University:
Morehouse College
Course:
HBIO 240 | Introduction to Public Health Science
Academic year:

2023
Views:

16

Pages:

2
Author:

do3ran7ut

Mental Health and Home Environments Mental health is a significant aspect of every person’s overall health. It is a public health concern for which healthcare professionals, educators, and family members have worked collaboratively over the years to treat, manage, and raise awareness. One significant aspect of mental health disorders is related to childhood experiences that usually affect health across the lifetime of every individual. The center for disease control terms childhood mental disorders as profound transformations in how children behave, learn, and handle their feelings (CDC, n.d). Different day-to-day experiences can significantly impact a child’s cognitive and behavioral function, which often affects their lifelong health physiology. One such good example is ‘childhood trauma’ that pediatrician Dr. Nadine Burke Harris speaks about in the 2014 TedTalk video on ‘how childhood trauma affects health across a lifetime. Dr. Nadine describes childhood trauma as progressive stress of abuse, mental health and substance abuse struggling parents, and parental neglect, which affects a person’s brain development. She emphasizes that people cannot get over these diverse childhood traumatic experiences as they grow, but instead, its high-dose exposure develops across people’s lifetime to a level where they are at a triple risk of involving in high-risk health behavior, acquiring lung cancer, and cardiovascular diseases, and a 20-year difference in life expectancy. Unfortunately, today, healthcare practitioners are not formally trained in routine childhood trauma screening or treatment, making it a more complex and comprehensive public health issue. For instance, from Dr. Nadine’s standpoint, it is clear that some adults diagnosed with high-risk behaviors and lifethreatening illnesses are usually misdiagnosed because their conditions are complex involving underlying symptoms of childhood trauma requiring in-depth and comprehensive analysis. According to SAMHSA (2020), by the age of 16, over two-thirds of children experience at least a single traumatic event. For instance, in America, the population of children who died due to childhood abuse and neglect in 2019 was 1840. This is an alarming rate if we expand the statistic on a global scale and then consider unreported cases of childhood trauma. It is expected that many individuals who experience childhood trauma do not show symptoms based on a resilient factor (Zhang et al., 2021). But no matter how resilient someone is, these traumatic experiences will reflect on these people’s lifelong health statuses. When it reaches a point where these individuals are at risk of involving in high-risk health behavior or acquiring chronic health diseases, the urge to pass responsibility for childhood trauma becomes strong. A blame culture is developed as an emotional coping mechanism and reaction to their status. But the big problem here that needs to be emphasized is childhood trauma, which could possibly predict their distress and health status.

How Childhood Trauma Affects Health Across a Lifetime

Related Documents

Recommended Documents

Description

Related Documents

Almost There!

Free up your schedule!

Take 5 seconds to unlock