Blog

TOKYO — Suicides by young people in Japan rose to their highest level in three decades in 2017, according to new figures released by the government. Japan has a persistent problem with suicides, although the number has been declining over all. But child suicides have risen recently, with experts pointing to school pressures and bullying as likely triggers. Last year 250 children in elementary, middle and high schools committed suicide, the highest number since 1986, according to data...

Having a baby in the United States can be dangerous. American women are more likely than women in any other developed country to die during childbirth or from pregnancy-related complications. And while other countries' maternal death rates have gone down, U.S. rates have risen since 2000 , a fact that has left both doctors and expectant mothers concerned about the state of maternity care in this country. But many of these problems could be prevented if hospitals would standardize the way...

A Jew, Muslim and Christian got together in 2014, nearly paralyzed by the horror of the war in Syria. “We cannot keep silent about this,” was the consensus. The result is the first-ever AAP policy statement and technical report on children and armed conflict. More than one in 10 children are affected by armed conflict. The number of people forcibly displaced from their homes now stands at 68.5 million, including more than 25 million refugees. Half of refugees are children, and most of them...

On Wednesday, October 24th, 2018, a white man who tried and failed to unleash his violent mission on a black church, fatally killed the next black people of convenience, Vickie Lee Jones, 67, and Maurice E. Stallard, 69, in a Jeffersontown, Kentucky Kroger. Today, I am thinking of the families and loved ones of Stallard and Jones, who the media reports, along with their grief, their anger, their lack of true recourse, have taken on the heavy work of forgiveness. *** June 17, 2015, two hours...

In the week before the mid-term elections, a slick political flyer arrived in my mailbox from the advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety . The front shows an image of a manila folder designed to look like a police file. In red and black letters it reads, "Before someone buys a gun, shouldn't we check their background?" The folder reads, "Criminal Record," and, under the tab, we can see the words "mental health evaluation" peeking out. On the inside, the document endorses the local...

A traumatic event or another crisis can act as the catalyst to cause or exacerbate an already upside down hierarchy. Over time, this inverted hierarchy will lead the problem symptoms in the child and/or other family members, a lack of boundaries, coalitions, or a lack of love or limits. On Tuesday, December 11 at 1 pm ET, the Family Trauma Institute presents a webinar that answers the question: "Why is theory so essential to helping the trauma therapist know where to tap to discover the root...

[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] Harris HR, Wieser F, Vitonis AF, Rich-Edwards J, et. al. Early life abuse and risk of endometriosis. Hum Reprod. 2018 Sep 1;33(9):1657-1668. PMID: 30016439 Using...

Dr. Vincent Felitti studied the connection between ACEs and health. Unexpectedly, he uncovered for the courts and our community partners a path past our litigants’ “past.” By applying science to what we do every day and responding appropriately to ACEs, we have a chance to change the trajectory of each life we touch. We have an opportunity to change the world if we see it through a trauma lens.

A root cause of almost every major challenge New Mexico faces--from opioid crisis and violence to low school achievement and underemployment--is childhood trauma. The Mission of Resilience Leaders: Preventing the costly epidemic of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and family trauma by providing the city of Las Cruces and all of Doña Ana county with the frameworks, technology, and training to implement a data-driven prevention program with results that include: safe childhoods, successful...

When it comes to turning back the clocks on our devices, technology has us covered. Our smartphones automatically adjust. But our internal clocks aren't as easy to re-program. And this means that the time shift in the fall and again in the spring can influence our health in unexpected ways. "You might not think that a one hour change is a lot," says Fred Turek , who directs the Center for Sleep & Circadian Biology at Northwestern University. "But it turns out that the master clock in our...

Between 1960 and 2016, inflation-adjusted median rents in America increased by 61 percent and median home values increased by 112 percent, according to a recent report from Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies. Median incomes, meanwhile, increased by only 5 percent for renters, and 50 percent for homeowners. In a new report , Urban Institute researchers Corianne Scally and Dulce Gonzalez look at how Americans are managing these trends. This striking divergence in the growth...

Adolescents with a particular variant of an opioid receptor gene have less response in a part of prefrontal cortex that evaluates rewards, compared to those with the other version of the gene, say researchers at Georgetown University Medical Center (GUMC). For the study, presented Monday at Neuroscience 2018, the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience (abstract #7517), the investigators scanned adolescents who have never used drugs or alcohol with functional magnetic resonance...