By Staff Writer
Voice & Viewpoint
Normally when you think of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), you think of soldiers coming back from back from Iraq or Afghanistan. However, the Centers for Disease Control hood_diseaseand Prevention says PTSD also impacts urban youth and makes it harder for them to learn.
According to the CDC, thirty percent of inner city kids suffer from PTSD, which they contracted from living in viοlent areas. The form of PTSD these kids suffer from is being nicknamed ‘hood disease’ by doctors.
What makes ‘hood disease’ so detrimental is that kids, unlike soldiers, never get to leave the battlefield.
“You could take anyone who is experiencing the symptoms of PTSD, and the things we are currently emphasizing in school will fall off their radar. Because frankly it does not matter in our biology if we don’t survive the walk home,” said Jeff Duncan-Andrade, Ph.D. of San Francisco State University, according to CBS San Francisco.
It’s sort of a perfect storm where kids don’t get their needs met in a number of ways.
“Its kids are unsafe, they’re not well fed,” Duncan-Andrade explained. “And when you start stacking those kids of stressors on top of each other, that’s when you get these kinds of negative health outcomes that seriously disrupt school performance.”
Teacher Jasmene Miranda told CBS San Francisco that in Oakland, kids become accustomed to viοlence. “These cards that (students) are suddenly wearing around their neck that say ‘Rest in peace.’ You have some kids that are walking around with six of them. Laminated cards that are tributes to their slain friends,” Miranda said.
