Dr. Stephen Porges writes that mammals like us aren’t made to be traumatized. We’re made to attach to other mammals, which makes us feel safe, secure and good. When that fails, we’re made to fall back into fight/flight; we get...
Jurisdictions across the country should stop sentencing kids to spend the rest of their lives in detention. “Children are constitutionally different from adults. ... Because juveniles have diminished culpability and greater prospects for reform...
The American criminal justice system is at a critical juncture. In recent years, federal policymakers have called for reforms, following the lead of states that have reduced prison populations without compromising public safety. Nationwide prison...
A growing chain of specialized Los Angeles County clinics is keeping people experiencing mental health crises from ending up in jail or an emergency room, according to statistics compiled by the county and an agency that runs two of the clinics. One...
Changing people’s perceptions of mental illness has been a longtime mission for Dario D’Ambrosi, an Italian avant-garde actor and author. For the past five years, he has led Teatro Patologico, or the Pathological Theater, an innovative...
I can remember the early days of having schizophrenia. I was so afraid of the implications of subtle body language, like a lingering millisecond of eye contact, the way my feet hit the ground when I walked or the way I held my hands to my side. It was...
When Farah Tanis began to meet with a group of low-income women to discuss their economic challenges, she found that nine out of 10 were survivors of domestic violence or sexual assault. “Most of us had grown up in poverty and we started looking...
Everyone’s talking about the minimum wage today. I’m in favor of raising it, and I always have been, but a picture is worth a thousand words, so here’s a picture for you. Courtesy of the OECD, it shows the minimum wage in various...
Here’s news that won’t surprise any parents: Raising children is really expensive. According to recent Department of Agriculture projections, middle income U.S. parents who had a child in 2013 should expect to spend about $245,340 before...
After decades of rising obesity rates among adults, the pace of increase is beginning to slow, but rates remain high. This report reveals that adult obesity rates increased in six states in the past year and remained high overall. [For more of this story go to http://www.rwjf.org/en/researc...tate-of-obesity.html ]
Paula Meltzer was only 38 when out of nowhere everything she looked at was blurry. For the single mother, who had a lucrative career as a gemologist and spent hours examining valuable pieces of jewelry, it seemed as if – in a split second...
What could we possibly learn from massaging rat pups? The answer is, a lot. Just ask the millions of families whose prematurely born infants have survived and thrived on account of that research. That's why the researchers behind this work –...
Glenn Peters knew he would be in the minority when he started training to teach preschool as part of New York City's rollout of universal pre-K, the largest such initiative in the country. But he didn't realize just how rare men are in the profession...
Suggest that the way to end recidivism is to reform the prison system, and you might be accused of caring more about criminals than the crimes they commit. It's happened to me. Often when I write or give a talk about my work with minors in adult...
Too many children are not being cared for adequately after being found mentally disturbed in a public place, the Howard League for Penal Reform reports. Instead of being taken to “a place of safety” as required by law, except in...