This is just amazing--please watch when you get a few minutes: How Childhood Trauma Affects Health Across A Lifetime
"Childhood trauma isn’t something you just get over as you grow up.
Pediatrician Nadine Burke Harris explains that the repeated stress of
abuse, neglect and parents struggling with mental health or substance
abuse issues has real, tangible effects on the development of the brain.
This unfolds across a lifetime, to the point where those who’ve
experienced high levels of trauma are at triple the risk for heart
disease and lung cancer. An impassioned plea for pediatric medicine to
confront the prevention and treatment of trauma, head-on."
As a child, my pediatrician first mentioned that she believed that I was suicidal around age ten and she warned my family to keep an eye on me, due to this. Since I was ten in 1983, there weren't as many resources available for a child like me and I am not sure that my parents took it seriously, either way. Honestly, I don't remember a lot below the age of ten but what I do remember is quite unpleasant. Also, as someone that has suffered from lifelong depression, including multiple suicide attempts (with my first attempt occurring at age sixteen and my last attempt being somewhere in my early twenties)--this video rang true on a lot of levels. Very powerful video and message....
