The document we are presenting today is a TED talk given by the pediatrician Nadine Burke Harris in 2015 in which she tackles one specific topic : the impact of unresolved childhood trauma on health and life expectancy. Indeed, she outlines that children are more sensitive to adversity as their brains and bodies are still maturing. While we are aware of the harmful effects of trauma on mental health, Nadine seeks to raise attention about the adverse impacts on physical health as well. According to her, early exposure to adversity strikingly increases the risk to develop health problems as it induces high doses of toxic stress. In fact, early exposure to adversity tremendously affects brain development, the immune and hormonal system, the way our DNA is read and transcribed and can reduce life expectancy by twenty years. In her talk, she aims to awaken the minds regarding what she claims to be a public health crisis. To assess early exposure to adversity, she uses a questionnaire, created by Dr Vince Felitti and Dr Bob Anda, exploring the relationship between childhood abuse and household dysfonction : the Adverse Childhood Experiences or ACE.
ACE’s questions involve possible issues encountered while growing up, whether it be emotional, physical or sexual abuse, neglect, parental separation, domestic violence, parent’s substance dependance and so on. Findings have brought to light that the higher your ACE score, the worse your health outcomes. Our opinion about her talk is rather positive as we found it utterly useful for several reasons. First, addressing this issue is relevant as sixty-seven percent of the population has faced at least one traumatic experience in their life. Studies have also shown that high doses of adversity increase markedly the likelihood to engage in risky behaviors and develop diseases. Besides, we found significant that this matter is being touched upon by a pediatrician. Indeed, doctors in general may tend to focus solely on somatic disorders and dismiss adverse childhood experiences because they regard these points as they were taught to regard them : either as a social problem or a mental health problem. Thus, we very much liked the fact she rethought her entire clinical practice to have a more holistic approach in order to allow a multi-disciplinary perspective for treating symptoms and reducing dose of adversity.
A limitation of this questionnaire can be linked to the interpretation of the ACE’s scores, which can create some bias as what might be considered traumatic for someone might not be the case for someone else. Therefore, it stirs up the question of the tool’s internal validity. However, this talk was absolutely riveting and instructive. Indeed, as psychologists, the use of such a tool is relevant because it can help us understand precisely how disrupted pathways affect children. It also offers us the means to engage in early identification and prevention of ACE, which can truly help improve a wide range of health problems.
Words we have learned :
life expectancy : l’espérance de vie
tremendously : considérablement
household : foyer
to stir up : soulever, débattre
early identification : repérage précoce
Nisma BOUSSAIDI, Florence BRAY, Maéva DASSE-HARTAUT
Find out more on : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95ovIJ3dsNk