Blog

By Jonathan Shannon, Coach, October 7, 2019 Masculinity, as we’re probably all aware by now, can turn nasty with catastrophic consequences for the person affected and the people around them – something Mike Miller knows all too well. Miller is programme director of Reach at The Cabin Group in Thailand, a rehab centre for men struggling with addiction. While Miller believes traditional masculinity – “a set of accepted behaviours for men” – is not all toxic, he thinks there are things that men...

By Markian Hawryluk, Kaiser Health News, October 8, 2019 One patient at Denver Health, the city’s largest safety net hospital, occupied a bed for more than four years — a hospital record of 1,558 days. Another admitted for a hard-to-treat bacterial infection needed eight weeks of at-home IV antibiotics, but had no home. A third, with dementia, came to the hospital after being released from the Denver County Jail. His family refused to take him back. [ Please click here to read more .]

By Sean Coffey, UCLA Newsroom, October 7, 2019 A report released today finds that physical and mental health care needs as well as abuse and traumatic experiences are major contributing factors to a loss of housing for unsheltered people, especially unsheltered women. A research team at the California Policy Lab analyzed survey responses from more than 64,000 single adults ages 25 and older who were experiencing sheltered or unsheltered homelessness in 15 states across the U.S. from 2015...

By Human Rights Watch, October 7, 2019 The Afghan government is failing to provide sufficient psychosocial, or mental health, support to Afghans who have experienced traumatic events, Human Rights Watch said today. More than half the Afghan population, including many survivors of conflict-related violence, struggle with depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress, but fewer than 10 percent receive adequate psychosocial support from the state, according to government documents. The Afghan...

For several years I was the Education Co-chair of New Jersey State School Nurses Association (NJSSNA), tasked with co-creating our annual spring conference. It was a formidable job, but one that I relished. Our overarching goal was to bring the quality of a national conference to our state. One of the many components was to have scholarly poster presentations in order for school nurses in NJ to share the excellent work they were doing with colleagues. Posters are tricky, not all school...

An ACEs Connection webinar co-sponsored with 4 CA In 2017, California became the first state in the country to pass a law supporting universal screening for adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) in the 5.3 million children in the state’s Medicaid program. As clinicians around California await the state’s announcement of what this new policy will entail, many are wondering what it takes to integrate ACEs science in a pediatric practice. Meet Drs. Deirdre Bernard-Pearl, R.J. Gillespie and...

[Editor's note: Dr. Harise Stein at Stanford University edits a web site -- abuseresearch.info -- that focuses on the health effects of abuse, and includes research articles on ACEs. Every month, she's posting the summaries of the abstracts and links to research articles that address only ACEs. Thank you, Harise!! — Jane Stevens] Zhang L, Zhang D, Sun Y. Adverse Childhood Experiences and Early Pubertal Timing Among Girls: A Meta-Analysis. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2019 Aug 13;16(16).

In a video clip , a hospital patient turns away in protest as a physician enters the room. “Why do you all keep coming in my room!” she asks in frustration. The physician moves a chair out of the way and sits down at eye level with the patient. “You’ve had to see so many people,” he acknowledges. “And I’m tired of it!” she yells. “I already know I have to get both of my legs cut off. That’s what they keep saying. I don’t have a choice!” “You don’t feel like you have a choice,” he repeats...

Graduate School of Social Work Lecturer Meagan Corrado, M.S.S. '09 , who is also an artist, has always taken a creative approach to her work with children, adolescents, and families, incorporating elements of art, music, poetry, and play therapy in her clinical practice. As a lecturer, she noticed that many of the students she came to know also had an interest in the arts. "We have social work students who are yoga teachers, photographers, filmmakers, writers, actors, visual artists, and...

By Brigit Katz, Child Mind Institute, October 2019 On a recent afternoon, JD Bailey was trying to get her two young daughters to their dance class. A work assignment delayed her attempts to leave the house, and when Bailey was finally ready to go, she realized that her girls still didn’t have their dance clothes on. She began to feel overwhelmed and frustrated, and in the car ride on the way to the class, she shouted at her daughters for not being ready on time. “Suddenly I was like, ‘What...

By David Leonhardt, The New York Times, October 6, 2019 Almost a decade ago, Warren Buffett made a claim that would become famous. He said that he paid a lower tax rate than his secretary, thanks to the many loopholes and deductions that benefit the wealthy. His claim sparked a debate about the fairness of the tax system. In the end, the expert consensus was that, whatever Buffett’s specific situation, most wealthy Americans did not actually pay a lower tax rate than the middle class. “Is it...

By Emily Laurence, Well and Good, October 5, 2019 In the US, the average life expectancy is 78 years. But there are a few places in the world—specifically Okinawa, Japan; Sardinia, Italy; Nicoya, Costa Rica; and Icaria, Greece—where living to be over 100 isn’t uncommon at all. In these regions, known as Blue Zones, the life expectancy isn’t just higher; centenarians are generally also healthy, their minds and bodies still working well. National Geographic journalist Dan Buettner spent years...