The word stress is everywhere and highly overused. Everyone is stressed, it seems, all the time. Looking into the meaning of stress in the natural science and the humanities, this book explores cellular stress as cause of and in correlation with what humans experience as stress. When do we psychologically feel stress and when do we show physiological evidence of stress in our brain? Stress is a deviation from what feels normal and healthy. It can be created by social or economic factors and become chronic, which has substantial impacts on the individual and society as a whole. Focusing on poverty as one chronic inducer of stress, this book explores how the lack of pressure-free time, the hardships and unpredictability of everyday life and a general lack of protection lead to destructive toxic stress. This pressure affects cognitive and social functioning, brain development during childhood and may also result in premature aging. How can the sciences inform our understanding of and our response to stress? What can be done about toxic stress both on a personal level and in terms of structures and policies? The book is written for anyone interested in stress, its causes and consequences, and its relationship to poverty.

The strengths and abilities children develop from infancy through adolescence are crucial for their physical, emotional, and cognitive growth, which in turn help them to achieve success in school and to become responsible, economically self-sufficient, and healthy adults. Capable, responsible, and healthy adults are clearly the foundation of a well-functioning and prosperous society, yet America's future is not as secure as it could be because millions of American children live in families with incomes below the poverty line. A wealth of evidence suggests that a lack of adequate economic resources for families with children compromises these children's ability to grow and achieve adult success, hurting them and the broader society. A Roadmap to Reducing Child Poverty reviews the research on linkages between child poverty and child well-being, and analyzes the poverty-reducing effects of major assistance programs directed at children and families. This report also provides policy and program recommendations for reducing the number of children living in poverty in the United States by half within 10 years.

Children living in poverty are more likely to have mental health problems, and their conditions are more likely to be severe. Of the approximately 1.3 million children who were recipients of Supplemental Security Income (SSI) disability benefits in 2013, about 50% were disabled primarily due to a mental disorder. An increase in the number of children who are recipients of SSI benefits due to mental disorders has been observed through several decades of the program beginning in 1985 and continuing through 2010. Nevertheless, less than 1% of children in the United States are recipients of SSI disability benefits for a mental disorder. At the request of the Social Security Administration, Mental Disorders and Disability Among Low-Income Children compares national trends in the number of children with mental disorders with the trends in the number of children receiving benefits from the SSI program, and describes the possible factors that may contribute to any differences between the two groups. This report provides an overview of the current status of the diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders, and the levels of impairment in the U.S. population under age 18. The report focuses on 6 mental disorders, chosen due to their prevalence and the severity of disability attributed to those disorders within the SSI disability program: attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, oppositional defiant disorder/conduct disorder, autism spectrum disorder, intellectual disability, learning disabilities, and mood disorders. While this report is not a comprehensive discussion of these disorders, Mental Disorders and Disability Among Low-Income Children provides the best currently available information regarding demographics, diagnosis, treatment, and expectations for the disorder time course - both the natural course and under treatment.

Draws together evidence that poverty causes serious mental illness and gives recommendations as to what can be done about this.

In the United States, some populations suffer from far greater disparities in health than others. Those disparities are caused not only by fundamental differences in health status across segments of the population, but also because of inequities in factors that impact health status, so-called determinants of health. Only part of an individual's health status depends on his or her behavior and choice; community-wide problems like poverty, unemployment, poor education, inadequate housing, poor public transportation, interpersonal violence, and decaying neighborhoods also contribute to health inequities, as well as the historic and ongoing interplay of structures, policies, and norms that shape lives. When these factors are not optimal in a community, it does not mean they are intractable: such inequities can be mitigated by social policies that can shape health in powerful ways. Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity seeks to delineate the causes of and the solutions to health inequities in the United States. This report focuses on what communities can do to promote health equity, what actions are needed by the many and varied stakeholders that are part of communities or support them, as well as the root causes and structural barriers that need to be overcome.

Improve outcomes for students in poverty by understanding their developing brains Economic hardship is changing our students’ brain structures at a genetic level, producing psychological, behavioral, and cognitive issues that dramatically impact learning, behavior, physical health, and emotional stability. But there is hope. This groundbreaking book by one of the nation’s top experts in brain science and resilience offers solutions that will change minds, attitudes, and behaviors. Learn about how problems develop between people of different races, how the brain develops in persistent poverty, and how it might react to solutions. Inside, you will find real-life applications on topics including: • The lack of culturally competent instruction and its impact on students of color • Poverty′s effect on language development and how it can be positively influenced • The importance of reading • How to counteract the effects of the widespread stress in lower SES environments Children make up 23% of the U.S. population and account for almost 33% of those living in poverty, making the education system our most distressed institution. In The Poverty Problem, you’ll learn how to increase students’ perseverance and confidence and positively impact outcomes by arming yourself with research-based instructional strategies that are inspiring, realistic, and proven to work.

This work is intended to portray the interrelationship of heredity, individual development, and the evolution of species in a way that can be understood by nonspecialists. In striving to offer a straightforward historical exposition of the complex topic of nature and nurture, the author tells the story through a central cast of characters beginning with Lamarck in 1809 and ending with a synthesis of his own that depicts how extragenetic behavioral changes in individual development could be the first stages in the pathway leading to evolutionary change. On the way to that goal, he describes relevant conceptual aspects of genetics, embryological development, and evolutionary biology in a nontechnical and accurate way for students and colleagues in the behavioral and social sciences. The book presents a highly selected review as a prelude to the description of a developmental theory of the phenotype in which behavioral change leads eventually to evolutionary change. This book grew out of an invited interdisciplinary course of lectures for advanced undergraduate and graduate students at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Presenting the various ways about thinking about heredity, individual development, and evolution, the author had three goals in mind: *to establish the relevance of individual development to the evolution of species; *to describe the most appropriate way to think about or conceptualize heredity in relation to individual development; *to show that this somewhat unorthodox manner of conceptualizing heredity and individual development gives rise to a new way to think about the behavioral pathway leading to evolution. In conclusion, the present work will provide a contribution toward the possible dissolution of the nature-nurture dichotomy, as well as a contribution to evolutionary theory.