PTSD prevalence in impoverished neighbourhoods, by Centric Lab
“If this report is to succeed in providing a new perspective on poverty that is understood in biological terms, we must understand poverty in terms of trauma. Historically, poverty has been linked to violence in terms of pathways or terms of exposure [...] While these pathways do a great job of linking poverty to incidents of trauma, it doesn’t address how the experience of poverty itself is traumatic or a trauma.
[...] In 1969 Johan Galtung proposed a groundbreaking definition of violence. He defined it as “the cause of difference between the potential and actual.” He goes on to say that violence is present when there are external factors that influence a person’s mental and physical realisations.
[...] We are extending this theory to what people experience when living in poverty. Poverty stands between the potential and actual. For example, a study from the University of California Davis points out that impoverished urban neighbourhoods impose daily challenges that create an environment where a person is in constant physiological and mental stress. In turn this can severely undermine a person’s wellbeing, regardless of their vulnerabilities.
Individuals living in impoverished environments will also often display behaviours that fall under the behavioural constellation of deprivation (BCD), a range of poor health choices [...].
Researchers argue that these behaviours are contextually appropriate responses, as psychologically, an impoverished environment results in a lowered sense of personal control - particularly over one’s risk of mortality which pushes individuals to partake in immediately gratifying, physiologically and mentally harmful behaviours.
[...] Understanding the experience of poverty as a form of trauma rather than only as an avenue to exposure, makes the issue more urgent and it shifts the responsibility from the individual who is experiencing poverty to the different structures that put them there in the first place.
Furthermore, it allows neuroscience to enter the conversation. If poverty in itself is a form of trauma, can we study it as its own phenomena? How does it change our brain structure and general biology? How does it affect cognition? Finally, can neuroscience offer insights on rehabilitating people who have experienced poverty?”