-Hands, hands, put your hands up .
Let me see your hands. -Police, police police.
-We have a level 2 MCI.
Active shooter at Stoneman Douglas High School.
-Keep moving. -Toxic stress is a health
condition like diabetes or asthma.
It's the over activity of the stress response,
in response to adversity, without adequate buffering.
And that leads to these long-term changes.
-A wealthy money manager,
whose friends have included presidents and a prince,
is behind bars in Manhatten tonight.
Jeffrey Epstein is accused of sex
trafficking and molesting under-age girls.
-What we're talking about
is a fundamental biological process.
It's the way that children's brains and bodies respond
to high doses of adversity.
These include physical, emotional, or sexual abuse;
physical or emotional neglect or growing up in a household
where a parent is mentally ill; incarcerated;
where there's parental separation or divorce;
where there's domestic violence;
or parental substance dependence.
And these things have the affect of both
being extremely stressful and traumatic for the child,
limiting the ability of a caregiver
to be a buffer to that stress.
And that's why these are the strongest predictors
of risk of life-long health problems.
-Okay. -Oh, my God.
-What happens when kids are experiencing very high levels
of stress or adversity,
is that their bodies release stress hormones.
And these stress hormones can have an impact
on children's developing brains and bodies.
Imagine you're walking in the forest and you see a bear.
Immediately the amygdala,
which is the brain's fear response
activates the fear center
and it causes release of lots of stress hormones in our bodies.
And they serve an important purpose.
They increase our heart rate and how strong our heart beats.
It opens our airways and dilates our pupils.
It raises our blood pressure and our blood sugar
so that we are ready to either fight
that bear or run from the bear.
But if this process is repeated over and over and over again,
without that nurturing, buffering caregiver,
then it becomes overactive
and can damage children's developing brains,
their immune system, their hormonal systems,
and even the way their DNA is read and transcribed.
The younger kids are when this happens,
the greater the risk
to their long-term health and development.
What we're seeing with these migrant kids,
what they're at risk for
and what they're experiencing right now,
is an identical biological process
to what we've been seeing in kids
and families who are growing up right here in the United States.
The nature of trauma is such that we shy away from it.
It feels overwhelming.
I believe it's our obligation to provide these children care,
given the trauma that we have inflicted on them
and what we know about the long-term damage
that that can cause.
If we believe and if we say that we are a moral country,
then we have to act that way.
One in four Americans have experienced four
or more adverse childhood experiences.
That is adversity that is significant enough to double
the risk for heart disease, double the risk for stroke,
triple the risk for chronic lung disease,
and dramatically increase the risk
for life-long health problems.
So this biological response, it's about being human.
It's there are no borders.
We see this in every state in the union,
every community, every ethnicity, every income level.
-Onto your face!
One of the most important aspects
of responding to this issue,
it starts on a very personal level.
It starts with each person
looking at their own adverse childhood experiences
and beginning to practice basic self-care.
It starts with opening up these conversations in our families,
in our communities, in our schools, in our society,
about how do we respond in a way that is healing and not harmful.
The science of toxic stress, I believe,
represents incredible hope for us
to be able to interrupt these biological processes.
And to be able to help to heal the brains
and bodies of children
who have been exposed to high doses of adversity,
but it requires for us to look at this problem and say,
"This is real," and, "This is all of us."