Dr. Vincent Felitti, the co-founder of the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) study, details the connection between childhood trauma and negative mental health outcomes in adulthood in a powerful video by Big Think.
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What a refreshing change from the bullshit of, “Depression is a severe mental illness 60% of which is attribute to the genes and heredity.”
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Efficient trauma emotion dialogue is by far the best form of prevention I can think of. Discussion of initial trauma scenario+emotion bridges the gap of mind creating oneness between people.
Some good points in there.
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Finally, some logic and common sense. And of course, we carry around these internalized bad dynamics until we wake up to them, own them, and then we can resolve them within ourselves, which changes our outlook and our reality. Our families of origin are not always the most safe and healthful communities for us, and the sooner we recognize this, the better chance we have to heal from these wounds and get back into our personal power. Healing should never be the burden of simply one individual, that’s a false premise. It’s about the entire community.
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So being abused is not good for you? Who would have thought…
It’s funny that psychiatry has to “discover” such things. Better late than never.
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The really interesting thing is that the ACE Study has been around since 1995 and is the largest Public Health study ever done in this country. And guess what? Almost no one has ever heard of it! I suspect that a lot of people don’t want to know about it since it deals with some very disturbing information about our society and our families and communities. Child abuse in all of its forms is rampant in this country; 20% of all Americans self-reveal that they are child abuse survivors. How large are the numbers of people who refuse to self-reveal? We stick our heads in the sands while it’s known from reliable studies that kids who are abused have something like over 900% greater chance of experiencing psychosis than kids who are not abused. Great for the drug companies and the mental health system, right?
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He ends by saying that the magnitude and complexity (of catastrophic harm and damage of abuse) is so huge that the only approach is primary prevention.
JUSTICE!
Justice is the missing element. My number one issue with Justice is the sadism of punishment. The threat of punishment will cause even worse disorder and dysfunction because people will do just about anything to avoid serious, severe punishment. The number one defense a guilty offender will use is to call the victim crazy and mentally ill. And it works, because abuse is so disruptive and disturbing that our suffering IS crazy and sick.
Humanity desperately and urgently needs RESTORATIVE Justice.
In psychiatry and the mental system, in my experience, we are pretty much invisible and ignored and forced to endure therapies, treatments and programs that amount to brainwash, mind control and conformity, ultimately causing more harm, injury and loss. But that is not news and almost everybody knows that the industrial system is a major part of the troubles and problems.
Dr. Felitti is a different sort of person from the typical people we encounter at the garbage level: ward of the state, government dependent, poverty-level. Somebody like him, who appears to be a head above the crowd, because he is, is always out of reach for people like myself. He’s most likely a private doctor and is not an agent of the state. This is a primary factor, which determines the level of care and services people receive.
People at my level are garbage, white trash. I’m in a state of condemnation, permanent transmogrification and disrepair, but if ever I were deemed worthy of the authentic support and assistance I need, to achieve the impossible, it would take a team of many dozens of people, wholly dedicated to me alone. And because those people do not know me, it would take a great deal of time for me to first EDUCATE them, about who I am, and about my life. But it just does NOT work that way. If I won a major lottery jackpot, it’s a miracle what money can do (facilitate building up the body of resources that it takes, to do the work, and somebody like me has a gold dome and two white pillars, if you understand what I’m saying).
As for restorative Justice, the family court process is just as faulty of a failure as “medical” services. Their primary interest is to literally OWN people and write their lives, FOR them. They want ownership, possession and control. They dictate, through service plans, people’s life paths through their system, forcing us to endure programs that serve the system and not the individuals and families.
Tom Ball and myself both self-immolated as a result of the harms afflicted on us by the family court system. I survived mine, he did not.
Restorative Justice means everything to me. The offender and the victim have worsened to the point that the system of help is itself the offender. People talk about REFORM the system?
It will be ONLY by Justice. Restorative Justice. For All.
