On a Saturday night in late May, I sat in the back seat of a taxi as it drove through a shantytown in Baghdad. We were not far from Firdos Square, where, in April of 2003, invading American troops famously toppled a large statue of Saddam...
Please join us on our upcoming webinar, "Achieving Access for Parents and Children", which is brought to you by Defending Childhood in partnership with the Office of Juvenile Justice and Deliquency Prevention and Futures Without Violence. This webinar...
I had a crappy childhood and I spent most of my life overweight struggling to control my food intake and literally couldn't help myself around food. What I learned was it wasn't a lifestyle choice, because no one wants to be fat. It was a problem with...
Correctional facilities have to provide health services to people who are incarcerated, but that doesn't mean the care is free of charge. In most states, inmates may be on the hook for copayments ranging from a few dollars to as much as $100...
"A young black man, Henry Dumas, went through a turnstile at a New York City subway station," reads an invitation by Toni Morrison for a posthumous book-launch party she threw for Dumas in 1974, six years after he died. "A transit cop" —...
Sarah Daniels stood at the front of an auditorium on the University of Michigan campus and looked out at the 120 or so students before her on an unseasonably cool day in late August. The first day of classes was about two weeks...
Monday morning my sister was attacked by a pit bull. It bit deep into her forearm, then let go. Just as it was about to attack again – likely, more lethally – two Good Samaritans in a pickup truck intervened, probably saving my...
One could be forgiven for assuming poorer families lean more heavily on fast food to get through meal times. Fast food is cheap and, well, fast. And time and money are perpetually scarce in cash-strapped households. Perhaps the most efficient...
Emerging research suggests growing up without excessive caregiving burdens is important for future mothers. Specifically, a new study suggests mothers who took on burdensome caregiving roles as children — and weren’t allowed to...
A program that gets troubled young people outdoors and working with search and rescue dogs is building the self-confidence of students at Youth Progress, a non-profit youth living center in Portland. For the past three years Youth Progress has...
It’s one of the great dilemmas of the modern era: in poll after poll, Americans consistently say they believe our society is getting more violent and more dangerous, when the opposite is true . The results of this chronic...
photo of a young mom holding prescription notes has gone viral on Facebook, and it's led to a movement that's aiming to shatter the stigma around mental illness. Erin Jones is a mother of four children with special needs. She's also...
When Secretary of Education Arne Duncan headed the Chicago Public School system, he asked staffers there what time of day the most kids were being arrested. He was looking to curb the number of students who were going to jail, and assumed an...
Psychiatric drugs and psychotherapy mostly have the same purpose: to make us feel better mentally and emotionally. However, it seems like common sense to assume that they do so by very different means, the former acting chemically on your brain...
Ye Seong Kim's freshman year at UCLA was so stressful that she considered dropping out and attending a community college until she was better prepared. "After struggling and studying so hard, it seemed like it wasn't paying off and I...