Ending The Cycle of Trauma
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a mental health crisis for adults and young people around the globe, and it is even written into the DNA of the next generation. I believe that implementing a supportive and educational mental health curriculum in schools may help alleviate this psychological burden.
The Aftermath
An estimated 6.3+ million people around the world have lost their lives due to the COVID pandemic, a shocking and painful statistic that has affected nearly every single person in some shape or form.
COVID caused extreme global uncertainty, exhaustion, panic for loved ones, and, for many, an excruciating quarantine in which individuals were unable to leave their homes — sometimes stuck with difficult families or simply forced into stagnant lives. COVID also brought a major economic depression, causing financial uncertainty and loss of comfort for many individuals. In the first year of the pandemic, global prevalence of anxiety and depression increased by 25%.
The figure below shows that during the pandemic about 4 in 10 adults in the U.S. reported symptoms of anxiety or a depressive disorder, up from 1 in 10 adults who had previously reported these symptoms in the first half of 2019.
In response to these increases in anxiety and depression, many individuals engaged in unhealthy behaviors, like increasing alcohol consumption and substance use. The subsequent worry and unease also led to sleep problems and compounded the effects of chronic conditions.
Though this mental health crisis has affected all people, 81% of Gen Z teens (ages 13–17) have experienced more intense stress during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The pandemic has been a major stopping point in many young people’s lives at a critical moment of social and emotional development. As students begin to emerge from this era of mask wearing and quarantines, an important step of our healing must include dealing with our mental health.
Invisible Trauma & Its Effects
In 2020, UNICEF predicted that “an estimated 116 million babies will be born under the shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic”… over a hundred million babies who were brought into a world undergoing extreme trauma.
The effects of the COVID pandemic can be seen not only among today’s youth, but will live on in this next generation. Research shows that trauma can be passed from parents to children, referred to as intergenerational trauma. When a traumatic or impactful incident occurs in someone’s life, the brain’s response can leave a chemical mark on a person’s DNA. This mark does not alter the genetic makeup or mutate the gene, but it does alter the mechanism by which the gene is expressed — causing an epigenetic alteration.
Unlike a genetic change, epigenetic changes are reversible and do not affect one’s DNA sequence, they simply change the way one’s body reads a DNA sequence. Gene expression is the ability to turn genes “on” and “off”, iand can result in behavior and health changes.
For example, the Dutch Hunger Winter — an extended period of famine that occured when the Nazis cut off food supplies to much of the Netherlands at the end of WWII — was found to not only have a great effect on the starving population, but also the next generation born from affected families. When the children reached middle age, they had higher cholesterol and triglyceride levels, which are related to obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and severe mental health disorders, like schizophrenia, because of a common chemical mark on one of their genes.
Beyond physical expression, epigenetic changes can also influence our ability to regulate stress. A study of Holocaust survivors and their children found a correlation between epigenetic changes and low cortisol levels — a hormone that helps regulate stress response. She found a distinct and recurring pattern of the same epigenetic change, concluding that “both parents and unborn children were affected on a genetic level”.
Another study conducted in 2005 of women exposed to the World Trade Center Collapse on September 11, 2001 found a relationship between low cortisol levels of mothers due to PTSD and subsequent low cortisol levels in their children.
Children with trauma-related epigenetic changes can suffer from a variety of symptoms including nightmares, depressive symptoms or anxiety, intense and ongoing emotional upset, attention and academic difficulties, as well as many others. Older children may use drugs or alcohols, behave in risky ways or engage in unhealthy sexual activities without any knowledge of the trauma that has pushed them into such behaviors.
The Darwinism of It all
Our bodies function in this way because of evolution. We pass on our genes and our experiences both chemically and physically because our minds and bodies are designed to adapt this way over time. It is helpful in the sense that we have evolved from Neanderthals into more intelligent people, but it is harmful in the way that traumatic experiences can be passed on to subsequent generations.
Healing
The upside to epigenetic changes, is that they are reversible. A study done by major academic and clinical centers in the US and the Netherlands (Vinkers et al., 2019) on veterans with PTSD and epigenetic trauma showed that psychotherapy reduced symptoms in over half of the 44 participants. Though this experiment needs to be repeated and expanded, it was the dawn of a new era of scientific research that suggests that psychotherapy can have a biological effect on a specific genetic region. Thus, psychotherapy can serve as an antidote for the effects of trauma.
Where is the conversation?
The only way I learned about intergenerational trauma was by talking to my therapist, a trained health care professional who was trained in these more niche aspects of mental health. Further, my access to a therapist is an economic privilege not all young people have. In reality, these issues are not niche — they are often not taught or talked about because of the stigma surrounding mental illness.
In my own experience as well as in schools across the country, counseling throughout the elementary and middle school years focuses on education around topics like bullying and empathy. Students are rarely educated about “anxiety” or “depression” is, instead left to sift through their own emotions, often left unsure of why they feel a certain way. Generally in high school, a counselor is someone one sees to talk about course schedules, and occasionally a source of emotional support. But rarely are counselors educators about serious mental health issues.
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In this time of societal upheaval, it is more important than ever to implement a strong mental health curriculum into schools. We must ask ourselves– Are failing this vulnerable generation by not providing them the help and education that they need?
The Lack of Resources
Data suggests that, even before COVID, many schools lacked adequate mental health staff. In the 2018–19 school year there were roughly 435 students for every school counselor, exceeding the ASCA’s recommended ratio of 250 to 1. Twenty-three percent of students attended schools with no psychologists and fifty-three percent attended schools with no social workers. With the increases in anxiety and depression resulting from the pandemic, these meager resources are clearly insufficient.
A Few Potential Solutions:
School climate surveys:
- Required by most states already
- Surveys to help gauge students emotional health during & after pandemic
- Assess severity of need for counselors for schools
- Assesses emotional & behavioral needs
- Broad & personalized level of help for students and families
https://www.gulfcoastcovidsurvey.org:
- Survey for schools
- Can enhance states/ or districts data gather capacity
Trauma education in health curriculums:
- Educate students on mental health — what is trauma?
- Teach about variety of important topics: Racism (explicit, implicit, and systematic; and microaggressions), Poverty, Peer victimization, Community violence, Bullying, Etc.
ACE (adverse childhood experiences) testing:
- tally of different types of abuse, neglect, and other hallmarks of a rough childhood
- Help educators counselors know how to help students & when authorities may need to get involved
Enforcing & normalizing regular mental health checkups with a school counselor:
- Breaks the stigma surrounding reaching out for help
- Makes it easier & more accessible for youths
Ending the Cycle.
Implementing more mental health programs and resources in school could both alleviate the current crises and begin to break the cycle of intergenerational trauma. Incorporating mental health in our school curricula from a young age may also help normalize the conversation, dissipating the stigma surrounding getting help. If young children and adolescents could identify and begin to cope with their mental health issues, this could benefit them and future generations. We must prioritize these issues, for what we do now will affect emotional health for endless years to come.
