Some years ago in Southern California, a 400-pound lesbian decided that life with her 300-pound partner and their three adopted children wasn’t worth living, so she drove into a semi truck, crushing her legs and hips and leaving her in...
15 years ago, my colleagues and I held a party in Catford to celebrate the launch of the first time bank in a UK health centre. The idea was to make mutual support possible among patients, their families and their neighbours, and I wanted to...
Traffic slows to a crawl, then a stop. You are trapped in a bottleneck nightmare, and late for a meeting. The stress takes a toll on you psychologically -- but your body is at risk as well, according to a Tel Aviv University researcher. A new...
In each police-related death recently dominating the headlines, authorities overreacted to black men’s behaviors as if they were life-threatening. On Staten Island, an unarmed Eric Garner was wrestled to the ground by five police officers...
Almost half of Minnesota’s county child protection directors say they are so short-staffed that they cannot respond to reports of child abuse in the time required by law. Only 60 percent of counties said they have the staff needed to make...
Emotions ran high last month during the final episode of the popular NBC series "Parenthood." The series, centered around the Braverman family, brought honest conversations about depression, substance use, mental health, aging, cancer and other...
- and not in a good way. Quoting Jodi Wentland (Olmsted County's child and family services director) in Brandon Stahl's Star Tribune front page article today, turnover is too high, inexperienced social workers are taking cases...
Wealth and income inequality have many causes, and it’s pretty much beyond dispute that any well-functioning capitalist society will have some degree of disparity between the richest and the poorest. It’s also beyond...
A baby’s brain needs love to develop. What happens in the first year is profound . In the late 1980s, when the crack cocaine epidemic was ravaging America’s cities, Hallam Hurt, a neonatologist in Philadelphia, worried about the damage...
Part 1 of this blog Jan. 23 concluded that by 1978, Dr. Mary Ainsworth’s estimate for U.S. babies was that (A) 23% were Avoidant insecure (avoid parents); (B) only 69% were Securely Attached; and (C) 8% were Ambivalent insecure (unhappy and...
Sedlis Dowdy sat inside a quiet out-of-the-way room inside a maximum security prison in Elmira, New York, deep within layers of barbed wire and rings of heavy metal gates and guard stands. To get here he had to pass in front of a row of...
Editors Note: MAPP (Mobilizing for Action through Planning & Partnerships) is a local coalition that aims to use and build upon our strengths to improve our individual, family, and community health. Health is defined broadly to include cultural, economic, educational, environmental, mental, physical, and spiritual health. If you could do one single thing that decreased the number of people within our community experiencing anxiety by 56 percent, life...
A Yale-led research team has identified the molecular mechanism by which insulin normally inhibits production of glucose by the liver and why this process stops working in patients with type 2 diabetes, leading to hyperglycemia. The findings...
Since 1970, life expectancy around the world has risen dramatically, with people living more than 10 years longer. That's the good news. The bad news is that starting when people are in their mid-to-late-20s, the brain begins to...
The state of the juvenile correction system in America is dreadfully lacking in effectiveness and is increasing in population year-over-year. The US h as the highest youth incarceration rate in the world with 336 juvenile incarcerations per...