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Food Addiction: Chemical Dependency’s Twin
Most addicts start on the path to addiction using food as the first drug. The addict “to be” starts life with a genetic predisposition. Whatever was happening in the future addict’s life to set him/her on the addiction journey (with this genetic vulnerability), happened at an early age. The...
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Embracing Harm Reduction
Many of the people we serve in supportive housing use drugs and alcohol; some in ways that disrupt their lives. That is a fact. Behavior change is hard. That is a truism, and a fact. It is our job as supportive housing providers to serve people who may have struggled for most of their lives with...
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Drinking for Two: Why We Need to Prevent Alcohol Use During Pregnancy
It was forty years ago that Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS) was first diagnosed by Drs. David Smith and Kenneth Jones at the University of Washington, when a group of babies born to different mothers who consumed alcohol during pregnancy were noticed to have similar physical and behavioral problems....
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Brief Overview of Treatment and Prevention of Substance Abuse and Mental Illness
Substance abuse and psychiatric conditions frequently co-exist. According to NAMI, most mental health services are not adequately equipped to address both conditions. This makes treatment and prevention of substance abuse in the presence of mental illness a challenging task due to several moving...
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Integrating Mental Health and Substance Abuse Treatment
Integrated treatment produces better outcomes for individuals with co-occurring mental and substance use disorders. Without integrated treatment, one or both disorders may not be addressed properly. Mental health and substance abuse authorities across the country are taking steps to integrate...
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Early Childhood Social-Emotional Development: Building Healthy Foundations for A Lifetime of Success
A seminal publication in 2000 From Neurons to Neighborhoods, The Science of Early Childhood Development has established the importance of early childhood experiences on lifelong well-being (JP Shonkoff & DA Phillips, Eds., 2000). Ongoing research continues to demonstrate that the early years in...
