Childhood trauma is a concerning topic in recent months as the world has taken a focus on the mental wellbeing of children. As far as history goes, the mental wellbeing of children is rarely a focused concern unless children’s mental wellbeing is threatened. Today’s children are suffering, all around the world. Their mental health issues aren’t segregated or separated based on any kind of differentiating circumstance like socioeconomic position, race, nationality, or religion. Across the world, children are suffering a tremendous amount of stress, bullying, and trauma, for a number of different reasons.
The more that childhood trauma remains a focus, the more that we are learning about the many negative, though some positive, effects of childhood trauma. At once, childhood trauma can cause a plethora of health issues in adulthood, both mental and physical. As well, childhood trauma can cause a great sense and ability toward empathy, a necessary and vital human quality. Yet, the growing awareness remains that children are traumatized, stressed, and dealing with burdens of reality far beyond their ability or need.
NPR asks if childhood trauma should be considered a public health crisis. Citing a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, the article suggests that childhood trauma should indeed be considered a public health crisis due to the broad percentages of people who turn to addiction or develop other mental health issues into adulthood. Attempting to tackle trauma on a consistently individual basis is problematic, the article offers, whereas approaching trauma at the public level might make more sense.
Unlike other childhood trauma studies, this one in particular actually followed people through their childhoods into their adulthoods. According to the cited lead researcher, the association between childhood trauma and adulthood hardship is impossible to deny. The numbers were quite striking, with more than 30 percent of adults experience at least one severe traumatic event and a higher likelihood of psychiatric problems among those who lived through trauma.
What the study finds is something that we, as trauma professionals, have known for quite some time. Trauma is a public health crisis because trauma can and most likely will affect every single person alive at some point in their lifetime. Our evolution as humans hasn’t progressed in a way which makes us resilient enough to let trauma roll off of us like water on a duck’s back. Our inability to cope with trauma, and the many harmful, destructive ways trauma can manifest in our lives, is a crisis worth looking at for both children, and the adults they grow up to be.
Eventually, there is nowhere left for trauma to go when we leave it unresolved, and it shows up everywhere in our life begging to be healed. Make the decision today to enter trauma recovery and find healing. Call The Guest House Ocala to learn more about our residential care programs for trauma, addictions, and related mental health issues: 855-483-7800