Stop The Cycle

Predicting and preventing youth and family violence

Kathryn Seifert Ph.D.

Prevent Youth Violence

Violence Risk Assessment in Behavioral Health

Behavioral health providers are increasingly using youth violence risk assessments in schools. In some states, it has become mandatory.

How to Prevent the Next School Shooting

School shootings are in the news. Find out how to prevent these tragedies.

Guns or No Guns for Those With Mental Illness?

Another school shooting. What can we do?

What’s Normal?

When it comes to childhood aggression, what is normal and what is not? When does behavior cross the line from anger to aggression?

Bringing Down the Cost of Healthcare

There are 3 effective ways to bring down to cost of healthcare without reducing quality or outcomes. These include prevention, early treatment and integrated care.

9 Youth Violence Prevention Recommendations

Everyone wants to know how to prevent the next school shooting. Here are 10 recommendations to move us closer to that goal.

Connecting Child Maltreatment and Behavior Health Problems

About 13% of US children have mental health and/or substance abuse problems. Prevention and treatment must consider child maltreatment as a possible factor to address.

What Can Be Done to Prevent the Next Mass Murder?

Reducing the unacceptably high number of mass murders and other types of violence in the US will require multiple methods. Prevention through Behavioral Health methods is one.

8 Steps for Solving the Opioid Addiction Epidemic in the US

Opioid use, abuse and deaths are now considered a US epidemic, from Prince to the man on the street. Integrated services may be part of the solution.

Back to the Good Ole Days - Part 2

The "Good Ole Days" are not all they are "cracked up" to be.

Oh, How I Long for the Good Ole Days

The simpler life of decades and centuries past has much to endear it to our hearts and much that is best left in the past causing us to both dream and cringe.

Radicalization of Young Muslims

Radicalization is a growing and terriffying problem from Paris to Canada and around the world. The radicalization process has been well studied by scholars and much is known about it. Publicising what is known can help us put prevention strategies in place. Risk reduction is found in interventions in violent homes and communities, reaching out to disinfranchised youth.

Guns, Mental Illness, Substance Abuse, Trauma and Murder

Restricting guns and increasing access to mental health treatment is only part of the answer to violence in the US. We need to look at the role of substance abuse and family violence that surrounds children with violence. There is a need to examine our cultural tolerance of substance abuse and guns as a rite of passage and family violence as nobody else's business.

Handcuff an 8 Year Old

Should school resource officers be handcuffing children? Most certainly it will be needed until there are sufficient behavoral health services in schools for children with special needs to provide intensive daily services for the most at risk youth and include families in the intervention.

Assessment of Police Officers & Others in Dangerous Jobs

Assessment and therapy to reduce risk of excessive use of force by some law enforcement officers can weed out applicants not suited for the job and change the behaviors of others

Lubitz Likely Practiced Mass Murder by Airplane

New details are still emerging about the Germanwings plane crash in the Alps in March of this year. Many are focused on the fact that co-pilot, Andreas Lubitz, had been diagnosed with a mental illness as being his major risk factor for suicide and mass murder. Mental illness alone is NOT a risk factor for violence or mass murder.

What Is Your Problem, Baltimore?

What Is Your Problem, Baltimore? Racism, Lack of Economic Opportunity, Community Engagement, or Something Else?

War on Terror

“Je Suis Moath al-Kasasbeh”

ISIS and other terrorist groups enraged the world with their actions. Fighting terrorists with lethal weapons will be part of, but not the entire answer. Examining the roots of terrorism will lead the world to ideas about prevention.

Lone-Wolf Terrorists and Mental Illness

The question we must ask ourselves is what can we do to reduce the risk of violent acts carried out by lone-wolf terrorists? The answer to this question is not simply better intelligence or a more effective police force.

Who Is Dangerous In High Stress Situations?

Law enforcement, military, and correctional personnel face dangerous situations daily. They may have to take actions extremely quickly. At the same time there may be changing standards of conduct. Training, supervision, oversite and clarity of communication are essential for the standards to be followed effectively and support those that must make such decisions.

Racial Justice

Racial Unrest in 1963 and 2014: What Have We Learned

Racial unrest in the US has resurfaced in Ferguson, MO with a fury that is familiar to those of us that grew up during the civil rights movement of the 1960's. The story is not one of blame but of social evolution and development toward greater globalization and mutual benefit.

Violence Risk Reduction Planning

While the murder rate in the U.S. is down as a whole, the mass murder rate has been rising. Many have been broadcasting the fact that we are seeing an overall decline in the murder rate in this country but the U.S. still has the highest violence and incarceration rates of all advanced nations in the world.

Violence: Beyond the Sidelines

In the last two years, over a dozen events involving NFL players have been associated with domestic violence.

From the Dark Ages of ISIS to Post Modernism

There are many different levels of social development that can be prominent in different parts of the world. ISIS is at a pre-modern level of social development where power over others is the main goal. Much of the rest of the world is at the level of resource sharing. These levels are incompatable and will be nearly impossible to solve by traditional means.

“Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor…”

In the United States, we have our own humanitarian crisis with 52,000 unaccompanied children, and an unknown number of families and adults, at our borders seeking refuge from the murder, rape and violence of their native countries.

Discipline, Forgetfulness, Child Abuse: Where is the Line?

The news, almost daily, has stories of harm done to children. Where do we draw the line?

Land of the Free, Home of the Prisoners

Land of the Free, Home of the Prisoners

In the U.S. we lock up more of our citizens than any other country. If we do not reform our prison system in a meaningful progressive way, our situation will continue to worsen from a psychological, economic and cultural standpoint.

Fort Hood Shooting: How Could We Have Known?

Ivan Lopez killed three people and injured many others before turning the gun on himself. Is there some way that we could have known that this storm was brewing? Could we have provided better treatment? Prevented this attack? For all of the above, I believe the answer is “yes."

Beyond Bullying: When Abuse Becomes Extreme

Bullying often ranges from a moderate problem to small growing pains. But what happens when students or youth go too far and display extreme abusive behavior? A recent story in Maryland shocked the country with its gruesome details. How can we prevent this type of violence from occurring in other schools?

Death by Stoning: Why Is This Sickening Punishment Legal?

Most of us think of stoning as an ancient punishment. But in 2014, it is still legal or being practiced in certain places.

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