The Deepest Well
Healing the Long-Term Effects of Childhood Adversity
by Nadine Burke Harris, M.D.
2018
Naomi Burke Harris has one specific goal in life. She wants to wake the world up to the idea that adverse childhood experiences can create medical problems in later life. She has the credentials, the research, and the perseverance to do just that. Her book addresses this issue in an informative, conversational style, filled with personal insights, patient stories, and detailed information on how dysfunction in early home life can have dire impacts on health outcomes.
When a child touches a hot stove, the heat is enough to burn the skin. This is an external factor. Internally, however, the body remembers and creates a biochemical bookmark as a reminder that hot stoves cause pain and to not touch them. When children are exposed to adverse experiences in their own homes, the warning signs are continuous, resonating in the body through rapid pulse, muscle tension, fight-or-flight response.
Although the body is trying to protect its occupant, when the stress response occurs often, it becomes maladaptive. There’s too much to process so it gets stuck on repeat. Abuse, neglect, parental addiction, mental illness, divorce, or violence in the home can all have lasting effects on human health.
From stress responses to failure to grow at a normal rate, to heart disease, diabetes, asthma, and a host of other illnesses are the result of changes in our biological systems stemming from childhood adversity. Dysregulation of the stress response profoundly impacts immune and inflammatory responses and this impact is further complicated when applied to a developing immune system.
Kaiser Permanente and the Centers for Disease Control studied some 17,000 adult patients and traced back their history of lifelong illness to adverse events in early years. Dr. Burke Harris, a self-proclaimed overachiever recounts her own first- hand experiences of the lasting impact of childhood trauma. Her mother suffered with paranoid schizophrenia as did one of her siblings. In adulthood, she miscarried late in a pregnancy and her brother was hospitalized with cardiac problems.
The research is ongoing but the results are strikingly similar. From New Zealand to Great Britain, to the US, more and more medical professionals are concurring that understanding and treating those affected by Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) will definitely combat some of the leading causes of disease and death. The appendix of this book contains both a self-test and a questionnaire for parents and caregivers to administer to children.
This book is a dense but fascinating read. The story she tells will inform and enlighten mental health professionals and individuals interested in understanding the roots of chronic illness and the legacy of childhood adversity.
Naomi Burke Harris, born in Vancouver, BC, Canada in 1975 is a force of nature. A pediatrician and CEO of the Center for Youth Wellness in San Francisco, Harris has garnered close to four million views with her TED Talk, “How Childhood Trauma Affects Health Across a Lifetime.” She’s also been profiled in The New Yorker, was featured in James Redford’s documentary film “Resilience: The Biology of Stress & the Science of Hope” and is the recipient of the Arnold P. Gold Foundation’s Humanism in Medicine Award and the Heinz Award in 2016 for the Human Condition for linking toxic stress in children and the risk of chronic disease in later life.
ISBN-13: 9781328502667
251 pages
Retail Price at ODIN BOOKS $22.99