Childhood trauma experts share insights with Sonoma County educators and counselors

Former California Surgeon General Dr. Nadine Burke Harris on Thursday shared her insights on childhood trauma, resilience and healing during a lecture-style event in Rohnert Park, organized by the Sonoma County Office of Education.

The talk, which also featured, via video conference, Dr. Bruce Perry, a renowned neuroscientist and trauma expert, focused on the impacts of adverse childhood experiences and the neuroscience of prolonged exposure to toxic stress.

It also presented ways to mitigate and even reverse the effects of such trauma, through collective, early intervention and a healing dose of safe, stable nurturing relationships.

The message resonated with those in attendance — primarily educators, youth counselors and community leaders — many of whom were familiar with the research around adverse childhood experiences, known as ACEs. Those experiences include, among others, emotional, physical or sexual abuse; domestic violence in the home; living with an adult who has an addiction problem or who is mentally ill.

“Our entire district really tries to be as trauma informed as possible,” said Samantha Cole, a school counselor at Hillcrest Middle School in Sebastopol.

Burke Harris, the state’s first appointed surgeon general, served between 2019 and 2022, during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic. More than a decade earlier, Burke Harris, a pediatrician, began exploring the effects of persistent childhood trauma after she founded a youth clinic in Bayview-Hunters Point, one of San Francisco’s most underserved communities.

Eventually, she developed a screening process that gave her and clinic staff insights into the specific traumas that were behind mental and physical health issues kids were experiencing.

“I had a kid who would have asthma attacks every time her father came home from incarceration,” Burke Harris said.

Burke Harris said one of the key findings from her work at the Bayview Hunters Point clinic was the vast difference in terms of behavioral problems for kids experiencing trauma and those who didn’t.

She said that only 3% of patients who did not have any adverse childhood experiences, or ACEs, had learning or behavioral problems. Meanwhile, 51.2% of kids with multiple ACEs had learning or behavioral issues.

But Burke Harris stressed that “ACEs are not destiny.”

She said key to reducing the effects of traumatic stress is ensuring that a child has a “safe, stable and nurturing relationship.“ A daily hug simply won’t be enough, she added.

Burke Harris, who lives in Sonoma County, said other interventions include high quality sleep, providing a balanced nutrition, mindfulness practices, high quality mental health care and greater access to nature.

Perry, who leads the Neurosequential Network and is an adjunct professor at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Chicago’s Northwestern University, echoed many of the points made by Burke Harris.

Perry said the current model of mental health care in the United States — one that focuses on “crisis pathology” — is incapable of responding to today’s mental health crises, particularly those involving large scale natural disasters and tragic events such as mass shootings.

Responding “with an hour of therapy a week, it will never work,” he said.

Instead, he said, “hundreds of tiny doses” of support through positive interactions throughout the day can heal and reverse the impact of trauma. “Those opportunities are mostly in school,” he said.

But the speakers recognized that no single person, whether school counselor, teacher, doctor or social worker, can carry the entire burden of creating a safe, stable and nurturing environment for children exposed to constant traumatic experiences.

You can reach Staff Writer Martin Espinoza at 707-521-5213 or martin.espinoza@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @pressreno.