#42 - MySpace Will Share Sex Offender Information

I am quite concerned after reading the latest news about MySpace complying to releasing information about known sex offenders:

Top News - MySpace to Share Sex Offender Data - AOL News

MySpace has disclosed that about 7,000 profiles had already been removed.

Here's the problem... did MySpace report these profiles to the police?

Every time we fail to stop a predator... we are leaving wide opportunity for another child to be victimized.

MySpace needs to do more.

It is just the right thing to do.

Loretta Kelly, MSW

#41 - Sexual Abuse Laws

One of the curses of surviving any form of abuse is that tickling in the back of the mind asking,

"Did this really happen?"

or

"Well, it wasn't THAT bad."

Defining abuse for ourselves, as survivors, is a process... not a one moment event.

Validation can come from many places, but seeing concrete definitions of what is considered child abuse by the law is a good place to start.

Here is an excellent resource to help you navigate through the laws regarding child sexual abuse:

Sex Abuse and Exploitation Laws

Loretta Kelly, MSW

#40 - Children's Rights

Please take a moment to visit this powerful photo essay that defines the rights of children worldwide:


UNICEF Photo essay - The rights of the child - I of II

#39 - Support Youth Suicide Prevention Funding

Support Youth Suicide Prevention Funding

April 20, 2007

Each year, over 31,000 Americans die by suicide and over 1.4 million make a suicide attempt. Suicide deaths consistently outnumber homicide deaths by a margin of three to two. You can act now to urge Congress to support funding for suicide prevention programs.

Action Required

As part of the FY 2008 budget now pending before Congress, a bipartisan coalition of senators – led by Senators Christopher Dodd (D-CT) and Gordon Smith (R-OR) – are seeking full funding for youth suicide prevention programs under the Garrett Lee Smith (GLS) Memorial Act. Advocates are strongly encouraged to contact their senators and urge them to join Senators Dodd and Smith and sign on to their letter urging $40 million for FY 2008 for programs under the Garrett Lee Smith Act. The deadline for signing on to the Dodd-Smith letter is April 25.

Contact your senator today through
NAMI's Legislative Action Center.

NAMI E-News Alerts are electronic newsletters provided free of charge as a public service. With more than 1,100 state and local affiliates, NAMI is the nation's largest grassroots organization dedicated to improving the lives of people with severe mental illnesses. Contributions to support our work can be made online.

#38 - Silent All These Years - Tori Amos

Here's the music that inspired Finding a Voice:

#37 - Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and Childhood

This month (MARCH, 2007) in Pediatrics - Official Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, new research is reporting that childhood stress related to traumatic experiences may cause changes in the brain.



This early study suggests that stress from trauma may cause a smaller hippocamus.

The hippocampus is part of your brain. It is buried deep in the forebrain (front). The hippocampus regulates emotion and memory.

Researchers are hypothesizing (educated guessing) that these brain changes may cause a childhood trauma survivor to have less physical resources to respond to stress.

If you are under stress...

you need your hippocampus to help you control the overwhelming feelings of anxiety.

If your hippocampus has been damaged by earlier trauma experiences...

you have less to work with and ,therefore...

the stress is more anxiety provoking.

So the theory would be that if you have survived a childhood trauma and suffer with post-traumatic stress disorder, your brain has undergone changes. These brain changes make you have a much more difficult time controlling anxiety than someone who has not experienced trauma.

Lest we forget, the brain is a body organ.

My opinion is that people are often shamed when they are having a powerful wave of uncomfortable emotions... and this makes facing the challenges of anxiety even more difficult.

Be gentle with yourself.

If you have had a traumatic experience, science needs time to catch up with what you probably already know.

Your ability to handle stress has probably been compromised by physical changes in your body.

There are medications that can help with this, counseling to help you cope and gain control...

and also lifestyle changes that must be made for the quality of your life to be the best it can be.

The new research did discover that cortisol levels are effected in children who have PTSD.

