28 September 2017
UNM awarded $7 million for integrated behavioral health thrust. “TREE Center” to optimize interventions statewide
Best of luck to a commendable effort, but there will be challenges.
“The
research team will study how social determinants, including historical
trauma, adverse childhood experiences and the combined effects of
poverty and discrimination, affect behavioral health, Cacari Stone
says.”
Even so it is not always possible to know the spiritual
strength that some children have been graced with that enable them to
survive the worst of their problems without becoming pathological in some
way, themselves. Statistical labeling based on conjecture can be
limiting. And when children are warned to not talk about what goes on
at home, particularly to school counselors because they will get into
big trouble at home if they do, then that skews understanding and
labeling based on statistics and conjecture. When people who have
experienced these traumas as children are working on the project as
adults, their experience and insight is immeasurably useful, but not
necessarily universal.
“If the research is successful, it will
make a measurable impact in preventing or reducing youth suicide,
alcohol and drug misuse, and depression in vulnerable populations, while
improving access to behavioral health services.”
It can only be useful when facts are known. Again, the warnings from home to remain silent loom large.
“It
also will provide an opportunity to grow a diverse scientific workforce
through training new investigators and building leadership capacity
from under-represented minorities, she says.”
The kids who need
it most may not talk, even though it might be obvious to adults what
they are experiencing. And trying to encourage them to can make them
feel like lab rats because they know the will suffer more at home, in the extended family, and community if they do
talk than if they do not . . . at least until they are adults and away
from the circumstances. Even then it may not be possible for some to discuss because some things simply can not be medicated and psyched away, especially when it is the spiritual realm that needs to be addressed and doctored, but not with the typical organized religion approach.
