On the Thursday of the fire that nearly scorched Ely’s southeastern corner a friend was called home from work to evacuate his house. Family members came and frantically loaded his gear into their trucks, and then police officers cleared the street as ash and smoke darkened the sky. Two days later my friend seemed unfocused and distracted, mentally replaying feelings of panic from the near disaster to his home and neighborhood. A week later, he was still telling the story to those who hadn’t yet heard the details.

What is considered a traumatic event is truly personal, and can run the gamut from surviving a disaster like a fire to being a victim of harassment or a violent crime, to crashing your car on an icy highway or fighting a war.

Post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, has become a familiar part of the American lexicon as we think of soldiers returning from war, but it affects those who have lived through terrible experiences of all kinds. While some people begin to feel better in a week, as my friend did, it’s time to reach out for help if strong feelings of distress last longer than a month. PTSD symptoms include reoccurring fear, a constant state of hyper-alertness, helplessness, anger, sleeplessness, guilt or shame.

Experts estimate that major traumatic experiences disrupt the ongoing lives of one out of five children and nearly 8 million American adults.

During mental health month this May, professionals have focused attention on the results of traumatic events in the lives of children. Professionals, volunteers and the public gathered in Ely for a Community Mental Health Conference sponsored by the Ely chapter of the St. Louis County Mental Health Local Advisory Council early in the month. It featured a wide range of topics including addiction, recovery, suicide prevention, crisis intervention, and adult and children’s mental health services.

“Childhood Trauma: Wounds that Won’t Heal” was presented by Autumn Cole, PhD, Licensed Psychologist and Licensed Independent Clinical Social Worker from Ely, who specializes in treating victims of childhood abuse. She has worked in community mental health for 35 years, currently as a consultant for the Range Mental Health Center’s children’s program.

While about 20 percent of children in this country have diagnosable mental health issues, fewer than half of them ever get treatment, Cole said. Therapists may use a 10-question Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE) Test to determine if they or a child they know are still suffering from childhood trauma. Physical, sexual or emotional abuse, even abuse by siblings, are sometimes factors. Just observing troubling episodes of addiction, physical abuse, suicide, depression or knowing that a household member went to prison can be damaging to a child.

Further, trauma is often shrouded in denial and secrecy. In America, where a woman is beaten every 15 seconds and a rape occurs every 6 minutes, violence often goes unreported and many victims do not get the help they need. Research ties homelessness, substance abuse, and many mental health issues to the experience of severe physical or sexual abuse.

“ACE gave its test to 17,000 people and found a direct link in those who suffered childhood trauma to mental and physical problems in adulthood,” Cole said.

An ACE score of six and higher may result in a shortening of lifespan by 20 years. A child or teen is 51 times more likely, and an adult is 30 times more likely, to attempt suicide if they have a score of seven or higher. Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disorder (COPD) is 260 percent higher in those with an ACE score of four or more, than in those with a zero-score.

“Almost every part of the brain can be effected by trauma,” Cole said. Traumatic memories stay stuck in the amygdala, thalamus hippocampus, hypothalamus and brain stem, the nonverbal, non-conscious parts of the brain where they aren’t accessible to the frontal lobes, which are the reasoning parts of the brain. As a result, the memories play havoc with the entire nervous system.

A study at Duke University showed that bullying and other forms of abuse can permanently damage a child’s immune system and DNA, shortening life by up to 10 years with heart and liver disease, diabetes and some types of cancer.

“When you think of the money we are spending to address adult health and mental health issues, it makes sense to put our resources into reaching out to children and to funding early intervention,” Cole said. The ACE study showed that in the year 2000, the national economic costs of untreated trauma-related alcohol and drug abuse, alone, were estimated at $161 billion.

One trend that holds out hope is the inception of “trauma-informed communities,” such as one in Tarpon Springs, Fla., where police, the Rotary Club, schools, churches, health workers, juvenile and ex-offender program staff began working together to reduce violence and support trauma victims.

They asked questions about why some children were having trouble learning in school, attended workshops, and used the ACE questionnaire to determine how many local adults were still suffering the effects of childhood trauma. The overwhelming majority of people in programs for substance abuse, battering intervention, and sex offender groups had, themselves, been trauma victims.

Similar programs are springing up in Maine, New York, Ohio, Washington D.C., and around the country, encouraged by national programs such as the Substance Abuse Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), which is offering $24 million in grants to fund child trauma response initiatives.

Such a program is starting up in Ely as a direct outcome of presentations at Ely’s recent conference by Cole and Dr. Glenace Edwall, director of the Children’s Mental Health division of the Minnesota Department of Human Services, who spoke on “Adverse Childhood Experiences and Community Health.”

For information about a local initiative to explore creating a trauma-informed community here, contact John Soghigian at (218) 365-8408 or at elyareamhbooster@frontier.com.