our brains develop and change throughout
life enabling us to learn and do new
things and to adapt at every age but
childhood and early childhood in
particular is the most sensitive and
critical period for brain development as
a child interacts with the world their
experiences both positive and negative
stimulate the brain causing it to form
neural pathways that lay the foundation
for lifelong cognitive and behavioral
functioning I like to think of brain
development as the brain is like a the
site of a town so you can lay out road
work you're laying down roads according
to in the brains case according to
experiences so you have an experience in
your brain lays down a path and the more
you have that experience the bigger the
path is going to get in the stronger and
then it's paved and becomes a real Road
and a highway and you're laying out the
grid work of the town according to your
experiences and that's very much like
the brain development
the more you have experiences the
stronger those electrical circuits are
going to be and that's going to shape
the way you think and act and view the
world safe stable nurturing
relationships and environments provide
the context for healthy brain
development when children have ample
opportunities to learn and explore in
this setting children acquire a range of
experiences that stimulate different
parts of the brain allowing for healthy
balanced development some degree of
adversity and stress is a normal and
essential part of human development that
can help children learn how to react to
future challenges but a child who's
repeatedly exposed to adversities like
abuse neglect or unstable relationships
and environments may experience what's
known as toxic stress and this can
disrupt brain development our
experiences literally shape the way our
brain is developing in the brain
architecture so if you have a baby a
very young baby who cries when they're
hungry and mother comes over and feeds
the baby and helps the baby settle down
the baby goes back to sleep that happens
what five 10 times a day and that is
laid down those electrical circuits are
laid down in the brain and so the baby
learns that you cry you get fed you sue
then you go to sleep and that experience
is sort of coded into the brain just
any other experience so good experiences
help the brain develop in a certain way
and if you have adverse experiences that
same baby cries and cries and cries and
the parents are addicted to opiates
let's say and they ignore the baby the
baby's left alone for 10 hours in the
dark that baby's brain is still
developing but it's developing in a
different way their experience is much
different and so it is developing in a
way that says you can cry and cry and
cry and escalate that stress response as
much as you want nothing's going to
happen and the interpretation of that is
not only does the brain realizing that
that's not gonna that they're not going
to get soothed but the child learns and
this is laid down the brain the child
learns that the world is an unsafe place
that they are insignificant there's no
one out there to help them and that is
all laid down in the brain as well there
are different forms of stress that any
individual is exposed to there's
positive stress that often times is very
short-term but you know it's something
that everybody experiences so even if
you said you know waking up in the
morning going to work going to school
that's you know one form of stress very
short-term but something your body has
to adjust to you can have you know very
neutral forms of stress that are a
little bit longer term but things in
which you know they're resources and
support that help you adapt to it
whereas there's other kinds of things
that are more long-term kinds of
negative stress and that's where toxic
stress really fits into things in which
person doesn't have or an individual
does not have the kind of resources and
support to try to deal with it and it
has a negative effect in the long-term
consequences on that particular
individual so it's toxic in the sense of
the body responds to that stress you
know one of the things that is produced
is a hormone called cortisol and that
constant production of cortisol has a
negative effect on brain development on
neurological development and on other
kinds of organs and tissues in the body
when we experience stress or encounter a
threat the brain triggers the body to
produce hormones that activate a stress
response or what's often referred to as
the fight-or-flight response
in a moment of crisis this response is
necessary and potentially life-saving
but stress can become toxic when the
stress response system is activated
frequently or for prolonged periods of
time
if a child is constantly afraid her body
and brain will remain on high alert
preparing her to react should a threat
return her body will continually produce
stress hormones and the stress response
system will remain activated in her
brain drawing energy away from other
neural pathways in need of development
or maintenance in a child experiencing
toxic stress parts of the brain that
might be weakened are those regulating
complex functions like emotional
self-regulation social interactions and
abstract thinking this may have
consequences throughout life and can
result in social behavioral and
cognitive challenges toxic stress
implies a certain level of adversity and
that often occurs early in life within
childhood so children who have
experienced adverse childhood
experiences have been found through very
diligent research to be at increased
risk for a number of long-term problems
when they reach adolescence and
adulthood and these problems really span
multiple domains they can be behavioral
problems emotional problems and physical
problems so if you think about it
children who have had early adversity
are at higher risk much higher risk for
major depression and suicidality for
anger management problems for
delinquency and high risk behavior after
dropping out of school for teen
pregnancy for runaway behavior for adult
criminality and for liver disease and
lung disease and heart disease among
other things so it has a profound
long-term impact potentially and yet the
brain is capable of healing and changing
effective treatments can help those
affected by early adversity and give
them a chance to heal from traumas and
learn new ways to interpret and react to
stressors and other stimuli
fortified by this information we can
shift the conversation away from one
that blames and punishes people for
inappropriate reactions and behaviors
that developed in childhood due to
adversity and trauma
instead we can champion the need for
expanded services and opportunities that
help people overcome early adversity and
we can focus on ways to prevent abuse
neglect and other challenges before they
occur I don't want to imply that any
child who experiences early adversity is
on a mission where they inevitably will
experience these adverse effects long
term that's not the case at all many
kids are resilient and so they are able
to overcome this adversity very early on
and prevent the long-term effects some
adults will experience those long-term
effects but there are ways that we can
help the adults and very often I work at
a child sexual abuse clinic and very
often our parents will come in the
mother will come in and say my daughter
was sexually abused and it comes out
while I'm talking to her that she was
sexually abused as well she never got
therapy so if 20 years she's been living
with this experience and hasn't told
anyone that's not too late she can still
get help she can still get therapy she
can still work through that she can
still kind of overcome that and move on
and not have an increased risk of
adversity there are other social
programs that are helpful for example
programs that help people develop some
of those skills that maybe they didn't
develop early on that the skills are
related to planning controlling their
emotions and controlling their impulses
and getting hold of that automatic
response that jumped to anger getting a
hold of that calming it down learning
how to do that can help tremendously CDC
is the nation's public health agency and
as such we're really interested in those
factors risk factors and protective
factors that influence health and it
turns out that early adversity in the
form of violence and other adverse
events has a profound impact on health
throughout the lifetime mental health
impacting infectious diseases as well as
chronic diseases so as such early
adversity and the and the influence of
that is critically important from a
public health standpoint and its
strategic if we can reduce or eliminate
early adversity we can have a enormous
impact on health of the US population
and in fact people around the world
during the course of their entire lives
in lesson two you'll learn about the CDC
Kaiser Permanente adverse childhood
experiences study and about findings
from the study that can aid in our
efforts to prevent and treat aces