The asynchronous video, How Childhood Trauma Affects Health Across a Lifetime with Nadine Burke Harris, discusses the impact that Adverse Childhood Experiences have on physical and mental health of youth into adulthood. The most critical part of the video was when the interviewee said this is important to understand so that, “when we understand how the biology works we can interrupt those processes.. it made me hopeful.” It is important on a macro level to think about how you can interrupt these processes and prevent youth from experiencing ACEs.
The article, Engaging depressed African-American adolescents in treatment: lessons from the AAKOMA Project, explains the barriers that black youth face in receiving mental health treatment. What stuck out for me in this article was the emphasis on the lack of representation for black youth to look up to around mental health treatment. In addition to this, there was an emphasis on the gender difference in how black women and black men identify symptoms of depression that are ingrained emphasizing ideologies of hypermasculinity.
ACEs and mental health treatment are something I think about often in my work at a family shelter in Philadelphia where 90% of our youth identify as black. The Philadelphia ACE Project did a study that concluded that out of the participants surveyed, 69.9% of people in Philadelphia had at least one ACE (NHTTAC). Access to programming that acts as a protective factor is key. Recently a WHYY article stated that there is a ratio of 1 adolescent psychiatrist for every 1,100 at-risk youth (WHYY). Programs like Joy Bank however are working on the other end and providing mothers in three zip codes in Philadelphia a thousand dollars a month during pregnancy and up until the child is three. I think it is about continuing to find these kinds of interventions that don’t blame parents but rather offer them resources to create their protective factors.
- https://nhttac.acf.hhs.gov/soar/eguide/stop/adverse_childhood_experiences
- https://whyy.org/articles/philadelphia-child-psychologist-at-risk-children-disparity-mental-health/#:~:text=In%20Philadelphia%2C%20over%2066%2C000%20children,of%20Child%20and%20Adolescent%20Psychiatrists
- https://www.phillyjoybank.org/