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By Don Thompson, San Francisco Chronicle, December 27, 2019 An inmate in solitary confinement at a California jail was refusing to leave his cell. The jailers' usual response: Send an “extraction team” of corrections officers to burst into the cell and drag him out. But not in Contra Costa County, one of three in the state using a kinder, gentler approach in response to inmate lawsuits, a policy change that experts say could be a national model for reducing the use of isolation cells. So the...

By Doug Smith, Los Angeles Times, December 27, 2019 With the ranks of homeless people growing faster than housing is being built, one of the most popular strategies for reducing homelessness has become to simply keep people in their homes. In theory, a small infusion of cash, counseling or legal aid could be the difference that prevents someone from ending up on the street. But reality isn’t so simple. Of the tens of thousands of people who are on the brink of losing their homes every year...

By Elizabeth Evans, University of Massachusetts Amherst, December 20 Gender-tailored methods to address the harmful mental health effects of childhood adversity may help alleviate the current opioid crisis and make treatment more effective, concludes University of Massachusetts Amherst epidemiology researcher Elizabeth Evans in her latest research about opioid use disorder (OUD). Looking for new ways to address the public health emergency that the opioid crisis has created, Evans and...

By Peggy Rowe and Larry Ward, Lion's Roar, December 25, 2019 Thich Nhat Hanh, our teacher, described love as an extremely powerful energy that has the capacity to transform ourselves and others. But many of us find it difficult to direct love toward ourselves. We quickly become aware of negative feelings like shame, guilt, and self-criticism that make it hard to love and care for ourselves. Unfortunately, this is all too common. Luckily for us, the seeds of love, compassion, joy, and...

By Daniela Blei, Stanford Social Innovation Review, December 26, 2019 Today, girls outperform boys in almost every academic subject. On average, girls earn higher grades and graduate from high school at higher rates, and women enroll in college in much greater numbers. While these gendered achievement gaps have created the impression that boys are the newly disadvantaged at school, education researchers say that growing talk of a “boy crisis” belies reality in the classroom. They have...

By Amy Steward, Dorchester Banner, December 25, 2019 Along with Maryland’s ACE Interface Cohort, For All Seasons and CASA of the Mid-Shore are partnering to train residents on the Mid Shore about Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) in hopes of helping communities to understand how trauma in young children may affect their physical, emotional, and mental health later in life. The trainings also bring awareness to how to build resiliency in children to help mitigate the trauma that they may...

By Victoria Brownworth, Stanford Social Innovation Review, December 26, 2019 The largest psychiatric facilities in the United States are prisons. It’s a sobering fact: 2.3 million adults are held in America’s prisons and jails, according to 2019 data from the Prison Policy Initiative. Within this statistic, approximately 20 percent of inmates in jails and 15 percent of inmates in prisons have a serious mental illness. There are three times as many mentally ill people housed in jails and...

By Michael Hill, Associated Press, December 22, 2019 Drug overdose patients rushed to some emergency rooms in New York’s Hudson Valley are asked a series of questions: Do you have stable housing? Do you have food? Times and location of overdoses are noted, too. The information is entered into a new overdose-tracking system that provides near real-time glimpses into the ravages of the opioid-fueled drug crisis. The Hudson Valley Interlink Analytic System is among a number of surveillance...

To understand the treatments for complex post-traumatic stress disorder, it is helpful to understand the interaction between neuroplasticity and mindfulness.

By Emma Brown, Your Tango, December 21, 2019 There are days when I can’t tell where I end and my trauma begins. But what I do know is that my trauma doesn’t define me, and neither does yours. I once thought that PTSD was an emotional response to a single, visibly distressing event. However, I now realize it’s so much more. In fact, navigating my life as a domestic violence survivor is like walking through a physical and psychological landmine. My abusive ex has caused me to suffer a variety...

You will be amazed to know how positive sentences will immediately affect the way you think. Your encouraging word may be just what they require. Words of affirmation can be exceedingly beneficial for children of all ages. Affirmation is a strong and holistic method of building a positive mindset and happier children. the key to affirmation is that any word or sentence, when recited regularly or frequently, will result in a positive outcome. In reality, you can use affirmation in any...

Gateway Mountain Center in Truckee, California provides nature-based therapeutic mentoring for youth. Gateway's program, ‘ Whole Hearts, Minds and Bodies ’ is the first nature-based therapeutic program in California to achieve full-service partner contracts with County behavioral health departments and certification as a MediCal provider. Peter Mayfield, founder and Executive Director, spoke with James Moore of Mad In America. To read the interview or listen to the podcast, go to ...