Adverse Childhood Experiences and Their Impact on Neurological Functioning in the Context of Traumatic Toxic Stress

Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and childhood trauma are related to shortand long-term unhealthy social and behavioral adaptations and negative physical and mental health consequences for children, adolescents and specifically for adults. Studies of the last three decades on ACEs and traumatic stress have emphasized their impact on multiple domains of human existence consisting of: Social adjustment, behavioral adaptation, mental health, physical health, mortality and morbidity, health care costs to society, poor educational outcomes, subsequent reduced productivity while drawing excessive resources from the society, increased crime and legal problems, among other. Available data is impressive in stressing the need and the importance of preventing and addressing trauma across all service systems utilizing universal systemic approaches. However, at a global scale, all systems of care are organized via “crisis response” paradigm rather than with a long term preventive care focus. As a result, only symptomatic care is provided to those who need care at all domains of systems of care allowing underlying issues to be transferred in an intergenerational manner afflicting mankind generation after generation, sucking unreasonable amounts of resources. During the last decade, trauma informed care (TIC) has been identified as a tool to uncover and address both crisis issues that bring clients to any system of care and the underlying issues that necessitate the service in the first place. In implementing TIC institutions must survey their organizational structure first and foremost to make sure that the institutional environment is safe both for providers and clients. Secondly, communities must develop interagency collaboration so that both TIC is implemented in all relevant agencies and the needed services in the community are made available. Current developments on the implementation of TIC in a variety of service systems call for the surveillance of trauma, resiliency, functional capacity and health impact of ACEs. When, clients are children under 18 years of age, it is important such surveillance to include the child’s immediate caretakers, known as two-generational TIC approach. Many such efforts have been implemented in mental health agencies. However, other medical agencies, educational facilities, day care services, legal services, social services are among the agencies that must implement TIC as well so that the root causes of all social, behavioral, legal, educational, medical, and mental health issues can be unearthed as early as possible to address them with a new paradigm. Early identification of childhood trauma in children unfortunately has just recently gained some momentum in the USA, which still remains a significant public health need. The panelists on this presentation will review childhood adversity and traumatic toxic stress, present epidemiologic data on the prevalence of ACEs and their social, behavioral, legal, educational, financial, physical and mental health impacts, and discuss intervention modalities for prevention taking into account the crisis in Greece and how this might have affected children and adults alike in the country.