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Author: Laura Godenick, TICN Program Coordinator

Armon Hurst is a student at Castlemont High School in Oakland, CA. He is the vice president of the student body, has a 4.0 GPA, loves to play baseball, and is set up to go to college next year. But, he wasn’t always so successful. A few years ago in 2016, Hurst was exposed to gun violence and for a while afterwards, he was having trouble sleeping, eating consistently, and concentrating in school. It wasn’t until Hurst had a conversation with a staff member of YouthAlive!, a nonprofit focused on developing youth leadership as well as preventing gun violence and helping to heal those who have been exposed to it, that he was able to recognize and begin to heal his own trauma.

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Author: Susie Wiet

It was when I had a conversation with Dr. Tasneem Ismailji, a pediatrician visiting from the San Francisco Bay area, about the importance of letting primary care practitioners know that resiliency from trauma was indeed possible that the idea arose to create the tool. It is called the Health Resiliency Stress Questionnaire (HRSQ). The goal of the HRSQ is for it to be easy and quick to complete by patients and an easy way for the provider to see patterns and respond accordingly. One of the main functions of the HRSQ is to help practitioners ask some tough questions to the patient and for the patient to feel heard. The effect that negative emotional states have on the health and wellbeing of the physical body has been researched extensively. It has been shown how simply being listened to, heard, and validated can be tremendously healing.  Read More

Author: Laura Godenick, TICN Program Coordinator

Dr. Nadine Burke Harris was recently appointed as the Surgeon General for California on February 11th, 2019. This will be the first time that California has appointed anyone for this position. Dr. Harris is a national leader in pediatric medicine. Read More

Author: Laura Godenick, TICN Program Coordinator

In this article, Ed Bullmore, psychiatrist and neuroscientist based in Cambridge, UK, speaks on the new and somewhat controversial research of neuro-immunology or immuno-psychiatry. Neuro-immunology focuses on the immune system’s effect on the brain through interacting with the nervous system while immuno-psychiatry investigates how mental health is affected by the immune system. Ed relays his experience of how depressed he felt after getting a root canal surgery. He discusses the mental leap from blaming his thoughts for his mood to discovering the possibility that it could actually be the inflammation in his body’s immune system that was responsible for his depressed state of mind. He calls this phenomena “the inflamed mind” and argues that depression could be a direct result of inflammation of the body.

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