PSTD is Real & we are ignoring it’s effects on our Children.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that nearly 30 percent of U.S. inner-city youths are affected by the disorder, which makes it difficult for them to learn, the news site says. Those who exhibit the disorder often live in virtual war zones, the CDC report says.
Doctors at Harvard recently coined the name “hood disease,” a term for a more complex form of PTSD, the news site reports. And since the youths rarely escape their communities—unlike soldiers who eventually leave a war zone—they are repeatedly exposed to trauma.
“You could take anyone who is experiencing the symptoms of PTSD, and the things that we are currently emphasizing in school will fall off their radar,” San Francisco State University associate professor Jeff Duncan-Andrade told KPIX 5. “Because, frankly, [schoolwork] does not matter in our biology if we don’t survive the walk home.”
Gun violence represents just part of the problem.
“It’s kids who’re unsafe, they’re not well fed,” Duncan-Andrade told the news site. “And when you start stacking those kinds of stressors on top of each other, that’s when you get these kinds of negative health outcomes that seriously disrupt school performance.”
More: Inner City Youth Suffer From ‘Hood Disease,’ Also Known as PTSD - the Root