Sociology Writing assignment This is a simple question and written response. Section on choose four questions and bullet point under the question the written answer. Section two answer three and bulle

In November of 2019, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published a fascinating study on the impact of childhood experiences on the development of the human being and the long-term effects of such experiences.

Much as I did with the Parson’s lecture on Pregnancy and the Sick Role, I will provide a brief summary of the results of the CDC research and raise some additional aspects for you to consider. Your next written assignment will provide you the opportunity to expand on the findings of this research. Again, as in the Parsons lecture, I have not covered this data in this class previously and am interested in your reaction and thoughts.

Summary of the CDC Data

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (www.cdc.gov) released a report on the impact of Adverse Childhood Experiences on Physical, Mental, and Economic Health.

For this data, a child is defined as anyone under the age of 18.

The CDC defined Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACES) as anyone under the age of 18 years old witnessing or being exposed to any of the 8 following items.

Witnessing Potentially Traumatic Events

These included the child seeing an immediate family member or resident in their dwelling engage in any of the following behaviors:

- Substance Abuse/Misuse
- Mental Illness
- Intimate Partner Violence
- Parental Divorce
- Incarceration

Exposure to Violence

The CDC included the person under 18 being a victim of these three types of violence:

- Physical
- Sexual
- Emotional

Results

The report found the following:

61% of US adults have experienced at least one Adverse Childhood Experience before age 18

15.9% of US adults have experienced 4 or more ACES by age 18

Younger adults report more exposure to ACES than do older people

[Regarding this finding, I wonder of some this may be the result of older people suppressing these experiences or not wanting to share these experiences with the researchers. It may also be that younger people are now more willing to express and verbalize these experiences than people were in previous times. Of course, it is also possible that these types of experiences have increased over the previous decades. tom’s note)

Women, Native Americans/American Indians, African-American, and other minority groups report more ACES than do white males [Again, I wonder if this is not a remnant of white males not wanting to share these experiences or suppressing these experiences. For those of you who took Principles of Sociology – remember the Durkheim data on suicide. tom’s note]

Impact

Now here is where the data gets to be fascinating.

The CDC reported that ‘Exposure to 4 or more ACES before age 18 has been identified as having a dramatic impact on mental, emotional, and economic health …’

The data is stating that while experiencing one, two, or three of these Adverse Childhood Experiences may impact a person’s development, the data shows that dramatic impact is demonstrated in those that have been exposed to 4 or more of these eight before the age of 18.

The authors write ‘… Exposure to adverse childhood experiences can be traumatic, evoking toxic stress responses that have immediate and long-term adverse physiological and psychologic impacts. These adverse childhood experiences can derail optimal health and development by altering gene expression, brain connectivity and function, immune system function, and organ function. Adverse childhood experiences can also compromise development of healthy coping strategies, which can affect health behaviors, physical and mental health, life opportunities, and premature death …’

Let me take a minute and go back over what the above paragraph states. The authors are basically claiming that being exposed to the above 8 ACES produces as stress response in the child that may have an immediate, or more important for our class, long-term changes to the child’s personality.

What the researchers claim here is that the stress response to these experiences can be so severe as to alter the ‘… gene expression, brain connectivity and function …’ – in other words, as a result of the chemicals that were released in the child’s developing brain as a result of these Adverse Experiences could alter the brain functioning and the other biological functioning. This is an amazing finding.

Notice how the authors go further in stating that these Adverse Experiences impact the child developing healthy or appropriate coping strategies as a result of the stress produced by and during these experiences. Clearly, not having learned the appropriate responses to stressful situations in childhood will impact the behaviors and choices that one makes later in life.

This research seems to support the concept that early childhood socialization (an aspect of which would include these ACES) is vital to the developing personality. For instance, the sociologists Berger and Luckmann claimed that ‘… childhood is the time when the human personality is formed…’

If we look at the end of the above paragraph, the authors provide some examples of the ‘health behaviors, physical and mental health, life opportunities, and premature death’ events the ACES may lead to:

Increased alcohol and substance use/misuse/addiction
Suicide
Depression
Heart Disease
Chronic Illness
Health Risk Behavior
Obesity/Anorexia
Reduced Educational Attainment
Higher Unemployment
Lower Life-time earnings

An Attempt to Apply This Data

One of the reasons for my trying these ‘new’ lectures is to give you the chance to think beyond the data presented and offer some understandable applications of this data to circumstances/situations today.

Let me try one of these explanations that I hope you start to develop. Let’s use the ‘health behavior, physical and mental health’ issue of Anorexia.

I will summarize data on anorexia from an article in the journal Clinical Nutrition Experimental (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352939318300484). The authors write, ‘The eating disorder anorexia nervosa develops mostly in adolescence or young adulthood with a ratio of women: men of 8: 1. Anorexia nervosa was found to be the third most common chronic disease in adolescents with the highest mortality rate of all psychiatric disorders … Although the disease is clinically well characterized, the underlying pathophysiology is still not well understood. In the past, several concepts have been established in order to attempt to explain the cause of anorexia nervosa. From personality traits, family or genetic concepts, the research community has now come to a multifactorial concept that is mainly focusing on neurobiology … Overall, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies indicate altered neural activity across the brain, including the frontal, parietal, temporal and occipital lobes, as well as subcortical structures such as the amygdala, striatum, thalamus and the cerebellum. Despite the growing body of knowledge due to the increase in number of fMRI studies, a clear pathophysiological picture is still to be drawn.

So then in summary, the authors found that anorexia largely affects young women in adolescence and young adulthood. The study reported ‘altered neural activity across the brain …’

Now here is a ‘scenario’ combining this data. There is a female child who is exposed to 4 of the ‘Adverse Childhood Experiences’ during childhood. These experiences produce the ‘toxic stress response’ the CDC research identified which then alters the brain functioning of the young child. As a witness or victim of these ACES, the child may have felt powerless to prevent, stop, or escape from these adverse experiences. In addition, the CDC article mentions these ACERS may inhibit the forming of appropriate coping strategies in the child. As the young woman enters her teens and the physical changes of puberty begin, she may again feel her life is out of control, and with the lack of appropriate coping skills may ‘think’ that limiting her food in-take is the one thing that she can control in her life and uses this strategy to handle the stresses (since she lack the ‘appropriate coping’ skills caused by the ACES) that she is experiencing at this particular time.

Please understand that none of this is meant to ‘blame’ the person who suffers from any of the ACES or impacts listed above. It is simply an attempt to ‘explain’ why certain persons may engage in certain behaviors. I think the topic is fascinating and has far reaching ramifications for understanding human behavior.

Expanding the Data

As I was reviewing the data for this lecture, I began to think about what other experiences during childhood may have a similar impact. In class discussions related to this topic last semester, a few examples that might be as traumatic for the child included – the death of a parent, the death of sibling, frequent changes in residence and/or school.

Then I also thought about approaching the topic from a different angle. The eight ACES listed by the CDC would clearly produce incredible stress in the young child and anyone involved in these experiences. But then I thought, could there be similar impact on the child due to a lesser stressful situation than those eight but one that is more constant or consistent over a long period of time?

For instance, a child who is exposed to negative, mean, hurtful criticism, not to the level of emotional abuse mentioned above, but to minor, constant negativity, could that also have an impact on a child’s brain, their functioning, and their long-term adaptive responses?

What I want you to consider at this point, what other (aside from the 8 listed above) experiences do you think should be included in this research? Do you agree that there is a potential impact on the child’s socialization due to lower level stressors but ones that are chronic or consistent?

You will get the chance to share your thoughts when the next assignment is posted.