A penny saved is a penny earned, is it not? Well, ‘tis the time of year to think of Ebenezer Scrooge. Dickens had a good point, and modern science is continually proving him right. One of this summer’s TED talks states it in no uncertain terms.
The speaker was Dr. Nadine Burke Harris and her topic was how trauma affects a child’s cerebral development. We’re not talking about the psychological effects on the mind, here. We’re talking about actual physical development of the brain. Scientifically provable through MRI scanning.
Her field is Adverse Childhood Experiences: physical, emotional or sexual abuse, physical or emotional neglect, parental mental illness, substance dependence, incarceration, parental separation or divorce and domestic violence. She spoke of a study of 17,500 adults, correlating their childhood ACE score with their recent medical history.
Her outcomes lead her to suggest that ACE is “the single greatest health problem facing US today.”
Here’s how the facts turned out:
67% of the people studied had one ACE factor in their childhood; 12.6 % had 4 or more. Think of that. Two-thirds of us have a serious problem of some sort hidden in our childhood, and one-eighth of us are seriously damaged goods. When it comes to simple empathy with suffering human beings, that’s a pretty nasty situation; at this point the bleeding heart liberals are coming out of the woodwork in droves, shaking “I told you so” fingers.
But we promised to talk economics here, didn’t we?
Let’s look at health outcomes, because those cost society real dollars. The people with an ACE score of 4 or more, compared to the mere third of society that had none of these incidents in their childhood, had 2.5 times the level of hepatitis and pulmonary disease, 4.5 times the incidence of depression and 12 times the suicide rate. (Yes, I suppose you could say that suicide is a cost-effective solution to these people’s problems, but I don’t suggest you say it out loud.)
And those with an ACE score of 7 had 3 times the normal incidence of lung cancer and 3.5 times the chance of heart disease of someone with a “normal” childhood.
And Now the Medical Testing
You might think that these medical problems were caused by bad lifestyle choices caused by the psychological damage. This would mean that people had a choice in contracting these diseases. But MRI scans of these victims of social problems reveal actual changes in the development of specific areas of the brain. You probably aren’t familiar with the nucleus accumbens, but you certainly enjoy its effects; it is the pleasure and reward centre of your brain. Other affected areas are the pre-frontal cortex, which deals with impulse control, and the amygdala, the fear response centre. All poorly formed in those with high ACE scores.
Dr. Burke Harris blames this aberration on the “fight or flight” stress response system. If you meet a bear in the bush, your adrenal gland makes adrenaline, cortisol and other drugs to prepare you to fight or flee. This is a good response for a one-time incident of danger. But what happens if the bear comes home every night? This response, when activated on a daily basis, floods the developing brain with an excess of these drugs. Thus it becomes maladaptive. You may well imagine that sensitive young brains and immune and hormonal systems in the developmental stage are affected by increased amounts of adrenaline and cortisol on a daily basis. At a high ACE level, it even affects how DNA is read by your body.
So what we have is an epidemic of children growing up with damaged brains, unable to form normal responses to the world, including the diseases that abound out there. And they are costing, and will continue to cost, society huge amounts of money because of the drain on the medical system.
And it goes without saying that they won’t be giving their own children an ACE-free environment to grow up in, either.
The Actual Cost
Of course, the shortsighted might argue that in the United States, where the medical system is profit driven, such a situation is good for business. Once again, I suggest you don’t say that too loudly. And in Canada, where most of our medical costs are borne by the government – in other words, us – the cost to society is direct.
There’s a lot of anxiety out there about the rising cost of health care, and how we’re going to be able to afford it. There are plenty of places where a small amount of money spent now would pay off in the long term, and protecting children from the effects of Adverse Childhood Experience is a good place to start.
The Bottom Line, As Usual
For the far-sighted, a penny spent now means a dollar saved later. The fact that it may be saved a lifetime away from now does not change the fact. What is it that the businessmen tell us? You have to spend money to make money? Well, sometimes you have to spend money to save money. Protect the poor and needy. They’ll thank you by costing you less in the future.