Stress of Poverty is Toxic to Our Children

A few weeks ago, I talked to Gov. Bill Haslam about toxic stress, brain development and epigenetics.

Those may not have been my exact words, but in asking for the state's help to fight Memphis' intractable poverty, I was discussing them nonetheless.

In the meeting in the governor's office in Nashville, I mapped out the city of Memphis' Blueprint for Prosperity, a 10-year plan to reduce Memphis' current 25.4 percent poverty rate to the state's rate of 16.5 percent.

The economic consequences for Tennessee are profound if Memphis is successful, because brain development and the futures of the children are now limited by the toxic effects of chaotic and unstable environments. That's because children living in poverty are at risk for a host of poor child and adolescent outcomes, especially if that poverty occurs early in childhood, and this early stress can have a significant impact on adult outcomes, too.

The research at The Urban Child Institute and supporting neuroscience reports say that a child's environment from conception to early childhood affects that child's biology directly — by creating toxic stress that becomes biological memories in a person's DNA.

It is now known that a phenomenon called epigenetics, the study of changes in gene activity that do not involve alterations to the genetic code itself, is a mechanism that can account for how early stress can result in long-term consequences. In other words, epigenetics helps explain how powerful negative environmental and home conditions — diet, stress, prenatal nutrition — can leave an imprint on genetic material that can result in adult health issues years later.

Conversely, positive early childhood experiences can help protect a child from stress-related responses that could have adverse effects.

Earlier this year, Robin Karr-Morse, author of "Scared Sick: The Role of Childhood Trauma in Adult Disease," spoke here and explained how toxic stress triggers physical and mental health issues that have created a major public health crisis in our city and in our nation.

"What happens emotionally affects us physically," she said. "Healthy, healing experiences protect us against disease. The opposite is also true — the emotion/disease connection. Seventy percent of the causes of disease are epigenetics."

It's a stunning statement, especially as it relates to Memphis because of the large number of children who live in situations of toxic stress. In other words, health problems lie beyond nature and nurture, because powerful negative environmental conditions — diet, stress, prenatal nutrition — can leave an imprint on genetic material.

We know we can shorten our own lives by smoking or overeating, but it's becoming clear that these behaviors can also predispose our children to disease and early death.

"When someone has neither the option of flight or fight, terror in the face of helplessness results in a freeze," said Karr-Morse. "Trauma is fear frozen in the body physically. Babies can be born traumatized at birth."

Put another way, early childhood experiences have lifelong effects. When young children grow up in toxic environments associated with poverty, their brains naturally make survival their top priority. The result is that parts of the brain associated with survival are prioritized, rather than areas of the brain that control higher-order thinking and reasoning.

These are disturbing findings for a nation in which one child in five lives in poverty; and even more so for Memphis, where more than half of our children are born into poverty, and a third of children will live in poverty their entire childhood. It is clear that poverty has unfortunate implications for early brain development.

The good news is that we know what works: interventions. There are evidence-based educational interventions that help to enhance children's skills and help them catch up to the cognitive and academic performance of more-affluent peers. The best of these programs include both children and their parents, and show greater returns than programs that target children alone. Equally important, such interventions can positively influence the development of noncognitive skills as well as the cognitive.

When I met with Gov. Haslam, I said the challenge of poverty in Memphis can only be attacked with an interlocking web of city and state interventions that include a focus on early child development and kindergarten readiness, job training, housing, better health, public safety, neighborhood redevelopment and more.

We need look no further for a measurement of success than unlocking the potential of every child in Memphis, and we do that by removing them from the stress of poverty. It is the right conversation at the right time for Memphis — and for Tennessee.

A C Wharton is mayor of Memphis.

This article was originally published by The Commercial Appeal online: http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2012/oct/21/stress-of-poverty-is-toxic-to-our-children/