“You feel horrible, but you don’t quite know why. You are filled with a scene of doom. You feel anxious, unable to sleep and dreadful. Your life is in a constant state of stress. You seem to be unable to relax and enjoy much of anything. You can’t seem to set goals or make decisions about your life. Your self-esteem and self-confidence is eroding.” (Snow) The way in which a person suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder feels evokes much more gloom than that of a healthy human being. Now take that depressing gloom and envision it in a young child who should be off playing in the backyard or drawing rainbows with sidewalk chalk. Unfortunately PTSD is no longer a disorder we see only in war veterans; PTSD is now commonly being developed in young children across the world. These children walk around like zombies, withdraw from their peers, reverse developmentally, and in severe cases experience dramatic flashbacks from the time the trauma occurred. While there has been copious amounts of research and treatment plans for adults who experience PTSD, there is little knowledge on treatment options when dealing with young children because it is though that “they will grow out of it”. Within the past decade, research has proven that there are long-lasting medical and emotional effects when children are not properly treated after suffering trauma. Further research and knowledge must be gained to develop effective treatment options for these children in order to reverse the effects of the trauma before it impacts their adult lives. 

Post- Traumatic Stress Disorder, or more commonly referred to as PTSD, is a debilitating disorder that develops in people that witness a natural disaster, serious accident, terrorist attack, death of a loved one, war, violent personal assault such as rape, or other life-threatening events. PTSD is usually accompanied by a diagnosis of depression, anxiety, or a combination of both.  Many people who suffer from PTSD experience symptoms of flashbacks, nightmares, or traumatic memories when national travesties occur such as the September 11th terrorist attacks or the Boston bombing of 2013(ADAA). These attacks that occur are difficult to deal with and many adults struggle with how accept even though they understand what is going on. Children end up handling these traumas very differently than adults and each reaction varies depending on their age and the circumstance. Anxiety disorders affect one in eight children (ADAA2).

“Exposure to extreme life stressors in the prepubertal period, such as loss of parents or sexual or physical abuse, has been related to an increased risk for depression and suicide” (PMC). “Estimated rates of witnessing community violence range from 39% to 85% — and estimated rates of victimization go up to 66%” (APA). While some anxiety is completely normal for children and part of their development but when it develops into uncontrollable nervousness, withdraw from peers and school, extreme shyness, and avoiding places and activities is when it really becomes an issue where help is sought out. Not to mention in the mid 90’s the CDC and Kiser Permanente released that exposure to childhood trauma increases the risk for to develop seven out of ten of the leading causes of death (Harris). “Anxiety and depression is treatable, but 80 percent of kids with an anxiety disorder and 60 percent of kids with depression are not getting treatment, according to the 2015 Child Mind Institute Children’s Mental Health Report.” Children who go untreated have lower performance in school, overall lower test scores, miss out on developmental mile stones and social experiences, and are twice as likely to engage in substance abuse (ADAA2).

The Syrian Up-rising that has been ongoing for almost two years now is having a startling effect on the children within the war zone. Many children have been taken out of this hostile environment and relocated in refugee camps where they can begin to attend school again. The classrooms within the refugee camps are filled with pictures created by the students but upon closer examination the pictures reveal drawing of air bombings, burning buildings, and deceased loved ones. Some of these children refused to speak for the first month upon arrival or are frequently missing a majority of the week, some have dramatic flashbacks where they believe they are still in the middle of the war much like many war veterans have. And then there are stories of “a 15-year-old girl is afflicted with nightmares after she saw hundreds of militia members affiliated with the regime approach her house and, fearing rape, prepared to throw herself off the balcony. A 5-year-old girl whose family moved her from one refugee camp to another has lost all sense of security and involuntarily urinates several times a day. A 14-year-old girl who saw a 20-year-old shot to death outside her home now refuses to be alone for even a minute” (Morello).Within the refugee camps there are no phycologist who can give these children the special treatment that they need, instead they have gynecologist and civil engineers filling that position because that’s all they could get, clearly not specialist. The extent of the treatment they are providing these children is to “be a good example for your friends” and talk about the problems that have followed them from Syria (Morello). When looking towards the future, school officials and official psychiatrics that visit the school have hopes that these children will simply “find a way to cope and move on” because “memories are short-lived” so the belief is “that most eventually return to their normal routines with no long-lasting repercussions” (Morello). Perhaps that is true and more than likely most will recover form PTSD but research has shown that there are many long lasting effects that these children will face in their adult lives if they do not get proper treatment. 

“Risk of having severe post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms was 10 times higher in patients reporting sexual abuse after age 12 than in those reporting sexual abuse before age 12. Relative risk of having severe depressive symptoms was higher for those abused before the age of 12 than for those abused after the age of 12” (PMC) A study was conducted at ---- that was trying to find the correlation between the age in which trauma occurred and the severity of PTSD that patient’s had. This study used sixty patients who had all be formal diagnosed with PSTD. In this study the sixty participants who had be formally diagnosed with PSTD with subject to a 56 question interview that measured the amount of trauma in a subject’s life during between early childhood and teenage years. Factors involved in the study included physical, sexual, psychological, and general trauma and evaluated according to the frequency, stage of development, duration, and impact on the subject. The average “age for the reported trauma exposure was 11.7 ± 3.7 years old” (PMC). Of the children who witnessed or encountered trauma before the age of 12, half were considered to have severe PTSD, thirty percent had moderate PTSD, with only twenty percent labeled as having mild PTSD (PMC). The study found that the children exposed the earliest were the ones who were more likely to develop severe and prominent Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.  

