In the 1997 film “As Good As It Gets,” Jack Nicholson portrays Melvin Udall, a middle-aged man with obsessive-compulsive disorder who avoids stepping on cracks, locks doors and flips light switches exactly five times, and washes his...
In an Op-Ed essay last Monday, Margo Kaplan set out to correct what she said were misconceptions about pedophilia, writing that pedophiles aren’t all child molesters and that an attraction to children is not itself a crime, but rather a...
Clifford the Big Red Dog looks fabulous on an iPad. He sounds good, too — tap the screen and hear him pant as a blue truck roars into the frame. “Go, truck, go!” cheers the narrator. But does this count as story time? Or is it...
Even when police interrogators left the room, cameras kept recording the teenage suspects. Some paced. Several curled up and slept. One sobbed loudly, hitting his head against the wall, berating himself. Two boys, left alone together, discussed...
While other kids enjoyed summer break, a teenager with more on her mind slipped into her only dressy jacket and traveled south to Anaheim, to a nondescript building housing the local office of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Lithe...
The John Howard Association of Illinois, an independent prison watchdog and justice reform advocate, recently published a report introducing ways to reform the criminal justice system for youth prosecuted for serious offenses. This report takes...
In the parts of the world that we cover in our blog, many people live in villages. Villages have their problems, to be sure. There may not be a doctor or clinic nearby. Girls may not be able to go to school. Clean water might be a long walk...
Positive, calm and friendly family meals might help a child avoid becoming overweight or obese, a new study suggests. Children seem to be less likely to add on extra pounds if their family meals feature pleasant conversation, positive...
Stress triggers different physical and mental reactions in women and men with heart disease, new research indicates. The study involved 254 men and 56 women with stable heart disease who did three mentally stressful tasks: an math test, a...
If, as the communications philosopher Marshall McLuhan famously said, television brought the brutality of war into people’s living rooms, the Internet today is bringing violence against women out of it. Once largely hidden from view, this...
New research in Chicago finds that homicide victims are concentrated among a tiny network. Tracing that network might lead to public health measures to protect would-be victims. [For more of this story by Shankar Vedantam go to http://www.npr.org/2014/10/09/...e-victims-a-heads-up ]
We’ve all had that moment—where the impact of childhood adversity suddenly really hits home. In our second virtual discussion as part of a national movement to prevent trauma and promote resiliency—the National Collaborative...
Joshua Ford, 18, has spent a good deal of his life homeless, moving from shelters to friends’ homes, then back to shelters. He said he has attended about 30 schools, primarily in Santa Barbara County. Despite his home situation, he was a...
A person who tosses thousands of beached starfish back into the ocean may provide the creatures with temporary relief, but doesn’t address the potentially hostile state of the environment. That’s the analogy conference facilitator...
This 6-part series was designed with the primary care practice in mind – those who may or may not be familiar with adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and the process of asking families about exposure to ACEs or other...