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It’s an undisputed fact that the United States is the incarceration capital of the world. Despite hosting only 4.4 percent of the world’s population, the U.S. feeds, clothes, and houses nearly 22 percent of the world’s prisoners, or more than two million people. While violent victimization rates are comparable to other advanced Western nations — and crime rates have declined over the last several decades — the U.S.’s incarceration rate far outstrips any other nation on the planet. In fact,...

Retired Army Lt. Col. John Bechtol understands how important it is for veterans on college campuses to have access to mental health services. “To come on campus in your mid-20s after having served, having nothing in common with your peers, it tends to generate feelings of separation,” Bechtol said. Even beyond considerations of post-traumatic stress and other mental health issues, “there’s often just this sense of loneliness, a feeling of being disconnected from their classmates.” As...

With all the parties, outings and family gatherings during the holidays, it's easy for kids to get overwhelmed or lost in the shuffle, a leading group of pediatricians says. Amid the hustle and bustle, parents and caregivers should be mindful of children's safety, the American Academy of Pediatrics advises. While staying in other people's homes, for instance, be aware of potential dangers for little kids, such as decorations that are sharp or breakable. Also watch out for unlocked cabinets,...

A trauma-informed, resilience-building shipyard based in values of authenticity, wholeness, and love? Yes, it's true, and it's located in a small coastal town in Alaska. Watch this 20-minute video made by consultant Tom Mann, who worked closely with Vigor Shipyards General Manager Mike Pearson in Ketchikan, Alaska which tells the remarkable Vigor story: https://youtu.be/i5Ys2zb5L1w

[Photo By Eli Christman - https://www.flickr.com/photos/gammaman/7170043719/, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=33160412] “Overall, the researchers found that yoga holds potential promise for helping improve anxiety, depression, PTSD and/or the psychological consequences of trauma”, according to a University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill news-release regarding a study by researchers at its School of Social Work. Release adds that the study “suggested that...

How easy is it to get help with mental health problems in the UK? It’s a topical issue, with reports of long waiting lists and some people being sent miles from home for treatment . Our mental health services are struggling to meet demand – and the government has vowed to invest more money to make improvements in England. The level of care you get appears to vary, depending on where you are. New guidelines recommend that people with anxiety and depression should get talking therapies within...

It's been years in the making, but finally, a plan to help scores of nonviolent, mentally ill people avoid jail and get treatment will take shape in the coming year, Dallas County leaders said Monday. The changes, to be primarily funded with a $7 million private grant, aims to bring fewer mentally ill people to the jail, release more of them while they await trial and connect them with services once they're freed so they don't return. The goal: to facilitate treatment for mentally ill people...

In this sequel to his ‘problem statement,’ outlining the pervasiveness of trauma in our daily South African lives [published on Biznews earlier this week], trauma activist Brian Rogers asks why our public health system has not dealt with psychological trauma, and continues to ignore its’ huge societal costs. As a former News Editor at the SA Medical Journal, I’ve written about the debilitating cost of not treating mental health properly – equal to some two percent of our GDP, UCT’s...

Orange County hopes to get homeless residents into housing – and help them stay there. Riverside County plans to connect former inmates with health clinics and social services. Placer County is opening a respite center where homeless patients can go after they leave the hospital. Those are just some of the pilot projects in a $3 billion experimental effort officials hope will improve the health of California’s most vulnerable populations. The effort is a recognition that improving people’s...

Immigrants comprised 23 percent of all parents with young children (ages 0-8) in the United States, or almost 8.4 million in total as of 2010–14. Twenty-four percent lived below the federal poverty level, compared with 15 percent of their native-born counterparts. By addressing the needs of low-income parents and their young children simultaneously, two-generation programs have great potential to uplift whole families and break cycles of intergenerational poverty. Generally speaking, these...

Three decades ago, a team of researchers at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in San Diego asked thousands of patients about traumatic events from their childhood. The responses were collected and analyzed against health records for a study known as the Adverse Childhood Experiences study or ACEs, a landmark study in the field of trauma research. The researchers found a strong correlation between the ten adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) - which include physical and sexual abuse, losing a...

Note: Facebook friends are funny. I "met" Matt, online , last year after writing about missing my absent father. A friend, Laura, introduced us because of our common bond. We three share the Dad-who-went-gone-while-alive thing. We each have a father who disappeared, by choice, who let us down, betrayed, beat , abandoned or other not so ideal parental things. We three know the way a parent can haunt and follow and stalk the consciousness for days turned decades long after childhood ends. We...