Twenty years ago, Hami Torres fled Mexico at age 13, her 11-year-old brother in tow. Terrified, they trekked for hours with a group of older strangers through desert scrub that slashed Hami’s bare legs bloody. Then the two children were folded into the spare-tire compartment of a car for the drive across the border.
The Torres children had left their home country to reunite with their mother and stepfather, who had entered the United States three months before. Yet once the children made it to this country, the ordeal wasn’t over. They lived in a crime-ravaged neighborhood where Hami was expected to join a gang for protection. She constantly feared being found by immigration authorities, always looking over her shoulder for officials who might find out she was undocumented.
Share This Post!
It Happened Here: Dr. Margaret Morgan Lawrence
By NYP History Every time she was turned away, Dr. Margaret Morgan Lawrence, whose career began at NewYork-Presbyterian in the 1940s, found a new opportunity to succeed, eventually becoming the first [...]
The Impact of Childhood Trauma on Developing Bipolar Disorder
By Yann Quidé, Leonardo Tozzi, Mark Corcoran, Dara M Cannon, Maria R Dauvermann Childhood trauma (CT) has been repeatedly linked to earlier onset and greater severity of bipolar disorder (BD) in adulthood. However, such knowledge [...]
Protecting Children from Sexual Abuse in the #MeToo Era
By Nickolas Agathis, MD Do you keep up with any modern social movements, such as #MeToo, #BlackLivesMatter or #KeepFamiliesTogether? The conversations surrounding them are still grabbing widespread attention through social media [...]
Immigrant Health is Interpersonal
By Amanda Venta, PhD Waves of Latinx immigration to the United States have changed in recent decades, and our scientific literature is only beginning to catch up. Regional violence and unrest [...]
Essential Elements of a Trauma-Informed Juvenile Justice System
NCTSN Trauma-informed policies and procedures make juvenile justice organizations safer and more effective by ensuring the physical and psychological safety of all youth, family members, and staff and promoting their recovery [...]
How Childhood Trauma Can Impact the Brain
Written by Kaytee Gillis, LCSW A recent study published in Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging finds that childhood trauma can lead to disruptions in two main regions of the brain, the default mode network (DMN) and [...]