Blog post 2/1/14
Violence and
its impact upon development
The stress I chose is violence.(Maltreatment) Berger (2012) states that “on average more
children die of violence either accidental or deliberate than from any specific
disease.” My ex spouse was a physically
and emotionally abused child and my current partner is also a survivor of sever
physical violence as well as emotional, verbal and mental abuse. These two people who are now adults have used
different coping mechanisms to hold on to themselves through the process of
growing up. My former spouse has not
talked to anyone very much about the abuse. He expressed to me that his dad
beat him as a child when he was drunk.
And others have cooberated this fact. He holds a great deal of anger
inside, and denies he has any problems.
He has become very religious since we divorced but when we were married
he refused to attend church with his family.
In retrospect I do not know if he has the ability to face his dragons on
the surface he seems well put together but underneath in certain places his
stressors show up in his actions.
My partner
was horribly abused as a baby and through out childhood and young adulthood by
her mother. There was never any
provocation for the abuse and she has had several broken bones as a result of
the abuse. Her head was slammed in to a
wall on several occasions. One time when
the teacher noticed the extensive bruising on her body she called the
police. They told her to go home and be
a good girl and she wouldn't get hurt.
Her optic nerves are damaged because of the abuse. She is now legally blind
because of the abuse and other medical conditions she has. How she dealt with the abuse was to develop a
strong drinking habit at the age of 14, the strategy of trying to be invisible,
and developing Dissociate Identity Disorder, also traits of Borderline
Personality Disorder have a role to play in her ability to cope with the abuse
and daily life. Both of them have PTSD
from the abuse. We could not take my former spouse to the Mall with out him having a mini melt down. My partner however has been in therapy for many years and
continues and she has been sober for 26 years. While she copes in a limited situation of
living in a way where she controls everything as much as possible she is not able
to cope with being in an environment where she must deal with several people at
once. Or in situations where she has little or no control over things that can trigger her PTSD. Even if they are people she
likes. Going shopping is hard and after
about an hour she can no longer take the sensory overload and we must go
home. If any triggers crop up it sends
her in to a tail spin emotionally that can lead to physical and health compilations. The kind of stress these two people experienced
as children can never be erased and while management is possible there is no “getting
well” for them.
The area of
the world I chose to investigate for stressors and the impact of they have on
child development was Sri Lanka. Sri
Lanka has been at war for many years. In
2010 Fernando, Miller and Berger released a study on how the effects of war and/or
natural disasters impacted child development.
The study used children ages 7-13 who were recruited through the school
system. Demographically there were
children of Sinhalese, Tamil and Muslim children and both genders were
represented. There were two events of
violence studied. One was violence due to war and the other a Tsunami a natural
disaster. It was found that girls
internalized the stress, anxiety and depression while boys externalized the
stress through aggression. Muslim and
Christian children scored worse on psychosocial outcomes then Hindu and Buddhist
children under the same conditions. The
finding of this study was that empirically children who experience daily
stressors are impacted by them in a similar way as children who experience stress
through war and violence. The impact on
social and emotional factors even years after the war has ended has been great
for the children. Much of the time the
economic factor a left over of war will add to the daily stress of children and
families alike.
In
conclusion the effects of violence have are long lived and will be with the person and society from generations to come.
Berger, Dale,
E. Fernando, Gaithri, A., Miller, Kenneth E. (2010) Growing Pains: The Impact of Disaster-Related and Daily Stressors on
the Psychological and Psychosocial Functioning of Youth in Sri Lanka. Retrieved
February 1, 2014 from http://www.drkenmiller.org
Berger,
Kathleen, Stassen (2012) The Developing Person Through Childhood. New York, New
York: Worth Publishers.
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