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Reflections on the Human Spirit
Spirit is a word with many meanings, but the difficulty we have in defining it should not take away from the fact that it is real.
For me, spirit is a personal, intuitive sense of being, distinct from, yet an integral part of the greater universe. It is the source of morality, ethics, justice and universal truths. It is not synonymous with religion. I believe human spirit is the source, not the result of religion. It is what makes human rights unalienable. It is what knits us all together while singling each of us out as somehow special at the same time. It is the organizing force behind our social economy and the broader social ecology of our collective development. It is that which, despite all individual and group differences, makes all of us equal from birth. It broadens and deepens our social bonds. It is the essential element for our personal well being, our survival as a species and the survival of Earth as we know it today.
From my perspective, spirituality is indwelling. It invades conscious awareness from fundamental sources deeply imbedded within each of us, as if our whole body is a spiritual organ physically connected to all things. Other people experience spiritual perceptions from a different direction, such as emanating from outside the body and beyond physical existence. It hardly matters. What matters is that it connects us to the world and to each other. It reveals to us pure and enduring insights that we all share. It is a source of knowledge, accessible through introspection and heightened perceptions, that dissolves the estrangement we sometimes feel towards nature or other human beings. The human spirit always arches towards a broader, deeper unity and that special sense of well being we call love.
With all the tensions and challenges today, are we loosing our humanity? I don’t believe so. The human spirit has always faced competitive forces. The most persistent form of this competition pits self-interest over communal interests or present advantage over future needs. Nearly every challenge we face today fits this form. Our challenge, as always, is to elevate the human spirit in our selves and in our world. There are no secret strategies. Most everyone reading this knows what they need to do. Together we must overcome greed with our generosity, both materially and in spirit. We must empower the marginalized, inspire the dispirited, organize the discouraged, protect the vulnerable, overpower the skeptics, confront the intolerant and above all, bring up our children to be champions of the human spirit.
HOUSTON, TAKE DOWN THIS THREATENING MESSAGE
An Orwellian chill ran through my veins as I sat waiting for my connection at Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport. It was the early hours of the morning and the Eastern sky was just starting to brighten. Travelers milled about the vast terminal or sat in various stages of slumber at the terminal gates as a female voice echoed over the public address system. It was that familiar security announcement about keeping track of your luggage and such. No one seemed to notice when this particular message went on to say:
“You are also reminded that any inappropriate comments or jokes concerning security may result in your arrest. We appreciate your cooperation while these measures are in effect.”
Arrest? “While these measures are in effect”?
I looked around. No one else seemed to notice they had just been threatened with arrest for cracking jokes or making comments that some security agent might not like. I suddenly felt less free and less safe from the mercurial powers of the state.
Once we discovered that jetliners can become weapons, tightened security was inevitable, but infringing on our First Amendment rights was not part of the bargain. It’s one thing to take off your shoes and empty your pockets, it’s quite another to face arrest for “inappropriate” speech.
Free speech has boundaries, of course. Everyone knows you can’t yell “fire” in a crowed theater or threaten someone with bodily harm, but when was the last time you were reminded about this in a public announcement at your local cinema? Houston’s airport message was obviously not referring to the normal boundaries of free speech.
From where does this authority to arrest come and how broadly is it being interpreted? What law enforcement authority approved this chilling message? And why is this additional “measure” in effect in Houston but not in most other airports, such as in Newark’s Liberty or New York’s Kennedy Airport?
It seems unlikely that the federal Transportation Security Administration (TSA) would be behind this announcement. The TSA has very limited law enforcement authority. Unless you are committing a felony under US law in their presence, TSA agents have no routine power to arrest you (49 USC 44903(d)(2)). And as far as I know, joking about airport security isn’t a felony. The authority of the TSA extends mostly to allowing passengers to fly or not fly. They can detain you for the purpose of screening or inspecting your personal property, but can’t arrest you if they find, say, a pen knife in your bags. If you refuse to be searched, they can deny you access to the plane. Having said that, the practical reach of the TSA is still an open question and there are examples of apparent abuses of their power. (For an interesting post on TSA authority see: http://www.papersplease.org/wp/2009/04/20/tsa-claims-new-powers-of-detention-search-and-interrogation/).
