Hood Disease: Inner City Oakland Youth Suffering From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

[luckytxn 2,265]

OK so that is what VJ advocates.

Guess we can have total bans on guns. That should solve the problems.

I think Harpa was pinging on the group of folks that advocate everyone over the age of 2 having a gun.

[We Keep Receipts 9,238]

OK so that is what VJ advocates.

Guess we can have total bans on guns. That should solve the problems.

Oh, don't be so nit picky. You need a hug. Or shoot something.

[luckytxn 2,265]

I love hugging and shooting but sometimes shooting and hugging can be good too.

Oh, don't be so nit picky. You need a hug. Or shoot something.

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

Where are you seeing this bashing?

Knowing the OP and his posting history and looking at the 7 word comment he managed to add, it's an educated guess that he'd love to have some ###### bashing in here. But that's just my take.

What's that OP look like to you? An attempt to start a serious discussion about the plight of inner city kids in this country? If it does, tell me what exactly makes it look that way to you.

Hood Disease: Inner City Oakland Youth Suffering From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

OAKLAND (KPIX 5) — In the inner city, a health problem is making it harder for young people to learn. The Centers for Disease Control said 30 percent of inner city kids suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

The CDC said these children often live in virtual war zones. Doctors at Harvard said they actually suffer from a more complex form of PTSD that some call “hood disease.”

Unlike soldiers, children in the inner city never leave the combat zone. They often experience trauma, repeatedly.

“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.

In Oakland, about two thirds of the murders last year were actually clustered in East Oakland, 59 people killed.

Teachers and administrators who graduated from Fremont High School in East Oakland and have gone back to work there spoke with KPIX 5.

“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,” said teacher Jasmene Miranda.

Jaliza Collins, also a teacher at Fremont, said, “It’s depression, it’s stress, it’s withdrawal, it’s denial. It’s so many things that is encompassed and embodied in them. And when somebody pushes that one button where it can be like, ‘please go have a seat,’ and that can be the one thing that just sets them off.”

In 2013, there were 47 recorded lockdowns in Oakland public schools – again, almost all in East and West Oakland.

Students at Fremont High showed where one classmate was shot.

“If someone got shot that they knew or that they cared about…they’re going to be numb,” one student said. “If someone else in their family got shot and killed they will be sad, they will be isolated because I have been through that.”

Gun violence is only one of the traumas or stressors in concentrated areas of deep poverty.

“Its kids are unsafe, they’re not well fed,” Duncan-Andrade said. “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.”

Editor’s Note: This story is part of the Equity Reporting Project, which is a yearlong effort.

SS disability ....Lawyers having a field day

[Crashed~N2~Me 970]

“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,” said teacher Jasmene Miranda.

I read this part & immediately felt sorry for these kids - what a surreal / nightmare these kids are living.

& I thought to myself = The space between - they try to hide.

Edited May 17, 2014 by Crashed~N2~Me

[luckytxn 2,265]

So because of something you saw in the past means this post has to be not to your liking before it plays out. You were the one that came in and blasted a decent thread.

Knowing the OP and his posting history and looking at the 7 word comment he managed to add, it's an educated guess that he'd love to have some ###### bashing in here. But that's just my take.

What's that OP look like to you? An attempt to start a serious discussion about the plight of inner city kids in this country? If it does, tell me what exactly makes it look that way to you.

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

Decent thread? With the exception of one single post, nothing in this thread - including the brief OP commentary - actually deals with the issue at hand.

[Crashed~N2~Me 970]

Decent thread? With the exception of one single post, nothing in this thread - including the brief OP commentary - actually deals with the issue at hand.

So your contribution to the thread = complaining and criticizing....instead of dealing with the issue at hand.....

Right?

[Harpa Timsah 13,258]

Wait, so saying "moral decay" and scolding bad parents is a good thread?

Cool.

[Crashed~N2~Me 970]

Edited May 17, 2014 by Crashed~N2~Me

[Not a Tailor 1,370]

Wait, so saying "moral decay" and scolding bad parents is a good thread?

Cool.

It is for these folks, because logic isn't their strong point. They can't follow the issues presented in the article back to the logical conclusion--that the parents have PTSD, too.

