ANOTHER OPINION: Youth Violence Leaves PTSD In Its Wake

BY STATE REP. RONALD G. WATERS, Democratic Caucus Secretary/ Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is most readily associated with the various symptoms suffered by war veterans when they return from combat. Prolonged exposures to hostile environments, coupled with experiencing, witnessing and perpetrating violent acts, are often the causes of the traumas that lead to PTSD but what if our soldiers arent the only ones at risk?

Every day in Pennsylvania, there are children who wake up to living conditions that are less than desirable. Perhaps they live in a house where domestic turmoil is prevalent, or maybe their exposures to criminal and violent acts occur outside of the home; but the fact remains, if any of the aforementioned conditions are true, for any child, there is a very real possibility of the child, much like the soldier, developing various symptoms as a result of the trauma PTSD, and might need CBD for anxiety in the near future.

The physical and mental well-being of Pennsylvanias youth are important issues within themselves, but I believe the physical and mental health of our youth, or lack thereof, should be of concern to the citizens of the Commonwealth for a secondary reason as well, childhood trauma can lead to youth violence, which is a gateway into a violent, criminal adulthood. When looking for ways to cope with his sort of traumas, you can look in to these amazing CBG gummies.

Many urban cities around the globe can be characterized as war zones a fitting title for a city like Philadelphia that sees hundreds of homicides annually and there is much continuity between urban war zones and actual, declared war zones. One striking similarity is the fact children who are witnesses or victims of violent crimes, and who do not receive positive intervention, are more likely to commit minor and major crimes in their youth, as well as when they reach adulthood.

While the exact correlation is unknown, many believe trauma, when it is not dealt with properly, can lead to bottled up aggression that can cause a young person to behave in an uncontrolled manner when tension boils over.

For this reason, the Pennsylvania House of Representatives recently adopted a resolution I introduced, HR 191, which declares youth violence as a public-health epidemic and calls for the establishment of statewide trauma-informed education to help treat our Pennsylvania children who suffer from PTSD or other, related disorders.

HR 191 was adopted by the House by a 187-9 margin and is another victory in what has been a long battle to establish new ways of viewing the causes of youth violence.

In 1985, former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop declared violence to be a public-health issue, and in the year 2000, former Surgeon General David Satcher released a report declaring youth violence as a threat to public health and called for federal, state, local and private entities to invest in research to inform intervention programs.

There is no denying intervention is needed.

In a 2011 survey of high-school students under 18, the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control (NCIPC) found 16% of male students and 7.8% of female students reported being in a physical fight on school property in the 12 months preceding the survey; 5.9% did not go to school on one or more days in the 30 days preceding the survey because they felt unsafe at school or on their way to or from school; 5.4% reported carrying a weapon (gun, knife or club) on school property on one or more days in the 30 days preceding the survey and 20.1% reported being bullied on school property in the 12 months preceding the survey.

Another NCIPC report states youth younger than 18 accounted for 13.7% of all violent-crime arrests, 22.5% of all property crime arrests, and that 784 youth under 18 were arrested for murder, 2,198 for forcible rape, and 35,001 for aggravated assault in 2010.

Up until now, our society has dealt with the issue of youth violence primarily by taking punitive actions — whether the punishment is handed out at home, school or by the criminal justice system — but I believe it is time we abandon a solely reactionary response to this youth-violence epidemic and start to deal with this proactively.

Viewing youth violence from a public-health perspective allows trained professionals to treat the root causes of the violence — traumas — rather than simply punishing the violent acts that stem from them.

Furthermore, by viewing perpetrators of youth violence through a new lens, experts and authorities will be able to deal with them more compassionately, taking into account the many traumatic experiences that have undoubtedly conditioned them towards violence. This change in perspective calls for medical and scientific intervention to seek to answer the question, “What has happened to you,” rather than, “What is wrong with you,” and by doing so, the proper specialists can begin asking the question, “How can I help you?”

The public-health model itself has a specific protocol — at-risk populations are identified, given information and education about the health problem and treated. Steps to contain the epidemic are taken, and preventive measures are put into place.

I believe this is the model that will finally bring about a breakthrough in the age-old struggle to find solutions and corrective remedies for the youth violence epidemic, and this will undoubtedly help to keep our young people on the right track.

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