Author Archives: Jane Ellen Stevens

Book review: “The Deepest Well: Healing the Long-Term Effects of Childhood Adversity” by Dr. Nadine Burke Harris

January 23, 2018 By in ACE Study, Adverse childhood experiences 8 Comments

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Dr. Nadine Burke Harris debuted her book, The Deepest Well: Healing the Long-Term Effects of Childhood Adversity, at the Philadelphia Free Library this evening in a talk and book signing.

This first stop in an ambitious book tour that crisscrosses the country reflects a mission that Burke Harris has pursued for nearly a decade: to spread the knowledge about the science of adverse childhood experiences, and about how people can use this knowledge to help solve our most intractable problems. (Her TED Talk has nearly 3.5 million page views.)

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‘Christmas Crime’ injects humor into a difficult subject

January 1, 2018 By in Adverse childhood experiences, Trauma Leave a comment

Sarah Ann Masse forwarded this just before Christmas, but I didn’t see it until after. Nevertheless, even though it has a holiday theme, it’s still worth watching, because We Are Thomasse have added a very clever twist — and wonderful clarity — to the sexual harassment and abuse issues that have surfaced over the last few months.

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We can’t stop sex harassment by firing or incarcerating our way out; we can stop it by using ACEs science

December 20, 2017 By in ACE Study, Adverse childhood experiences, Child trauma, Neurobiology, Solutions 21 Comments

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So, Harvey Weinstein has gone to ground, along with Charlie Rose, Matt Lauer, and Kevin Spacey, to name a few, and they’re likely never to work in their chosen fields again. This week, federal Appeals Court Judge Alex Kosinski retired after 15 women, including former clerks, accused him of sexual misconduct. Do a search for “sexual harassment” and stories about dozens of men across a variety of professions appears.

Sexual harassment is everywhere – all professions, including higher education, and all walks of life (see the NYTimes article about women who work in Ford’s Chicago plants). The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission says that 60% of women report having experienced sexual harassment. That’s 45 million women. Forty-five million. And a much smaller, but still in the millions, number of men have also been sexually harassed by their male or female bosses.

The solutions so far — Fire them! Jail them! Destroy them! — might garner some headlines and short-term satisfaction. The solutions certainly fit our traditional approach of using blame, shame and punishment to attempt to change human behavior.

But we can’t fire or imprison our way out of this — it’s too big and too complex. Here’s why:

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Wisconsin aims to be first trauma-informed state; seven state agencies lead the way

October 1, 2017 By in ACE Study, Adverse childhood experiences, Alaska, Community prevention programs, Solutions 16 Comments

Here in California, many people think that it’s only liberal Democrats who have a corner on championing the science of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and putting it into practice. That might be because people who use ACEs science don’t expel or suspend students, even if they’re throwing chairs and hurling expletives at the teacher. They ask “What happened to you?” rather than “What’s wrong with you?” as a frame when they create juvenile detention centers where kids don’t fight, reduce visits to emergency departments and shrink teen pregnancy rates….among many other things.

Because they do all this and more by abandoning the notion of trying to change people’s behavior by punishing, blaming or shaming them, and instead using understanding, nurturing and healing, some people might think this approach belongs to the purview of one political party.

Mmmmmm….Not so fast.

To paraphrase Tonette Walker, the First Lady of Wisconsin, married to Republican Governor Scott Walker, who was a GOP presidential candidate in 2016:

That’s ridiculous.

Her exact words were: “It’s ridiculous that people say this is a Democratic or Republican issue. We all care about issues concerning families and children. We all care about the outcome of people’s lives, no matter who you are.”

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New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu’s address on removal of four Confederate statues

May 29, 2017 By in Adverse childhood experiences, Community prevention programs, Uncategorized 1 Comment

This 22 minutes is definitely worth the time. New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu eloquently describes why New Orleans removed the statues, which weren’t erected immediately after the Civil War to honor the fighters, but to remind all who passed by the statues about white supremacy.

Here’s the text from the YouTube page on which this video appears:

On Friday, May 19, 2017, Mayor Mitch Landrieu delivered an address about the City of New Orleans’ efforts to remove monuments that prominently celebrate the “Lost Cause of the Confederacy.” The statues were erected decades after the Civil War to celebrate the “Cult of the Lost Cause,” a movement recognized across the South as celebrating and promoting white supremacy.

