Trauma Not the Problem
Trauma is not the problem, y’all, it’s the solution — for realz!
I don’t think I’m exaggerating. Resistance of the medical field and politicians over the last several centuries shows that, even while understanding the profound effects of trauma, the maintenance of a traumatized society is a desired outcome. Conspiracy crazy as it sounds, if you’re trying to have a maleable society you gotta apply pressure and what better way than systematically pulling the rug out from under healthy mental development—psychologically breaking citizens at their most vulnerable when they are babies. I swallowed sentiment that fears blaming the inability to cope with life on our broken pasts avoids personal responsibility—stripping our agency. Major institutions dig in their heels against trauma informed service. Fact is children are by default targets trauma-inducing action leading to trauma, with one million children suffering violence, abuse and disruption, while having little to no agency to address it.
Historically, resistance to understanding the impact of trauma—specifically sexual trauma—on children has met with outright denial. “Parents don’t do that to their kids!” remains the key argument against labeling incest a serious social problem. On the opposite extreme, mental health professionals once argued that incest had benefits. Look that shit up. I’ve been reading Bessel Van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score which chronicles like a thriller the fight to have developmental trauma designated a mental illness. The documented progress of the profession on considering trauma has been slow despite overwhelming evidence of its lasting damage.
Doctors agree past violent and otherwise horrific events experienced by children over time lead to a reliable set of complexes that differ from those experienced by adults who face calamity. Still, despite documented events themselves, as well as the acceptance of them as factors for a person’s mental health status, there isn’t a stand-alone diagnosis for individuals whose mental illness is founded in a history of abuse and dysfunction. Though decades of study have shown identical gene-level physiological and behavioral phenomena in people (and animals) who’ve survived trauma, the world has flatly refused to categorize those distinct phenomena under a heading and system of treatment.
Accepting the fact of development as a primary link to mental illness would require a huge shift in the way children are reared. We might actually put effort into providing for the safety of every child. We’d make sure every child had enough to eat, had a comfortable place to rest, and we’d provide resources so that every household understood the impact of trauma on the young people in their lives. We’d also make sure people acting as care-givers to children had the support they needed to get the job done. We’d do more than just penalize and take their kids away when they fail. Trauma informed support would prioritize individual needs over generalization.
I know some of y’all think I’m dreaming when I propose that each persons developmental needs be analyzed and met. “It would cost too much money to have individualized care plans for every child in the world, Pink!” It would be so cumbersome! Except it wouldn’t be more cumbersome than the later-in-life applications for traumatized adults. The US spend $50 thousand a year per incarcerated adult—one person. Reducing childhood trauma reduces incidents of harmful social behaviors of adults. We, as a society, prefer to fund the maintenance of violent systems over harm-reduction for youth at a financial loss. When you follow the money trail, it looks like a lot is being invested in keeping us mentally ill—stealing sanity from babes.
— Notorious Pink