In a Ted Talk with Dr. Nadine Harris she explains to the crowd that in high doses, exposure to trauma at an early age effects brain development, the way our DNA is read and transcribed, our immune and hormonal systems, have triple the risk for heart and lung disease, not to mention a twenty year difference in life expectance, yet most doctors are not trained or required to do routine screening or treatment (Harris). Dr. Harris herself was not trained to deal screening or treatment when presented with these issues, protocol was to refer the children to either mental health or social services. She went to work for California pacific medical center where she had the opportunity to open a clinic in one of the poorest neighborhoods inside of San Francisco. Many Children were being referred to Dr. Harris for ADHD but when she did thouro history and physical work-ups she found that a vast majority of them had be exposed to severe trauma. Concerned that she was missing something important, she decided she needed to find the root of all of these issues. She even related it back to something she leaned during residency: “If you see 100 kids who dink from the same well and all of them have diariah, you can write dose after does of anti-biotics, or you can go to the source and find out what the hell is wrong with that well” (Harris). She began to read everything she could about how exposure to trauma effects the developing brains and bodies of children when she came along research done by the CDC and Kiser Permanente that correlated effects between adverse childhood traumas and health outcome in adults: the more trauma exposure the worse the health outcome. Hepatitis and heart desise is two and half times higher than those who have not experienced trauma, suicide was twelve times higher and lung cancer three times as high (Harris). Not only did Harris  find these trend but also Maia Szalavitz; Szalavitz conducted a study that uncovered when children as a young age are physically or sextually abused there biological make-up is altered leaving stress marks on the brain (Szalavitz). After learning these outstanding statistics about adverse childhood trauma, Harris changed the way that her practice was set up. All of the doctors were educated on routine screenings for adverse childhood traumas and what warning signs to look for when children come in for check-ups. There was also a team of phyciotrist set in place to help start the treatment for children that displayed many symptoms. After implementing all of these changes illness went down 28% over a two year span within her practice (Harris)   

Treatment is essential for the recovery of children with PTSD, But not all treatment is effective and not all treatments work depending on age and severity, not to mention there is still little research done on the topic of effective treatment tactics for children. In fact these are very few options out there, to be more specific it is in the ball park of three. Cognitive-behavioral therapy, Dialectical behavior therapy, and Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, but the main focus is on the first two (Lupit). Treatment on children is often just as harmful as the treatment itself because it floods the brain of traumatic images once again. This is yet another reason a softer approach needs to be developed for children. With children only have so few options, and not even effective options as that, they are left to suffer with PTSD and the effects that come down the road from going untreated. A huge concern in the research development process of childhood PTSD is the lack of funds. Funding and grants are very had to come by for researching working within the realm of children with PTSD whereas researcher working with veterans suffering with PTSD have a relatively easy time getting access to large funds of money to conduct there research. When looking for facts and websites to donate to childhood PTSD, I came up short. It took me nearly an hour just to find a site to tell me where to donate and even that was not specifically for childhood, but when looking to donate to veterans the first link on google leads you right to a source. In reality, it appears that the only way to get funding for childhood PTSD research is through a federal grant that involves a long tricky application process and the result doesn’t get all that much money (NCTSN).  

Abused Children who suffer from PTSD do not only rep the symptoms while they are young, but carry this baggage into adulthood. Trauma survivors may have trouble with their close family relationships or friendships feeling angry, detached, and tense or worried in their relationships. PTSD affects trust, closeness, communication, and problem solving in regards to the way they act with others (USDVA). Because children’s brains are not fully developed, they end up because the easiest to treat compared to veterans or adult survivors or rape or natural disasters. The treatment process goes a lot faster on children since their brains are developing in the middle of treatment, which is why it is co crucial to get help right away. Neglecting treatment as a child with PTSD is what leads to the adult having strained relationships, not being able to cope, problems getting jobs because they have poor social skills. It is all avoidable with treatment. It is very important that the family and loved ones help though out the process of treatment, being there emotionally is the best thing they can do for the survivor. Making sure they are going to treatment, getting their meds and growing as a person are all things that will encourage a victim that has survived PTSD to go on a lead a happy normal life leaving the trauma in the past. 

Trauma has no prejudice and can affect you no matter what race, social status, or age. While we normally hear about victims of natural disaster or rape and war veterans that suffer from PTSD, Childhood Trauma resulting in PTSD has increasingly become an issue for all walks of life. Children who are exposed to trauma then develop PTSD need treatment; without treatment these children will have to deal with short term effects such as nightmares, withdraw from school ect. And face long term effects including increased health issues, increased risk of suicide, and decreased social skills. Treatment is the most important factor for these children but unfortunately there are not many developed treatment options out there and low funding for the few who do seek to further research. As a society we need to put some focus on increasing the amount of research we are doing for the kids but in order to do that we need people to fund the research. By creating better and more effective treatment options we can increase the amount of fully functioning genuinely happy adults in the world.
