In the new report, Adverse Childhood Experiences, Resilience, and Trauma-Informed Care: A Public Health Approach to Understanding and Responding to Adversity, Professor Hugo van Warden, the director of public health for NHS Highland (Scotland), writes: "This report deals with ‘Adverse Childhood Experiences’ and chronic exposure to ‘toxic stress’. A key message in this report is that such experiences increase the risk of later development of poor mental health, adverse behavioural responses, and increased risk of a range of physical illnesses, but that caring relationships can buffer these adverse effects and improve resilience."
In this context, caring relationships include systems change. Here's more of van Warden's introduction:
The evidence provided in this report suggests that we can help each other in the face of the stresses and strains to which we can all be subject. By sharing each other’s burdens and helping each other to bounce back from the knocks that life brings, we can create a society that is more connected and healthy. Many of us also have opportunities to use the evidence provided in this report to enhance the lives of babies, children and young people in our extended families, our community, and in our place of work.
We are also tasked with listening and responding to the expertise of those with lived experience of adversity. Grassroots expertise needs to underpin the shifts in culture and practice that are required to demonstrate what has been termed ‘ACE Awareness’ or an ‘ACE- Aware Nation’. We have found a grassroots energy and interest that we are keen to facilitate and support.
I would encourage all of us to think about ways in which we can increasingly develop a ‘trauma informed’ approach to our work, particularly with children and vulnerable people across our communities. I am grateful for the fact that such an approach is well recognized in many schools and mental health services, but there is probably more that we can do to embed these lessons in the way that we all work.
It's a report well worth reading:
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