childhood trauma

A few recent pieces I recommend: Sarah Frostenson at Vox: Public health shouldn’t be contentious. But it’s incredibly polarizing. Mallory Falk and Eve Troeh at WWNO: Kids, Trauma and New Orleans Schools Vann R. Newkirk II in The Atlantic: Obamacare’s Unlikely Defenders Andrés Miguel Rondón in the Washington Post: In Venezuela, we couldn’t stop Chávez. Don’t make the same mistakes we did. Lizzie Presser in The California Sunday Magazine: Below Deck: Filipinos make up nearly a third of all cruise ship workers. It’s a good job. Until it isn’t.
If you haven't heard it already, This American Life's "Back to School" episode is a riveting examination of how children's environments and early learning affect their adult health and achievement prospects. Here's the Act One summary from the show's website: [Host Ira Glass] talks with Paul Tough, author of the new book How Children Succeed, about the traditional ways we measure ability and intelligence in American schools. They talk about the focus on cognitive abilities, conventional "book smarts." They discuss the current emphasis on these kinds of skills in American education, and the…
There's a growing body of research linking childhood trauma (abuse, neglect, family dysfunction, etc.) to impaired brain development and functioning. Maia Szalavitz at TIME's Healthland blog describes the findings of new study by Harvard researchers (published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences): Now, in the largest study yet to use brain scans to show the effects of child abuse, researchers have found specific changes in key regions in and around the hippocampus in the brains of young adults who were maltreated or neglected in childhood. These changes may leave victims…