For many, the phrase “psychiatric asylum” conjures up haunting and disturbing images: lobotomy procedures, drugged and restrained patients, the creepy facility in the movie “Shutter Island,” the cruel Nurse Ratched...
“Desensitizing people to past horrors rarely prepares them to be fully available to deal with post-combat realities.” Bessel Van Der Kolk, MD (NY Times Comment) Although written in the context of veterans, Dr. Van Der Kolk’s...
I have wondered what resilience truly is. Reading Tina Marie Hahn's comments on resilience helped me achieve a better understanding. I agree that resilience is not something we are born with. We talk about resilience in a couple of ways....
January 27, 2015 Dear Colleague, A special issue of the Journal of Women’s Health, released on January 22, details how intimate partner violence (IPV) has a profound impact on the health of our nation’s women and girls. Such violence...
To the Editor: Re “Redefining Mental Illness,” by T. M. Luhrmann (Op-Ed, Jan. 18): While many experiences — such as hearing voices — can occur without illness, a psychiatric diagnosis is more than a single symptom. The...
The true-crime podcast “Serial” was a phenomenon, in part, because it was told in the first person. The narrator, Sarah Koenig, all but whispered the story into our ears, and her brainiac sensibility was as interesting as the killing at...
Public schoolteachers would undergo more suicide prevention education under a proposal from a bipartisan group of New Jersey lawmakers. An Assembly committee approved the measure late last year while State Senator Diane B. Allen, a Republican,...
Across the country, efforts to make marijuana more accessible have quickly gained traction. Medical marijuana is now legal in 23 states, and recreational use is also legal in four states and the District of Columbia. Science, however, hasn't...
With the attached ACEs history synopsis, we wanted to start out with what our team at UWECI has done in the last several years and looking forward to our future plans.
Dr. Adrienne Coopey, a board certified pediatric and adult psychiatrist with Mission Hospital in Buncombe County, North Carolina, is taking action in the prevention and healing from ACEs. In her recent article on Citizen-Times, Dr. Coopey does...
The “lifestyles of the rich and famous” are often times a discussion piece for a variety of reasons – the latest celebrity fashion; who divorced who; what photo is “breaking the internet” this week. However, how...
It’s hard enough growing up in the world even with a supportive family and plenty of access to resources. Can you imagine how difficult the journey must be for homeless and high-risk youth? Each individual youth has their own complex and...
It sounds like something that occurs under barbaric, totalitarian regimes. Prisoners are held in solitary confinement for up to 23 hours a day. They have no recourse to an independent body to oversee their incarceration, nor do they know when...
Oscar was 16 when he and a friend robbed a man at gunpoint. In Georgia, armed robbery with a firearm goes straight to adult court. It also means a mandatory minimum sentence of 20 years in prison unless transferred by the prosecutor to juvenile...
On Jan. 20, a federal court in Birmingham began hearing arguments in a class-action lawsuit alleging that school-based police officers used excessive force in spraying disabling chemicals on teenagers. The eight lead plaintiffs, all former Birmingham...