Let’s reduce adverse childhood experiences

To the Editor;

On Sunday, March 13th at 2 p.m., you are warmly invited to attend the screening of the documentary, “Paper Tigers”, at the Center Theatre in Dover-Foxcroft. This screening is free to the public and is sponsored by the Piscataquis Public Health Coalition in collaboration with Helping Hands with Heart (HHH), Maine Resilience Building Network (MRBN), Center Theatre, Foxcroft Academy and the National Alliance on Mental Illness of Maine (NAMI).

“Paper Tigers” follows a year in the life of an alternative high school in Walla Walla, Wash., that has radically changed its approach to disciplining its students, and in the process has become a promising model for how to break the cycles of poverty, violence and disease that affect families.

We all know people who have struggled in their lives — faced with tremendous challenges and for some, overcoming and succeeding despite these challenges. We also know people who have been unable to overcome their challenges, and who now struggle every day with what are often debilitating and disabling conditions. These are not strangers — they are members of our family, perhaps our own children, our neighbors, people we work with, the folks who sit next to us in the church pew on Sunday. What accounts for the difference between those two groups of people?

Since February 2012, members of the Maine Resilience Building Network have been discussing adverse childhood experiences and their effects on teens. The term comes from 1998 study conducted by researchers from Kaiser Permanente and the Centers for Disease Control. The study included more than 17,000 predominantly middle-class participants who answered questions about various types of trauma they experienced between their gestation in the womb and age 18. The types of trauma included physical abuse, emotional abuse, sexual abuse, neglect, living in a home with substance abuse, household mental illness, parental separation or loss, parental incarceration and instances of domestic violence. The researchers then looked at the participants’ health.

What they found shocked them. The more Adverse Childhood Experiences or ACEs that people listed had a direct correlation on not only their behaviors but also on their health later in life. Those who listed having four or more such experiences, for example, were not only 12 times more likely to attempt suicide than those with one, but they were also more likely to have diseases such as heart disease, lung disease, diabetes and obesity.

The trauma, it turns out, is also frighteningly common. Dr. Robert Anda, one of the co-authors of the adverse childhood experiences study who visited Maine last November to speak at the first ACEs to Resilience Conference. Dr. Anda, formerly with the Centers for Disease Control in Maryland, was the first to hold the initial data in his hands. “I saw how common it was,” he told the Northport crowd, “and I wept.”

Common, it is. In the Maine Kids Count report put out by the Maine Children’s Alliance, 25 percent (1 in 4) of Maine’s kids have experienced two or more adverse childhood experiences. That is 3 percent higher than the national average. In fact, more than half of Maine kids have experienced at least one ACE. As the poorest county in Maine, Piscataquis County has the highest rate of infant mortality in the State, second highest percentage of children enrolled in free and reduce school lunch, the highest percentage of kids in foster care in the State, and the second highest unemployment rate.

Helping Hands with Heart (HHH) and its partners have been working on a variety of strategies to help all of our residents including our youth and families. We believe that we can create a trauma-sensitive, county-wide environment that builds awareness, communicates strengths, fosters connections and encourages us to expect the best and stay for the worst.

“Paper Tigers” is about several students in an alternative high school specializing in educating young people who have experienced ACEs and are at high risk for school failure. When you see this documentary, you will see the face and hear the story of children you know in our county. You will see the power that one individual and a supportive environment can have to turn things around not only for these kids — but for their families, as well.

“Paper Tigers” is a national call to action for discussion about adverse childhood experiences, what the federal CDC describes as “one of the leading, if not the leading determinant of the health and social wellbeing of our nation.”

The event is free and open to the public. We may be helpless to stop the trauma that rages in so many other parts of the world, but we do have control over what happens here, in our own community. We have the opportunity to change the current course of events and the first step is to become informed.

We look forward to having you join us on Sunday, March 13th at 2 p.m. at the Center Theatre. Refreshments will be on hand. Parents, teachers, business and community leaders, health and mental health care providers, early childhood educators, law enforcement, clergy …. This is a movie we all need to see and a discussion we all need to engage in.

Donations are welcomed but not required. “Paper Tigers” is not appropriate for young children. You can view a “trailer” on line of this documentation by clicking on http://www.papertigersmovie.com/

Following the movie, there will be a brief discussion. Many thanks. Questions? Please contact hhhpiscataquis@gmail.com

Sue Mackey Andrews, co-chair
Helping Hands with Heart