October 2017

In this last episode of season two, Carey talks with Dr. Aparna Kota , a pediatrician with Kaiser Permanente . Dr. Kota works in San Francisco, where she is a local leader for child abuse prevention and advocacy. She is also on the board of Safe and Sound (Formerly the SF Child Abuse Prevention Center) and she is an associate clinical faculty at UCSF where she teaches medical students and pediatric residents. She and Carey talk about leadership and struggling to use data about Adverse...

Community leaders and members of the Arizona ACE Consortium, along with City of Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton and First Lady Nicole Stanton, came together on October 3rd to hear leading voices in the ACEs movement - Vincent Felitti, MD and Nadine Burke Harris, MD - discuss the impact of ACEs and toxic stress, and explore what's needed to promote resilience in individuals and communities. Local experts addressing the opioid epidemic also highlighted the connection between ACEs and addiction.

What we’re seeing is an avalanche of truth telling from eyewitnesses to the crimes of sexual harassment, sexual abuse and sexual assault. There’s an iceberg moving through our world – it’s eyes glaring out at all of us – wondering if it will be NOW that we, as a people, as a planet full of people – will begin to notice her. Not just notice her but finally do something about her. Some say this is a tipping point. I say, it’s happened before; O’Reilly, Ailes, Cosby, Clinton, Trump, Sandusky...

He was incarcerated, caged, stripped of his family, friends, and dignity. Now, just four days before his 28th birthday, he’s dead. When Selmin Feratovic was pronounced dead early Thursday morning at the Otis Bantum Correctional Center on Rikers Island, he had been incarcerated for nearly seven months but had not been convicted of a single crime. I was Selmin’s public defender. When I met him, the first thing I noticed was his shy smile. He seemed like a kid with his messy hair, soft voice,...

For families in the U.S., the costs of high-quality child care are exorbitant, especially for those with children under age five. A new policy proposal, "Public Investments in Child Care," by Dartmouth Associate Professor of Economics Elizabeth Cascio, finds that current federal child care tax policies are not benefiting the families most burdened by child care costs. Therefore, Cascio outlines a new policy that could replace the current federal child care tax policies. The research examines...

When I first heard accounts of film producer Harvey Weinstein’s predatory behavior, my mind devised punishments fitting for Renaissance Europe or the film A Clockwork Orange: Cover his face with a shame mask widely used centuries ago in Germany; shock his frontal lobes so that he’d start empathizing with the women he’s preyed on. When we learn of injustice, it’s only human to focus on how to eliminate or punish the person responsible. But my research into the social psychology of power...

Parents, therapists and schools are struggling to figure out whether helping anxious teenagers means protecting them or pushing them to face their fears.

Smacking children was outlawed in Scotland this week. Remarkably, parents in the rest of the UK can still use physical violence to punish or discipline their children, provided it can be considered “reasonable punishment”, a term not properly defined in law . Smacking is allowed in the majority of other nations. Around the world, smacking is common. A 2014 report by UNICEF found that 80 per cent of the world’s children are subject to some form of violent punishment at home. A survey of just...

Emerging research suggests that young people are sleeping less than ever before with the sleep void potentially damaging their physical and mental health. Ironically, but perhaps not surprisingly, San Diego State University investigators discovered the decline in restorative slumber is linked to technology and because teens are trading their sleep for smartphone time. Most sleep experts agree that adolescents need nine hours of sleep each night to be engaged and productive students; less...

When I was a kid, there was an anti - drug public-service announcement (PSA) on television showing a man holding an egg (this is your brain) and a hot frying pan (this is drugs). He breaks the egg into the pan (this is your brain on drugs). He holds the pan up to the camera as the egg oozes and sizzles. Any questions? I had questions. In part, these questions are what formed my path into neuroscience. I had always felt that those PSAs were heavy handed, too deeply entrenched in the "Just Say...

This is an interview with Judith Sekler, who works with an organization called A Thousand Joys in Los Angeles. It partners with schools in high-crime impoverished neighborhoods with high-risk children and families who are suffering the effects of trauma-related stress and violence, referred to as Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE’s). ATJ’s school-based program Transform uses healing modalities including yoga, meditation and mindfulness to help students build confidence and control over...

Despite the "law and order" vows of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, states and counties continue to take steps to reduce prison and jail populations. Last month, Cook County, Illinois initiated its own special court dedicated to setting bond for people with felony cases. The mandate of the court is to set bond at a level the charged individual says they can afford. In California, meanwhile, the SB10 bail reform bill has passed the Senate and appears likely to become law in the coming year.