The movie, “Time Still Turns The Pages”, awakened our awareness of the impact of childhood trauma on a person’s psychological makeup and life trajectory. Sometimes, people tended to judge those who suffered from depression and attempted suicide. These people might think that those who sufferred from depression had weak willpower and they should learn to be stronger and tougher. Furthermore, it is common for some people to differentiate themselves from those who sufferred from mental illnesses. These people think those with mental illnesses are problematic and are negatively different from them. It is sad that sometimes, even some mental health professional portraited an authoritative role when helping those with mental illnesses. As the book written by Bruce D. Perry and Oprah Winfrey stated, it is what happened to these individuals contributing to their psychological and mental conditions. We should understand these uncontrollable factors’ impact on ones’ life without judging these people.
In “Determined: a science of life without free will”, a new book written by Robert M. Sapolsky, an American neuroendocrinology and a professor at Stanford University, Professor Sapolsky quoted a research finding about our neurons had already activated before we thought we were first freely choosing to make our decisions. In one of those experiments, participants were asked to push a button whenever they wanted. They also needed to tell the researcher when they decided to push the button at a clock that ones could detect fractions of a second. At the same time, the researcher collected brain data and monitored exactly when the participants’ fingers started moving. The basic findings of this research was that people reported that they decided to push the button about two hundred milliseconds before they moved their fingers. However, the participants’ brain actually activited to have a commitment to move their fingers about three hundred milliseconds before people believed that they had decided to push the button. This showed that, according to Professor Sapolsky, the brain decided before we think we did make the decision ourselves.
In Professor Sapolsky’s book, he mentioned that our intent and our actions actually are the result of all the interactions between biological and environmental factors that come before. This means that people with childhood trauma, suffered from depression and attempted suicide are probably influenced by their biological and environmental factors throughout their lives. For instance, research in recent years showed that trauma in childhood and adolescence, such as physical or sexual abuse and bullying experience at school contributed to the propensity for the development of depression and other mental illnesses in adulthood. With this in mind, it is our ignorance in the past to think that people with mental illnesses are those weaker people with defects. We should be more empathetic and compassionate to those who had experience trauma in their lives.
It is important for us not to solely blame those with mental illnesses for their slow progress in treatment and their recurrent relapses. Even though it is difficult for us to fully understand their inner world, we need to cultivate more understanding on the impact of childhood and adolescent trauma on them.
