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By JOSÉ-IGNACIO CASTAÑEDA PEREZ , MATTHEW HENDLEY , BYRON MASON II , and BRAELA KWAN on October 23, 2020 for Slate Ruben Saldaña was 12 when he joined a gang after moving to a part of Homestead, Florida, that he called a ghetto. By 13, he was leading his “junior gang.” “I became a gang member before I even hit puberty,” said Saldaña, who now runs a mixed martial arts diversion program for kids in high-crime areas in central Florida. Saldaña said the crimes committed by juvenile gangs had...

Though we cannot fix or heal them, we likely do not even know who many of them are, we can empower them emotionally towards the possibility of their own potential.

This election will test the country’s core. Who are we? How did we come to this? How did this country elect Donald Trump and does it have the collective constitution to admit the error and reverse it? At the moment, Joe Biden is leading in the polls, but the fact that Trump is even close — and still has a chance, however slim, to be re-elected — is for a person like me, a Black man, astounding. I assume that there are many women, Muslims, immigrants, Mexicans and people from Haiti and...

By Isaac Chotiner, The New Yorker, October 23, 2020 Earlier this month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released its employment report for September, which showed that women have been choosing to leave the workforce in staggering numbers: while about two hundred and sixteen thousand men dropped out of the workforce that month, about four times that many women made the same decision. Though the figures for September are particularly stark, they are consistent with trends that have been...

In this "How to talk policy and influence people" interview with Mick Finnegan, National Expert by Experience Adviser at the Royal College of Psychiatrists, National Collaborating Centre for Mental Health, we discuss his experience of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), including being a victim of child sexual abuse by a senior officer in St John Ambulance. We talk about the consequences of embodied trauma stemming from rape, including serious mental health problems and homelessness. We...

Because family scapegoating processes can be insidious and subtle, many adult survivors do not realize that they are suffering from a most egregious (and often chronic) form of systemically-driven psycho-emotional bullying and abuse, with all of the painful consequences to body, mind, and spirit.

CRACKED UP, THE EVOLVING CONVERSATION is a new series of virtual conversations on trauma and recovery inspired by my film CRACKED UP, THE DARRELL HAMMOND STORY . Because of the Covid-19 pandemic restrictions, we were not able to do our in-person event to celebrate our release on Netflix May 1 st , 2020. So, I decided along with Darrell Hammond, our courageous subject of the film, and renowned trauma expert Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, also in the film, to have a live virtual conversation and Q...

BMJ 2020 ; 371 doi: org/10.1136/bmj.m3852 (Published 07 October 2020). Future suicide data must include more information for analysing health inequalities Dear Editor, Woody Caan made an important assertion that adult suicide rates will only reduce once policy makers tackle health inequalities, with particular consideration needed regarding adverse childhood experiences during the Covid-19 pandemic (Letters, 10 October). [ Please click here to read more ]

Members of Heaven’s Gate, a religious cult, believed that as the Hale-Bopp comet passed by Earth in 1997, a spaceship would be traveling in its wake—ready to take true believers aboard. Several members of the group bought an expensive, high-powered telescope so that they might get a clearer view of the comet. They quickly brought it back and asked for a refund. When the manager asked why, they complained that the telescope was defective, that it didn’t show the spaceship following the comet.

By Nick Cochran, October 24, 2020, The Wheeling Register. Youth Services System Inc. is seeking input from the local homeless population with the goal of bringing some of them to the table alongside representatives from local nonprofits, government agencies and offices, law enforcement, churches and the public for a restorative justice event in 2021. [ Please click here to read more ]

By Rita Ziegler-Zurich, October 21, 2020, Early trauma leads to changes in blood metabolites similarly in mice and humans, according to new research. Experiments with mice show that these potentially harmful effects on health are also passed to the next generation, the researchers report. They identified a biological mechanism by which traumatic experiences become embedded in germ cells. People who live through traumatic experiences in childhood often suffer long-lasting consequences that...

The Historical Trauma Specialist Certification- Level 1 is a comprehensive understanding of Historical Trauma from a multicultural lens. The training is designed for participants serving, leading, advocating and working with people of color. It is the perfect training for people in multicultural families and for anyone with the desire to understand the impact of slavery, genocide and colonization. The course dives deeply into the following topics: Introduction: Explosion of COVID-19 &...