Social Justice Event

Alyssa Giammarco
Dr. McKamey
FNED-346
24 September 2018

For my social justice event I watched a Ted talk about how childhood trauma affects health across a lifetime. Nadine Burke Harris brought up a important point when talking about how childhood trauma affects children in so many ways. "Things like abuse, or neglect, or growing up with a parent who struggles with mental illness or substance dependance." All of these can impact a child's health at a young age resulting in childhood trauma.  First Nadine told us that after her residency she wanted to go somewhere that she was needed and could make a difference. She started working for California specific medical center. As a team they opened up a health clinic in a poor and low income neighborhood in San Fransisco. I couldn't believe that prior to them opening up their health clinic, there was only one heath care provider to serve and help more than 10,000 children. It was interesting to hear about a "disturbing trend" of ADHD: Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder. Children were being sent to her with this disorder. However she did research about it and said she could not provide a diagnose for ADHD. This is because most of the children that she saw experience such extreme childhood trauma. Nadine quoted, "one of the things they teach you in mental health school is that if you're a doctor and you see a hundred kids that all drink from the same well and 98 of them develop diarrhea you can go ahead and write that prescription for dose after dose after dose of antibiotics. Or you can walk over and say what the hell is in this well." This quote is so important because in today's generation to help "cure" a disorder in a child at a young age doctors tend to prescribe more medication to "solve" issues. This affects children because they depend on these drugs that doctors provide them for many years. As an adult if they try and take them out of their system they are going to have a difficult time concentrating and start craving a drug in replace of their medication. This can later lead to addiction/drug addiction for many but not for all. 

Connect to in class readings:
"There are children in the poorest, most abandoned places who, despite the miseries and poisons that the world has pumped into their lives, seem, when you first meet them, to be cheerful anyway."
I can connect this quote to a piece that we read in class: Amazing Grace by Johnathan Kozol. Kozol told a descriptive and detailed story about the horrible struggles adults and children from the South Bronx had to face everyday. This can be related to the Ted talk because the children he was describing are growing up in an area where they are dealing with trauma that will only affect them as they get older. Most of the adults that he described had a lot of trauma in their childhood that resulted in substance abuse as they entered adulthood. This quote reveals that even though some children's lives are filled with hurt, anger, and horror, when you meet them they make it seem like everything is fine. This is because these children face these obstacles everyday which makes them costumed to it. 

"Issues of power are enacted in classrooms."
This quote is from The Culture of Power by Lisa Delpit. This quote can be related to the ted talk about how childhood trauma affects health across a lifetime because it talks about codes of power. During the Ted talk when hearing about how many children came to Nadine with symptoms of ADHD it made me think of this quote. Delpit explained that as a child you have little to no power, whereas your parents make most of your decisions for you. For example Nadine talked about things that she learned from mental health school which was that if you're a doctor and you see many children drinking from the same well and some of them develop a disease that you prescribe doses of pills to cure their body. This is when Delpit's codes of power come into place because children are so young and have little to know control in making a decision. Parents have complete power over their children just like teachers have complete power over the students in their classrooms. 

Links to the Readings:
Amazing Grace By: Johnathan Kozol
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-JcBFAuLc-0Ml9vUkdMdFdoNDg/view
The Culture Of Power By: Lisa Delpit
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-JcBFAuLc-0ZXdvUDB5X3lDVDg/view

Ted Talk: Nadine Burke Harris
https://www.ted.com/talks/nadine_burke_harris_how_childhood_trauma_affects_health_across_a_lif
etime#t-808876