Most large airports are owned by state or local governments in the US. They operate under state or local authorities, sometimes through an airport authority administration or private management company. Airport security, other than passenger screening, is usually provided by state or local law enforcement agencies.
The George Bush Intercontinental Airport is owned and operated by the City of Huston. It is likely that the Houston Police Department is in charge of airport security. In fact, on the Houston Police Website, M. A. Eisenman is the Assistant Police Chief in charge of the Homeland Security Command and C. W. Driskel is Captain of the Airport Division. If there is a law or temporary measure to limit free speech, the city of Houston and not the TSA would be responsible.
There is internet evidence that this same message has been playing in Houston since at least 2007. In the years since this security message first played, the Iraq war ended, Osama Bin Laden was killed by our special forces, his terrorist network has been decimated, the war in Afghanistan has nearly drawn to a close and there has been no significant attacks in the United States. The “war on terror” is settling into a more or less routine program of security vigilance and covert actions. The flying public accepts today’s airport security arrangements. If there was ever a need to threaten citizens with arrest for inappropriate speech, that heightened need has surely passed. It is time for the City of Huston to stop threatening citizens with arrest for making bad jokes and restore respect for our First Amendment liberties. Houston, take down this threatening message!
“Free Market” Social Services Fail to Deliver
Where do you turn when your aging mother can’t be by herself anymore or you notice your baby seems a little delayed? Imagine that your teenager start skipping school and staying out all night or imagine you are suddenly diagnosed with a serious illness or disabled in an accident. Where do you go for help?
Sooner or later we all knock on the door of our community’s social service network. What greets us may be far less than we expect. And sadly, the help available to us will depend a lot on where we live and how much money we make. The confusing patchwork of private, public and non-profit social service agencies through which we must navigate is the natural, unintended consequence of the free market model we’ve created to deliver social services.
We are all only temporarily able bodied. We don’t give much thought social services. We are content knowing that free market competition is efficiently keeping down the cost of publicly financed services for the needy.
It isn’t until we seek help ourselves that we encounter a labyrinth of agencies with confusing components and cutesy sounding acronyms for their names. Agencies often list the types of services they offer (counseling, for example) without listing the types of problems they serve (such as adolescent issues). Consumers are expected to know which services work best for their problems. Some agencies over promise results in their marketing or take on people with problems that would be bettered resolved elsewhere. Access to services are often restricted by bewildering eligibility requirements based on age, gender, geography, diagnosis, income, insurance provider, religion, ethnicity, funding source or hours of operation.
If your family has one or two very common problems, chances are you will find the help you need. But if your problems are uncommon or complex, your search will not go smoothly. And if you also happen to be poor, live in an under served community or don’t have transportation, the prospects for getting effective help are slim.
This is the character of our social service networks today. They are not based on matching service availability and capacity to the needs of local communities. They are loosely coordinated networks created by free market forces and competition between private or non-profit agencies scrambling for dollars.
For over thirty years we have been privatizing public social services in the belief that free markets are more efficient than government in providing the best services at the lowest cost. Little attention is given to the inescapable fact that market driven systems create uneven results by their very nature. This is true in commerce but especially true in public social welfare. Larger agencies are more politically connected and better positioned to compete for public dollars. Wealthier communities have a higher profit potential so they attract more and better competitors. Smaller agencies and program models that incorporate innovative ideas are less able to compete for government money.
Innovative approaches to helping people are usually funded in small trials by private foundations. Even when these trials prove successful, bringing them up to scale is almost impossible. Agency competition actually works against it because social service providers are competing on an artificial playing field.
Governments create the playing field on which agencies compete, but the government departments responsible for developing and funding social service contracts are often under staffed and ill equipped to monitor service outcomes. They also lack the personnel and special expertise it takes to design better programs. The time and effort involved in researching literature, writing contract proposals, putting contracts out for bid and guiding the implementation of new programs is enormous . Politicians don’t want to spend what it would cost to create real free market competition for high quality services.
To overcome the uneven distribution of services problem, governments develop specially targeted service contracts with extra financial incentives to serve specific areas. But these initiatives are expensive and tax revenues are declining. Targeted service contracts are usually limited in size and scope because of their higher costs.
