December 2015

It has long been recognized that early adversity can have life-long consequences, and the extent to which this is true is gaining increasing attention. A growing body of literature implicates Adverse Childhood Experiences, including physical, sexual, and emotional abuse, in a broad range of negative health consequences including adult psychopathology, cardiovascular, and immune disease. Increasing evidence from animal, clinical, and epidemiological studies highlight the critical role of...

The San Francisco Bay Area Trauma-Transformed (T2) regional center put together this grid of trauma-informed organizational assessment tools to assist with the beginning stages of transformation. Follow up tools coming soon! Trauma-Informed Organizational Assessment Tools

High-quality evaluations document that schools with the Quiet Time program have significantly improved in key areas: 1. Decreased teacher turnover After three years of the Quiet Time program at Visitacion Valley Middle School, teacher turnover dropped to zero, leading to the institution’s removal from the district’s “Hard to Staff” school list. 2. Greater academic achievement Youth who meditated at Quiet Time schools had improved grades, attendance, and standardized...

Emerging research suggests a childhood family breakup can have long-term negative consequences for the children with girls’ health especially at risk. University of Illinois researchers discovered girls’ mental and physical health are more affected by family fragmentation than boys’ health although they discovered both genders may have adult health problems. Investigators looked the impact of a family breakup on overall health, depression, and smoking and finds that, for...

Casey Hodge stepped from the prison van, trembling under the weight of her thick handcuffs and leg shackles. The slight 25-year-old was led with a group of other women into a small room and ordered to strip naked. “Show me your pink,” said a female corrections officer, instructing her to squat and cough so that they could peer between her legs and certify that she wasn’t concealing anything. Hodge, who has been legally blind since she was 16, then was told to remove her...

Last year there were 11,000 referrals to juvenile court in Connecticut, representing enough children to fill more than 22 average-sized public schools. Most of these children have been repeatedly exposed to trauma and a majority have unmet mental health needs. Trauma exposure includes domestic violence, sexual abuse, physical and emotional maltreatment, community violence, natural disasters, and traumatic loss. Although many youth exposed to trauma do not experience ongoing concerns, the...

(l to r, Joyce Dorado, UCSF HEARTS; Jennifer Lynn-Whaley, Contra Costa County's Youth Justice Initiative; Barbara McClung, Oakland Unified School District; and Anh Ta, Bay Area Regional Trauma Transformed Center) __________________________________________________________ Over 130 residents from across the San Francisco Bay Area representing education, health, and law enforcement attended the sold-out screening of Paper Tigers and panel on December 9 at the Brower Center in Berkeley,...

Pain, grief and emotional loss follow mass shootings in America, and there are also other costs that add up to violence's financial toll . It's Ted Miller's job to crunch numbers on social ills like mass shootings. He's a health economist with the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation. For example, when then-U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords was shot in a 2011 incident that left six people dead and 13 injured (including Giffords), her medical costs alone were well over $500,000, Miller says.

Eleven years ago– seven years after the murder of our brother –our sister nearly became a Chicago homicide statistic. She was out with friends at a neighborhood restaurant when someone in her crew got in an argument with someone else. That someone else left the restaurant, returned with a gun, and attempted to murder everyone within 200 feet. The bullet shattered her femur. She had extensive physical therapy. Her mother, desperate to escape the violence, moved her to...

It's no secret that our nation's jails and prisons house individuals charged with or convicted of crimes. What most Americans don't know is that more Americans with a mental illness or addiction reside in jail and prison than in health care institutions. Sixty-five percent of inmates meet the criteria for a substance abuse disorder (a rate seven times higher than the general population) and more than half have a mental health problem. Many are incarcerated for nonviolent offenses related to...

Mental health courts are popular in many communities, and it’s easy to understand why. Rather than sending someone who’s mentally ill to an overcrowded jail that is poorly equipped to manage his condition, mental health courts offer treatment and help with housing and other social services. The community saves on the cost of locking someone up and offenders get support to stay healthy and may have their charges expunged. Everybody wins, right? [For more of...

On June 22, Anita Krajnc, a Canadian animal rights advocate, stood on the side of the road leading to Fearmans Pork Incorporated, a slaughter plant in Burlington, Ontario. Krajnc was, as she puts it, “keeping vigil” with a few other activists as truckloads of pigs were hauled to an abattoir that processes between 8,000 and 10,000 animals daily. The afternoon was unusually hot—Ontario was in the midst of a heat wave—and, through the slats of a truck sitting at a red...