My second TED Talk was How Childhood Trauma Affects Health Across a Lifetime. This was written by Nadine Burke Harris to explain how certain events or behaviors of other people in a child's development stages can affect them in the future.
She starts off talking about what she learned in school, and how they taught students to diagnose a medical condition. Nadine says that she got into the real work field and wanted to do something that mattered, or would make a difference in people lives. She ended up working at the California Pacific Medical Center in the children's department.
Nadine starts off by saying that she got many patients that were diagnosed with ADHD, but as she ran tests, she realized that wasn't the case. The actual problem was based on a scale, depending on how many traumatic things they experienced during their childhood. The more they were exposed to, the more at risk they were for severe health problems. My cousin grew up, and had a similar problem to this. He was diagnosed with ADHD when he was 10, but the medication didn't do anything to help. He went to do experimental tests, and they found that it wasn't ADHD, it was trauma that was caused by his parents when he was a kid, which caused him to act out. His level on this scale wasn't nearly as high as it could be, but it was enough to affect him as he got older.
She also states that there are many things that can count as trauma, such as their parents having drug or alcohol dependence, or domestic violence. Not all of the traumatic experiences have to connect directly to the child, they could be something that happens with their family, relatives, or friends.
Many children that are exposed to this, can have higher risk of lung cancer, cardiac problems, high blood pressure, and mental illness. With every step up the ladder they go with these experiences, the more risk they are at. Nadine goes on to say that many people believe these problems are from bad decisions on the child's part as they grow up and follow in the foot steps of drugs or alcohol abuse. She said she agrees with this, saying that some of the health problems are caused by what the child decides to do, but some of it can actually be caused by the experience itself. One of which is the "fight or flight" reaction. I used to think that we controlled this reaction consciously, but she proved that our hormones control the adrenaline that we get when there's something unexpected that happens. Our minds decide if we should fight, or leave. Which I think makes sense, because usually the decisions we make in a stressful situation are subconscious. When these hormones are over used, they can lose their reaction response. This connects to childhood trauma, because if the child is abused, they will no longer react to these "fight or flight" experiences as they should.
I was really interested in watching this talk, but as I listened, it became more that just a talk, it became knowledge that helped me understand more of what I am interested in. This talk helped me understand more about the things that can affect our lives in more ways than we can imagine, and how there are always reasons for the way people act.
She starts off talking about what she learned in school, and how they taught students to diagnose a medical condition. Nadine says that she got into the real work field and wanted to do something that mattered, or would make a difference in people lives. She ended up working at the California Pacific Medical Center in the children's department.
Nadine starts off by saying that she got many patients that were diagnosed with ADHD, but as she ran tests, she realized that wasn't the case. The actual problem was based on a scale, depending on how many traumatic things they experienced during their childhood. The more they were exposed to, the more at risk they were for severe health problems. My cousin grew up, and had a similar problem to this. He was diagnosed with ADHD when he was 10, but the medication didn't do anything to help. He went to do experimental tests, and they found that it wasn't ADHD, it was trauma that was caused by his parents when he was a kid, which caused him to act out. His level on this scale wasn't nearly as high as it could be, but it was enough to affect him as he got older.
She also states that there are many things that can count as trauma, such as their parents having drug or alcohol dependence, or domestic violence. Not all of the traumatic experiences have to connect directly to the child, they could be something that happens with their family, relatives, or friends.
Many children that are exposed to this, can have higher risk of lung cancer, cardiac problems, high blood pressure, and mental illness. With every step up the ladder they go with these experiences, the more risk they are at. Nadine goes on to say that many people believe these problems are from bad decisions on the child's part as they grow up and follow in the foot steps of drugs or alcohol abuse. She said she agrees with this, saying that some of the health problems are caused by what the child decides to do, but some of it can actually be caused by the experience itself. One of which is the "fight or flight" reaction. I used to think that we controlled this reaction consciously, but she proved that our hormones control the adrenaline that we get when there's something unexpected that happens. Our minds decide if we should fight, or leave. Which I think makes sense, because usually the decisions we make in a stressful situation are subconscious. When these hormones are over used, they can lose their reaction response. This connects to childhood trauma, because if the child is abused, they will no longer react to these "fight or flight" experiences as they should.
I was really interested in watching this talk, but as I listened, it became more that just a talk, it became knowledge that helped me understand more of what I am interested in. This talk helped me understand more about the things that can affect our lives in more ways than we can imagine, and how there are always reasons for the way people act.