May 2019

We’re pleased to announce that B.K. Bose of Niroga Institute has been selected to present at The Institute for Educational Leadership’s 2019 National Family and Community Engagement Conference in Reno, NV! This convening is a wonderful professional development and networking opportunity for state leaders, school and district leaders, administrators, educators, community-based organizations, researchers and families to come together and focus on solutions that enhance and expand engagement...

Renee N. Salas, M.D., M.P.H., Wendy Jacobs, J.D., and Frederica Perera, Dr.P.H., Ph.D. On June 4, 2019, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals will hear oral arguments in Juliana v. United States to determine whether the case will proceed to trial in district court in Oregon. Nearly 4 years ago, 21 children and adolescents between 8 and 19 years of age, including Kelsey Juliana from Oregon, filed suit against the federal government, charging that the government’s inaction on addressing climate...

Sacramento Bee and Propublica, May 28, 2019. A decade ago, so many inmates were crammed into California’s prisons that the sprawling system had reached a breaking point. Prisoners were sleeping in gyms, hallways and dayrooms. Mentally ill prisoners were jammed into tiny holding cells. There were dozens of riots and hundreds of attacks on guards every year. Suicide rates were 80% higher than in the rest of the nation’s prisons. The California prison population peaked at more than 165,000 in...

Safe Space Radio . Many white parents have never learned how to talk about race and racism with their kids. Silence perpetuates racism—but it can be hard to know how to start. This hour-long program is about talking to white kids about race and racism: how white parents, families, and teachers can learn to show up for racial justice in a way that will make a difference for generations to come. The show explores a wide variety of approaches with kids of all ages. Parents, racial justice...

Susie Nielson, NPR , May 28, 2019. As a child, Molly Easterlin loved playing sports. She started soccer at age 4, and then in high school, she played tennis and ran track. Sports, Easterlin believes, underlie most of her greatest successes. They taught her discipline and teamwork, helped her make friends and enabled her to navigate the many challenges of growing up. When Easterlin became a pediatrician, she started seeing a lot of children suffering from trauma, from physical abuse to...

The reach of substance use disorders in America is far more significant than people think. 21+ million Americans struggle with substance use disorders. Their substance use and addiction-related behaviors impact 100 million more Americans. These are the moms, dads, husbands, wives, children, brothers, sisters, grandchildren.... Together, these two groups represents more than one-third of the American population!

The Surviving Spirit Newsletter May 2019 Healing the Heart Through the Creative Arts, Education & Advocacy Hope, Healing & Help for Trauma, Abuse & Mental Health “ Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars”. Kahlil Gibran Newsletter Contents : 1] May is Mental Health Awareness Month - By My Side Live at the River Ledge, You Tube 2] We Need New Ways of Treating Depression By Johann Hari, author of Lost Connections 3] I Now...

By K. Hecht, A. Hosack & P. Berman If only I could do more to help Claire? She is feeling so hopeless because there are no advertisements in the newspaper for Dental Hygienists. Mrs. Carson knew that Claire could figure out how to get a job on her own. But, that first job search was a complex process and she hated to see Claire so down after she had worked so hard in school. Claire was also taking it so personally. Rather than just realizing there weren’t job listings now, and everyone...

Finding child care in California can be tough for everyone. It’s even more difficult for families living paycheck to paycheck — families who make too much for welfare, but not enough to pay for care comfortably. Many of those families apply to receive subsidized child care through the state. But the slots are limited and the wait can last for years. Between her two younger children, Jacquelyne Gettone has been waiting to receive state-subsidized child care for over a decade. On a recent...

Mobilizing Action for Resilient Communities has released a new brief, Building Stronger Networks (May 2019) . Drawing from existing literature and informed by a series of interviews conducted by Dr. Andrea Blanch and Dr. David Shern, this brief explores how a framework recognizing adverse childhood experiences, trauma, and resilience (ATR) can facilitate community collaboration. See what movement builders from across the country have to say about the value-added of the ATR framework in...

I am a poet-artist, child psychiatrist, and mental health advocate. My now 32 year old daughter Emma drew this picture of us when she was a little girl and I added the poem. It took me six decades to fully see the full, true, metaphorical, and creative meaning of "circle of love" and when I did in May 2019, I commissioned Amanda Meador to do this design! This Circle of Love poem and image can include your own family drawing or family photo, and is available as Mother Love and Father Love. I...

The World Health Organization is bringing attention to the problem of work-related stress. The group announced this week that it is updating its definition of burnout in the new version of its handbook of diseases, the International Classification of Diseases — ICD-11 — which will go into effect in January 2022 The new definition calls it a " syndrome " and specifically ties burnout to " chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed ." Despite earlier reports to the...