Recent surveys of Arkansans have shown a shockingly high amount of trauma, also called Adverse Childhood Experiences, including poverty, bullying, or an unhealthy weight. This new information is a call to action across our state- instead of blaming people for the reactions of traumatic behavior and mental illnesses, we have the ability to study and understand trauma in a new way in order to improve our overall state’s health. Brother Nelson Henderson of First Free Will Baptist in Pocahontas, Arkansas, said that in his experience, “stress is also affecting people younger in age, and even children. Stress keeps many people from being able to function properly. It affects physical, emotional and mental health.”

What causes mental illness? Experts tell us that each person is born with different genes. These genes determine how people express their emotions in different situations. However, a professor named Rachel Yehuda, an expert in understanding how the effects of stress and traumas can be passed on biologically, also studies the effects of trauma on mental health. She studies the power of developing beyond the traumatic incident, and identifies large and small factors that impact everyone’s individual situations.

Shelby Eldridge, Special Education Teacher at Pocahontas Junior High has found that “trauma and stress alters the pathways in the brain, making it harder to regulate emotions and increasing the risk for disorders, as well as chronic illnesses. However, repeated stressors lead to lifelong challenges with PTSD, anxiety, and depression.”

Science has shown that the brain is not just ‘’barking’’ orders at the peripheral tissue, including the adrenal glands that trigger the stress response in people. Neurologists have found that people have the ability, with appropriate training and support, to retrain their brains to not trigger their fight or flight responses. The more and more that Yehuda studied the subject, she found when you remove the adrenal glands in infant rodents, the emotional control of the brain develops faster and larger than the average adult rodent. This shows how our physical body impacts our brain development.

Therefore, we need further research and support to impact people across the state’s overall physical and mental health. Mrs. Melba Henderson, a special education teacher at Pocahontas Junior High, summed up her experiences working with Arkansas youth as a hopeful one. “ Multiple traumatic events can affects a students/adults self-esteem, willingness to learn and ability to do essential things to keep one going, [but] with that I believe that we could do better by becoming more informed about the effects of trauma and stress on an individuals mental health and learning to look for a warning sign instead of judging an individual's actions.”