Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)
More than two decades ago, two respected researchers, clinical physician Dr. Vincent Felitti and CDC epidemiologist Robert Anda, published the game-changing Adverse Childhood Experiences Study (ACEs.) It revealed a troubling but irrefutable phenomenon: the more traumatic experiences the respondents had as children (such as physical and emotional abuse and neglect), the more likely they were to develop health problems later in life—problems such as cancer, heart disease, and high blood pressure. To complicate matters, there was also a troubling correlation between adverse childhood experiences and prevalence of drug and alcohol abuse, unprotected sex, and poor diet. Combined, the results of the study painted a staggering portrait of the price our children are paying for growing up in unsafe environments, all the while adding fuel to the fire of some of society’s greatest challenges.
"What's predictable is preventable."
However, this very same study contains the seed of HOPE: all of the above-mentioned risk factors—behavioral as well as physiological—can be offset by the presence of one dependable and caring adult. It doesn’t need to be the mother or the father. It doesn’t even need to be a close or distant relative. More often than not, that stable, caring adult is a teacher.
“Resilience is about overcoming adversity. It’s about how you think and how you view the world. When something bad happens to you, do you see it as a catastrophe? Or do you see it as an opporunity? Are you able to tell the difference between something that’s a real tiger versus something that just feels like a tiger.
Because stress is designed into our bodies so that we can deal with the tiger that’s going to attack us. Right? And the key is that you have to be able to tell the difference between something that could really chew your face off, or just feels like it might.
The resilience mindset can tell the difference between something real and something that only worries you.
Unconditional love...it gives human beings the security that allows them to move forward and to take chances. That’s the bottom line of being able to handle almost anything.
’I am loved, I am valued, and people know who I am inside.’ That allows people to thrive through good and bad times and that’s what resilience is.”
Resilience: The biology of stress and the Science of Hope
Examining the emerging science around Toxic Stress and how it negatively alters the brains and bodies of children if left untreated.
"The child may not remember, but the body remembers."
Researchers have recently discovered a dangerous biological syndrome caused by abuse and neglect during childhood. As the new documentary Resilience reveals, toxic stress can trigger hormones that wreak havoc on the brains and bodies of children, putting them at a greater risk for disease, homelessness, prison time, and early death. While the broader impacts of poverty worsen the risk, no segment of society is immune. Resilience, however, also chronicles the dawn of a movement that is determined to fight back. Trailblazers in pediatrics, education, and social welfare are using cutting-edge science and field-tested therapies to protect children from the insidious effects of toxic stress—and the dark legacy of a childhood that no child would choose.
Paper Tigers
Captures the pain, the danger and the hopes of struggling teens–and the teachers armed with new science who are changing their lives for the better.
“Stressed brains can’t learn.”
The film follows a year in the life of an alternative high school that has radically changed its approach to disciplining its students, becoming a promising model for how to break the cycles of poverty, violence and disease that affect families.
That was the nugget of neuroscience that Jim Sporleder, principal of a high school riddled with violence, drugs and truancy, took away from an educational conference in 2010. Three years later, the number of fights at Lincoln Alternative High School had gone down by 75% and the graduation rate had increased five-fold. Paper Tigers is the story of how one school made such dramatic progress.
Following six students over the course of a school year, we see Lincoln’s staff try a new approach to discipline: one based on understanding and treatment rather than judgment and suspension. Using a combination of vérité and revealing diary cam footage, Paper Tigers is a testament to what the latest developmental science is showing: that just one caring adult can help break the cycle of adversity in a young person’s life.
“When I started hearing about the emerging science of adversity and childhood stress, my mind was blown. High “doses” of stress during childhood get into our bodies, change our brains, and lead to lifelong health and social problems—everything from domestic violence and substance abuse to heart disease and cancer. Who knew that if your parents got a divorce when you were growing up, you have a significantly higher risk of heart disease? Or that if your mother had a drinking problem, your own risk for depression in adulthood is much higher? The science of “Toxic Stress” and the major findings that came out of the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) Study should be common knowledge public health information. But the movement is still in its infancy.
We started making RESILIENCE to make this science digestible and relevant to everyone, and to showcase some of the brave and creative individuals who are putting that science into action. There is a growing group of pediatricians, educators and communities who are proving that cycles of disease and adversity can be broken.
In the United States, we spend trillions of dollars every year treating preventable diseases, rather than intervening before a patient is sick and suffering. We have a zero-tolerance, “suck it up” culture that judges and punishes bad behavior, rather than trying to understand and treat the root cause of that behavior. But now, with this new body of scientific knowledge available, we are learning there are better ways of dealing with these seemingly intractable problems.
RESILIENCE has a companion film: PAPER TIGERS follows a year in the life of an alternative high school in Washington State who radically changed its approach to student discipline, with radically positive results. Our goal with these two projects is to make “Toxic Stress” and “ACEs” household terms, so that individuals and communities are empowered to improve the health and wellbeing of this and future generations.”