June 2018

I live with someone who is 24 times more likely than the average person to attempt suicide. My husband is the survivor of extreme childhood trauma — and has lived through years of harrowing neglect and abuse, even bearing witness to his own mother’s multiple attempts to end her life. His heartbreaking upbringing makes him far more susceptible to repeating her patterns. Millions of children and adults suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder will follow suit. He survived ten of eleven...

Candida Rodriguez is my mentor, while she may disagree with that statement and say it is the opposite, it is the absolute truth. My respect, admiration, and amazement at the depth of her knowledge, talent, and compassion astound me every time we work together. Candida serves her complex and ever-changing community with dedication, skill and a relentless pursuit of coordinating care for her students and families. We are partners in the Community Cafe Initiative that began in 2015 after I...

Over the past year, current events have magnified the role of trauma in the lives of children and families in this country. From school shootings to immigrant families seeking refuge at our borders, children have been placed in frightening and life-threatening situations. In an effort to outline the role advocates can play in addressing trauma, Community Catalyst created a brief paper outlining what trauma is, how we measure it, and how we can mitigate harm and build resilience.

In America, there are two competing philosophies about what policing should be. The first philosophy believes the most important thing for cops and courts to do is “act tough.” The act-tough philosophy believes in harsher sentences, bigger jails, greater prosecutorial discretion and giving local police forces the weapons of war. It gave us three strikes, stop and frisk, and mandatory minimums. It criminalizes poverty, immigration status, race, and addiction — all with the aim of supposedly...

One in seven high school students reported misusing prescription opioids, one of several disturbing results in a nationwide survey of teenagers that revealed a growing sense of fear and despair among youth in the United States. The numbers of teenagers reporting “feelings of sadness or hopelessness,” suicidal thoughts, and days absent from school out of fear of violence or bullying have all risen since 2007. The increases were particularly pointed among lesbian, gay and bisexual high school...

In 2012, the U.S. Attorney General appointed a national task force on children exposed to violence that concluded, “Nowhere is the impact of incarceration on vulnerable children more obvious than when it involves solitary confinement.” This statement still holds true and solitary confinement bears an even heavier impact on incarcerated youth today. Why? Because the use of solitary confinement has been practiced under a variety of assumed names (room restriction, room confinement, isolation,...

Why will we asking math teacher Molly to ignore the fact that 7 out of her 28 fifth-grade students are living in homes where various forms of emotional abuse and neglect exist? Summer. School is out. What better time to ask the leaders of our education and behavioral health care systems to draw up a plan for addressing the epidemic of childhood trauma impacting a quarter of the student population. Yes, one out of four student has or will endure three or more adverse childhood experiences.

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), Office of Justice Programs (OJP), Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) is seeking applications for funding under the Fiscal Year (FY) 2018 Opioid Affected Youth Initiative. This Initiative furthers the Administration’s priority to support states, local communities, and tribal jurisdictions in their efforts to develop and implement effective programs for children, youth, and at-risk juveniles and their families who have been...

CHICAGO — In a conference room at Northwestern Memorial Hospital on a recent evening, a group of men sat down for a class on pregnancy and childbirth led by Dr. Craig Garfield, a pediatrician who specializes in studying new fathers. The class is one of many that Northwestern offers to new parents, including some that are designed for moms, for grandparents and — in the case of one class called “Bowser & the Baby” — for dog owners. Dr. Garfield’s parenting class is for expectant fathers ,...

NEW YORK CITY — Ninety-nine percent. The number sent an audible gasp throughout the City Council chamber. Chief of Detectives Dermot F. Shea had just read off the percentage of people of color on the NYPD’s controversial — and until now — largely secretive gang database. Shea was talking publicly for the first time about one of the New York Police Department’s most popular crime-fighting tools. He testified Wednesday before the City Council’s Committee on Public Safety in the database’s...

BROWNSVILLE, Tex. — In the loading docks, children sat in a darkened auditorium watching the animated movie “Moana.” Where there were once racks of clothes and aisles of appliances, there were now spotless dorm-style bedrooms with neatly made beds and Pokemon posters on the walls. The back parking lots were now makeshift soccer fields and volleyball courts. The McDonald’s was now the cafeteria. All this made it difficult to visualize what the sprawling facility used to be — a former Walmart...

The number of people dying by suicide in the United States has risen by about 30 percent in the past two decades. And while the majority of suicide-related deaths today are among boys and men, a study published Thursday by the National Center for Health Statistics finds that the number of girls and women taking their own lives is rising. "Typically there's between three and four times as many suicides among males as among females," says Dr. Holly Hedegaard , a medical epidemiologist at the...