Thinking much about Chester Bennington's passing, the links between Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACES) and later substance abuse and mental illness, and the intersections of mental illness and creativity. For those unfamiliar with him, Chester was the lead singer for Linkin Park . Chester committed suicide by hanging on July 20th, on what would have been the 53rd birthday of his dear friend, Chris Cornell , lead singer of the group Soundgarden. Chester battled depression most of his life...

Brookings Institute: 5 Reasons to Invest in Social Emotional Development

The stories that have been shared herein recently, e.g., regarding trauma-informed education models, are stories about folks practicing 'eulogy virtues' as defined in this great piece by David Brooks in the New York Times.  http://nyti.ms/1Fy2QmR...

This story, "As Arizona Struggles to Fix Foster System, Children Suffer the Consequences"  [ http://nyti.ms/1GdjcA7 ], in the 3/24/15 issue of the New York Times, describes challenges in the Arizona foster care system that are not atypical of foster care systems around the nation.  It was the subject of the following workshop at the recent Child Health, Education, and Care Summit put on by First 5 California in Sacramento:  Understanding and Addressing Toxic Stress in a...

Apparently, Dr. Felitti was not the first to uncover the impact of ACES although his work did advance the field in this arena significantly.  The initial groundbreaking discovery of ACES actually occurred in 1961, in the...

While reading the responses to a recent blog post ( Screening for ACES ), an uneasy feeling started to creep up from deep within me.  I had sensed a similar reaction in me brewing up in other posts, and it is only by accident that this one served...

In my first "My ACES and Me" blog post published one month ago, [Feb 18, 2015] I invited you all along with me on a brief tour of the 7 (or 6, or 8?) adverse childhood experience categories that make up my ACES score.  At the time of that writing, I had fully expected to continue that story line in chronological fashion, sharing the first, initial consequences in my life as I crossed the ACES time boundary of 21 years old and beyond.  Perhaps I believed that further...

      When I first attended an ACES presentation by Dr. Felitti in the mid 2000-aughts, the data was not so much astounding as revelatory.  As he ticked off the 10 adverse childhood experiences one-by-one, mental pictures of their...