Relevant Article

Deadlines are not friendly to headline writers. Current events can impart unintended meaning and emotions to an unlucky choice of words.

The Yale Alumni Magazine (YAM) cover story is a cheery one.

The women's ice hockey team made it to the NCAA Final Four ("Frozen Four"), where the Bulldogs lost to the eventual champion, Ohio State, 2-1.

Speaking of current events, YAM also has a relevant article on research into the effect of trauma on children's brains.

Children who have endured chronic stress, such as living in a violent neighborhood or within an unstable home life, tend to have thick branches near the brain’s alarm system (the amygdala) and weaker ones near its off switches (the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex). The alarm system blares and there’s nothing to stop it...

(Wiley Online Library)

For children who have endured severe trauma, one option is Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT). Dylan Gee is involved in a study designed to assess TF-CBT. Previous studies have shown that it works very well for about half to two-thirds of those who go through it, but less well for others. Her goal is to figure out which children are most likely to benefit from TF-CBT and what might improve the process for those who don’t.

Gee is assessing volunteers, aged 10 to 17, before and after therapy. The theory is that the reason many children show fewer symptoms of trauma after TF-CBT is because the therapy strengthened their regulatory centers. In other words, the children have better control over their brain’s alarm center than they had before.

Children exposed to traumatic events, especially those involving extreme violence, will, of course, need therapy ("TF-CBT").

The Yale study indicates that physical intervention in the development of children's brains at the cellular level is also necessary to right the ship.

Although we are years, if not decades, away from devising the methodology, at least we know the direction in which we're headed.