“You can't go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.” C.S. Lewis

"Pediatrician Nadine Burke Harris explains that the repeated stress of abuse, neglect and parents struggling with mental health or substance abuse issues has real, tangible effects on the development of the brain. This unfolds across a lifetime, to the point where those who’ve experienced high levels of trauma are at triple the risk for heart disease and lung cancer. An impassioned plea for pediatric medicine to confront the prevention and treatment of trauma, head-on." (Source: TED.com)

What is trauma?

“Trauma is an event that overwhelms the central nervous system and changes the way you remember and react to things that remind you of it.”

  “Trauma is not the story of something that happened back then... It's the current imprint of that pain, horror, and fear living inside people.”

Bessel van der Kolk, MD

video courtesy: TED.com

Trauma and the Brain: Understanding abuse survivors responses from NHS Lanarkshire on Vimeo. Video used with permission courtesy of NHS Lanarkshire and media co-op.

“Childhood trauma isn’t something you just get over as you grow up.” Nadine Burke Harris, MD