How Childhood Trauma Affects Health

This week I watched a TED Talks video from Nadine Burke Harris, and the topic is how childhood trauma affects health throughout their whole lifetime. In this video, Dr. Harris talks about how childhood trauma can cause a numerous amount of health issues such as affecting brain development, hormonal systems, and immune system. She touches on the many different outlets that teens turn to or use to eliminate the pain they suffered as a child. Dr. Harris explains in the video that trauma like a parent being incarcerated or a child being abused is enough to alter their brain development. When the brain is altered many of the important parts of the brain that are used to function become different. For example, Dr. Harris explains that trauma affects the prefrontal cortex which plays a major part in learning, impulse control, and executive function. Also, she talked about the Nucleus Accumbens in the brain that control the pleasure and reward center that involves substance dependence. When it comes to physical health & childhood trauma the situation gets worst. Dr. Vince Felitti conducted at study called Adverse Childhood Experiences Study. In this study, about 17,500 adults were asked about different examples of trauma that they might have been exposed to as a child.
Every time the participant said yes another 1 point was added onto their score. They used this experiment to see how people that are exposed to trauma have more health problems than others. Like it was discovered that if a person has an Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) score of more than four, they are more at risk for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. People with high ACE scores are 2 times more likely to contract hepatitis. Also, people with high ACE scores are 4 time more likely to develop depression. Lastly, anyone that scores above 7 points on the study are three times more likely lung cancer and coronary heart disease. As I discussed in my first paragraph the trauma they experience affects their prefrontal cortex that controls impulsive behavior.
When this part is altered the person is more likely to engage in risky behavior often causing irrational decisions. With this being said yes their risky behaviors can cause all of those negative health issues; however, the reason behind them engaging in those risky behaviors is due to childhood trauma. I like to think of this situation as a domino effect, meaning when the first domino falls all the others come falling down. When a child is exposed to trauma it alters their brain, next they begin to involve themselves in risky behavior, and this results in health
problems. A child with ACES will act different than a child that didn’t experience any trauma. For example, they learn different because of their brain development is not where it’s supposed to be for a child their age. Also, I feel that they would act out possibly depending on what type of trauma they experienced. However, if you are a teacher you could try to help the child learn more for their own pace. Teachers could slightly alter the lessons so that the child could understand. A therapist could simply talk to the child about their trauma, and discover how their experiences can be turned into a positive experience. I feel if you address the experience & try to help the child understand and overcome the experience they will benefit greatly from it. This TED Talks really confirmed a lot of my thoughts about Childhood trauma. I’ve always believed that the trauma children experience will stay with them on a mental level impacting the way they think & feel for the rest of their life. I wasn’t aware of the physical health issues that come along with the trauma. I was surprised about the list of physical issues especially the fact about suicide. I feel different about children’s development because now I see how easy it is damage a child. It honestly makes me feel different about wanting to have kids mainly because I would not want to get a divorce one day, and my child have a bad childhood experience.