Children’s Anxiety When Living In Violent Environments Can Cause Sleep Troubles
Many kids who live in fear of violence in their neighborhoods suffer from nightmares and sleep disorders. As a result they are not getting enough sleep, and that's affecting their behavior and academic performance, experts say. In related news, hospital workers in San Francisco work to keep schoolchildren safe as as the kids walk to after-school activities.
The Baltimore Sun:
When Violence Leads To Sleep Problems In Children
Danielle Montgomery woke up in a panic, peering around her darkened bedroom. To the teenager's relief, she was still alive. Not like in the nightmare where her lifeless body lay under a black tarp as her family huddled around crying. The dream interrupted her sleep again and again after the 15-year-old saw a dead body for the first time last year. While headed to the bus stop one morning on her way to school, she stumbled upon a crime scene. What she saw came to haunt her: Police milling around in a yard, a black tarp on the ground, and, underneath, a dead body. (McDaniels, 11/22)
Modern Healthcare:
Hospitals Broaden Scope Of Community-Benefit Work
It's a 2:54 on a sunny Thursday afternoon in the gang-ridden Tenderloin district of San Francisco, and community volunteers wearing lime-green and orange vests are patrolling an 11-block stretch. Their mission is to keep area schoolchildren safe from drug dealers, gangbangers and other threats as the kids walk to their afterschool activities. Called the “corner captains,” they are the mothers of the students as well as other volunteers participating in the Safe Passage initiative. Cool and collected, they keep watch for an hour each weekday. Earlier this year, an intersection in this area, Turk and Leavenworth, was the site of a double shooting on an early Monday afternoon. (Kutscher, 11/21)