Despite the considerable press addressing the global rise of mental health challenges, the crisis is worsening. Why? futuresTHRIVE believes that until we talk about mental health when it is still health, talking about illness will always scare people. When a parent goes to the well-child visit they are guided through conversations such as; height, weight, blood pressure, food allergies, asthma, vision, hearing, and more. We ask, why not mental health? If a parent could have a baseline of their child’s mental health just like they do for every other health measure – wouldn’t the conversation be completely different if the child was suffering? So if you know your child always worried a bit extra, and a worldwide pandemic happened, and your child started locking themselves in their closet – getting mental health help would be as easy as getting them glasses if they were unable to see the mailbox from the front door.
Article highlights include:
- “The biggest surprise from the study was that adverse childhood experiences, or ACEs, didn’t just lead to emotional and psychological ill effects, such as depression, later in life: People who had more traumatic experiences were also more likely as adults to have heart disease, cancer and a host of other health problems. And though people with higher ACE scores are more likely to smoke and suffer from alcoholism and drug abuse, behavioral factors don’t fully account for these increased disease risks.”
- “Recent work has shown that ACEs can start to affect health even in childhood, increasing risks for asthma, cognitive delays, hormone imbalances, sleep disturbances, obesity, and frequent infections.