Childhood traumas can lead to early death

by Dennis Dalman

editorial@thenewsleaders.com

A boy or girl who experiences four or more traumas in childhood will likely die at least 20 years earlier than their healthier peers.

Besides dying earlier, such people generally suffer from adverse behaviors during their lives such as alcoholism, drug abuse, sexual promiscuity, depression, failed relationships, suicidal tendencies and trouble with the law, to name just some. And those are just some of the multiple bad outcomes of childhood traumas that can lead to too-early death.

An awareness about the link between childhood traumas and tragedies later in life is what informs the work of the St. Cloud Area Child Response Initiative – CRI for short.

In just the past two years, 400 children in the greater St. Cloud area have been helped through CRI, with about 176 of them referred for many kinds of help or treatment to providers that are usually members of the CRI network. That network includes the police departments of St. Joseph, Sartell, Sauk Rapids, St. Cloud and Waite Park; first-responders; child-protection teams; trauma-informed advocates; and the Stearns County Domestic Violence Partnership, among other agencies.

The first referrals are usually made by the police departments whose officers are the most likely to be first at the scene when crises, such as domestic disturbances, occur. Then, CRI can become actively involved in intervention, more referrals and safety support for children and their families. The support can include all kinds of services, often interconnected ones: education, support groups, court services, forms of treatment and follow-up work.

Paige McConkey is a mental health practitioner and trauma-informed advocate who is in charge of CRI, along with newly-hired assistant Stacie Hoeschen. Both work through the Central Minnesota Mental Health Center. CRI was created about three years ago as an offshoot of the Stearns County Domestic Violence Partnership, which helps children and families traumatized by domestic violence.

McConkey said CRI has helped children as young as 6 months old and up to 18 years old who were traumatized by a wide variety of bad circumstances. Almost half of the cases were due to unhealthy domestic upsets. There were also instances of physical or sexual assaults, neglect, maltreatment, loss of a parent or sibling, children present during a suicide attempt, the killing of a pet or, in one case, being attacked by a dog. Most often, McConkey noted, the children feel frightened or anxious because of what happened to them or what they have seen.

Early intervention equals early protection is one of the mottos of CRI. When there is a crisis, police officers and child-protection teams make sure the children are placed in safe places. Within 24 to 48 hours, the CRI will get the gears in motion to get the children (and families) help through the network.

McConkey said he is happy any traumatized child can be seen by a mental health provider within two weeks of the reported trauma. Such relatively early appointments are exceptions to the rule because there is such a great need for mental health services that longer waits for non-CRI cases sometimes cannot be avoided.

What makes CRI effective, McConkey said, is the cooperation from so many agencies, such as mental health providers. He also has high praise for the police departments.

“Law enforcement is always there for us,” he said. “It’s a huge help, and so are the first-responders.”

McConkey also praised others: social workers, schools, public health, child protection and Stearns County in general. Such tight, expert collaboration is what makes CRI and its vital work possible.

For 10 years, McConkey was a chaplain for the St. Cloud Police Department. The rapport established was helpful in setting up the trusting communications between CRI, law enforcement and the other agencies, he noted.

Origins

Some years ago, members of the Stearns County Domestic Violence Partnership were attending a conference in San Diego when they heard a speaker from Greensboro, N.C., talk about how a child-response initiative in Greensboro had brought such good results.

Back home in St. Cloud, the members, inspired by what they’d heard, shared the concept with others at the Central Minnesota Mental Health Center. When they heard the plan, law enforcement agencies expressed immediate support, as did other entities, and the CRI soon began its work.

ACEs

CRI undertakes its work with a keen awareness of ACEs. ACEs stands for “Adverse Childhood Experiences,” a term coined by a study undertaken from 1995-97 by the Kaiser Permanente Group in Southern California.

The study involved questionnaires filled out by more than 17,000 members of a health-maintenance organization regarding their childhood experiences (good and bad) and their subsequent health factors as adults.

The study was launched after a doctor at a Kaiser Permanente obesity clinic in San Diego discovered an alarming number of patients who were greatly overweight had experienced childhood sexual abuse.

The ACEs study then began with two massive waves of data collected. The results established a link between early traumas and later adverse behavior-and-health outcomes.

The study’s respondents gave personal input about the following categories of traumas in their childhood years: physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, physical neglect, emotional neglect, mother treated violently, household substance abuse, household mental illness, parental separation or divorce, incarcerated household member.

The study revealed an alarming number of people had experienced at least one childhood trauma, with physical and sexual abuse the most common (28 percent and 21 percent, respectively).

Almost 40 percent reported having suffered two or more kinds of trauma.

The study further found early traumas can cause social, emotional and cognitive impairments. They, in turn, can lead to health-risky behaviors, which can cause social problems, disabilities and disease. Early death can be the tragic consequence.

Some of the behaviors and conditions leading to early death can be one or more of the following: drug and/or alcohol abuse, poor diet and lack of exercise, heart disease, liver disease, obesity, sexually transmitted diseases, depression, anxiety, suicidal tendencies, financial stress, sleep problems, doing poorly in school, lack of ambition, developing a-social or anti-social responses and inability to develop or maintain good relationships with others.

The Kaiser Permanente study had an enormous influence on similar, subsequent studies worldwide. And the studies’ results led to the formation of many childhood-trauma intervention and support systems such as the St. Cloud Area Child Response Initiative.