. "Our analysis makes it clear that doctors, clinicians, and other health workers should redouble their efforts to help the public understand how important strong social bonds are throughout the course of all of our lives," study co-author Yang Claire Yang, a professor at the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill, said in a university news release. For the study, the...

When Jack O'Connor was 19, he was so desperate to beat his addictions to alcohol and opioids that he took a really rash step. He joined the Marines. "This will fix me," O'Connor thought as he went to boot camp. "It better fix me or I'm screwed." After 13 weeks of sobriety and exercise and discipline, O'Connor completed basic training, but he started using again immediately. "Same thing," he says. "Percocet, like, off the street. Pills." Percocet is the brand name for acetaminophen and...

In my first year of training as a doctor, I knew something was wrong with me. I had trouble sleeping. I had difficulty feeling joy. I was prone to crying at inopportune times. Even worse, I had trouble connecting with patients. I felt as if I couldn’t please anyone, and I felt susceptible to feelings of despair and panic. I’m a physician, and, if I do say so myself, a very well-trained one. Yet it took an “intern support group” and the social worker who ran it, close...

The teaching evaluation is something of a staple for end-of-term college life. In theory, student feedback provides key information on how well a professor is doing in the classroom. In reality, a new analysis  posted on the post-publication-review site ScienceOpen shows, students give their female instructors worse grades than their male counterparts—and there's no simple way to fix or compensate for that bias. Of course, this is not the first time that...

"Most of us who live and operate in the culinary underworld are in some fundamental way dysfunctional," Anthony Bourdain wrote in 1999, in the New Yorker piece that would lead to his magnum opus Kitchen Confidential. He proclaimed the professional kitchen "the last true refuge of the misfit," and while many would argue that still holds true nearly two decades later, even now there pervades an unfortunate double standard in which the sort of so-called dysfunction that often drives people...

Hair samples may help determine the risk of a child developing mental and other chronic illnesses later in their life, research led by the University of Melbourne has found. Researchers assessed the level of cortisol in the hair of 70 nine-year-old children from primary schools across Victoria. Cortisol is known as the “stress hormone” because it is released in response to acute stress to help the body react and cope. The greater number of traumatic events a child had...

New research finds that environmental design efforts to encourage walking or biking need to be tailored to a community based upon the income level of the residents. Health professionals and policy makers have believed that creating high density environments that combine housing, work-sites, store-fronts, and parks within walking or riding distance from a person’s house will encourage physical activity. In a new study, University of Washington researchers determined that motivating...

It is a precarious line that teachers and staff walk when students erupt into emotional and physical outbursts, kicking, biting or punching fellow students or teachers. It might seem that children should never be physically restrained in school. But, when all other interventions have failed, how do we deter a child from running into traffic, break up a fight between 18-year-olds or stop a teenager in an acute psychotic episode from committing suicide? The use of restraints in schools has not...

Ethan’s face lights up when he hears Gina Hatanpa’s voice. Just waking up from a nap, the 19-month-old was cuddled, shyly and sleepily, in the crook of his mom Mylee Workman’s neck. But by the time Hatanpa takes off her coat, Ethan is ready – goofing off, trading smiles and silly faces, playing with the zippers of her briefcases. He clearly adores the weekly visits. Hatanpa is a registered and public health nurse with Anoka County. She has been visiting Workman...

In the wake of tragedies like the Paris attacks and the San Bernardino shooting, people are left with many questions. Who could do something like this? Who is truly that evil? Forensic psychologist James Garbarino might have some answers. Earlier this year, the Loyola University psychologist published a book tying these experiences together, entitled  "Listening to Killers:  Lessons Learned from My Twenty Years as a Psychological Expert Witness in Murder Cases."   [For...