Assignment 1: How Child Trauma Affects Health Across the Lifetime PDF

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Essay about Dr. Burke Harris's TED Talk regarding how child trauma and adverse childhood experiences affect negative health outcomes throughout the life for Professor Clark-Addison's class....

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Running head: HOW CHILD TRAUMA AFFECTS HEALTH ACROSS A LIFETIME

How Child Trauma Affects Health Across a Lifetime Amanda J. Scheuer Rutgers University

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Dr. Nadine Burke Harris’ TED Talk focused on the topic of early childhood adversity and the effects of toxic stress on physical and mental health throughout the lifespan. She discovered that adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) such as exposure to abuse, neglect, parental mental illness, substance dependence, incarceration, parental separation/divorce, and domestic violence, can all have negative health outcomes later in life. From a biopsychosocial view, this kind of trauma in early childhood causes multidimensional harm. Burke Harris explains that exposure to adversity in early childhood can change the structure and function of the brain, which can lead to high-risk behaviors later in life like substance dependence. The textbook by Elizabeth D. Hutchison describes the ways that ACEs can have a negative effect on not just the brain’s structure, but on other psychological and social processes as well. Witnessing parental divorce or domestic violence at an early age can lead to behavioral problems and severe aggression (Hutchison, 2015). Additionally, those who suffer emotional abuse often experience alienation and intimacy problems (Hutchison, 2015). Burke Harris finished her presentation with a call to action: to find the solution to the single greatest unaddressed public health threat today, it is crucial to learn how to interrupt the progression from ACEs to detrimental health outcomes. There are implications for development among children facing maltreatment at each embedded level of the social environment. Adversity can occur at at the micro-social level, from those the child has individual contact with; at the meso-level, from a group of people or from an indirect influence; and at the macro-level, from larger institutions or systematic maltreatment (Module 2, PPT Presentation). Burke Harris described how abuse and neglect, micro-social ACEs, are correlated with negative health outcomes. On the meso-level, a child may have harmful health outcomes if they are exposed to the stress of having an incarcerated relative, going through a parental divorce, or witnessing domestic violence or substance abuse. Macro-

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social stressors involve being exposed to adversity on a bigger scale, such as racism and violence in society. While Burke Harris did address micro- and meso-level ACEs, there was minimal attention paid to these macro-social experiences during her presentation. Burke Harris could have addressed the macro-level issues even more forcefully by emphasizing that many ACE studies haven’t focused on societal issues like racism, poverty, and homelessness, which are all sources of toxic stress for children. She especially could have stressed this in reference to the homogeneous nature of most research about ACEs; being that a greater percentage of minorities are living below the poverty level, these children may not be included in those studies (Hutchison, 2015). It is important to recognize and develop new ways to approach ACEs in order to solve this public health crisis, but it is especially important to understand these harmful experiences on the macro level that are not often brought to light. The concept of person-environment transactions refers to the ways in which individuals influence their environment just as their environment influences them. People are just as much producers of their environment as they are products of it (Module 2, PPT presentation). Burke Harris’s argument demonstrates this relationship at each level of the social environment. At the micro-level, if a child is physically abused or neglected, they are more likely to experience delayed cognitive and language skills, anxiety, and poor peer relations, all of which can lead to isolation and a withdrawn social environment (Hutchison, 2015). An example of a meso-level transaction is that a child who witnesses domestic violence is more likely to display increased aggression and behavioral problems, which might lead to deviant, high-risk behaviors. Similarly, at the macro-level, an individual born into poverty may be more likely to engage in high-risk behaviors such as using and selling illegal drugs, which may result in their incarceration later in life. Exposure to early adversity impacts behavior and health across the lifespan, which can

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complicate social work practice because it is difficult to recognize and interrupt the progression from ACEs to negative health outcomes. Early intervention is most effective, but it isn’t always possible, so it is crucial to continue researching and bringing light to this issue. Burke Harris’s argument, particularly her explanation of the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis, incorporates insights from a complex systems perspective. This axis is the brain and body’s stress response system, which is especially sensitive during early childhood development. High adversity acts on the body as a repeated stressor that can cause maladaptive changes in the structure and function of the brain (Module 5, PPT Presentation, Slide 11). This is represented by the complex systems theory because the simpler parts interact with each other as one system to cause different biological, psychological, and social outcomes. It is indirect and nonlinear, meaning this interaction does not happen as a cause-and-effect, but rather a feedback loop of interactions causing and being caused by one another; it is non-reductionist because one cannot reduce the system to just one part; it is probabilistic because the presence of an ACE doesn’t guarantee a specific health outcome, but it does increase the likelihood that it will occur; and it is heterogeneous because every part and every outcome of the system works in different ways for different people (Module 5, PPT Presentation). Complex systems theory works to enhance sensitivity to diversity by recognizing that all children are uniquely exposed to different ACEs and are thus impacted in a variety of ways. Researchers should keep in mind that children experience adverse experiences on many different levels, and should thus study the effects of ACEs on more diverse populations in order to develop a better understanding of this concept.

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References Harris, N. B. (2014, September). Retrieved October 05, 2018, from https://www.ted.com/talks/nadine_burke_harris_how_childhood_trauma_affects_health_ across_a_lifetime/up-next Hutchison, E. D. (2015). Dimensions of human behavior: The changing life course. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications....