ACES Connection (articles from April)

On Holocaust Remembrance Day (May 5), WTTW-Channel 11 in Chicago will present its 6th annual broadcast of “Prisoner of Her Past. ” The film will air at 10 p.m. Central. Written by Emmy-award winning Chicago Tribune journalist, Howard Reich, the film documents Howard’s quest to discover why his mother is reliving her Holocaust past.

As lead advocates for Prevent Child Abuse, William & Mary Psychology Professor Emeritus Joseph Galano and Adjunct Professor of Psychology Lee Huntington have been at the forefront of the crusade to raise awareness and ultimately end abuse and neglect in the Commonwealth for more than three decades — before prevention programs were really even a thing.

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Impossible Questions & Painful Statistics

New research finds people with more friends tend to have a higher pain tolerance.

Conservatives and liberals agree that too many Americans are locked up, but that doesn’t mean solutions will be easy to achieve.

A new Trulia report looks at which cities have the highest housing burdens.

Dr. Cathy Anthofer-Fialon explains how the change of season displaces families in Northern Michigan.

Chaplain Chris Haughee shares a section from his training, “10 things that kids with ACEs woud like you to know: moving your church toward greater empathy,” called “The traumatized are biologically wired to worry.”

At a time when police behavior is under intense scrutiny — a series of fatal shootings by police officers have focused national attention on issues of race and mental illness — Portland’s approach has served as a model for other law enforcement agencies around the country.

A review of the available research finds that physical punishment is significantly linked to bad outcomes for kids.

The incarceration of a parent can have as much impact on a child’s well-being as abuse or domestic violence. But while states spend heavily on corrections, few resources exist to support those left behind. A Shared Sentence offers commonsense proposals to address the increased poverty and stress that children of incarcerated parents experience.

Patrick Anderson reacts to a recent article posted on ACEsConnection.com.

The national suicide rate is at its highest in nearly 30 years. Why?

Stories of emotional abuse fill magazines and newspapers, but little is said about how we often do the job on ourselves first. It’s easy to see how partners abuse each other — we can hear the insults and witness the behaviors — but what happens when the denigrating talk, shaming, threatening and behavioral choices happen inside one’s own head?

Destiny Watford, 20, has taken the Goldman Environmental Prize for her work to stop a trash incinerator from being built in her neighborhood.

Here are three things the United States can learn from other nations should policymakers ever decide that it’s shameful to be the largest economy in the world and not have paid leave.

For the last two years, nearly all students referred for mental health services in seven school-based health centers in Deschutes County, OR, have taken the 10-question adverse childhood experiences survey.

Although the bill is now considered dead, Representative Geran Tarr was able to build a record of information about ACE’s, talk to many of her colleagues, and move the bill out of the House Health & Social Services Committee to House Finance.

Transforming trauma is the theme of this book and the story of the author’s life as well.

Daniel R. Taylor makes the case for action to address childhood poverty in order to improve the health of children.

Author Maia Szalavitz explains that addiction is a learned behavior that often results in measurable changes to the brain. And acknowledging this could revolutionize not only how we see addicts but also how we treat addiction.

In North Dakota and Minnesota trauma informed care for kids is on the rise.

America suspends, expels, detains and incarcerates more youth than any developed nation on the planet. An indefensibly disproportionate number of those youth are minorities from low-income homes, neighborhoods and schools.

Are efforts to boost kids’ vocabularies before kindergarten missing the mark?

Understanding teens, and sorting myth from reality, is a challenge for both adults and teens themselves. So check out this quiz and update your knowledge on the latest findings.

New data highlights the need to strenghten policies that ease access to a basic necessity.

A new study from the University of Notre Dame, Duke University and Princeton University finds that wild baboons that experience multiple misfortunes during the first years of life, such as drought or the loss of their mother, grow up to live much shorter adult lives. Their life expectancy is cut short by up to 10 years compared with their more fortunate peers.

Some public schools in Maine are paying more attention to the impacts these experiences can have on student success. These schools are helping students identify — and cope with — the stressors that are effecting their lives.

This tool is based on the pioneering research on self-compassion and self-soothing by psychologist Kristin Neff. Her work has shown that we can significantly reduce anxiety, depression and self-criticism by doing practices like these.

A new study finds associations between states’ criminal justice and welfare laws.

More than half of college presidents surveyed said that the “racial climate” on their campuses is more of a priority than it was a few years ago.

How can communities intervene to spare future generations the same pain and illness? Special correspondent Sarah Varney reports in collaboration with Kaiser Health News on how the city of Memphis, Tennessee, is tackling the problem.

Racial minorities experience shorter lives, but until we can fix economic inequality there’s an easy way to improve this health crisis: better listening skills among doctors.

The artist Ramiro Gomez revises images of the city’s most luxurious domestic settings by inserting the housekeepers, gardeners, and caregivers who maintain them.

