November 2019

Have you ever felt you have painted yourself into a corner? Better stated perhaps, find yourself standing in the crosshairs of your own truth. Well, that’s me and here we are. In the last year, I have been going through a rebranding process, still the same heart, still the same mission, but a tweak to messaging and language so it was clear what the work was ultimately about. Simultaneously, I have been stewarding the completion of my book, my own story. Now, here I sit ready to pull the...

By Susan Brink, NPR.org, November 19, 2019 Sexual violence against children happens everywhere: in wealthy enclaves, in slums, in suburbs, in rural villages. Invariably, it happens in secret: in the privacy of family homes, in dark corners of schools and churches, and in murky shadows at neighborhood, community, sporting and scouting events. It happens often, and periodically groups put out reports to call attention to the issue. "That's usually where the story stops," says Daniela Ligiero,...

By Background Sexual minority adolescents are more likely to have mental health problems, adverse social environments, and negative health outcomes compared with their heterosexual counterparts. There is a paucity of up-to-date population-level estimates of the extent of risk across these domains in the UK. We analysed outcomes across mental health, social environment, and health-related domains in sexual minority adolescents compared with their heterosexual counterparts in a large,...

By Mike Addelman, EurekAlert!, November 18, 2019 People with Borderline Personality Disorder are 13 times more likely to report childhood trauma than people without any mental health problems, according to University of Manchester research. The analysis of data from 42 international studies of over 5,000 people showed that 71.1% of people who were diagnosed with the serious health condition reported at least one traumatic childhood experience. The study was carried out by researchers at The...

By Ashley Nestler, Yahoo Lifestyle, November 18, 2019 Trauma. How many times have you heard or been told what trauma is, or what counts as trauma and what doesn’t? Everyone has their own perspective of trauma based on what they know, think they know, or what they have experienced; however, trauma affects each person differently. The following are five truths about trauma that I have learned from my personal experience and from my experience in social work. 1. Trauma is not limited to...

By Katelyn Newman, U.S. News & World Report, November 18, 2019 RECOGNIZING TRAUMA AND grief in children and providing evidence-based interventions to help them cope with what they're experiencing in a healthy manner are key to reducing violence and improving their overall health and well-being later on in their lives, said Julie Kaplow, director of the Trauma and Grief Center and chief of psychology at Texas Children's Hospital. "We know that if we don’t address trauma, these kids can go...

By Michael Staton, Clemson University College of Education, November 18, 2019 When students arrive at school, they don’t check their trauma at the door or ignore it. Considering the effect trauma can have on student learning, teachers can’t choose to ignore it, either. Trauma leads to learning problems, lower grades, suspensions, expulsions and even long-term health problems. Teachers are increasingly expected to identify and work with issues students bring to school, and based on related...

I am on the scene of a house fire in a town near where I live in Brant, NY. As part of my duties as EMT with my fire company ambulance (I'm first assistant chief firefighter), I make sure firefighters who are working a fire stay healthy while they’re fighting it, especially firefighters with ACEs.

[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] Jackson DB, Chilton M, Johnson KR, Vaughn MG. Adverse Childhood Experiences and Household Food Insecurity. Am J Prev Med. 2019 Nov;57(5):667-674. PMID: 31522923...

Attendees at the San Mateo event participate in ice-breaking exercise When you’re working with people who've had a lot of childhood and adult adversity, it’s hard for you to believe that anyone else can have a bad day, says Laura van Dernoot Lipsky. “Your neighbor or your best friend says: ‘I’ve had a bad day.’ And you think, ‘Oh, I’m sorry you had a bad day; were you sex trafficked today? No, you were not!'” Laura van Dernoot Lipsky Van Dernoot Lipsky, the author of Trauma Stewardship: An...

What a delightful conversation Teri Wellbrock engaged in with the passionate and compassionate Shenandoah Chefalo, author of "Garbage Bag Suitcase: A Memoir" and faculty member of The Center for Trauma Resilient Communities. They dove into the depths of: the healing work of Crossnore and The Center for Trauma Resilient Communities; growing up in the foster care system; trauma-brain; 3 proven resilience-building factors; compassion approaches; and why they dislike tomatoes!

We can not solve problems from a distance from ourselves or from each other. The way we muster the courage to heal is to walk the journey together. Any effort to create policy change, structural change, or even programatic change will not succeed unless there is an explicit healing perspective. It begins with a deep understanding that we all come hurt and that those hurts often mean that in striving to relieve our own pain we hurt each other. “Hurt people, hurt people.” It is simplicity on...