We have come to the point where the availability and quality of essential services, to treat an abused child for example, becomes an accident of birth. How often have I seen children getting excellent services in one county while children with identical needs have no such services in another.
Commercial markets are efficient in distributing products according to demand when profits are distributed according to merit. This method breaks down when applied to funding social services. Competition discourages inter-agency coordination and inadequate funding increases agency competition in more profitable locations while discouraging them from entering less profitable communities. This causes unacceptable inequalities in meeting the basic human needs of our people.
There are many pressing issues that demand attention. How we fund social services is rarely among them, yet the wisdom of distributing social services through artificially created free markets cries out for public debate.
Tragedy in Newtown and Our Changing Culture
The slaughter at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut has fundamentally altered the public debate on gun regulations. This change is long overdue. Ultra-lethal guns are the instruments that make these acts so deadly. Assault weapons and extra-lethal types of ammunition have no place in our communities. We must have meaningful gun regulations.
We can’t stop there. The existence of assault weapons alone don’t explain these violent rages. We concurrently need to strengthen our system of identifying and treating people with mental illness and anti-social conditions. And we need to do this without letting it distract us from pursuing better gun regulations. Effective mental health treatment is incredibly labor intensive. Building helping relationships with other human beings takes time and commitment. It is therefore also expensive. Decades of budget contraction for mental health services has created a history of having to do more with less which has lead to service gaps and poor outcomes.
But we can’t stop there either. Significant weaknesses in our mental health systems don’t explain societies growing fascination with guns and violence or our loss of empathy towards “others”. While we press for better gun regulations and improved mental health systems, we need to examine the social factors that are shifting our American cultural in a dangerous direction.
Identifying connections between shifting cultural attitudes and extremely rare events is difficult. Scientific methods are not suited to the study of rare events, yet connections between cultural shifts and extremely rare behaviors are no less real.
This last point is very important. It is easy for those who oppose change to challenge the influence social factors might have on culture or to manipulate these factors for self-gain. Whether we are speaking about violent content in video games or the proliferation of guns in American homes, the influence of each on culture is subtle and hard to measure. We can easily see how being raised in a home where religious values are prominent effects development, but we don’t often consider how social development is influence in homes where deadly weapons are prominent features. Additionally, it is always difficult to perceive cultural changes as they occur. To help explain why this is so a little though experiment might be helpful.
Start by picturing a normal “bell curve” depicting the aggressive tendencies of every person in the country. The vast percentage of us would always fall within the normal rage. The very middle of the bell curve is the median, or average value. So in this case the middle represents people who have an average level of aggression. But there are always a few extraordinarily passive or aggressive individuals at the far ends of the bell curve. Statistically, these are called outliers, but if we are plotting aggression, the furthest outliers on the aggressive end might represent those who commit mass murders.
Now, imagine that social conditions shift the national average in a more aggressive direction. The whole bell curve would move slightly in that direction. Most people within the normal range wouldn’t notice the change. Their own aggressive tendencies and those of everyone around them would be changing in unison. It’s difficult to perceive change when there is no fixed reference point. What everyone might start to notice, however, is what happens at the statistical extremes. As average levels of aggression increases in society, the frequency of rare acts of violence also increases.
To illustrate this last point, consider an analogy to climate change. Suppose there was no scientific or public awareness of climate change or its impact on weather prior to Hurricane Katrina or super storm Sandy. After these events the public might reasonably demand to know why such bad storms are becoming more frequent. Answering that question by simply studying each storms would not be very fruitful. It could improve our knowledge of the particular weather patterns that produced each storms, but it wouldn’t answer the question of why these preconditions were happening so often.
Fortunately, scientists have been studying climate change for decades, so we know why super storms are becoming more frequent. We also know how we can respond to this threat even though convincing those with conflicting interests is another matter. It sometimes takes a super storm to form a consensus for action.
The same logic holds true for trying to understand what happened in Newtown, Connecticut. Studying what made Adam Lanza snap might be helpful from a mental health perspective, but it won’t explain the preconditions in his life. The killing efficiency of his weapons helps explains why the shooting was so deadly, but it won’t explain why his mother and others are so drawn to deadly weapons. It is our changing attitudes towards guns and violence that we must understand. The study of cultural change is far less advanced than the study of climate change, so we are ill prepared for the challenge. This needs to change. In fact, it is clear that we all need to change if we ever hope to end the rash of senseless violence in America.
