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By Ellen Barry, Photo: Kim Raff/The New York Times, The New York Times, March 31, 2022 New research from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on adolescents’ mental health during the coronavirus pandemic suggests that for many teenagers who were ordered to stay at home, home was not always a safe place. A nationwide survey of 7,705 high school students conducted in the first half of 2021 built on earlier findings of high levels of emotional distress, with 44.2 percent describing...

By Emmanuel Felton, Photo: Joshua Lott/The Washington Post, The Washington Post, April 1, 2022 If you really concentrate, you can imagine the town that this community’s elders describe. There was the grocery store on the highway, and the gas station. There were the shops where children walked to buy lunch for 50 cents on school days. There was Ms. Sadie’s chicken shack and Dr. Minor’s office. All of that’s gone now. In their place, either vacant lots or dilapidated buildings. Today, you’re...

When the trauma Informed lens is in place, you will inevitably see that change is needed in your organization. The 'change' could be to practice, or process, or maybe wholesale culture change - but there will be change. The impacts (positive and negative) will impact in a parallel process. It should be felt by 'those we serve', 'those we employ' and modeled/felt by leadership. A TIC/ACE/PACE based foundation is exactly what organizations need in order to develop a healthy, thriving workplace...

[Editor's note: Dr. Harise Stein at Stanford University edits a web site — abuseresearch.info — that focuses on the effects of abuse, and includes research articles on PACEs. Every month, she posts the summaries of the abstracts and links to research articles that address only ACEs, PCEs and PACEs. Thank you, Harise!! — Jane Stevens] Child Abuse Vermeulen S, Alink LRA, van Berkel SR. Child Maltreatment During School and Childcare Closure Due to the COVID-19 Pandemic. Child Maltreat. 2022 Feb...

Growing up as the eldest daughter in a family of three girls and three boys in Nairobi, Kenya, Becky Ndung’u and all her siblings attended school, which is mandatory for children ages six through 14. Her parents—both farmers and her father also a lifelong government accountant—were committed to providing all their children a good education. Her education began in a public school, followed by a private high school. Our conversation was conducted in English, but Ndung’u is also fluent in her...

By Dani Blum, Illustration: Debora Cheyenne Cruchon, The New York Times, April 4, 2022 Nancy Méndez-Booth was diagnosed with PTSD after she delivered a stillborn baby in the winter of 2008. Within an hour after she rushed to the hospital, in labor and exhilarated, a doctor told her that the baby she had spent years planning for had no heartbeat. When she returned home from the hospital, Ms. Méndez-Booth said she felt as though she had “arrived from Mars”; she got lost in her own apartment...

By Renee Menart, Photo: Rob Marmion/Shutterstock, Juvenile Justice Information Exchange, April 1, 2022 Children’s books centered on characters involved in the justice system can support kids with incarcerated parents and offer a compassionate window into this experience for broad young audiences. Incarceration is harmful not only to people held in confinement but to the health of their children , who, for example, may experience post-traumatic stress from witnessing a parent’s arrest or...

By Richard Mendel, Photo: Getty Images, The 74, March 29, 2022 T he COVID-19 pandemic has been a nightmare for teenagers. The U.S. surgeon general and the American Academy of Pediatrics recently declared a nationwide adolescent mental health crisis, as did the president of the United States . Academic achievement tests show wholesale learning loss. School attendance has plummeted. And these difficulties are being felt most among students who were already behind before COVID — youth of color,...

By Alaa Elassar, Photo: Don Hankins, CNN US, April 3, 2022 California is calling upon Native American tribes to bring back the once-prohibited practice of lighting controlled burns to help prevent devastating wildfires that have wreaked havoc on the state . Gov. Gavin Newsom's Wildfire and Forest Resilience Task Force has launched a new plan -- "Strategic Plan for Expanding the Use of Beneficial Fire" -- that relies on the help of Native Americans to revive their cultural burning practices,...

Are You Sick Of Will Smith’s Slap? (There are 2 TV shows on ACEs in this blog.) He has dad trauma from age 9; Trauma doesn’t get better with time; Trauma gets stronger when it’s not resolved; Trauma gets pushed down into the body; Trauma freezes emotions at the age it occurred; Will smith is a 9 year old boy in a big body. Will needs to find ACE trauma informed care and the only way to be sure the right care is to reach out to ACE co-principal investigator, Vincent J. Felitti MD. Will...

What happened this past winter caught me by surprise. Stepping from my car at a hip coffee shop in Carrboro, North Carolina, the first words I heard were that most potent of racial slurs for Black Americans, repeated angrily from a nearby vehicle. I tried to ignore the harassment, but on the third shriek, I turned around. A hairy arm shot out of the passenger side of a green pickup, and an angry male voice yelled, “White power!” as the truck sped away. I continue to reflect on the lasting...

The camp counselor tapped me on the shoulder, drawing my attention from the dream catcher that I was busily crafting and said, "Rachel, honey, let's go for a walk." I hopped up from the table right away! The dream catcher reduced to a pile of popsicle sticks and blue and green yarn, no longer a potential vessel for driving away the nightmares. I was excited that my camp counselor wanted to spend some time with me. I had been at camp for about a week, and already I was so enamored with this...