April 2016

It was December 2012 when the country learned about the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School , that left 20 children dead at the hands of 20-year-old shooter Adam Lanza. After the shock and the initial grief came questions about how it could have happened and why. Reports that Adam Lanza may have had some form of undiagnosed mental illness surfaced. The tragedy drove Liza Long to write a blog post on that same day, titled "I Am Adam Lanza's Mother." She wasn't Lanza's mom, but she was...

This article -- 5 Things Psychologists Wish Their Patients Would Do -- seems to carry a lot of wisdom in the five things psychologists wish for patients to know. Having been through counseling twice, with little, if any benefit, I believe the advice is sound. I don’t know many counselors who actually teach this, however. It’s not standard work for healing, which is how I view the Restoration to Health Strategy (RtH) I envision as a means to healing. The five steps in RtH are knowledge,...

Hi, Everyone! I am excited to share with you all that the Mobilizing Action for Resilient Communities (MARC) Project has a new website that has just gone live! Please visit http://marc.healthfederation. org/ for more information. This is a great resource for information on the project, in addition to a great resource for the 14 MARC communities to connect with each other, and share information about what is happening in their community. Additionally, this official announcement has been...

Who hasn’t been grounded by exhaustion, sidelined by grief, or in need of support from others in order to soar higher?

Food insecurity in America is an issue that can be hard to see. It is not synonymous with poverty: two-thirds of food-insecure households have incomes above the national poverty level, according to new data from The Hamilton Project. The same report also demonstrates that the way food insecurity is measured often masks the extent of the problem. Instances of food insecurity often arise suddenly and temporarily, and as a result are difficult to track from year to year. [For more of this...

My co-teacher is stirring sugar into a pitcher of hot water. Our students, ages 4 and 5, stand around the table, watching the sugar intently. “It’s dissolving!” one student cries out. “What does that mean—dissolving?” my co-teacher probes. Another child raises his hand. “It means, like, disappearing, or disintegrating.” My students are the children of doctors, lawyers, teachers, and other professionals, and have been hearing words like “dissolve” and “disintegrate” since they were babies.

or children, the wounds of a traumatic experience can run deep, and the scars can linger for years. This has long been intuitive to people who work with traumatized kids. Now there's a growing body of research that shows how these experiences can derail a child's normal brain development, increasing the chance of mental health problems like depression, anxiety, eating disorders and substance abuse. There's even a study that suggests a link between childhood trauma and adult health and...

The words “My mom said ‘I ain’t gonna teach you nothing, because I want you to go through what I went through” were displayed on a PowerPoint slide in the Italian Community Center ballroom. This quote was stated by someone who took part in a study that explored how childhood stressors lead to poor health outcomes, according to Dr. Roy Wade. SaintA hosted Childhood Adversity & Poverty: Developing a Collaborative Response on April 12 from 3pm to 6 pm, featuring Dr. Wade as the keynote...

Understanding teens, and sorting myth from reality, is a challenge for both adults and teens themselves. So check out this quiz and update your knowledge on the latest findings. 1. Which of the following is not true: The adolescent brain leads teens to: Explore Seek out the good in life Feel things passionately Seek novelty Process information rapidly Need their parents less and be less affected by parents’ disapproval All of the above Though teens have gotten a bad rap, the adolescent brain...

A new study has found that interventions designed to increase connections to non-drug-using family and friends, the faith community, education and employment are the best ways to reduce substance abuse among African-Americans and other minorities in low-income, resource-poor communities. The study focused on locations within the Arkansas Mississippi Delta, a region characterized by strained race relations, a stagnant economy, high unemployment, low incomes, and high emigration, and where the...

What happened in Murfreesboro about a week ago shouldn't stay in Murfreesboro. Police arrested 10 children at an elementary school and led them away in handcuffs. The children didn't have weapons. They weren't fighting or hurting others. They weren't destroying property. Basically, they were arrested and taken to juvenile court for acting like children. Police said the kids, ages 6-12, were arrested on suspicion of failing to stop other kids from fighting off campus several days earlier. The...

For the last two years, nearly all students referred for mental health services in seven school-based health centers in Deschutes County, OR, have taken the 10-question adverse childhood experiences (ACE) survey. It didn’t take long to realize why this was good idea. “The average ACE score for a student being seen by a Deschutes County clinician was 5 out of 10,” says Elizabeth Fitzgerald, supervisor of school-based health centers at Deschutes County Health Services.