A Simple Guide to American Capitalism
- Give a starving man a fish and you’re a sucker.
- Teach a starving man how to fish and you’re a socialist.
- Sell a fish to a starving man for profit and you’re a capitalist.
- Tax a starving man for the fish he catches and you’re the government.
- Buy the lake, sell off all the fish in it for a quick profit and you’re a “private equity” capitalist (What man? I didn’t see a man!).
- Rent the lake for $1 from the Department of the Interior, sell all the fish in it to an international fish cartel that sells a fish back to a man for more than he can pay and you’re a petro-capitalist.
- Stock the lake with GM “franken-fish”, then sue a man when he accidentally catches one and you’re an agro-capitalist.
- Ignore a man trying to fish, pump all the lake water into plastic bottles, sell it by the case and you are a “Nestles” capitalist.
- Buy up all the shoreline around the lake, sell dock space through an owners association to a man so he can fish and you are a real-estate capitalist.
- Buy up the prettiest shoreline, sell fancy dock space to a man, charge him to fish from his fancy dock space and you’re a time-share capitalist.
- Buy and sell a man’s fish before he catches it (call it “fish futures”) and you’re a commodities trader.
- Sell insurance policies (call it “swaps”) to those who buy “fish futures” so they make money even if a man’s fish are tainted and you’re a hedge fund manager.
- Bundle a man’s tainted fish into “fish-backed” securities, disguise the smell, sell the bundles to pension fund managers, invest heavily in “swaps” payable to you when everyone discovers the fish are bad and you are WALL $TREET.
Evidence That Juvenile Jails Don’t Work
What follows is important information needed to understand our juvenile justice system and how it is failing us in many ways. The evidence suggests that jailing juveniles doesn’t rehabilitate and appears to cause more harm than good. This was originally posted earlier this year, but in light of renewed discussions on how to curb violence in America, a review of our Juvenile Justice system is appropriate.
No Place for Kids: The Case for Reducing Juvenile Incarceration
The Annie E. Casey Foundation’s new report, No Place for Kids: The Case for Reducing Juvenile Incarceration assembles a vast array of evidence to demonstrate that incarcerating kids doesn’t work: Youth prisons do not reduce future offending, they waste taxpayer dollars, and they frequently expose youth to dangerous and abusive conditions. The report also shows that many states have substantially reduced their juvenile correctional facility populations in recent years, and it finds that these states have seen no resulting increase in juvenile crime or violence. Finally, the report highlights successful reform efforts from several states and provides recommendations for how states can reduce juvenile incarceration rates and redesign their juvenile correction systems to better serve young people and the public.
State-level data:
- Total Number of Juveniles in Committed Custody in the U.S. (1997 and 2007)
- 2008 Juvenile Correction Budgets by State
- Facility Closures in the United States Since 2007
- Change in Juvenile Correction Confinement Rates in the U.S. (1997 and 2007)
- Recidivism by Youth Released from State-funded Juvenile Correctional Facilities
- Quality Gaps in State Recidivism Data for Youth Released from Juvenile Correctional Facilities
- Litigation and Federal Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act Investigations over Conditions of Confinement
- Juvenile Arrest Rates (1997 to 2007)
- Systemic or Recurring Maltreatment in Juvenile Corrections Facilities
- Does Lowering Juvenile Confinement Rates at the State Level Foreshadow Increased Juvenile Violence?
Download the Map of Recurring Maltreatment in Juvenile Correctional Facilities in the U.S. (2.17 KB)
How Public Schools Came to Be and the Fight to Dismantle Them
Publicly funded local schools are a universally accepted social norm. Abandoning them would be almost unthinkable. When we stop to consider what we value in our communities, local public schools are almost always a top consideration and a source of civic pride.
This isn’t just true in the United States. Publicly funded education has become a global norm in all advanced societies for nearly century. But a hundred years isn’t very long in the sweeping arch of history, is it? Public schooling has fundamentally altered American society, yet few of us can recount how this radical change came about. How did public schools come to be?
