Department of Family and Community Medicine, Office of Community Engagement and Neighborhood Health Partnerships, University of Illinois Hospital and Health Sciences System, Chicago, Ill; Center for the Collaborative Study of Trauma, Health Equity, and Neurobiology, an educational program of the Hektoen Institute of Medicine, Chicago, Ill. ajstille@uic.edu
The author reported no potential conflict of interest relevant to this article.
Childhood adversity is a significant root cause of chronic illness and early death. Prevention, mitigation, and Tx of toxic stressors must be part of our paradigm of care.
› Refer eligible patients to an evidence-based perinatal home-visiting program and all parents to an evidence-based parenting program to prevent childhood adversity. A
› Consider screening adult patients and parents for their own history (and their children’s history) of childhood adversity. B
› Recommend trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy and eye-movement desensitization and reprocessing as first-line treatments for adversity and trauma. A
› Consider prescribing yoga, neurofeedback, and other neuromodulatory modalities to treat the consequences of childhood adversity and trauma. B
Strength of recommendation (SOR)
A Good-quality patient-oriented evidence B Inconsistent or limited-quality patient-oriented evidence C Consensus, usual practice, opinion, disease-oriented evidence, case series
References
The rising prevalence of obesity, widespread community violence, and the opioid epidemic are urgent health crises that we have, so far, failed to solve. Physicians must therefore ask: Are we employing the right framework to effectively understand and address these complex problems?
Careful review of the literature reveals that these problems and many others begin with, and are profoundly affected by, childhood adversity. Compounding this, studies over the past 20 years that have focused on abuse and neglect without including community, structural, and historical adversity demonstrate that our definitions of adversity and trauma have been too narrow. The prevalence and diversity of factors affecting development and health is much greater than our medical model anticipates.1,2
CASE
Eileen W, a 55-year-old married, self-employed woman with a 20-year history of autoimmune thyroiditis, longstanding insomnia, and anxiety presents with intense episodes of terror related to public speaking, which are compromising her work performance. Her history is significant for tobacco and alcohol use beginning in early adolescence and continuing into young adulthood, as well as 2 unplanned pregnancies in her 20s. Additional adversities included the murder of her maternal aunt while Ms. W was in utero, resulting in her parents having fostered 2 young cousins; bullying; and the premature death of a special-needs sibling.
What treatment strategies might have been undertaken to manage consequences of the adversities of Ms. W’s childhood—both on her own initiative and as interventions by her health care providers?
Because at least 60% of Americans have had 1 or more experiences of childhood adversity, family physicians care for affected patients every day—a reality incompletely addressed by our conventional theories and practices.1,3 Consequently, updating our medical model to incorporate research that confirms the critical and widespread impact of childhood experience on health and illness is an essential task for family medicine.
Core values of family medicine integrate biological, clinical, and behavioral sciences. They include comprehensive and compassionate care that is provided within the context of family and community across the lifespan.4,5 Family medicine is therefore the ideal specialty to lead a movement that will translate scientific evidence of the effects of childhood adversity on health into training, delivery of care, and research—transforming clinical practice and patient health across the lifespan.
Because at least 60% of Americans have had 1 or more experiences of childhood adversity, family physicians care for affected patients every day.
This article describes the dramatic impact of childhood adversity on health and well-being and calls on family physicians to play a crucial role in preventing, mitigating, and treating the consequences of childhood adversity, an important root cause of disease.