Blog

By Vanessa Davis, The San Diego Union-Tribune, June 25, 2021 There’s such a powerful interconnected relationship between two of my life challenges that I question which emerged first in my life: the foster care system or mental health challenges. These two things haven’t played out separately for me. Instead, they are interwoven and further compounded by the everyday reality and stressors of life. To spread healing within our communities, I believe it’s important for people to go beyond what...

By Susan M. Sawyer, Monika Raniti, and Ruth Aston, The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health, June 25, 2021 In the past year, the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on schools has reinforced the profound links between children's health, wellbeing, and learning. In addition to deleterious effects on student engagement, learning outcomes, and educational transitions, there is growing evidence of the impact of school closures on children's and adolescents' emotional distress and mental health.1...

By Heather Tirado Gilligan, California Health Care Foundation, June 28, 2021 COVID-19 remains a mysterious illness, a respiratory infection that also affects many organs, including the brain. Researchers from Stanford University, in a study that examined the brains of people who died from COVID-19, have discovered that the illness may have a profound effect on that organ. The researchers compared the brains of 12 people who had COVID-19 to the brains of 12 who did not die of that infection.

By David Oliver, Illustration: Colin Smith, USA TODAY LIFE, June 8, 2021 Imagine your high school baseball team banning you from playing. Your local DMV barring you from changing the name on your driver's license. Your neighbors darting their eyes away from you in public. The transgender community faces hardships like these on a daily basis – not to mention a wave of discriminatory legislation. Trans people are like Sisyphus, forever barreling a boulder up a never-ending hill. But what if...

Pride is 365/24/7 - Joy, Resilience, and Healing. Post includes resources for finding LGBTQ therapists of color and other healing resources, as well as resources for further reading.

It was a beautiful, warm and sunny Juneteenth in the City of Oakland. Around Lake Merritt, people were listening to music, riding off-road vehicles, having a drink, smoking a little weed...enjoying life. I was there soaking up the sun while celebrating the end of chattel slavery with my friends John and Juan “Swamp.” After an afternoon of talking about everything from adversity to political ideology to healing-centered interventions, we meandered through the food sellers strewn alongside the...

Mention the “love drug” Ecstasy and it conjures up images of young people at rave parties on the beach. But MDMA, the chemical compound better known as Ecstasy, is now gaining credibility as a potential treatment for severe trauma. The promise of MDMA (known to scientists as 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine) as a therapeutic treatment was part of a conversation between Dr. Gabor Maté and pioneers in the field who are researching the synthetic drug to treat the painful manifestations of...

Raising public awareness of ACEs and translating ACEs knowledge into action was the theme of a June 23 virtual New Jersey ACEs Collaborative press conference ( click here to view the 45-min event and here for the press release). The overarching goal of the collaborative is to make the state “Trauma-Informed and Healing Centered.” We need to have more people “shouting from the rooftops” and taking action to address the root causes of ACEs, said Dave Ellis, Executive Director of the New Jersey...

By Candy Gibson, University of South Australia, June 23, 2021 A year-long Australian population study has found that full time workers employed by organisations that fail to prioritise their employees’ mental health have a threefold increased risk of being diagnosed with depression. And while working long hours is a risk factor for dying from cardiovascular disease or having a stroke, poor management practices pose a greater risk for depression, the researchers found. The University of South...

By Sahaj Kaur Kohli, Ideas.Ted.com, May 28, 2021 Every one of us has mental health in the same way that every one of us has physical health. Yet despite the prevalence of mental health struggles, there is still so much stigma around them. Worldwide the leading cause of disability is depression, according to the World Health Organization, and in the US alone, nearly 1 in 5 of adults lives with a mental illness. As a mental health therapist-in-training and the founder of Brown Girl Therapy ,...

By The Associated Press, NBC News, June 25, 2021 A Massachusetts town has created a fund to pay reparations to Black residents as communities and institutions across the country look to atone for slavery, discrimination and past wrongs amid the nation’s ongoing racial reckoning. The Amherst Town Council on Monday voted 12-1 in favor of establishing the fund and requiring a two-thirds vote of the council to authorize any spending from it, The Daily Hampshire Gazette reported . Michele Miller,...

By Stacy Cowley and Ella Koeze, The New York Times, June 27, 2021 Though Congress approved billions in aid for small companies to help them keep paying their employees during the pandemic, there was a big problem: It wasn’t reaching the tiniest and neediest businesses. Then two small companies came out of nowhere and, through an astute mix of technology and advertising — and the dogged pursuit of an opportunity that big banks missed — found a way to help those businesses. They also helped...