Blog

By Lauren Weber, Kaiser Health News, February 7, 2020 The more than $34,000 in medical bills that contributed to Darla and Andy Markley’s bankruptcy and loss of their home in Beloit, Wisconsin, grew out of what felt like a broken promise. Darla Markley, 53, said her insurer had sent her a letter preapproving her to have a battery of tests at the Mayo Clinic in neighboring Minnesota after she came down with transverse myelitis, a rare, paralyzing illness that had kept her hospitalized for...

By Darius Cikanavicius, PsychCentral, February 7, 2020 Most of us occasionally question ourselves, sometimes feel self-doubtful, or challenge ourselves to try harder. People who chronically feel not good enough, however, are unable to escape this feeling, ever. Consequently, this becomes their main motivator in life. It is also their biggest burden since it can never be satisfied, no matter how hard or often the person tries to satisfy it. Why Do We Feel Not Good Enough? I have worked with...

By Janice Bloom and Lori Chajet, The Hechinger Report, February 11, 2020 There’s room for more than one counseling solution. First, some numbers: 1-to-464 — the average school counselor-to-student ratio in the United States. 20 percent — the percentage of their time at work that more than half of high-school counseling departments report spending on college-related counseling. 1-to-1,000 — the typical adviser-to-student ratio at community colleges in the United States. [ Please click here to...

By Eli Hager, The Marshall Project, February 11, 2020 The children usually arrived in the dead of night, silent and terrified. For two years, Daniel Derkacs and Ashley Keiler-Green, foster parents in Albuquerque, New Mexico, regularly took in kids whose parents were suspected of abusing or neglecting them. Sometimes, as the couple scrambled to find pajamas for their latest house guest, they couldn’t help but wonder if they’d just met a child who would be with them for years to come. But they...

By Mike Elsen-Rooney, USA Today, February 10, 2020 For both boys, the struggles at school started in the first grade. Isaac Rosenthal was a fast talker with a big vocabulary. But when it came time to read, he couldn’t keep up with his classmates. He didn’t pick up on the rhyme scheme in Dr. Seuss books, and often mispronounced words whose meaning he knew (like “Pacific,” for which he’d substitute “the other ocean”). Landon Rodriguez, four years younger than Isaac, was energetic and talkative...

Thomas Jefferson University's newly formed Department of Counseling and Behavioral Health has generated its first-ever newsletter . If you're interested in trauma-informed training and education , or if you simply want to stay abreast of the work of some great clinicians, researchers, advocates and aspiring professionals, please have a look. The Community and Trauma Counseling program currently has Art Therapy options and is launching two new specializations and certificates this summer: (1)...

By Randi Hutter Epstein, The New York Times, February 10, 2020 It was a staple of medical thinking dating to the 1910s that stress was the body’s alarm system, switching on only when terrible things happened, often leaving a person with an either-or choice: fight or flight. The neuroscientist Bruce S. McEwen trailblazed a new way of thinking about stress. Beginning in the 1960s, he redefined it as the body’s way of constantly monitoring daily challenges and adapting to them. Dr. McEwen, who...

By Ashley A. Smith, EdSource, January 30, 2020 California foster students who were suspended from school or attended multiple high schools are more likely to struggle in college, according to a new report that examines the academic transition these students undergo. The report released Wednesday, from Educational Results Partnership, a nonprofit research organization, and California College Pathways, a statewide organization that helps foster youth succeed in college, finds these students...

By Elizabeth S. Barnert, JAMA Pediatrics, February 10, 2020 Research shows that incarcerated youth are at risk of poor health and social outcomes.1 Interventions that focus on keeping youth out of the juvenile justice system are more likely to affect long-term outcomes.1 To create systems that prevent youth incarceration and improve youths’ trajectories, we must use evidence to inform public policy. By applying the scientific method through community-engaged scholarship,2 pediatric...

By Gabrielle Hays, WBIR 10 News, February 10, 2020 Melissa Bucks spent 36 years of her life teaching kindergarteners and first graders in Knox County. She just retired in May but is still involved in the classroom and in the community. After almost four decades in education, she can recall how trauma in the classroom changed over time and how it impacts some of our youngest children who are trying to learn. “It was always different but there was always one child, two children or three...

From Northern California Grantmakers, February 2020 Since January 1, 2020, Medi-Cal providers have been eligible to receive payment from the California Department of Health Care Services (DHCS) to screen patients for Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs). This program is part of an initiative led by the Office of the California Surgeon General and DHCS and is the product of several legislative efforts, including the passage of AB340, that have facilitated the momentum around universal...

One of the worst triggers of Childhood PTSD symptoms for many of us is the feeling of abandonment. This trigger is primal because we’re all wired to be loved and included in the tribe as if our lives depended on it. Because in any situation before the last 100 years or so, our lives did depend on it! We need our parents when we’re born and we need dependable people connected to us throughout our lives. So just about everyone (and I know this because I’ve taught so many people to write their...