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Nationally, Black women have the lowest rates of breastfeeding initiation in comparison to any other racial/ethnic groups. Black babies are dying at twice the rate of White babies and according to the CDC, increasing breastfeeding among Black women can decrease infant mortality rates up to 50 percent. In honor of Black Breastfeeding Week (August 25th – 31st), we partnered with the BreastFriends Mommy Group in West Oakland to explore why these rates look different for Black women and...

August 31, 2020, Security Magazine. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, First Lady Chirlane McCray, and Schools Chancellor Richard A. Carranza announced “Bridge to School,” a Citywide initiative for the 2020-21 school year focused on the social and emotional well-being of students and adults in order to create a safe, supportive learning environment that confronts the trauma caused by the COVID-19 crisis. As a result, schools will be equipped to integrate trauma-informed practices into school...

By Cristina Novoa and Taryn Morrissey, Center for American Progress, August 27, 2020 Since the World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic on March 11, 2020, the United States has seen a proliferation of cases, record-breaking unemployment, and economic instability. Meanwhile, many public health measures that severely restrict social interactions—including stay-at-home orders and school and child care closures, among others—have been prematurely lifted, with...

By JoAnn Stevelos, Psychology Today, August 21, 2020 As a child, I was an orchid but lived like a dandelion. I have always prided myself on my resiliency, for surviving a long and painful childhood filled with abandonment, psychological, physical, emotional, and sexual abuse . Child abuse can do that to you—give you a false sense of self and what resiliency really looks like. Resiliency is not just surviving. This false narrative of resiliency can take years to undo. One approach is to try...

From Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, August 2020 The coronavirus pandemic has elevated and exacerbated deep-seated inequities in communities across the United States. Localities large and small, urban and rural, well resourced and under resourced, are responding to distinct challenges. The Sentinel Communities project will follow the experiences of nine diverse communities to understand how they are responding to and recovering from this crisis. From the county housing the nation’s...

So far, in this series on the inner child, we have discussed inner children, and how, when they are wounded, they can affect adult life. We learned that every person has an inner child that is part of our psyche, that is a childish self, inside all of us. There is a model of healing known as doing inner child work. In this article, we shall tackle this subject to understand how we can begin the healing process from having a wounded inner child. What is Inner Child Work? Inner child work is...

When a young person experiences trauma, there is no single answer regarding how that experience may impact them in their later years. Two 12-year-olds experiencing the exact same kind of trauma, for example, may have two very different responses — one crumbles and the other rises. One processes it deeply and the other suppresses it. One becomes a powerful force for change in the community and the other struggles to make their place in the world. Furthermore, what may be considered traumatic...

Who knew when the year started we’d be separated from loved ones for months? And here we are, canceling celebrations, work and vacation plans, and not even hugging our friends. We are facing more stress – financial, emotional, social – than anyone could have imagined. We haven’t seen the full impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health yet. But as therapists, we know that as chronic stress continues, more people will experience depression and even suicidal thoughts. Let’s not wait to...

By Ray Hanley, Talk Business & Politics, August 16, 2020 All children face challenges – it’s how they learn and grow into responsible adults. But how does one child experience a terrible childhood trauma and survive, even prosper as an adult, while another child is emotionally and physically destroyed by it? The answer is closely linked to the amount of resilience in each child. Resilience – the ability to recover from or adjust to trauma or misfortune – comes in many forms – a loving,...

By Manisha Aggarwal-Schiefellite, The Harvard Gazette, August 3, 2020 Experiencing adversity early in life has a direct effect on a person’s mental and physical health as they grow, and certain kinds of trauma can affect the pace of aging, according to new Harvard research. In addition to being risk factors for anxiety, depression, and stress, early life experiences like poverty, neglect, and violence are powerful predictors of physical health outcomes like cardiovascular disease, diabetes,...

By Nadine Burke Harris, STAT, August 4, 2020 The world is learning more about the uncommon but puzzling ways Covid-19 can show up in kids, keeping worried parents on the lookout for symptoms of the disease. We should also be concerned about how toxic stress brought on by the pandemic, or made worse by it, will affect children’s developing brains and bodies and their future health. In millions of households, kids are experiencing an incredible amount of stress and anxiety. They’ve lost the...

By Eli Rappaport, Nallammai Muthiah, Sarah A. Keim, and Andrew Adesman, Pediatrics, August 2020 Abstract BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Little is known about the 2% of US children being raised by their grandparents. We sought to characterize and compare grandparent- and parent-headed households with respect to adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), child temperament, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and caregiver aggravation and coping. METHODS: Using a combined data set of...