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Thursday, April 16, 2015
YOLO COUNTY NEWS
99 CENTS
Child abuse, mental illness linked
By Connie Valentine
Child abuse. Domestic violence and sexual assault. Substance abuse. Mental illness.
These terms flow trippingly off our tongues. We rarely pause to consider the profound suffering the words represent. They are often see as Sombody Else’s Problems …. until they happen to us. Then these words, of course, regain their overwhelming, searingly tragic meanings. We finally understand.
These concepts are both interconnected and circular:
Child abuse: A child is beaten and/or raped repeatedly.
Domestic violence and sexual assault: The child watches his mother being beaten and/or raped.
Substance abuse: As a teen, the child discovers that alcohol/drugs and sex numb the pain of the abuse.
Mental illness: As an adult, he turns anger on himself as depression, or has flashbacks (often misdiagnosed as psychosis). He is prescribed toxic drugs that solidify the addiction cycle.
San Diego Kaiser Permanente and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have researched this circular phenomenon in nearly 17,000 adults (see http://www.acestudy.org). They found that the more categories of adverse experiences a child endures, the more problems he or she is likely to have in adulthood.
Adverse experiences include recurring physical or emotional abuse, one instance of sexual abuse, loss of a parent and living in a household where someone is mentally ill, a substance abuser or incarcerated.
The research showed the link between child abuse and adult problems such as depression, hallucinations, substance abuse, smoking, promiscuity, job instability, heart disease, lung disease and cancer — the major causes of disease, death and despair.
Most child abuse is hidden, yet there are 3 mllion reports of child abuse every year. One million are substantiated. Thus, in the past decade, at least 10 million children were abused.
Karl Menninger, M.D., predicts the outcome: “What is done to children, they will do to society.” It is no surprise that our society is increasingly violent and abusive, which leads to the next generation of abused children.
Why, then, is child abuse not the most urgent topic of conversation? It is an epidemic that maims and kills, like smallpox or polio. Do we feel helpless and leave the solution to child welfare services? Quite frankly, that is not good enough. So what can you do?
* Attend the 17th annual Child Sexual Abuse Awareness Conference from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday at the Davis Senior Center, 646 A St. Sponsored by the Incest Survivors Speakers’ Bureau and the California Protective Parents Association, this conference features Colin Ross, M.D., a well-known trauma expert who has authored more than 20 books. It is free to the public.
* Ask the Rotary Club of Davis and other groups to convene a series of town hall meetings to brainstorm how neighbors can best help neighbors in trouble.
* Parents can decide to stop drinking or drugging. Parenting under the influence is just as potentially deadly as driving under the influence. At the very least, it is confusing and frightening for children.
* Ask Assemblywoman Mariko Yamada, D-Davis, and state Sen. Lois Wolk, D-Davis, to co-sponsor a bill to eliminate hitting children. We don’t hit other adults. We should not hit children. If someone tells you they have a God-given right to do so, just ask if Jesus would ever hit a child. That would be unthinkable.
This sunny, flower-filled, Easter-basket-and-colored-egg-hunting month of April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month. The lovely month of April is also National Child Abuse Prevention Month. Although the juxtaposition of the beauty of springtime and the heart-stopping gravity of the problem is hard to reconcile, we need to act despite our discomfort.
— Connie Valentine is a Davis resident and longtime advocate for child abuse prevention.
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