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An Activist for Children and Humanity (1935 - 2016) Executive Director, Parents & Teachers Against Violence in Education Years ago, when I was first jolted out of the collective blind stupor that dismisses violence against children, I was outraged and needed to do something. That is when I met Jordon Riak... (more) Just in! Recent Meta-Analysis of the Last 50 Years on Spanking Research Please spread the word and invite everyone you know who needs to find alternatives to punishment to the...

According to a recent study by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, more than half a million Americans are homeless on any given night. HUD counted 1.5 million people who used a shelter in 2014, and then there are those who are crashing at a friend’s house or sleeping on the street. Those big numbers point to the scale of the problem nationally, especially in cities . But often homelessness can seem like an issue that’s too big to deal with on an individual level, something...

Mahad Olad, a high school student, used to be active in “the local social-justice scene” around Minneapolis, Minnesota, attending meetings and leading demonstrations for feminist, LGBT, and anti-racism groups. Then he became disillusioned. When he was just 16, the ACLU profiled the teen activist. He came to the U.S. as a child. Later, his immigrant parents took him back to their home country, Kenya, so that their son could experience what it was like to live in that culture as well. “In...

The future prosperity of Memphis and all of Tennessee depends on what we do today to provide opportunities for children to succeed in school, and become good parents and productive employees in the future. Memphis is a leader in Tennessee and the nation in identifying and addressing Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs). These are the kinds of experiences that disrupt the architecture of the developing brain, especially in young children. They include all types of abuse and neglect, and...

One in 10 children in Tennessee currently have or have had a parent in prison, according to a new Kids Count report. Tennessee is tied with five other states in third place for the highest prevalence of children with incarcerated parents, with Kentucky in first and Indiana in second. "It really cuts across all geographic, all socioeconomic classes," said Linda O'Neal, executive director of the Tennessee Commission on Children and Youth. "It’s a reality for everyone." O'Neal correlates the...

If drug addiction is a disease like cancer or Alzheimer's, how do you explain the seemingly amoral behavior — the lying, cheating, and hiding — that has come to be linked with so many addicts? The answer is far simpler than you might think, at least according to neuroscience journalist and author Maia Szalavitz, whose new book, " Unbroken Brain ," throws water on most of the modern assumptions that plague our understanding of drug and alcohol addiction. Addiction, she writes, is not a...

The more children are spanked, the more likely they are to defy their parents and to experience increased anti-social behavior, aggression, mental health problems and cognitive difficulties, according to a new meta-analysis of 50 years of research on spanking by experts at the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Michigan. The study, published in this month's Journal of Family Psychology, looks at five decades of research involving over 160,000 children . The researchers say...

It was December 2012 when the country learned about the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School , that left 20 children dead at the hands of 20-year-old shooter Adam Lanza. After the shock and the initial grief came questions about how it could have happened and why. Reports that Adam Lanza may have had some form of undiagnosed mental illness surfaced. The tragedy drove Liza Long to write a blog post on that same day, titled "I Am Adam Lanza's Mother." She wasn't Lanza's mom, but she was...

This article -- 5 Things Psychologists Wish Their Patients Would Do -- seems to carry a lot of wisdom in the five things psychologists wish for patients to know. Having been through counseling twice, with little, if any benefit, I believe the advice is sound. I don’t know many counselors who actually teach this, however. It’s not standard work for healing, which is how I view the Restoration to Health Strategy (RtH) I envision as a means to healing. The five steps in RtH are knowledge,...

Hi, Everyone! I am excited to share with you all that the Mobilizing Action for Resilient Communities (MARC) Project has a new website that has just gone live! Please visit http://marc.healthfederation. org/ for more information. This is a great resource for information on the project, in addition to a great resource for the 14 MARC communities to connect with each other, and share information about what is happening in their community. Additionally, this official announcement has been...

Who hasn’t been grounded by exhaustion, sidelined by grief, or in need of support from others in order to soar higher?

Food insecurity in America is an issue that can be hard to see. It is not synonymous with poverty: two-thirds of food-insecure households have incomes above the national poverty level, according to new data from The Hamilton Project. The same report also demonstrates that the way food insecurity is measured often masks the extent of the problem. Instances of food insecurity often arise suddenly and temporarily, and as a result are difficult to track from year to year. [For more of this...