The fight to establish public schools is almost lost history. There is very little content or comment about it on the Web or in our public media. What we do hear lately are a great many lively debates about burdensome public school taxes, failing schools, voucher programs, charter schools, and making public funds more available for private schools and colleges. Lost to our comprehension in these debates is how these arguments follow the exact fault lines in what was an incredibly contentious battle, waged over the course of a generation, to establish public schooling. The political struggle for public education has been compared as second only to the fight for the abolition of slavery in its intensity and divisiveness, but who remembers any of that today?
The battle to undo public education is already underway. If we fail to grasp the fact it is because we have no historical context to recognize the attacks for what they are. If we hope to retain and strengthen our system of public education in America, we need to place the current arguments against it in historical context. We need to reclaim our history.
To this purpose I recommend a book copyrighted in 1919 by Ellwood P. Chubberly entitled, “Public Education in the United States, A Study and Interpretation of American Educational History.” It is a text book, long out of print, but the entire book can be downloaded or read on line. Much of the book is obviously dated, but the early chapters on the history of public education provide the valuable context we need to understand the political arguments today.
Of particular interest to our purpose here is Chapter V., “TheThe Battle for Free State Schools”, beginning on page 118. Read this chapter first for some quick insights. Below is the full URL addresses and links to the book and its Table of Contents.
Full URL Addresses:
Book
Table of Content
Mental Health Screening in Schools – In the Wake of Newtown
The horror of the mass killings of six faculty and twenty Sandy Hook Elementary School children is still painfully fresh, but it isn’t too soon to begin thinking about what needs to change to try and prevent this from happening again somewhere else. Much of the discussion following this tragedy will rightly focus on adopting some sensible gun regulations. But there are other areas that we need to focus on as well because our propensity for social violence is a broad and multifaceted problem. Our mental health system is another important area to address. Particularly with respect to children, our ability to identify and treat behavioral problems and mental illness needs to be strengthened. One aspect of this involves early mental health screenings. What follows here is a brief and partial list of articles, studies and references on the topic. It’s not too soon to start educating ourselves.
American academy of pediatrics
MENTAL HEALTH PROBLEMS: CAPACITY TO IDENTIFY, REFER, MANAGE
Summary: The purpose of Health, Mental Health and Safety Guidelines for Schools is to help those who influence the health and safety of students and school staff while they are in school, on school grounds, on their way to or from school, and involved in school-sponsored activities. The guidelines recognize that the primary mission of schools is to educate students. Schools also have a responsibility for students’ health and safety while they are at school. By addressing health, mental health, and safety issues (including transportation and motor vehicle safety), schools can improve students’ academic performance today and contribute to their increased longevity and productivity long after they leave school.
Excerpt: Early identification of students with, or at risk for, transient or on-going mental disorders, followed by early intervention can mitigate the severity and duration of these problems and reduce personal, social, educational, and financial costs to the student and family and the educational and health systems. Up to three-quarters of U.S. children receiving professional care for a mental health problem obtained services through a school-based program.
Citations: Suggested citation, prior to written publication:
Taras H, Duncan P, Luckenbill D, Robinson J, Wheeler L, Wooley S: Health, Mental Health and Safety Guidelines for Schools. (2004); Available at http://www.schoolhealth.org
Mental Health Screening in Schools
Summary: This article discusses the importance of screening students in
schools for emotional/behavioral problems. Elements relevant to planning and implementing effective mental health screening in schools are considered. Screening in schools is linked to a broader national agenda to improve the mental health of children and adolescents. Strategies for systematic planning for mental health screening in schools are presented. Careful planning and implementation of mental
health screening in schools offers a number of benefits including enhancing outreach
and help to youth in need, and mobilizing school and community efforts to promote
student mental health while reducing barriers to their learning. When implemented with appropriate family, school, and community involvement, mental health screening in schools has the potential to be a cornerstone of a transformed mental health system.
