Health Risk And Adversity

Research on health involves evaluating the disparities that are systematically associated with the experience of risk, including genetic and physiological variation, environmental exposure to poor nutrition and disease, and social marginalization. This volume provides a unique perspective - a comparative approach to the analysis of health disparities and human adaptability - and specifically focuses on the pathways that lead to unequal health outcomes. From an explicitly anthropological perspective situated in the practice and theory of biosocial studies, this book combines theoretical rigor with more applied and practice-oriented approaches and critically examines infectious and chronic diseases, reproduction, and nutrition.

Research on health involves evaluating the disparities that are systematically associated with the experience of risk, including genetic and physiological variation, environmental exposure to poor nutrition and disease, and social marginalization. This volume provides a unique perspective - a comparative approach to the analysis of health disparities and human adaptability - and specifically focuses on the pathways that lead to unequal health outcomes. From an explicitly anthropological perspective situated in the practice and theory of biosocial studies, this book combines theoretical rigor with more applied and practice-oriented approaches and critically examines infectious and chronic diseases, reproduction, and nutrition.

“An extraordinary, eye-opening book.”—People 2018 National Health Information Awards, Silver Award “A rousing wake-up call . . . this highly engaging, provocative book prove[s] beyond a reasonable doubt that millions of lives depend on us finally coming to terms with the long-term consequences of childhood adversity and toxic stress.”—Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow Dr. Nadine Burke Harris was already known as a crusading physician delivering targeted care to vulnerable children. But it was Diego—a boy who had stopped growing after a sexual assault—who galvanized her journey to uncover the connections between toxic stress and lifelong illnesses. The stunning news of Burke Harris’s research is just how deeply our bodies can be imprinted by ACEs—adverse childhood experiences like abuse, neglect, parental addiction, mental illness, and divorce. Childhood adversity changes our biological systems, and lasts a lifetime. For anyone who has faced a difficult childhood, or who cares about the millions of children who do, the fascinating scientific insight and innovative, acclaimed health interventions in The Deepest Well represent vitally important hope for preventing lifelong illness for those we love and for generations to come?. “Nadine Burke Harris . . . offers a new set of tools, based in science, that can help each of us heal ourselves, our children, and our world.”—Paul Tough, author of How Children Succeed “A powerful—even indispensable—frame to both understand and respond more effectively to our most serious social ills.”—New York Times

Older aged adults face many adversities over the later life course. This edited volume will address the ways in which seniors bounce back from different types and combinations of adversity – termed “resilience”. While research has been accumulating that identifies inherent abilities and external resources needed to adapt and navigate stress-inducing experiences among aging and older adults, gaps remain in understanding the unique elements and processes of resilience. A series of chapters included in this book will address several overarching questions: why do some older individuals/families/communities adapt to adversity better than others; what are modifiable behavioral protective/risk factors related to resilience; and how can we foster resilience at the individual/community level and which approaches show the most promise? The spectrum of aging-related challenges and responses addressed in this book include: mental health; physical/functional health problems; multimorbidity; socio-economic deprivation; social isolation and loneliness; cultural dimensions of loneliness; housing/homelessness problems; and environmental disasters. This book presents cutting-edge science at the conceptual, methodological, empirical and practice levels applied to emerging resilience sub-fields in gerontology. It will also present potential areas of future research, policy and practice linked to these areas. During a period of the most rapid population aging in the US, Canada and many other nations, coupled with heightened global socio-political change, extending our knowledge of resilience will help society to make important adjustments to maximize health and wellness of older individuals. Supporting and enhancing resilience through technological, social and/or community-level advances in geroscience will help those facing adversity to thrive by harnessing, stretching, and leveraging a wide array of potential resources. The promotion of healthier older populations has far-reaching consequences for health care and social/community support systems, both in terms of public health including pandemic response, and the development and implementation of innovations in treatment and practice guidelines.