The criminalization of families and communities has created generational harm that reproduces the very environments of trauma, grief, and pain that addiction thrives in. Still, the U.N General Assembly sustains the same empty mission statement of more than 18 years ago: “to promote a world free of drug abuse” and to reduce the production of illicit drugs. Such language reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of why people use drugs.

Dallas and other cities have instituted policies aimed at increasing classroom diversity.

Beyond Paper Tigers, A Trauma-Informed Care Conference, will take place June 28-29, 2016, at Whitman College in Walla Walla, WA. The event features several local experts including Jim Sporleder, former principal of Lincoln High; Teri Barila, co-founder and CEO of the Children’s Resilience Initiative (CRI); Brook Bouchey, former Lincoln High intervention specialist; Sergio Hernandez, retired educator, superintendent, and CRI logistics expert; and Rick Griffin, executive director of Jubilee Leadership Academy.

For those of you in the Minneapolis and Rochester, MN, areas, Resilience is coming to two theaters near you this week, as is director James Redford.

Yakima’s three community health clinics have made a big push in the last few years to integrate mental and behavioral health with medical services. Behavioral health specialists and medical practitioners are housed in the same building, facilitating a “warm handoff” between providers.

A new $1.5 million MacArthur Foundation grant could give New Orleans’ public defenders, and its incarcerated citizens, some relief.

Interesting patterns emerged when the team broke down the data by race and ethnicity. White males from high-income homes, for example, were more likely to carry handguns than their low-income peers. And while handgun carrying among African Americans and Hispanics has dropped or held steady since 2002, it significantly increased among whites over the last two years of the study period.

Michael Salzman shares his research on Native Hawaiians how colonization, disempowerment, cultural oppression and the process of political and psychological decolonization have helped generate an atmosphere that seeds the phenomenon of anger in school settings.

Advocates say screening will increase early diagnoses and lead to better outcomes. Opponents say it will do more harm than good.

Partnerships for Raising Opportunity in Neighborhoods (PRO Neighborhoods) is a $125 million, five-year initiative to identify and support custom solutions for the unique challenges facing disadvantaged neighborhoods in U.S. cities.

We must acknowledge the link between race and poor health before we can meet our nation’s daunting health equity challenge.

Nearly 20 years ago, Monica Lewinsky found herself at the heart of a political storm. Now she’s turned that dark time into a force for good.

Jane Stevens provides information about a series of webinars and conference calls for prospective applicants interested in applying for the Resiliency in Communities after Stress and Trauma grant program (ReCAST).

Steve Hein writes about his thoughts on schools and teens.

Center for Child Counseling (CfCC) has received a $200,000 grant from Quantum Foundation to expand services in Palm Beach County for families and caregivers struggling with “toxic stress” from Adverse Childhood Experiences in children.

No one escapes the pain and long term affects of addiction.

A conversation with Joan Cole Duffell on social-emotional development.

From our ACEsConnection members, we have a request inviting people from central Pennsylvania to start a community group, a discussion challenging neurobiology as an effective health care message, a request for information about trauma-informed hospital chaplaincies, and a question about ACEs and ethnic oppression.

Questions about smoking, seat belts or regular exercise are routine at a doctor’s office, thanks to the overwhelming data showing that the lives we lead influence our overall health. But one insidious yet common risk factor is rarely addressed: living with trauma.

The World Health Organization findings suggest every U.S. dollar invested in mental health treatment can quadruple returns in work productivity. However, most countries are investing far below what is needed for those suffering from common mental disorders.

Some therapists are using Songify, a music app, to have patients make recordings of their worried thoughts—and get rid of them.

The impact of trauma on children, youth, and adults deep into their lives has been extensively documented and has spurred schools to become expert in and adopt trauma-informed practices to boost children’s emotional-social well-being.

Dale Fletcher is looking for any initiatives that involve ACEs and ministry or for connections to decision makers in seminaries to begin a conversation about ACEs.

A massive study of health and income found that smoking, obesity, and exercise are the most important determinants of longevity. Poor neighborhoods score worse in all of them. What’s going on?

Hip-hop artists Tupac and Eminem are among the most iconic music artists of the past two decades, and as Dr Akeem Sule and Dr Becky Inkster, co-founders of HIP-HOP-PSYCH, write, their lyrics can provide a valuable insight into the lives of some of the people most at risk of developing mental health issues.

The remaining candidates continue to resonate with counties that are being left behind.

The Knight Cities Challenge-winning project invited 400 strangers from across the city to dine together around a two-block-long table.

Kerry Fair is looking for research in order to help shape services.

The Attitudes Related to Trauma-Informed Care (ARTIC) Scale is the first psychometrically valid measure of TIC published in the peer reviewed literature. It was developed collaboratively by the Traumatic Stress Institute of Klingberg Family Centers and Dr. Courtney Baker at Tulane University.