Excerpt: “Youth with internalizing disorders such as depression, anxiety, or suicide ideation are not as easily identified as those with acting-out or externalizing disorders. Individuals with internalizing conditions comprise a significant population; the 2003 Youth Risk Behavior Survey, a nationally representative sample of more than 15,000 high school students throughout the United States, found that in the 12-month period preceding the survey, 16.9% had seriously considered attempting suicide, 16.5% had
made a plan for attempting suicide, 8.5% had attempted suicide 1 or more times, and 2.9% had made an attempt requiring medical attention.
Citation: Weist MD, Rubin M, Moore E, Adelsheim S, Wrobel G. Mental health
screening in schools. J Sch Health. 2007; 77: 53-58.
Screening Mental Health Problems in Schools
http://smhp.psych.ucla.edu/pdfdocs/policyissues/mhscreeningissues.pdf
Summary: This brief highlights the following issues:
• How appropriate is large-scale screening for mental health problems?
• Will the costs of large-scale mental health screening programs
outweigh the benefits?
• Are schools an appropriate venue for large-scale screening of mental
health problems?
Excerpt:
• Advocates for large-scale MH screening in schools see major benefits to individuals and
society of finding many more students with problems in order to treat them before the
problems become severe. In citing benefits for screening children and adolescents, the
assumption is that those identified will receive effective treatments. Based on this
assumption, key benefits claimed are preventing problems from becoming worse and
enhancing student success at school, which generates other benefits for students, their
families, and their teachers and for the society in terms of future productivity and which
reduces costs because there is less need for intensive treatments and special education.
In citing benefits for using schools as a venue for public health programs, as compared to
other community venues, matters of ready access and reduced costs are stressed, as well
as the benefits to schools of having students with problems treated.
• Those who oppose large-scale screening raise a host of concerns (i.e., potential costs). For some, there is a fundamental fear that society will mandate such screening and thereby interfere with what should remain a personal family matter and will violate rights to privacy, consent, and parental control. Others are concerned that screening will increase referrals for nonexistent treatment resources and that the dollars budgeted for screening will reduce the dollars allocated for treatment. Still others point to the evidence that available screening methods used in schools produce too many errors (e.g., false positive identifications, inappropriate over-identification of subgroups such as some ethnic groups and boys with externalizing problems and girls with internalizing problems). Relatedly, they argue there will be insufficient follow-up assessment resources to correct for false positive identifications. And, some argue there are significant costs resulting from selffulfilling prophecies and stigmatization.
In arguing against using schools, there is the social philosophical argument that mental
health is one of those matters that should remain a domain for family, not school,
intervention. More pragmatically, it is argued that scarce school time and resources should not be used for matters not directly related to teaching. Others point to the lack of enough competent school personnel to plan, implement, and evaluate large-scale screening.
Examples of documents covering the issues:
Screening Aimed at Preventing Youth Suicide (2005)
by Ellie Ashford for the National School Board Association’s School Board News
http://www.nsba.org/site/print.asp?TRACKID=&VID=55&ACTION=PRINT&CID=682&DID=36189 Provides a quick overview for school boards of some of the controversies and places them in the context of current events.
Screening for Depression: Recommendations and Rationale (2002)
by U.S. Preventive Services Task Force for Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality
http://www.ahrq.gov/clinic/3rduspstf/depressrr.htm and
Screening for Suicide Risk: Recommendation and Rationale (2004)
by U.S. Preventive Services Task Force for Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality
http://www.ahrq.gov/clinic/3rduspstf/suicide/suiciderr.htm
Citation: The Center is co-directed by Howard Adelman and Linda Taylor and operates
under the auspices of the School Mental Health Project, Dept. of Psychology, UCLA,
Write: Center for Mental Health in Schools, Box 951563, Los Angeles, CA90095-1563
Phone: (310) 825-3634 Fax: (310) 206-5895 Toll Free: (866) 846-4843
email: smhp@ucla.edu website: http://smhp.psych.ucla.edu
Mental health screening in schools
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17222155
Summary: This article discusses the importance of screening students in schools for emotional/behavioral problems. Elements relevant to planning and implementing effective mental health screening in schools are considered. Screening in schools is linked to a broader national agenda to improve the mental health of children and adolescents. Strategies for systematic planning for mental health screening in schools are presented.
