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The ChildTrauma Academy Newsletters |
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The ChildTrauma Academy and its partner Fellows and institutions are working to help improve the lives of traumatized and maltreated children. A key to our work is trying to ensure that our efforts are focused on the most efficient and effective methods to heal - or ideally - prevent the adverse impact of trauma, neglect, exposure to violence and other adverse childhood experiences (ACE). In this issue we will share some of why we feel that understanding the brain can help all of us in these efforts. In this edition, we will highlight the Adverse Childhood Experiences studies. This remarkable collaborative effort has provided some of the most important and compelling evidence about the connections between early childhood trauma and emotional, social and physical dysfunction later in life. We believe that this landmark project will be viewed as some of the most important academic work of the decade. As always, we appreciate the positive - and not-so- positive constructive feedback we receive from from our previous Newsletters. We look forward to your comments on this Newsletter. We will continue to work hard to provide useful and timely information to help you continue to better understand and serve high risk children and their families. Bruce D. Perry, M.D., Ph.D.
Since 1988, Dr. Perry and the ChildTrauma Academy have been
writing about the relationships between developmental trauma
and neglect and subsequent vulnerability to any
brain-mediated function including the regulation of the
bodies major organ systems - heart, lung, gut, skin. In
these articles citations to a small but converging
literature about "risk" for mental health, cognitive, social
and physical problems later in life were made (for example,
see this article on
behavioral teratology). These tantalizing studies,
however, left many unanswered questions - what about
genetics, resilience, attenuating factors? By the late 1990s
a series of landmark articles started to focus on some of
these questions.
In 1995, a unique collaborative -The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study started. It is one of the largest investigations ever conducted on the links between childhood maltreatment and later-life health and well-being. As a collaboration between the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Kaiser Permanente's Health Appraisal Clinic in San Diego, this study involved the retrospective review of the health and life experiences of over 17,000 people. The ACE Study findings suggest that adverse childhood experiences are major risk factors for the leading causes of illness and death as well as poor quality of life in the United States. Please visit their sites and learn more about these important studies. And learn about their ongoing prospective studies. We are confident that this group will continue to provide important and useful data about the importance of developmental experience in shaping the health and functioning of children and adults.
We had so many people ask about the status of this book that
we will be providing updates in this and future Newsletters.
The CTA website will dedicate a set of pages to the book and
related resources. Progress on publication proceeds. The
publication date remains Jan 2007. We will feature exerpts
of the book on the CTA website in the next few months. As
described in previous Newsletters, the evolution of the
therapeutic approach we use at The ChildTrauma Academy is
described in the book.
By using case material and the true stories of children he has worked with over the years, Dr. Perry and his award-winning co-author, Maia Szalavitz, describe the experiences that slowly shaped Dr. Perry's thinking about neurobiology and trauma, relationships and healing, clinical practice and systemic problems. Written for the general public, this should none-the-less be a valuable resource for practitioners of every discipline.
Dr. Donald Smith has a unique combination of life
experiences and training that create his rare expertise. He
has been a beat-cop, a doctoral level researcher in
neuroimmunology and a director of programs focusing on
interpersonal violence. His experience and expertise in the
area of domestic violence comes from multiple levels of
analysis and insight. He puts this expertise to work in many
ways.
Some of the most important work he has pioneered is the creation of training and related curricular materials about abuse, neglect and exposure to trauma for school personnel. He continues to lead several major projects related to these issues in partnership with the Dallas Independent School District. In the last several years, he has also been the lead investigator in a project designed to examine and assess the "export" process for a therapeutic pre-school project using the Neurosequential Model of Therapeutics (described in previous issues of this Newsletter).
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