Cortisol is commonly called a "stress hormone".

Corisol effects blood pressure, insulin, blood sugar, and how our body metabolizes fat and carbohydrates.



If your body can not use cortisol (the "stress hormone") properly...

you may encounter high blood pressure, challenges with blood sugar and weight gain.

Some resources also suggest that cortisol problems may lead immunity diseases.

Regarding this study and this blog summary...

readers need to understand that this is a VERY SMALL research study. Only 15 children were test subjects.

That is called a small sampling. For more thorough research... you really need a much larger group of people to participate in the study.

Researching children for any scientific endeavor is EXTREMELY challenging.

Scientists must be careful to do no harm to their test subjects.

So researching trauma in childhood is complicated.

Scientists can only research children who are in saferty, and who will not experience any harm from being researched.

This is one of the many reasons why medical research appears to be so slow for childhood physical and emotional challenges.

That being said...

I think this early result is promising for many trauma survivors.

First of all, just knowing that your body has been physically altered by experiencing an emotional event can be VERY validating.

You are not crazy. You are not over reacting. Yes... life is more challenging for you because something in you has been altered that should not have happened.

And in regards to child abuse prevention and intervention...

with scientific data to back up what frontline child abuse workers and advocates already know...

the way is being paved to increase funding towards protecting children and offering compassionate support to helping communities raise their children.

Loretta Kelly, MSW




RESOURCES:

Here is a summary of the original research:

Stress Predicts Brain Changes in Children: A Pilot Longitudinal Study on Youth Stress, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, and the...

You can read news coverage of this research here:

BBC NEWS Health Stress may 'damage child brains'

HIPPOCAMPUS:

Hippocampus definition - Medical Dictionary definitions of popular medical terms

CORTISOL ("stress hormone"):

cortisol: Definition and Much More from Answers.com

Stress and Weight Gain Information by MedicineNet.com

#36 - March 12th CNN - Sins of the Father

Tonight, Monday, March 12th at 10:00 pm ET, Cnn will be broadcasting an hourlong program to the story of Thomas Roberts, news anchor. Mr. Roberts will share his story of surviving abuse at the hands of Calvert Hall chaplain, "Father Jeff" Toohey.

Read more here:

CNN.com - Anderson Cooper 360

and here:

CNN to air sex-abuse documentary - Examiner.com

Please make sure to check your local television listings for the proper time.

Would you like to join Catholic grassroots advocacy?

Voice of the Faithful was formed in response to the clergy sex abuse scandal in Boston Massachusetts.

You can learn more here:

Voice Of the Faithful

#35 - Anna Nicole Smith: How Do Parents Grieve?

The media frenzy has been fast and furious over the death of Anna Nicole Smith .

Lest we all forget...

one of the most unimaginable tragedies for a parent is the death of a child.

I can not locate the source today, but while counseling grieving parents, I learned that the untimely death of the mother is extremely high for the first five years or so after the death of her child.

Public tragedies such as Anna Nicole's resound in our hearts.

People are already judging her harshly, but the day her son died...

her life was flipped upside down and inside out.

May she now rest in peace.

Loretta Kelly, MSW

Here are some resources about parental grief:

The Child Death Helpline (for UK)

The Sudden Death of a Child

The Grief of the Parents: A Lifetime Journey

Here is an important link for those of us who have grieved miscarriage:

Child Miscarriage and Child Death Support Website

Tragedies covered on the media may cause those who have been traumatized to re-experience the emotional pain from a personal trauma.

Crisis phone counseling is available here:

USA National Crisis Hotlines

#34 - Childhood is Sacred

Childhood is Sacred.

I just needed to say that.

#33 - MySpace and Sex Predators

Congress is pushing for social network sites, such as MySpace, to have access to the database of registered sex offenders.

Here's the news article:

Money News:- Congress Targeting Online Sex Offenders - AOL Money & Finance