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Laura's note: This call for submissions of stories about mental health by the editors of YES! Magazine has the ACEs Connection Network (ACN) community's name written all over it. OK, not literally. But you know what I mean. There are so many knowledgable, passionate people posting and commenting on this site about their experiences and efforts related to preventing and healing childhood trauma and understanding the roots of it, not to mention a lot of talented writers. I bet the stories of...

Growing up in today's world is NOT easy. I have heard hundreds of students tell me this. Despite this fact, many of them have also told me that many of the adults in their lives don't seem to understand this, including parents, teachers, and society. Adults who are disconnected from the reality of the lives of the youth that they are around will not be able to completely understand how to provide the support that might be needed for those youth needing it most. I recently met a young woman...

A few folks asked for this while we were doing the final revision so I wanted to post the final product - Healthcare Standards of Practice for Trauma Informed Care . Oregon Health Sciences University Department of Family Medicine, Oregon Pediatric Society, and other healthcare partners reviewed and modified for healthcare settings the original Trauma Informed Oregon's Standards of Practice . The Standards (original and healthcare) are intended to provide benchmarks for planning and...

In 2016, heading into her 15th year as a kindergarten teacher, Kristy Caesar knew what to expect from a room full of 5-year-olds. But what greeted her on that first day of school last year was an eye opener — she had 21 kindergartners and only four had attended preschool. Eighteen students couldn’t recognize a single phonetic letter sound, such as the sound “A” makes. “It was so challenging; they were months behind,” said Caesar, who teaches at Kennedy Elementary School in Lindsay, in...

Chances are, you — or someone you know — has suffered from lower back pain. It can be debilitating. It's a leading cause of disability globally. And the number of people with the often-chronic condition is likely to increase. This warning comes via a series of articles published in the medical journal Lancet in March. They state that about 540 million people have lower back pain — and they predict that the number will jump as the world's population ages and as populations in lower- and...

The prospect of a dangerously warming planet inspires us to cling more tightly to our tribe. That is the discouraging finding of two newly published studies. One reports that confronting people with climate-change warnings provoked higher levels of ethnocentrism among residents of a central European nation—and decreased their intentions of acting in Earth-friendly ways. The other finds the threat of global warming increases group conformity , leading people to more tightly endorse the...

healing trauma is first and foremost about becoming an environment where healing happens which means, establishing safety nudging my nervous out of fight, flight, and freeze dropping away from unhelpful patterns such as "efforting" (or "avoiding") learning to notice, to allow, to rest to receive all the support being given right now: (this chair, this cool breath the soft hum of belonging to life) the body wants to heal mostly its about helping the mind to stop interrupting and get on board...

Resilience... An interesting word with many meanings for many people from many different walks of life. But that's the point... isn't it? In order to truly promote & support the resilience movement we must ensure that everyone has a set at the table. Enoch Pratt library has officially joined the movement!! Libraries across Baltimore, MD, will be hosting screenings of Resilience and discussion panels for community members and stakeholders. This is a wonderful opportunity for us to come...

Recently, I was tasked with writing a strength-based personal story to use during my CRM trainings. As a trainer of trauma, depending on your content and audience, often it is beneficial when speaking to others to model transparency and even a bit of vulnerability. Therefore, as a part of my process of becoming certified as a CRM trainer, one of the activities is to write a strength-based personal story.This story can be about yourself and what you have experience personally or you can...

The growing momentum for tighter gun control after the deadly school shooting in Parkland, Fla., is highlighting the National Rifle Association's history of aggressively confronting challenges to what it regards as Second Amendment rights. Federal limits on both research into gun violence and the release of data about guns used in crimes are powerful reminders of the lobbying group's advantages over gun control activists. For decades, the NRA pushed legislation that stifled the study and...

The secret to ending solitary confinement at youth detention centers across the United States might just hide behind a nondescript door down a long hallway in a government building in Sacramento. From the outside, the room appears like any other in the Sacramento Juvenile Detention facility, but inside, gauzy filters take the edge off the fluorescent lighting, and bright murals evoke an underwater vibe. This multi-sensory de-escalation room (MSDR), dubbed "the Cove" by staff and the youth...

The Sunbelt is growing, the Rust Belt is dying, and the only thing keeping expensive coastal cities afloat is international immigration, as American-born residents flee their escalating housing prices. That pretty much sums up the conventional wisdom about the recent growth and decline of U.S. cities. And that conventional wisdom was only reinforced last month when the Census Bureau released its latest figures on population growth for America’s metropolitan areas. Nine of the top 10 counties...