By Gina Warren, Marilyn Woods, Damon "Fade" Dorrough, and Sarah Marikos, The Sacramento Observer, April 21 2023
There is a transformation taking place in an area of Sacramento once notorious for gang violence, sex trafficking, and near decimation brought on by the crack and opioid epidemics.
Despite the cultural taboos around mental health that still exist in many communities, this transformation is healing intergenerational trauma and changing trajectories – by getting to the root.
There’s plenty of evidence documenting how our early experiences shape our health and behavior. Adverse Childhood Experiences, or ACEs, such as abuse, neglect, and growing up in a household with violence, incarceration or problematic substance use, can lead to prolonged activation of the body’s stress response, a condition known as the toxic stress response, which affects both mental and physical health throughout the lifetime – even making changes to our DNA that ripple across generations.
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