The Science of Trauma and the Toxic Stress of Poverty
“It has long been known that growing up in impoverished and dangerous neighborhoods dims life prospects. But now a commanding body of medical research presents a disturbing, biological picture of why. It suggests that the stress itself — if left unchecked — is physically toxic to child development and health. Brain imaging, biochemical tests, genetic testing and psychiatric trials show toxic stress ravages growing children — inviting maladies such as asthma, obesity, heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, kidney disease and stroke in adulthood. When children don’t get a break from the stress — when adults can’t or don’t know how to shield their children from it — their developing bodies go on a stress hormone production binge that can alter gene expression within their DNA. In some cases, parts of their brains are smaller, and their chromosomes shorten. Those biological and developmental changes trigger lifelong health consequences that can ultimately shorten lives. Some pediatricians who treat children in mostly poor neighborhoods describe a toxic stress epidemic.”
The Crisis Within: How Toxic Stress and Trauma Endanger Our Children
by Nancy Cambria, St. Louis Post Dispatch, 2016
“We now understand better than we ever have before how exposure to early adversity affects the developing brains and bodies of children.”
Pediatrician Nadine Burke Harris makes an impassioned plea to recognize trauma and early childhood adversity as the public health crisis it is.