There are four prominent monuments in question. The Battle of Liberty Place monument was erected by the Crescent City White League to remember the deadly insurrection led by white supremacists against the City’s racially integrated police department and government. The Jefferson Davis statue on Jefferson Davis Parkway, the P.G.T. Beauregard equestrian statue on Esplanade Avenue at the entrance to City Park, and the Robert E. Lee statue at Lee Circle.

Addiction doc says: It’s not the drugs. It’s the ACEs…adverse childhood experiences.

May 2, 2017 By in ACE Study, Adverse childhood experiences, Child trauma, Community prevention programs, Solutions 342 Comments

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He says: Addiction shouldn’t be called “addiction”. It should be called “ritualized compulsive comfort-seeking”.

He says: Ritualized compulsive comfort-seeking (what traditionalists call addiction) is a normal response to the adversity experienced in childhood, just like bleeding is a normal response to being stabbed.

He says: The solution to changing the illegal or unhealthy ritualized compulsive comfort-seeking behavior of opioid addiction is to address a person’s adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) individually and in group therapy; treat people with respect; provide medication assistance in the form of buprenorphine, an opioid used to treat opioid addiction; and help them find a ritualized compulsive comfort-seeking behavior that won’t kill them or put them in jail.

This “he” isn’t some hippy-dippy new age dreamer. He is Dr. Daniel Sumrok, director of the Center for Addiction Sciences at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center’s College of Medicine. The center is the first to receive the Center of Excellence designation from the Addiction Medicine Foundation, a national organization that accredits physician training in addiction medicine. Sumrok is also one of the first 106 physicians in the U.S. to become board-certified in addiction medicine by the American Board of Medical Specialties.

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England and Wales produce new animation about ACEs & resilience

May 1, 2017 By in ACE Study, Adverse childhood experiences, Child abuse, Child trauma, Resilience, Solutions 8 Comments

Here’s a new ACE animation that was posted last week by Dr. Helen Lowey and Prof. Mark A. Bellis at Public Health Wales.

Lowey, consultant in public health, Blackburn with Darwen Borough Council in Northwest England, sent this information with the animation:

Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) are those that directly harm a child; such as physical, verbal and sexual abuse or physical or emotional neglect – as well as those that affect the environment where they grow up; including parental separation, domestic violence, mental illness, alcohol abuse, drug use or incarceration.

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Pediatrician develops whole-child assessment tool that includes ACEs questions

April 30, 2017 By in ACE Study, Adverse childhood experiences, Child trauma, Community prevention programs, Solutions 2 Comments

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Over the last dozen years or so, many pediatricians, astounded by the ramifications of the science of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) on the children they care for, began integrating this science into their practices. The most common approach has been to ask parents about ACEs using a questionnaire, and to use this information to counsel parents and identify resources for the family. Different practices have been using different questionnaires: Some ask parents for their ACE scores along with their children’s; others also add a resilience survey.

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The practice of ACEs science in the time of Trump

February 20, 2017 By in ACE Study, Adverse childhood experiences, Solutions 23 Comments

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As with any remarkable change, the 2016 presidential election, a swirl of intense acrimony that foreshadowed current events, actually produced a couple of major opportunities. It stripped away the ragged bandage covering a deep, festering wound of classism, racism, and economic inequality. This wound burst painfully, but it’s now open to the air and sunlight, the first step toward real healing. The second opportunity is how the election and its aftermath are engaging more Americans from many different walks of life. The election brought out people who hadn’t voted in years; its aftermath has engaged people who’d counted on someone else to do their citizenship work for them. All these people — all of us — now have an opportunity to work together to solve our most intractable problems. That knowledge is embodied in the science of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs).

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Just one year of child abuse costs San Francisco, CA, $300 million….but it doesn’t have to

January 12, 2017 By in ACE Study, Adverse childhood experiences, Child trauma, Chronic disease, Solutions 5 Comments

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In 2015, 5,545 children in San Francisco, CA, were reported to have experienced abuse. Of those, the reports of 753 children were substantiated. The expense to San Francisco for not preventing that abuse will cost $400,533 per child over his or her lifetime. That adds up to $301.6 million for just that one year, according to “The Economics of Child Abuse: A Study of San Francisco.”

And, because child abuse is profoundly underreported, the costs are likely to be as much as $5.6 billion for one year of children experiencing trauma, the report found.

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