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We're proud to announce major research that suggests that positive childhood experiences — such as supportive family interactions, caring relationships with friends, and connections in the community — are associated with reductions in chances of adult depression and poor mental health, and increases in the chances of having healthy relationships in adulthood. This association was true even among those with a history of adverse childhood experiences.

By Jonathan Roberts, Johnson City Press, September 2, 2019 Almost half of all American children have experienced at least some form of childhood trauma. Many of these adverse childhood experiences, or ACEs, can be tied back to drug and substance abuse, but their impact may be more widespread than many perceive. In Tennessee, an estimated 49% of children have at least one adverse childhood experience, and 24.1% have at least two. Nationally, those numbers sit at 45% and 20.5%, respectively.

By Giles Bruce, Center for Health Journalism, September 9, 2019 Much of the discussion around child maltreatment understandably focuses on prevention. But what about kids who have already suffered abuse and neglect? What does the evidence show is the best way to treat them? The answer, it turns out, is complicated. [ Please click here to read more .]

Eighteen-year-old Kia Hanson has always enjoyed her time as a youth leader at the East Oakland Youth Development Center (EOYDC). She’s worked mostly with five- and six-year-olds since she began in 2016. Recently, she tapped into new skills, especially if the kids were having a meltdown. Kia Hanson “If they’re off, we ask them, ‘What’s wrong?’ ‘Do you want to talk about anything?’,” she explains. “Basically asking before assuming they’re mad at the world for no reason.” What made the...

YWFC sponsored Sister Warriors meeting When she was 15 years old, Lucero Herrera was put in a rehab program by San Francisco’s Juvenile Court because she was getting drunk regularly. And in doing so, the court failed to explore the root of her drinking. Had they done so, she said, they would have found that anger and trauma were lurking underneath, driven by her ACEs: adverse childhood experiences. Lucero Herrera "Why did they put me in a drug program when I had an anger problem? I went...

By The Associated Press, The New York Times, September 4, 2019 Separated from his father at the U.S.-Mexico border last year, the little boy, about 7 or 8, was under the delusion that his dad had been killed. And he thought he was next. Other children believed their parents had abandoned them. And some suffered physical symptoms because of their mental trauma, clinicians reported to investigators with a government watchdog. "You get a lot of 'my chest hurts,' even though everything is fine"...

By Maria Trent, Danielle G. Gooley, Jacqueline Douge, Pediatrics, August 31, 2019 Abstract The American Academy of Pediatrics is committed to addressing the factors that affect child and adolescent health with a focus on issues that may leave some children more vulnerable than others. Racism is a social determinant of health that has a profound impact on the health status of children, adolescents, emerging adults, and their families. Although progress has been made toward racial equality and...

By Naveed Saleh, MDLinx, August 29, 2019 Domestic terrorism has become a nationwide epidemic—and it’s contagious. As of this writing, there have been 271 mass shootings in 2019, leaving 290 people dead and 1,121 injured, according to the non-profit organization Gun Violence Archive. In early August, the mass shootings in Dayton, OH, and El Paso, TX, resulted in the deaths of 31 people in less than one day’s time. Researchers have found that mass shootings are contagious, in the sense that...

Sengthong Sithounnolat, Jeris Woodson, Donald Greene, Ashley Blanco On a recent Saturday, 10 people gather around a table at the offices of Trauma Transformed in Oakland, Calif., where quotes from figures like Frederick Douglas, Nelson Mandela, and Coretta Scott King grace one wall as light streams in from a skylight above. The group is known as the Resident Warriors, which meets weekly. One participant talks of her recovery from addiction and her mother’s murder. Another mentions being...

By D. Gartland, R. Giallo, H. Woolhouse, F. Mensah, and S.J. Brown, August 18, 2019 Violence and other adversities commonly co-occur, yet are usually investigated individually. The primary objectives of this paper are to investigate: (i) the relationship between maternal exposure to violence (including childhood abuse and intimate partner violence) and postpartum mental and physical health; and (ii) the extent to which exposure to violence and poor maternal mental and physical health are...

[Editor's note: Dr. Harise Stein at Stanford University edits a web site -- abuseresearch.info -- that focuses on the health effects of abuse, and includes research articles on ACEs. Every month, she's posting the summaries of the abstracts and links to research articles that address only ACEs. Thank you, Harise!! — Jane Stevens] Clemens V, Berthold O, Witt A, et. al. Child maltreatment is mediating long-term consequences of household dysfunction. Eur Psychiatry. 2019 May;58:10-18. PMID:...

Melinda Coates experienced a tumultuous pregnancy. “I was really mentally upset literally from day one (of the pregnancy),” she says. (Melinda Coates is a pseudonym. To protect her and her children’s privacy and safety, we are not using her real name.) Coates had hoped to get counseling last October, when she was seven months pregnant. That’s when she enrolled in the state’s Medi-Cal program, shortly after she and her abusive husband moved to California, “but nobody was able to get me in...