Consequences of Stress on Children's Development

In this assignment, my colleagues and I were asked to identify a stressor from a long list of stress factors that can impede a child's development and discuss an instance in our lives or the life of someone that we know and how it affected us/them. I have been thinking about this assignment all week, and certainly have a lot of people in my life that I could use as examples, but I, have to admit, I feel uncomfortable telling people's stories on the internet. So many of my loved ones read this blog and I really do fear disrespecting my loved ones by using them as examples.

So, what I have chosen to do is take them all into account and write about what I see in terms of how things have affected my friends' development. I have had friends and acquaintances who have suffered plenty of very severe stress. I think most of us have experienced toxic stress either personally or with those we love. The types of stress that I have seen in the ones I love and hold dear include neglect,  poverty, physical abuse, sexual abuse, and mental abuse. Though it is entirely hard to anecdotally measure the consequences of each of my friends' stresses in childhood and still keep in mind that their own individual temparment and all other variable in check, I can say that the consequences have included the development of multiple personality disorder, drug addiction, risky sexual behavior, tending to get into relationships with unsafe people, alcoholism, eating disorders, and more. On the other end of the spectrum, however, is the reality that most of the people that I knew as a child who experienced intense stress throughout their childhood had a rough patch through their twenties, dealing with depression, lack of motivation, or too much "partying", and then seemed to come out the other side in their thirties becoming active, motivated, successful, and relatively happy people. My friends who experienced intense neglect or phsyical, sexual, or mental abuse by a parent seem to have been the worst off and went some suffered from severe depression and mental illness. Even those friends, however, came out the other side with treatment. Why is this?

Well, I guess I believe that it is largely do to the plasticity of human kind. We can change and adapt to the circumstances we are given. It is also important to point out that I grew up in an upper middle class world (though a great deal of my friends did not) and most of the parents in these dramas were educated, of sound financial means, and white. The kids were also going to schools that offered fairly good support systems. Most of them had at least one strong, loving relationship with someone in their family to protect them from and buffer the abuse of any offender that might have been within thier household. All of them, including those who did not have safe connection at home, had created amazing bonds with their friends, however. Perhaps that is why so many of them were able to turn it around or never be too affected in the first place. Perhaps their own protective optimism stuck around for a while past the school years and allowed them to find kindred spirits who could offer to help them pretect their development through loving them and providing protective relationships with them. Perhaps.

Post Traumatic Stress and Children after Hurricane Katrina

My mother grew up in New Orleans. I visited my great grandmother there as a young child and returend for Mardi Gras annually for a good portion of my childhood. So, when we were asked to pick a region that we have an affinity for and look at the stressors that their children face and how it is dealt with, New Orleans immediately popped into my head. Of course, when one thinks of stressor on families and children, one cannot help but immediately jump to the affects of Hurrican Katrina that wiped out much of Loiuisiana in August, 2005. The hurricane caused massive devastation and children and their families suffered severe loss of their homes, their communities, their possessions, pets, and, for some, their loved ones. They suffered the stress of the terrifying experience of this violent hurrican, and, as if that wasn't enough, the real stress came afterwards when families were left homeless and without vital resources. Many families were forced to relocate 2, 3, 4, even 9 times! Not surprisingly, about half of the children who lived through Hurrican Katrina are thought to have PTSD (Tull, 2012). When I set out to find informationon this topic, I wasn't suprised to find loads of studies of the affects of Hurricane Katrina on kids and the prevalence of PTSD and depression. What I was saddened to find was that it was hard to find information on what type of help these children had and have. I can only assume that is because there wasn't that much- certainly not enough. What I did find was that there were people from Unicef there attempting to provide psychosocial (Snider et al, N.D.). I also found one study that said that the majority of children suffering from PTSD post Katrina saw a reduction in symptoms with treatment through schools and clinics, but it was very vague (Tull, 2012). I was hearteded, however, to find that there are a lot of scientists studying the disaster in order to assess how to better deal with a huge emergency like this and how to create prepackaged psychosocial emergencies plans for natural disasters and the like.

References:

Snider, L, Hoffman, Y, Littrell, M., Fry, W., & Thornburgh, M. (N.D.) Supporting children after  hurricane katrina: reflections on psychosocial principles in practice. Retrieved fromhttp://mhpss.net/wp-content/uploads/group-documents/178/1351478256-KatrinaBookChapter-Snideretal..pdf

Tull, M. (2012). The effect of hurrican katrina on children. Retrieved from http://ptsd.about.com/od/causesanddevelopment/a/Katrinachildren.htm.