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As 2021 comes to a close, we want to take a few moments to reflect on this busy and fruitful year as we ask you to remember PACEs Connection in your Giving Tuesday and year-end giving. Despite this physically and emotionally challenging time, we have so very much for which to be grateful, and we would love to share our gratitude list with you. When we practice gratitude, we’re actually practicing a very PACEs-Connection thing to do: helping our brains. Brain imaging studies, says Dr. Daniel...

Upon seeing a mental health specialist, we are often unclear about what brought us there, our purpose for seeing them, and our goals for the future. One method mental health professionals use to help both you and they guide your healing journey is to form a treatment plan. But what is a treatment plan? This article will explore this question and provide information on treatment plans and some of the people involved in your healing. After reading this article, you will see just how vital a...

By Stephanie O'Neill, Photo: Stephanie O'Neill/KHN, California Healthline, November 29, 2021 It was supper time in the Whittier, California, home of Air Force veteran Danyelle Clark-Gutierrez, and eagerly awaiting a bowl of kibble and canned dog food was Lisa, a 3-year-old yellow Labrador retriever. Her nails clicking on the kitchen floor as she danced about, Lisa looked more like an exuberant puppy than the highly trained service animal that helps Clark-Gutierrez manage the symptoms of...

By Bob Mercer, Keloland, November 22, 2021 A closer relationship that’s developed between South Dakota’s courts and mental-health services during recent years seems to be gradually paying off. That’s according to the draft of a new annual report from a state monitoring panel. The South Dakota Oversight Council for Improving Criminal Justices Responses for Persons with Mental Illness put the finishing touches on the report Monday. [ Please click here to read more .]

By Joy Borkholder, Photo: Dan DeLong/Investigate West, November 17, 2021 It’s hard to get an economy moving again when almost half of your potential workers can’t leave the house. That’s basically what it means when unemployed and underemployed people can’t take jobs because they care for their kids at home — either because there is no child care available or because the child care costs nearly as much as or more than what the job would bring in. In Washington state, about half of unemployed...

By Warren Kibbe and Giselle Corbie-Smith, Photo: Mario Tama/Getty Images, November 22, 2021 N early 170 years ago, a physician who had been born into a poor family used data to stop a cholera epidemic in London’s then-marginalized Soho neighborhood. By interviewing residents and plotting the locations of those who were ill on a simple map , John Snow, today seen as one of the founders of modern epidemiology, identified a shared water well as the source of cholera. Removing the pump handle ,...

On November 17, 2021, Roadmap to Resilience: Supporting Children Experiencing Stress and Trauma announced its official website launch and release of podcast episodes, short videos, and other digital tools. Roadmap to Resilience guides the listener through specific, trauma-informed approaches to supporting children and their families. Created by a task force of international child trauma experts, the collection of free resources provides practical, accessible, and timely digital content for...

I am going to give you a little context before I share the College Essay that prove PCEs DO mitigate ACEs. I was young when I had my first born and his life started off rocky. His father asked me to abort him when I was 8 months pregnant right after he was discharged from the military for being an alcoholic. We tried to make it work and the alcohol won. My infant son and I moved away across the country to start anew, never looking back. I struggled for a long time trying to get on my feet. I...

My son is old enough to remember me being a single mother and the two of us living in an apartment with cockroaches, wearing someone else's hand me down clothes, and standing in the long foodbank lines hoping nobody would recognize us. Granted this was a short time in our life, still a memory we both can recall. Even when we were living in poverty, my son and I together found joy in giving back often. It was a way for us to thank the community for taking care of us during our time of need,...

Let's talk about our children for a minute. Let's talk about what they have been through the past eighteen-ish months. In March of 2020, the world was plunged into a global pandemic from out of nowhere. Many schools shut down during Spring Break Week and didn't reopen for the remainder of the school year. Our students were rapidly taken away from school, as well as their friends. Younger children, I can tell you from personal experience, had a very difficult time adjusting to this sudden...

The “Best Of” ACE Treatment Solutions from Dr. Felitti & Dr. Alman You know the value of the ACE Study. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be here at PACEs Connection reading this post! You’re here because you’re passionate about identifying and healing the root cause of trauma, whether that’s for yourself, your loved ones, or your patients. While the ACE Study shows the connection between ACEs, physical, and mental dis-ease and the ACE Assessments helps pinpoint which traumas, specifically, could...


By Kisha James
 - Perspective
 The Washington Post, November 24 at 4:00 PM ET — 
On Thursday, millions of families across the United States will celebrate Thanksgiving without giving much thought to the truth behind the heavily mythologized and sanitized story taught in schools and promulgated by institutions. According to this myth, 400 years ago, the Pilgrims were warmly welcomed by the “Indians,” and the two groups came together in friendship to break bread. The “Indians” taught the...