According to one of the unsettling statistics cited in “Thank You for Your Service,” for every American soldier killed in combat, 25 die by suicide. Tom Donahue’s moving work of advocacy journalism draws on a range of experts on the military and its mental health crisis, but it’s the first-person chronicles of the walking wounded […]
Community
Out of Our Mind. Art Therapy and Mindfulness with Refugees, Political Violence and Trauma
Combining art therapy and mindfulness in meeting the needs of refugees and asylum seekers is a novel innovation. This paper presents the integration of these approaches, and draws on examples from a short term art therapy and mindfulness meditation studio group, named Inhabited Studio. Art therapy and mindfulness are demonstrated to complement each other, and […]
Multilevel Prevention Trial of Alcohol Use Among American Indian and White High School Students in the Cherokee Nation
American Indians (AIs) suffer from significant health disparities related to alcohol. Early prevention is critical, because early onset is a risk factor for problematic use into adulthood, and AIs have a higher rate of early onset than do other groups. In addition, rural youths and rural youths who are a racial minority in their community […]
Two Years of Relationship-Focused Mentoring for First Nations, Métis, and Inuit Adolescents: Promoting Positive Mental Health
Claire Crooks, director of the Faculty of Education’s Centre for School Mental Health, led a team that implemented a mentorship program for Grade 7 and 8 Indigenous students in the Thames Valley District School Board (TVDSB). Groups of students met once a week with an Indigenous adult mentor. Their sessions focused on acquiring skills, in […]
Decreases in Suicide Deaths and Attempts Linked to the White Mountain Apache Suicide Surveillance and Prevention System
Suicide deaths among the White Mountain Apache tribe in Arizona dropped by nearly 40 percent between 2006 and 2012 compared to the previous six-year period due to community-based efforts, according to a new study by researchers at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. From 2001 to 2006, the suicide rate among 15- to 24-year-olds […]
Language Diversity and English Proficiency in the United States
While a record 64.7 million people ages 5 and older in the United States spoke a language other than English at home in 2015, a growing share of them are also fully proficient in English. Sixty percent of those speaking a foreign language at home were fully proficient in English in 2015, up from 56 […]