Here’s a recently published study that I hope will turn out to become a landmark and be the last of its kind that ever needs to be done: Child Abuse and Cancer. Essentially, abused children run almost a 50% higher risk for contracting cancer later on as adults than those who haven’t been abused. Admittedly, many of the causes of cancer remain mysterious and complex, but as a result of reading books like Bob Scaer’s The Body Bears the Burden and The Trauma Spectrum, and oncologist Gabor Mate’s When the Body Says “No!,” this study makes perfect sense to me. I’ve often wondered why, on a percentage basis, incidents of cancer have increased so profoundly over the last 100 years? I think a pretty compelling neurological case could be made that is it because incidents of child abuse have increased as well, perhaps leaving many children’s brains severely compromised like this.
The High Costs of Doing Nothing
Several years back, Suzette Fromm conservatively calculated the direct and indirect annual costs of child abuse from reported incidents at 100 billion dollars. Privately, she told me that she only used reported incidents (which is estimated at only 6% of all incidents), because when she told people what she thought the real costs were, based on all incidents of child abuse in America, people’s eyes glazed over or they simply didn’t believe her. It’s kind of like Freud during the Victorian era refusing to believe that the primary cause of so many of his women patients’ difficulties were rooted in the sexual abuse they experienced as kids. His incredulity forced him to contort his thinking until he finally came up with the bizarre explanatory fiction called: Penis Envy! Not one of his finer contributions.
But if we don’t distort our own thinking like Freud, and add adult-onset cancer to the list of annual abuse costs, which was $72 billion in 2004, I’m pretty sure we can add over another $100 billion dollars to those costs.
Controlling for Abuse
And then, of course, abused children often turn out to be abusers themselves. Why? Because the damage that has been done to them often prevents abused children from being able to self-regulate their emotional reactivity to the people and circumstances that life brings their way as adults (or that their brains unconsciously draw them to, in futile attempts to compulsively heal the trauma?). Because they can’t control themselves, as a society we are forced to find other means to try to provide “self-control.” We call one of those “other means” prisons. Prison-building, as you may know, has exploded here in America in recent years. America has five percent of the world’s population and 25% of the world’s prisoners.
If we add in the $50,000 annual cost of housing the 2.2 million people in prison in America in 2006, we can add another 100 billion dollars to our growing costs! And that’s not factoring in the lost productivity and opportunity costs that would be obtained were these folks well and working to make a positive contribution to the world.
More Money, More Suffering
Paraphrasing the observation popularly attributed to Senator Everett Dirksen, “A hundred billion here and a hundred billion there, and pretty soon we’re talking about real money.” I wouldn’t be surprised if the real total costs of child abuse in this country were over a trillion dollars annually. (To get a proportional sense of these numbers, consider that a million seconds is a little less than 12 days. A billion seconds, roughly 32 years. A hundred billion seconds is just shy of … 320 years. A trillion seconds puts us back 100 years before Christ, and sends us forward into a very tentative future).
So, disease and crime and early abuse are all connected, resulting in a lot of money being spent, money that will most likely not pay much of a return, mostly because so many parents, teachers and caregivers don’t really know when their actions are causing damage. Nor do they know how to repair such damage once it’s occurred. In my opinion, this is where the real education and interventions need to be aimed – at the harm that is done unwittingly to our children as a result of simple ignorance (for example, screaming at kids!).
Profound Human Suffering
Underneath all that money, what we’re really talking about though, is profound human suffering. And it’s suffering that’s widespread, suffering that begins early and often repeatedly recurs over a lifetime.
It was out of making these connections between early abuse and lifelong suffering, that it seemed to make the most sense to me to attempt to focus on early, optimal interventions. A lifetime of leverage can be gained by beginning to educate parents, teachers and caregivers about the brain, even when children are still in utero. Together with continued, mentored learning, like that provided by the midwife Colorado-based, Nurse-Family Partnership, we can greatly optimize the first three years of every child’s development in areas like immune and executive function, social, emotional and spiritual intelligence, and basic overall human goodness.
It seems like something not only “best for the children,” but ideal for the caring, connected adults it’s possible to become as well.
Well written and poignant piece AGAIN. In so many ways it comes down to the brain. Maybe that’s why I see so much hope in Buddhist practice, meditation and awareness. It’s never too late to grow your brain. I’ve watched several boys, mine included, who either have peace and consciousness as a main piece of their learning or not. The difference is huge. From the very beginning, a child who is taught to be conscious and exercises self control (I mean really has the skills and practice) has the great gift of a society who supports them – not one who wants them out of sight or on medication (and multiple other forms of rejection). Raising strong aware families is paramount to stopping the cycle of “mindless” abuse. It’s never too late for parents to grow their own brains in support of themselves and their families. Entirely possible.