You can move past toxic stress, let go of fear and anger, and build resilience! This workbook will show you how. Do you often feel sad, anxious, angry, or upset and don’t really know why? Do you no longer enjoy the things you used to enjoy, or feel like the world is a bad place? If you’ve experienced extreme stress or trauma—such as abuse, neglect, a family member's illness, or living through a natural disaster—you may need help healing and moving forward in your life. It’s important to know that you are not alone, and there is nothing to be ashamed of. Most importantly, there are ways to feel better. Written by an expert in teen mental health, this healing workbook offers powerful skills to help you overcome the effects of toxic stress, trauma, and adversity using mindfulness, neuroplasticity, and emotion regulation. You’ll learn all about how your mind and body respond to stress, how to identify triggers, and how to ground and calm yourself in the moment when your emotions feel too big to handle. If you’re struggling with the effects of stress or trauma, you should know that you can move forward in your life with confidence, self-compassion, and resilience. This workbook will help you, every step of the way.

In Staying Alive While Living the Life, Sue-Ann MacDonald and Benjamin Roebuck unpack the realities of living on the streets from the perspective of homeless youth. While much is written about at-risk youth, most literature on youth homelessness reduces their lives to flattened images with little room for the diverse, complex and individual nature of their experiences. Challenging the dominant youth-at-risk conversation by putting forward a framework of survival and resilience, MacDonald and Roebuck illustrate the ways that young people who experience homelessness demonstrate tremendous resilience when facing adversity, social exclusion and various forms of oppression. Drawing on conversations with homeless youth, this book focuses both on the external constraints imposed on their lives as well as the ways young people understand their circumstances and their approaches to problem solving. The result is a nuanced analysis that puts human agency at its centre, allowing readers to explore the challenges young people face and the internal and external resources they draw upon when making decisions about their lives.

Child trauma and violence is not an issue that is constrained to one nationality or one ethnicity. A staggering number of children around the world are subjected to violence and abuse, both domestic and political. The current volume examines the issue of developmental trauma from a variety of viewpoints, including sociological, epidemiological, genetic, and psychiatric. The chapters contained within are broken into the following sections: Child neglect and violence from an international perspective The effects of war and armed conflict on children’s health and development The impact of childhood trauma on mental and physical health into adulthood Case studies of interventions that provide possibilities for treatment in a variety of different contexts Written by a researcher from Harvard Medical School and Children’s Hospital (Boston), this book provides an important resource for understanding violence as an almost ubiquitous presence in children’s lives around the world, as well as offering directions for treatment and interventions. This book is an important resource for researchers, counselors, psychologists, child advocates, and anyone who seeks to understand how adversity in childhood affects a person’s entire life.

This book offers the most current research and reviews, innovative programs and approaches, developments and directions, and future outlooks and trends from an international perspective by experts in the field on a variety of current topics related to youth facing adversity with implications for creating and maintaining child and adolescent resilience in a constantly changing world. In these chapters are themes and information that embody the stories of the lives of youth today. Topics include the following: parenting, coping, and motivation of Australian at-risk adolescents; religious rejection and resilience among Christian sexual minority youth; the influences from parents, police, and social work on at-risk youth in Hong Kong; resilience among Native American youth; the experience of Australian children who have been diagnosed and treated for pediatric hematology; the effect in adulthood with Serbian youth who grew up in political and economic turmoil; approaches for overcoming adversity among Arab American youth; EcoWellness as a way to connect with at-risk youth using nature as a basis for overcoming adversity; adolescents and gaming; poly-victimization and resilience among Spanish youth; a Liberation psychology approach to working with borderland Mexican children impacted by violence on the U.S.-Mexico border; substance use and resilience among adolescents; use of the Home Interaction Programme for Parents and Youngsters (HIPPY) as way for enhancing parenting practices to mitigate socioeconomic disadvantages faced by at-risk youth in New Zealand; use of rite of passage programs, specifically, the Louis Armstrong Manhood Development Program (LAMDP), as a way to address the overrepresentation of African American boys in special education; psychosocial factors involved in adolescent self-injury; and nurturing hope and resilience among at-risk middle school youth using a group rap therapy program called Wrapped in Resilience. All chapters provide a better understanding of various areas in which youth face adversity, and offer implications for ways of helping youth develop resilience and positive coping skills. Building upon the knowledge, awareness, and skills that are explored in this text, helping professionals, researchers, and educators who work with youth begin to better understand and more effectively intervene with the lived experience of youth who face adversity in many different forms today, and who survive these experiences in a way that makes them stronger and more resilient