Building healthy adults starts in childhood

Extensive evidence indicates that early childhood adversity and “toxic stress” have harmful effects on mental and physical health that can last a lifetime, warns a new report from the December 26th issue of Pediatrics. In an accompanying policy statement, the American Academy of Pediatrics advocates incorporating the growing scientific knowledge base that links childhood adversity to lifelong harm into the training of all current and future physicians.

The authors summarize what they call “extensive evidence” linking early adversity to later impairments in learning, behavior, and physical and mental well-being. They suggest that many adult diseases should be viewed as developmental disorders that begin early in life and that persistent health disparities associated with poverty, discrimination, or maltreatment could be reduced by the alleviation of toxic stress in childhood. The AAP says, “All health care professionals should adopt the proposed EBD framework as a means of understanding the social, behavioral, and economic determinants of lifelong disparities in physical and mental health.”