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A new report from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention announced that the number of teen-aged and young adult women being medicated for ADHD (Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder) has risen by 344%. The CDCP noted that in 2006 about 1% of the female population were medicated for ADHD, but by 2015 the percentage had climbed to 4%. The study focused on women between the ages of 15 and 44 who had private insurance. About 5% of the general population has ADHD. The disorder used to...

In the United States, inequality tends to be framed as an issue of either class, race, or both. Consider, for example, criticism that Republicans’ new tax plan is a weapon of “ class warfare ,” or accusations that the recent U.S. government shutdown was racist . As an India-born novelist and scholar who teaches in the United States, I have come to see America’s stratified society through a different lens: caste . Many Americans would be appalled to think that anything like caste could exist...

It’s the weekend and that means no work, no stress, and some time to rejuvenate. Right? If you’ve ever felt guilty about watching Netflix instead of writing an email back to your boss, then this infographic is for you. Thinking that you’ll be more productive by constantly working is false. According to the infographic, the result of working 60 hours a week for two months is the same as working 40 hours a week, measured in levels of productivity. The mind needs time to refresh in the same way...

It is possible that the rich and famous can offer more to society than glimpses into their opulent lifestyles. The cult of celebrity today goes beyond our desire and admiration of superstars’ expensive clothes, cars, and houses. We want to know where they stand on important issues that impact our lives, like racism, sexual violence, the environment, food and land reform. To our consolation, some of them are actually using their platforms to stand up for these causes. While in the food...

Dinnertime is stressful for Ruiyi Li, a married mother of two who lives in San Francisco’s Chinatown. She has to wait in line for almost an hour to use a communal kitchen in the building where her family rents a single room for $400 a month. Then there’s the problem of how to eat the meal. The family’s tight dwelling is slightly wider and longer than the size of a double bed, with no space for a table. Li, her husband, son and daughter must sit one next to the other on the edge of the lower...

The spectacle of more than 150 young women telling their stories of sexual abuse before a court, the world, and the perpetrator himself seemed straight from the movies, a cathartic ending to a dark, yearslong drama that had been all too real. It is rare, perhaps unprecedented, for so many victims to stand in court and, with the encouragement of a judge, to describe aloud for days the abuse they endured. Therapists said that the chance to testify at the sentencing hearing of Dr. Lawrence B.

“If your heart is a volcano, how shall you expect flowers to bloom?”Khalil Gibran Definition of Projection or Blame-Shifting: (n.) A term originally coined as a self-defense mechanism by Anna Freud when a person attributes their own unwanted thoughts, feelings, or motives onto another person (A. Freud, 1936). By projecting, or “blame-shifting” one’s undesirable mental/emotional notions onto another person, the individual is defended against having to be aware of and accountable to their own...

Cissy's Note: One of the things that worries me about technology is that parents might not be watching so much Sesame Street anymore. As a parent with a whole lot of ACEs, I find the gentle and warm tones of adults on Sesame Street so soothing, On especially hard days this gentle warmth can make an actual difference. When my daughter was young, we'd cuddle on the couch and watch together. The content is always so basic and clear and because it's geared towards and for kids, I never felt...

To the casual observer, the offices of the Women and HIV Program at the University of California San Francisco look like any other primary care clinic. There’s a waiting room with vinyl-covered chairs for the clinic’s patients. Staff check in patients from a non-descript desk ringed with a bank of computers. A video screen promotes the clinic’s services. But as you make your way further into a second waiting area, you might meet Pepper, one of the clinic’s volunteer therapy dogs....

Immigrant communities in the United States have always been under siege and used as scapegoats, regardless of who was in power. Post September 11th it was the Muslim community (and those mistakenly lumped in whether Persian or Arabian). Before the most recent threats against Dreamers, women and children immigrating from Central American countries fleeing violence became targets for detention and deportation. The rhetoric during Trump’s campaign and the policies under his Administration...

Across the Western world today, if you are depressed or anxious and you go to your doctor because you just can’t take it any more, you will likely be told a story. It happened to me when I was a teenager in the 1990s. You feel this way, my doctor said, because your brain isn’t working right. It isn’t producing the necessary chemicals. You need to take drugs, and they will fix your broken brain. I tried this strategy with all my heart for more than a decade. I longed for relief. The drugs...

We are hosting a screening of the documentary, Resilience , at the Landmark Theater Opera Plaza in San Francisco this Wednesday evening, Jan. 31, at 7pm. It just so happens that this is the evening after Dr. Nadine Burke Harris will be at Books Inc. at the Opera Plaza promoting and signing her book: The Deepest Well: Healing the Long-Term Effects of Childhood Adversity . So you may want to be at the Opera Plaza two evenings in a row. Please come an join us on Wednesday evening. Tickets for...