Sharing – Sending Out an SOS: Help Combat Childhood Trauma
I will quote the key points from Michael Corrigan’s piece, but I want you to read the whole thing.
“Key points
More than 258 million adults and 48 million youth in the U.S. are victims of childhood trauma.
Not enough professionals are trained to stem the tide of trauma, and critical mistakes in care are being made.
Since 1973 more than 50 trauma-informed bills have been introduced, but only two became law with limited funding.”
We don’t see it because we don’t talk about it enough. We don’t talk about it enough because it’s an uncomfortable topic. It’s not “fun” to talk about childhood trauma, even though almost everyone experiences it directly or indirectly. Everyone knows people who have lived through childhood trauma or are currently living with it. They just don’t talk about it or know what to do. And since we don’t talk about it, solving it doesn’t become much of a priority.
The rest of the article and the link to Part 2 of the series can be a start. For me, the first step is acknowledging the extent of the problem and being honest about it. This is not some online conspiracy theory about Hollywood or Washington DC, this is real-life trauma occurring in every community across the country. This is acknowledging how poverty, being in foster care, being bullied as someone who is “different” from others, or living through natural disasters creates long-term effects that impact the lives of millions of children every year while we, in turn, do almost nothing to help.
That isn’t good enough, and the only way that changes is if we talk about it and keep talking about it even when other people don’t want to see it.