Excerpt: When implemented with appropriate family, school, and community involvement, mental health screening in schools has the potential to be a cornerstone of a transformed mental health system. Screening, as part of a coordinated and comprehensive school mental health program, complements the mission of schools, identifies youth in need, links them to effective services, and contributes to positive educational outcomes valued by families, schools, and communities.
Citations: Weist MD, Rubin M, Moore E, Adelsheim S, Wrobel G.
Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Center for School Mental Health Analysis and Action, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD 21201, USA. mweist@psych.umaryland.edu
Study pushes early identification of kids’ mental health problems
http://www.theday.com/article/20120914/NWS12/120919796/1018
Lisa Chedekel, Conn. Health I-Team Writer
Publication: theday.com
Published 09/14/2012 12:00 AM
Updated 09/15/2012 12:13 AM
Josue, 15, was born to a 12‐year‐old mother. Exposed to domestic violence and abuse, he struggled in school early on and received a special education evaluation in Grade 4 that found weaknesses in reading, math and writing.
By 13, he had been diagnosed with symptoms of bipolar disorder, depression, learning disabilities and attention deficit disorder. Yet, he started high school with limited support services and ended up suspended from school and referred to the juvenile justice system.
[SNIP]
“Red flags for mental and behavioral health problems are often clear before the end of second grade,” said Andrea Spencer, educational consultant to the Center and dean of the School of Education at PaceUniversity, whose work was funded with a grant from the Connecticut Health Foundation. “It is imperative that we improve screening and identification, so support for these children can be provided before their academic careers are at risk.”
Please go to the above URL address to continue reading.
Gun Homicide Rate 22 Times Higher Than Other Advanced Nations
The following was just published in October. Given the events of yesterday it is worth going back to read this again. Clearly we need to reconsider some sensible changes to our gun laws to keep them out of the hands of people who are emotionally unstable, domestic abusers and criminals. We should also have a national law against gun trafficking (crazy that we don’t).
From: John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
October 25, 2012
Restricting High-Risk Individuals from Owning Guns Saves Lives
On July 20, a gunman in Aurora, Colorado, used an assault rifle to murder 12 people and wound 58 others. Although this was one of the worst mass shootings in U.S. history, all mass shootings account for a small percentage of gun violence that occurs in the U.S. every day. In the past 100 days since the Aurora shooting, an estimated 3,035 Americans have died as a result of gun violence.
A new report by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health examines policies and initiatives for reducing gun violence in the U.S. by reforming current gun policies. The report, a synthesis of prior research and analysis conducted by researchers with the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research, includes the following key findings:
- Easy access to firearms with large-capacity magazines facilitates higher casualties in mass shootings.
- “Right-to-carry” gun laws do not reduce violent crime.
- Prohibiting high-risk groups from having guns–criminals, perpetrators of domestic violence, youths under age 21, substance abusers, and those with severe mental illnesses–and closing loopholes that enable them to have guns are integral and politically feasible steps to reduce gun violence.
Please go to the new report (above) or the full News Release.
Map Pinpoints Where Children Are Being Sexually Abused. Why Aren’t We INVESTIGATING?
The trial and conviction of former Penn State football coach, Jerry Sandusky, for child sexual abuse allowed many people to hear for the first time the graph details that makes these crimes so repulsive. Civil hearings on child sexual abuse cases usually take place in closed courtrooms for the protection of these young victims. In this case, however, the victims are now adults, the trial was public and very high profile. People paid attention and learned just how violent these child rapes are. This made it easy to see just how destructive these betrayals of a child’s trust are and why it scars children for life.
This may be a good point to consider the scope of the child sexual abuse problem. Perhaps the information presented below will have greater resonance than when first posted a number of months ago. Each red dot on the map below is a Sandusky type horror story for some innocent child in America. So what are we going to do about it???
Most of these children wait for a rescue that will never come. They are in extreme danger and law enforcement knows where they are. Investigators go home every night knowing there are thousands of children out there beyond their reach, because they have not been given the resources they need to rescue them.
See The Ed Show Segment on this issue
Watch a Video Plea From Children
Go to Protect for More Detailed Information
Take Action
View my post on Child Fatality Risk Factors (Because child sexual abuse is not the only problem our children face every day)
Data Driven Viewpoints 