Thank you for sharing your wisdom. You are a diamond in the world of children and parenting.
Saw this story about Jani several places. This poor child’s big brain question has been answered with a resounding “no.”
http://tinyurl.com/nzby84
What sort of future might this poor dear have?
Between seeing Michael Jackson’s daughter’s heart publicly breaking and reading the story of Jani I’m just so sad.
Mark,
Your message for this week resonates deeply with me on many levels. As a Home Health/Hospice nurse, with experience of over 37years, I work very closely with people who endure this lifelong suffering, or as Michael Kearney, MD titled his book, are “Mortally Wounded”. I wonder if you are familiar with Wendy McCarty’s work? (http://www.wondrousbeginnings.com)
She is a professor @ UCSB who heads the Pre and Perinatal Psychology doctoral program. She is my mentor and her work is powerful in aiding release of this suffering in a very immediate way on a cellular level, even from the womb experience. I have felt it personally, observed it with my clients, and been blessed that my sexually abused daughter has been willing to experience the work. Although the picture of the brain comparison is so very graphic, the countenance of healing that settles over a person fills me with deep gratitude for the tools of release and healing we now have available to us.
Thank you for all you do to raise awareness.
Hello Mark –
A good friend and ally just sent me your article. Thank you for your straightforward words connecting childhood abuse and “lifelong suffering.” That’s a direct, accurate description of the dynamic that goes on. And it makes sense that parents sometimes harm their kids out of ignorance and not intention. I’d like to read that book, “When the Body says No!” The title alone is intriguing.
I did want to say that Sigmund Freud, according to author and psychologist Alice Miller, actually did believe his female patients about their childhood sexual abuse earlier on in his career but when he put forward his knowledge to his peers in the profession, they reacted so powerfully against it (“it can’t be true, therefore it isn’t true”) that Freud backed down and retracted his original position.
Alice Miller has written many powerful books (“For Your Own Good,” “The Untouched Key,” “The Drama of the Gifted Child,” “Thou Shalt Not Be Aware,” and others.) She is quite excellent. She’s difficult to read because of her unvarnished truth telling about what happens to children but I found her consciousness-exploding and my life has never been the same.
I’m glad there are people like you who are spreading the word about how to be allies to children. I look forward to reading more of your articles.
Mark,
The information you share each week is always of great value, (you know how dedicated I am to getting this information out!) but this week, in my opinion, was the one with information with the most impact.
I will be sharing it with many others.
Thanks as always!
Deborah
I was following you until you through the Prisons in there – but I get your point. What I would like to know is the abuse physical or emotional or a combination of both? Does the scarred physical abuse cause the cancer or is it somehow related to emotional abuse that inevitably causes cancer?
Thanks for adding your voice to the mix.
The critical factor in abuse is not whether it’s physical or emotional. It’s whether or not the interactions trigger sustained neurotoxin release that a child is not able to clear out of his or her system that works to impair or delay brain development.
Physical activity is one of the primary ways kids (and adults) accomplish this. Making kids stand or sit in a corner, for example, can often be abusive – since they have no outlet for the cortisol and adrenaline spikes this punishment triggers. Neuro-inhibitors can latch onto neurons that don’t shut off of their own accord, produced by shaming, for example, and keep them from firing for a lifetime!
Hope that helps clarify things.
Best,
Mark
Mark I am an advocate for children in foster care in Australia. I observe that tragically the “system” perpetrates further trauma to children when they come into state care by the very ignorance you refer to shown by care givers and workers alike. I agree that the affect of trauma on the developing brain on all aspects of the child’s functioning- social, emotional and cognitive, needs wider exposure in the field of child protection. I find it abominable that parents, carers and child protection workers are not properly informed in this area. Even access to theraputic services for children who have been abused and neglected is not automatically established for such children in this country. I often have to fight for it on behlaf of the children I support. Sadly the lack of recognition for their suffering only serves to further enhance their sense of isolation and mistrust. And the cycle continues. The cost to our society is so much greater than financial. Thank you for your article.
Mark – Have I your permission to mention this article in my Brain Gym® newsletter that is going out today? I feel this would be of great benefit to my clients. Thanks…Cristina