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Safe & Sound’s Center for Youth Wellness (CYW) and the New Jersey Chapter, American Academy of Pediatrics (NJAAP), have extended the deadline to submit an RFP response for participation in its Trauma-Informed ACEs Screening & Intervention Evaluation Project ECHO (TASIE Project). More information can be found here: www.njaap.org/tasie, including a pre-recorded informational webinar. Safe & Sound was awarded a grant from the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) and...

By Eleni Schirmer, Photo: Jovelle Tamayo/The New Yorker, The New Yorker, July 27, 2022 On a warm October evening, in 1932, Franklin Delano Roosevelt stood in a baseball field in Pittsburgh, delivering an impassioned speech about passion’s improbable subject: the federal budget. “Sometime, somewhere in this campaign, I have got to talk dollars and cents, and it’s a terrible thing to ask you people to listen for forty-five minutes to the story of the federal budget, but I am going to ask you...

By Asher Lehrer-Small, The 74, July 27, 2022 Students who miss at least 10% of school days are more likely to face reading difficulties by third grade, less likely to earn a high school diploma and are at higher risk of juvenile delinquency . There’s a word to describe when students surpass this troubling threshold: chronic absenteeism. It makes intuitive sense. Students who spend less time in the classroom have a harder time keeping up with their peers and may face difficulties developing...

By Noah Weiland, Photo: Sophie Park/The New York Times, The New York Times, July 26 2022 During a recent interview here, Dr. Rahul Gupta, President Biden’s drug czar, appeared to be on the verge of supporting a radical shift in U.S. drug control policy. Asked for his views on supervised consumption sites , where users bring their own drugs to take under the supervision of trained workers in case they overdose — a concept accepted in Canada and Europe but still technically illegal in the...

By Emily Cataneo, Photo: Jessie Wardarski/AP, The Guardian, July 26, 2022 R obin Blakeman, an eighth-generation West Virginian, has been a practicing minister since 2004. This May, the city where she lives flooded for the second time in nine months. Several inches of rain left roads in disarray, with cars washed out and first responders rushing to evacuate families. The rising flood also damaged one of the city’s churches. Before that point, local congregations in Huntington, West Virginia,...

Standing on top of Ogun Mountain, in the Sacred City of 41 Mountains, West Africa, I knew my life would forever change. The women from the royal house danced for me. The men drummed me into a trance. They called me by my African name as they welcomed me home. On the soil of my ancestors, the healing began. I am a black woman born in the 1970’s. Nine generations ago, my ancestors were on the continent of Africa inhabiting the Kingdom of Dahomey. We were thriving. Unbeknownst to most, we were...

Although things are changing within mental health communities, only a few mental health professionals have competent awareness of cultural and racial identity, let alone incorporate this awareness in clinical treatment. ILLUSTRATION BY GOOD STUDIO/ADOBE STOCK To read more of Gabes Torres' article, please click here. July is BIPOC Mental Health Month, a month that recognizes the mental health experiences and struggles unique to Black, Indigenous, and people of color in North America. Not many...

Last week, the HOPE National Resource Center held our annual retreat. Team members flew in from across the country to meet in person in Boston. This was a great opportunity to network and meet with people we partner with every day in a virtual setting. We also used this time to talk about the future direction of HOPE. Over the past year, HOPE leaders have been looking at our organizational structure closely and developing a 3-year business plan. Our first step is defining our organization...

In this episode of Transforming Trauma we connect with professor, author, and renowned psychoanalytic psychotherapist Nancy McWilliams, PhD. Nancy teaches psychoanalytic theory and therapy at the Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology at Rutgers–The State University of New Jersey. Nancy is also a senior analyst with the Institute for Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy of New Jersey and the National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis. Nancy’s genuine curiosity for...

By Claire Healy, Photo: iStock/Washington Post Illustration, The Washington Post, July 25, 2022 When Mark Patterson took over as administrator of the Hawaii Youth Correctional Facility in 2014, he inherited 500 acres of farm ranch — and the care of 26 boys and seven girls between 13 and 19 years old. By 2016, his facility, in Kailua, Oahu, was only holding between five and six girls at a time. And in June, the last girl left the facility. For the first time, there are no girls incarcerated...

By Sara Miller Llana, Photo: Melanie Stetson Freeman/The Christian Science Monitor, The Christian Science Monitor, July 25, 2022 C hristine M’Lot grew up feeling her culture was invisible. Throughout most of her public education in Winnipeg, the Anishinaabe educator says she saw almost no representation of Indigenous voices, save for a single book assignment her senior year. It wasn’t until university that she had her first Indigenous teacher and was introduced to modern Indigenous culture –...

By Dhruv Khullar, Photo: Supranav Dash/The New Yorker, The New Yorker, July 25, 2022 T he Bhalswa landfill, on the outskirts of Delhi, is an apocalyptic place. A gray mountain of dense, decaying trash rises seventeen stories, stretching over some fifty acres. Broken glass and plastic containers stand in for grass and stones, and plastic bags dangle from spindly trees that grow in the filth. Fifteen miles from the seat of the Indian government, cows rummage for fruit peels and pigs wallow in...