More good information on the adolescent brain

I so appreciate the nuance of this NPR article, The Teenage Brain: Spock vs. Captain Kirk   It simply explains a couple of the risks that come with adolescence without casting dispersion on young people.

Also, I am attaching a video below that I use to explain Adolescent Brain Development when I make presentations. It is a cartoon, but it does a good job making good points in an easily-understandable way.

By the way, the reason so many of us do not already know some of the details about how the brain develops is that the advanced imaging technology that we take for granted, today, was not available prior to the mid 1990s. Scientists and physicians are revisiting concepts that have long been held as facts--like the idea that the cerebellum is responsible for motor function, only--and learning that we were wrong for years and years.

Now that we know how the brain develops and how psychotropic substances like THC and Alcohol impact the development processes, there is simply no excuse for giving our young people pot or alcohol. We know better, now.

The Role of Adverse Childhood Experiences in Adult Mental Health/Substance Abuse problems

There are two interesting articles on NPR's website regarding Adverse Childhood Experiences and their potential impact on people's behaviors.

Here's a link to their feature story, "Can Family Secrets Make You Sick?"

This one administers the quiz (I have "Finding Your ACE Score" available to print out and administer over in the sidebar under "Education") and explains some of the potential problems that having many ACEs can correlate with: "Take the ACE Quiz and Learn What it Does and Doesn't Mean"

The What Shapes Health Report by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is here, and also in the sidebar under "Education." Of course, I simply swiped it from the link in the NPR story, but I enjoy keeping everything together so it is easy to find in the future.

 I always remind people that, though there is nothing we can do to take always the pain of past adverse experiences, we can help compensate for them (both individually and as a society) by shoring up Protective Factors. That's where I see real hope for us all.