“What kind of relief is affordable, efficient, effective and nontoxic? The answer is touch. Hugs and other forms of non-sexual physical soothing, such as hand-holding and head-stroking, intervene at the physical level to help the brain and the body calm down from overwhelming states of anxiety, panic and shame.” Sadly, for many survivors of sexual…
“I have learned,” she writes, “that when you teach kindness and compassion to students and they really understand the concept, everything else falls into place. This should be the first lesson of every teacher.” Looking at other people with kindness prevents the kind of dehumanization that I’ve written about before. It’s when we see other…
That is what makes me better now, why I seem happy. I try my best not to listen, and some days I am really strong. I push it down with dreams of the future, of a life where I might one day be happy. I know how to fix myself now, I know I will…
An alcoholic home is chaotic and unpredictable. This is something that has a profound effect on the development of children. We see it among abuse survivors, and we see it with kids who grew up in broken homes, and dysfunctional families. (And the fact that there is a lot of crossover in those groups, should…
The TraffickCam app enables travelers to submit pictures of hotel rooms around the world. The images are matched against a national database used by police. “You just enter your hotel room, and your room number. You take four pictures, and you submit them to the website,” Washington University Researcher and TraffickCam developer Abby Stylianou said….
“Discrimination by therapists compounds the already steep obstacles Americans face in accessing mental health care. There are shortages of mental-health providers even in wealthy areas, and more than half of all counties in the U.S. have no practicing psychiatrists, psychologists, or social workers. In any given year, about one in five Americans has a mental…
