Blog

Some days at work are better than others. Yesterday was one of the best days I've had in awhile! I had the chance to speak to a small group of youth leaders from Cherokee Point Elementary School in San Diego, CA, on Wednesday. As a representative of the Chadwick Center for Children & Families, I came to talk with them about Child Abuse Prevention (CAP) month, which is coming up in April. We are collaborating with Cherokee Point in an effort to bring awareness to the community about CAP...

Chip and Gail Angell would have paid any price to save their son. They weren’t given the chance. Their 39-year-old son Chris, who suffered from schizophrenia, refused to allow his doctors to talk to his parents, even though they were his primary caregivers. So the Angells weren’t able to correct their son’s medical chart, which incorrectly listed the young man as uninsured. They weren’t able to plead with doctors not to base their son’s treatment on cost. “Whenever we tried to get Chris into...

A large majority of women with breast cancer develop symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) within the first few months after diagnosis, according to a new study led by researchers at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet (LMU) in Munich, Germany. The findings reveal that receiving a breast cancer diagnosis often has a stronger psychological impact than experiencing other types of severe trauma, such as a serious accident or a violent assault. Over half of the breast cancer patients in...

T he Psychology of Women once again welcomes Lauren Bittner to the Giveaway Girl project. Lauren is an award-winning freelance writer who focuses on women’s issues. She is a self-titled Giveaway Girl. Today, Lauren offers insights about how to handle #workprobs — workplace bullies. A Tale of Two Entirely Different Workplace Bullies Dealing with workplace bullies leaves me feeling completely disempowered at times. That’s not surprising for a Giveaway Girl. #workprobs: I know from the stories...

Toddlers may be ever so adorable but they can also be frustratingly poor at listening and respecting other people's feelings. So how are they able to grow into social butterflies a decade or two later, often capable of extraordinary friendship, loyalty and perceptiveness? While social development is a long process that lasts into our teens, our earliest experiences of forming social bonds are a lot more important than it may seem. In fact, studies have suggested that they have repercussions...

When he died, I got sick. He was family—if not by blood then by love. A friend's father. For all but the first few years of my life he had cared for me when others had faltered. He sheltered and fed me, taught me to question and listen and believe, in equal doses. And then, when I was 30, he was gone. My grief felt like the final moment of falling down, when you hit the ground and rise up too quickly, your body in shock—over and over again. There were times when I would go blank; dark holes...

Jamira Burley knew both perpetrators and victims of violence in her family and in her Philadelphia community. Now 27, she was raised largely by older brothers because her parents were in and out of jail. “My brothers had to become adults before they could fully experience their childhood,” she said. They took care of the family by whatever means available, which often resulted in run-ins with the law. “Whether that was selling drugs, getting into fights to protect the younger siblings, it...

Many cultures have rules for new mothers and babies. The Latin American cuarentena and the Uzbek chilla represent 40 days of rest and social support. In China, women rest in bed for a month ; in Korea, for 21 days . In the United States, however, the time for rest, bonding, and recovery often is determined not by tradition, or even by a doctor’s recommendations, but by the new mother’s employment situation. This is certainly true for Tara, who asked me not to use her last name to protect her...

Last Friday, February 26, 800 people filled the Laguna Honda Hospital & Rehabilitation Center in the beautiful Twin Peaks area of San Francisco. They were there for a Black History Month event coordinated by the San Francisco Health Network, featuring two outstanding clinicians, Dr. Joy DeGruy (Social Work) and Dr. Ken Hardy (Psychology). The full conference title was: Racial Trauma: Healing Ourselves, Our Clients, & Our Communities Addressing the aftermath of historical trauma and...

As many of you who read my posts know, I advance a healing protocol that contains five levels to work through. The first level is termed “Knowledge.” Because I believe that childhood trauma is a fundamental root cause for many health and behavior issues, I felt it was important to take information about a client about the existence of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE’s), if they have any, and discuss it with them. This concept is straight out of Dr. Felitti’s experience at Kaiser...

Laura Guzman, who directs a Homeless Resource Center in San Francisco, discusses chronic homelessness using a trauma-informed perspective.

In the United States, daycare is a booming business. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects the daycare industry to be among the country's fastest growing through 2020, according to Forbes. Roughly 11 million kids under the age of five in the U.S. spend every work week in some kind of childcare setting. Parents put their faith in childcare centers—and the governmental departments that regulate them—under the assumption that their children will be safe and cared for until they return. But a...