Some parents have to travel six hours and take up to eight buses each day to take their kids to better schools outside of their neighborhoods.

MAPP, Mobilizing for Action through Planning & Partnerships, is a local coalition that aims to use and build upon our strengths to improve our individual, family and community health.

To say, as the CDC did, that both pain patients and doctors are the culprits in rising mortality is misguided for several reasons.

Commissioner of the Administration for Native Americans Lillian Sparks Robinson met with representatives of the Roundtable on Trauma-Informed Native Communities on March 30 to address concerns highlighted in a December 17 letter sent to HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell by 12 U.S. senators.

An updated report (first one was in 2010) about knowledge of ACEs among providers in Maine, and how important the issues are. Also some input about the Maine Resilience Building Network and feedback about the educational efforts from the group.

The AAP provides a series of messages and communications tips for pediatricians to use when talking about poverty and child health with other health care providers, legislators, and other audiences.

A new study redeems a remarkably successful canvassing approach that was rocked by scientific fraud last year.

Here’s what you need to know about wage stagnation in America.

Sylvia Paul explains how solutions journalism focuses on how to address social problems, going beyond simple identification of problems.

Laura is Co-Founder of ACE Interface, a company that develops and provides ACE-informed educational products, consultation and strategies for improving health and well-being. She has spent more than a decade leading implementation of ACE study concepts in Washington, providing support and services to philanthropic leaders, government officials, parents, youth and communities.

A key barrier to the science of TIC is the lack of objective ways to determine if TIC is being practiced. The Attitudes Related to Trauma-Informed Care (ARTIC) Scale was created to fill this gap.

Dr. Allison Jackson of Richmond, VA is giving a Tedex Talk today on ACEs and need for more community involvement on this issue. She is scheduled to be on at 2:47 pm ET today, April 8, for about 10 minutes. There are three other speakers during the day speaking on trauma to a first time ever sold out crowd at RVA Tedex of 1500 folks!

The Democratic congressman from Massachusetts frames the juvenile justice system not as an illness, but a symptom of the deeper illness of poverty.

Katrice Horsley is looking for your thoughts on the use of Narrative within communities, organizations and individuals, in light of growing neuroscience research showing the impacts of Narratives on the brain.

If drug use is a risk-taking factor, and we know that trauma is an indicator for premature risk taking, how can we start to change the direction of conversation to healing trauma as a preventative measure for drug use?

Health care providers can address patients’ traumatic experiences and their associated health effects by implementing trauma-informed approaches to care. Changing organizational culture and clinical practice to reflect trauma-informed principles has the potential to improve patient engagement, treatment adherence, health outcomes, and provider and staff wellness. This brief outlines a practical implementation framework and policy considerations for instituting trauma-informed approaches to care in health care settings.

Researchers tracked hundreds of students in Baltimore to find out what top achievers had that others didn’t.

Researchers from the University of California-San Francisco are turning to an unlikely source to combat schizophrenia: the very people suffering from the disease.

KPJR Films produced a short video to introduce ACEs.

On Monday, March 21, 2016, over 400 social workers, educators and more filled the gymnasium of Bester Elementary School in Hagerstown, MD, as leading trauma experts from across the nation linked findings from the ACE Study with staggering proof of health, social, and economic problems resulting later in life.

New research is uncovering the particularly damaging health effects of experiencing racial discrimination in childhood — and showing just how long those effects can last.

The National Housing Trust Fund will give housing assistance to the very poorest households in the nation.

If communities are ready to address juvenile delinquency in ways that best protects the community and offers the youth a healthy, productive future, then communities must agree to be part of the solution.

How can we possibly heal trauma in line at the grocery store? One interaction at a time.

Patrick Anderson discusses the links between ACEs and Anxiety.

A new study conducted by Finland researchers has revealed that early childhood stress could lead to a hardening of arteries or Atherosclerosis in later adult life, a serious condition that can lead to heart attack, stroke, or even death.

For many of us being kind to ourselves is hard. It’s hard even when we’re struggling — and need compassion most. But the good news is that we can learn to cultivate self-compassion.

A new study suggests that low expectations from some teachers might engender low performance from students.

Dr. Brenda Jones Harden is Associate Professor in the Department of Human Development and Quantitative Methodology at the University of Maryland College Park. Her research examines the developmental and mental health needs of children at environmental risk, especially those who have suffered maltreatment or trauma.

A new report from the Department of Education calls on schools to improve the graduation gap.

While there has been some success in uncovering genes which make people more susceptible to various disorders, specialists say that the true causes of depression and anxiety are from life events and environment, and research should be directed towards understanding the everyday triggers.

A new analysis by the Brookings Institution shows increases in two-thirds of the largest U.S. metros.

Defensive walls go up quickly when we feel unappreciated or disrespected. The walls are meant to keep out unfairness and negative evaluations of our choices and behaviors. But what it often shuts out is self improvement.