April 2016

Portraits of Professional Caregivers: Their Passion Their Pain is an award winning documentary film that is enjoying screenings at a number of community and professional events, including The ACES Film Festival, and state and national conferences, such as the American Public Health Association (APHA) and the National Association of Social Workers (NASW). The film illustrates the impact of secondary traumatic stress or “compassion fatigue”. through a series of first person stories of social...

Last week, the Hamilton Project, a policy initiative spinoff of the Brookings Institution, hosted a conversation with United States’ Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack on food insecurity. The event was accompanied by the Hamilton Project’s new report on the topic, which makes for mostly grim reading. The report finds that, though food insecurity, which increased sharply during the Great Recession, has declined, it still hasn’t returned to pre-recession levels. In fact, in states with...

As the knowledge economy becomes increasingly spiky, concentrated, and urban, some of America’s most expensive cities like New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and Boston have become even more unaffordable. But the burden of escalating housing costs is not spread evenly, hitting some groups harder than others. As the affluent and the talented crowd into these urban centers, less advantaged families, those who don’t yet own a home, and younger people have trouble staying in...

A&Q is a special series that inverts the classic Q&A , taking some of the most frequently posed solutions to pressing matters of policy and exploring their complexity. America is a world leader in incarceration. The U.S. locks up more people than any other country, the University of London’s Institute for Criminal Policy Research reports. An estimated 1.6 million individuals were held in state and federal prisons at the end of 2014, while roughly 1 out of every 36 adults fell under...

A 38-year-old woman living in Everett, Washington recently told me that nine years ago, she had a well-paying job, immaculate credit, substantial savings, and a happy marriage. When her first daughter was born, she and her husband decided that she would quit her job in publishing to stay home with the baby. She loved being a mother and homemaker, and when another daughter came, she gave up the idea of going back to work. Seven years later, her husband told her to leave their house, and filed...

Many of us can remember at least one childhood friend who made growing up slightly easier with jokes and playtime adventures. Even as adults, friendships play an important role in our lives. By bringing laughter and camaraderie, their mere presence can buffer stress as well as the effects of negative experiences. Furthermore, they can help alleviate despair or emotional turmoil. New research published in Scientific reports suggests a better pain threshold may be another benefit of having...

It’s the week before Christmas and the Brighthaupt family is in its weekly therapy session. Kecia Brighthaupt, 37, grabs a piece of paper from the center of the dining room table in her apartment and reads the word on it. “Hopeful,” Kecia Brighthaupt says. “I feel hopeful that Jamari is going to graduate.” She, her 15-year-old son Jamari, and their counselor, Ayize Ma’at, sit at one end of the glass rectangular table. A tan carpet covers the floor. Photos of relatives, including Kecia’s...

Across the Commonwealth, thousands of tiny blue pinwheels staked in the ground flutter in the springtime breeze. Much more than garden ornaments, the decorations symbolize a dark past and a hopeful future for children in Virginia. William & Mary Psychology Professor Emeritus Joseph Galano and Adjunct Professor of Psychology Lee Huntington know the significance of the pinwheels perhaps better than anyone. As lead advocates for Prevent Child Abuse, which declared the pinwheel its national...

On Holocaust Remembrance Day (May 5), WTTW-Channel 11 in Chicago will present its 6th annual broadcast of “Prisoner of Her Past. ” The film will air at 10 p.m. Central. Written by Emmy-award winning Chicago Tribune journalist, Howard Reich, the film documents Howard’s quest to discover why his mother is reliving her Holocaust past. To date, “Prisoner of her Past,” has aired more than 500 times in 140 markets across the United States! http://prisonerofherpast.kartemquin.com/

Scientists say they have made an atlas of where words' meanings are located in the brain. The map shows that words are represented in different regions throughout the brain's outer layer. Moreover, the brains of different people map language in the same way. "These maps are remarkably consistent from person to person," says Jack Gallant , a neuroscientist at the University of California, Berkeley who led the study. The work appears in the journal Nature. To make the language maps, Gallant's...

Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam has signed legislation that allows mental health counselors and therapists to refuse to treat patients based on religious objections or personal beliefs. Critics of the law say it could result in discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. As Nashville Public Radio reported earlier this month: "A group representing gay and lesbian Tennesseans [asked Haslam] to veto the legislation. ... "The Tennessee Equality Project, an LGBT advocacy...

Stacy Bannerman didn't recognize her husband after he returned from his second tour in Iraq. "The man I had married was not the man that came back from war," she says. Bannerman's husband, a former National Guardsman, had been in combat and been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. He behaved in ways she had never expected, and one day, he tried to strangle her. "I had been with this man for 11 years at that point, and there had never been anything like this before," Bannerman...