Consultant and speaker Baruti Kafele talks frankly about his challenges to be healthy mentally and physically when he was a school principal and gives advice for leaders who are struggling with the mental balancing act.

This article describes the impact on young children of sudden and extended separation from a primary attachment figure. It recommends clinical intervention when the child's development and family functioning are negatively affected by the severity of the child's symptoms, and it highlights key treatment modalities derived from Child-Parent…

Children and adolescents who experience parental incarceration are faced with significant challenges. Additionally, parental incarceration disproportionally affects African American families and families in urban settings. Due to institutional, economic, and social barriers, access to community mental health services for these affected children…

In this report, Defending the Early Years (DEY) offers offers some thoughts and suggestions for supporting young children through COVID-19. Topics discussed include: (1) falling behind; (2) communicating with grandparents, family, and friends; (3) routines; (4) play; (5) time to teach skills; (6) screen time; (7) talking with children; and (8)…

Women with families face particular challenges when they undertake Higher Education. Questions arise about coping with the demands of study, new family routines, and the changed identity when mother becomes student: Can I manage it all? How will my family react? Will they give me the time and support I need? The author, herself a mother and…

Patient-centered care is extending the sphere of health care beyond the patient, focusing attention upon the family caregiver(s). In this context, patient-family relationships are at the center of consistent, well-developed interprofessional interventions that encompass caregiver education, training, and wellness. Cohort models of intervention…

It is estimated that there are 1,678,778 military children in the United States, with 80% of them attending U.S. civilian operated public schools. Therefore, it is critical that educators across school settings have access to information that supports the academic, behavioral, and social emotional health of military children. The current paper…

Part of the Center for Education Equity, Mid-Atlantic Equity Consortium's (CEE's) "Exploring Equity Issues" series, this paper discusses social and emotional learning (SEL) and the special challenges faced by immigrant students in this area. For immigrant students, the challenge of SEL is compounded by their simultaneous navigation of…

Providing treatment to survivors of human trafficking requires mental health professionals to understand complex layers of multiple traumas. These layers include an understanding of how trafficking occurs; what gender, ages, sexual orientations, life circumstances, and ethnicities are most at risk to be trafficked; the lasting impact of…

This article presents a narrative account of one gender-variant student and his experiences in public school and school music. In the sixth grade, Ryan began cross-dressing and announced that he was gay. While his family was supportive, the school community's response was hostile. Ryan was eventually forced out of public education, ending his…

Family language policy (FLP), like language policies in general, includes aspects of practice, management and ideology. But FLP is often affected by and affects emotional issues and psychological dimensions that are seldom acknowledged as central in the analysis of such policies. Relying on a psychoanalytic theoretical framework, this article…

Childhood epilepsy is the most common paediatric neurological disorder. It is a condition with a well-documented association with cognitive, behavioural and emotional difficulties. Children with epilepsy are at increased risk of global and specific cognitive impairments. They are also at increased risk for symptoms associated with attention…

This article describes the story of resilience of a mother who achieved multiple successes despite challenges that included child abuse and homelessness. The factors that contributed to her success included consistent support from a team of staff of the family Assertive Community Treatment (FACT) Program. This agency serves mothers from 18 to 25…

Bereavement has been extensively studied over the years, yet scholarly work depicting, with the first-person perspective, the experience of childhood bereavement is severely lacking. The research question I set out to answer here is: What is it like as an Asian child to experience bereavement following grandparental death? As such,…

When dealing with families that have been somatically fixated, it is important to initially focus on the symptoms, while not getting dragged into the way that the symptoms have become a centrally organizing event for the family. This allows the clinician to connect with the family around the physical symptoms, which they have become hypervigilant…