There is something of a sea change in the way we understand experiences that have traditionally been labelled as psychotic. In our culture at least, experiences such as hearing voices or seeing visions have long been viewed by the medical...
The idea that our more distressing emotions such as grief and anger can best be understood as symptoms of physical illnesses is pervasive and seductive. But in my view it is also a myth, and a harmful one. Our present approach to helping...
A thought-provoking read in Scientific American by Peter Kinderman, a distinguished professor of clinical psychology at the University of Liverpool, who challenges the disease model of mental illness. He argues that mental health services should be...
When Frank Serpico, the most famous police whistleblower of his generation, reflected on years of law-enforcement corruption in the New York Police Department, he assigned substantial blame to a commissioner who failed to hold rank-and-file...
In keeping with the Christian theme of her self-serving apology, Elizabeth Lauten has blessedly resigned from her post as the communications director for Rep. Stephen Lee Fincher (R-Tenn.). She had said prayer showed her the error of her ways,...
Ron Haskins, a preschool expert who co-directs the Center on Children and Families at the Brookings Institute, says the movement is symptomatic of the country’s failure to reduce poverty and stymie growing inequality. Pre-k is seen as a solution...
She sits alone in a cinder-block cell, an Oglala Lakota teenager with a long braid and tattoos. For five months she has been locked up on this remote prairie reservation for drinking and disorderly conduct. When she behaves, she can watch television....
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation awarded the Health Federation of Philadelphia $4.8 million to invest in promising community-level collaborative efforts that aim to reduce the prevalence and impact of early childhood adversity and to promote family...
NPR’s Gene Demby reveals an inspiring collaboration between an Alaskan tribal non-profit and a video developer in his interview with Amy Fredeen of the Cook Inlet Tribal Council and Sean Vesce of E-Line Media. In an effort to find a sustainable...
The idea that poverty can change the brain has gotten significant attention recently, and not just from those lay readers (a minority, according to recent research) who spend a lot of time thinking about neuroscience. Policy makers and others...
Mayor Bill de Blasio acknowledged last week that he initially underestimated the dysfunction that had allowed chronic violence and corruption to flourish at the Rikers Island jail complex, adding that he intended to make reforming this troubled system...
Lwandile Mnatanywa is zipping up his wetsuit. The tall, soft-spoken high school junior comes to Cape Town's Monwabisi Beach almost every day after school and starts running when he sees the water. "I can see the waves are cooking, I will run...
You can lead a child to vegetables, but can you make her eat them? A child, for instance, like Salem Tesfaye, a first-grader at Walker-Jones Educational Campus in Washington, D.C. Tesfaye picked up a lunch today that's full of nutrition:...
One Monday in 1988, El Mundo newspaper of Medellín, Colombia, reported, as it did every Monday, on the violent deaths in the city of two million people over the weekend. An article giving an hour-by-hour description of the deaths from...
Children living in the United States are entitled to a free public education, regardless of their or their parents' immigration status. In addition, migrant and refugee students experiencing homelessness are entitled to specific rights under the...