Blog

By Miranda Bryant, The Guardian, March 19, 2020 In the face of indefinite isolation, contagion, financial uncertainty, and with no return to normality in sight, coronavirus is taking its toll on our collective mental health. Crisis Text Line, which operates in the US, UK and Canada, has seen a huge rise in volume since late February, and 80% of the texts it receives about coronavirus deal with anxiety. In these unprecedented times, what can people do to bring themselves a bit of mental...

By Mary Wilde, Yahoo Lifestyle, March 18, 2020 Despite four years of medical school, three years of residency and over a decade in practice, I was never taught the profound connection between high childhood stress and increased risk of chronic disease. It was at a community event sponsored by our local school district that I first learned it, as I watched the documentary entitled, “Resilience: The Biology of Stress and the Science of Hope.” Suddenly, the medical education I had been...

By Rachel Glaser, WWMT West Michigan, February 13, 2020 Childhood trauma has life-long, wide reaching consequences, according to a study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on adverse childhood experiences, also known as ACEs. In early February, Michigan lawmakers passed a resolution declaring that ACEs a critical health issue. State officials estimated 70% of Michigan adults experienced one ACE before the age of 18. The CDC scores people on a scale of 0-10 for adverse...

This month we have been discussing complex post-traumatic stress disorder (CPTSD/ c-PTSD/ Complex PTSD) and adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). So far, we have explored the definitions of both, and some of the long-term consequences to the lives of children who survive their devastating effects into adulthood. Today, we are going to examine the many mental health disorders which are directly related to both ACEs and CPTSD. Some of the research we will be discussing is cutting edge and...

By Terri Janos, Technology Networks, February 15, 2020 In individuals with functional neurological disorder (FND), the brain generally appears structurally normal on clinical MRI scans but functions incorrectly (akin to a computer software crashing), resulting in patients experiencing symptoms including limb weakness, tremor, gait abnormalities and non-epileptic seizures. In some cases, childhood maltreatment may have been a contributing factor, yet links between risk factors such as...

What does it mean to be trauma-informed and resilience-oriented? In the years since STAR began our learning and teaching journey (in response to a call to respond to September 11, 2001 in the US), many more voices and programs have emerged to build awareness and action plans for building resilience and addressing trauma in individuals, organizations and communities. Both clinical and cultural perspectives on trauma and resilience have begun to inform our lives in myriad ways. The impacts of...

This month we have been discussing complex post-traumatic stress disorder (CPTSD/ c-PTSD/ Complex PTSD) and adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). So far, we have explored the definitions of both, and some of the long-term consequences to the lives of children who survive their devastating effects into adulthood. Today, we are going to examine the many mental health disorders which are directly related to both ACEs and CPTSD. Some of the research we will be discussing is cutting edge and...

By Neha Chaudhary, The Washington Post, February 3, 2020 A woman walked into an emergency room with her 13-year-old son, her lips pursed. He was there for a psychiatric evaluation for suicidal thoughts that he had voiced to his school counselor. After my evaluation of her son, I sat down with her to talk. She didn’t look pleased. “I hope you’re here to tell me you’re discharging him,” she said. “We have to get to soccer practice in an hour.” What I was about to tell her was the opposite.

By Eli Hager, The Marshall Project, February 11, 2020 The children usually arrived in the dead of night, silent and terrified. For two years, Daniel Derkacs and Ashley Keiler-Green, foster parents in Albuquerque, New Mexico, regularly took in kids whose parents were suspected of abusing or neglecting them. Sometimes, as the couple scrambled to find pajamas for their latest house guest, they couldn’t help but wonder if they’d just met a child who would be with them for years to come. But they...

By Gabrielle Hays, WBIR 10 News, February 10, 2020 Melissa Bucks spent 36 years of her life teaching kindergarteners and first graders in Knox County. She just retired in May but is still involved in the classroom and in the community. After almost four decades in education, she can recall how trauma in the classroom changed over time and how it impacts some of our youngest children who are trying to learn. “It was always different but there was always one child, two children or three...

By Mike Elsen-Rooney, USA Today, February 10, 2020 For both boys, the struggles at school started in the first grade. Isaac Rosenthal was a fast talker with a big vocabulary. But when it came time to read, he couldn’t keep up with his classmates. He didn’t pick up on the rhyme scheme in Dr. Seuss books, and often mispronounced words whose meaning he knew (like “Pacific,” for which he’d substitute “the other ocean”). Landon Rodriguez, four years younger than Isaac, was energetic and talkative...

By Diana Hembree, San Francisco Bay View, February 1, 2020 If you experienced severe hardship as a child, are you more likely to have children with behavior or mental health problems? The short answer is yes. A recent UCLA study shows that the children of parents with four or more Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), such as abuse or neglect, are twice as likely to develop ADHD, which makes it more likely children will become hyperactive and unable to pay attention or control their...