[Crashed~N2~Me 970]

It is for these folks, because logic isn't their strong point. They can't follow the issues presented in the article back to the logical conclusion--that the parents have PTSD, too.

Which "folks" disagreed with that? The folks you imagine in your head?

[Not a Tailor 1,370]

Which "folks" disagreed with that? The folks you imagine in your head?

Anyone blaming the parents is basically discounting the issues inherent in generational PTSD.

As stated before, the parents can't be held responsible if they don't know anything else other than clinging to the edge in a way akin to an active war zone.

(PS: As a writer, the folks I imagine in my head are usual liberal, cape-wearing superheroes or obvious allegories for the eyes-closed ignorance inherent in many north american conservatives (so liberal mouthpieces). I'd have a hard time mistaking them for anyone here.)

Edited May 17, 2014 by Not a Tailor

[Crashed~N2~Me 970]

Anyone blaming the parents is basically discounting the issues inherent in generational PTSD.

As stated before, the parents can't be held responsible if they don't know anything else other than clinging to the edge in a way akin to an active war zone.

(PS: As a writer, the folks I imagine in my head are usual liberal, cape-wearing superheroes or obvious allegories for the eyes-closed ignorance inherent in many north american conservatives (so liberal mouthpieces). I'd have a hard time mistaking them for anyone here.

You dodged my question coz you are projecting your assumptions as other's rationale. Otherwise...I think you need to revisit Webster's to get a better understanding of the English language.

&..to address the point you are making - A parent's decision does influence their children ...duh.

Edited May 17, 2014 by Crashed~N2~Me

[Not a Tailor 1,370]

You dodged my question coz you are projecting your assumptions as other's rationale. Otherwise...I think you need to revisit Webster's to get a better understanding of the English language.

&..to address the point you are making - A parents decision does influence their children ...duh.

Sorry, I didn't know I had to do quotes, but here are the posts that I am speaking of, one of them coming from you, even:

Moral Decay....

True. Decisions of the parents affect the kids.

Perhaps I am wrong, but these sound very much like blaming the morality of the parents, especially as the latter was a direct response to the former. I was basing my response to those two posts on the attitudes put forth by the posters in previous posts, but perhaps their eyes have been opened and their minds changed since those, so I apologize for my assumptions that the attitudes of those posters would remain the same, as clearly pattern recognition and logical thought are not permitted here and I must only respond to the things said directly in this thread and must ignore all precedent set by any poster or my words are wrong and invalid.

The parents' decisions may indeed affect the children, but the question that should be asked, in light of the information in the OP, is whether or not the parents have the capability of making better decisions, in order to get their children out of the inner city and away from these war grounds. And the answer I would have to give to that is 'no.'

Why? People raised in poverty are happy to have food on their table and a roof over their head. That's not to say they don't long for more, but having grown up knowing they will get nothing more, successfully pursuing it seems as likely to them as the likelihood of the Malaysian person in your family (I don't know if it's you or your husband/wife) becoming president of the united states. When you add in PTSD from watching people die, from seeing how many of their friends never grew up? They're totally screwed over in terms of being able to make better decisions.

Moral decay is the easy out answer, the one that doesn't require you to look deeper at the inherent problems and the generational issues that are causing that apparent decay. Declare it a simple case of moral decay, the issues these children are having are just the result of society going horribly awry as a whole, without any addressable causes.

Blaming parental decisions is also an easy out answer, because it doesn't look at the issues the parents are facing. Someone barely keeping a roof over their head doesn't have the money to be able to move somewhere nicer. Someone barely keeping food on the table doesn't have the resources to have the luxury of stepping back and figuring out how to make better decisions. I never lived in the inner city, but I know poverty. I've lived it. In a developed nation, I had to live on ten dollars a week as my maximum for food, while renting a cheap room in a mouldy basement with a methhead living in the next room. In order to get out of that situation, I had to make a choice that was bad for me, bad for my mental health and which caused me to need nearly a third of my life so far to recover from it. I've only had the luxury of that recovery because I was able to find a handful of friends who were in stable enough living situations to help me. If I didn't have those friends, if I didn't have access to the internet to stay in contact with those friends, then I guarantee you that I would be unable to ever climb out of the hole I was in. I got lucky.

The people in the article are unlikely to have my sheer luck.