Yale professor to discuss trauma and children

Cindy Crusto from the Yale University School of Medicine will speak on “The Impact of Trauma on Young Vulnerable Children: Implications for a Public Health Approach to Children’s Mental Health” at 11 a.m., Friday, May 24, in the Colvard Building, Room 3120, as part of the Health Psychology Speaker Series.

Director of program and service system evaluation at the Consultation Center at Yale University School of Medicine and associate professor of psychiatry, Crusto will address the issue of childhood exposure to psychological trauma. She contends that trauma such as child abuse, neglect, domestic violence, loss of a loved one or natural disaster is a major public health concern. Young children exposed to multiple traumas often experience negative developmental consequences.

In her presentation, Crusto will address the impact of the exposure of young children from birth through age 6 to trauma on their social and emotional functioning. Data will be presented from two large-scale projects implemented in a low-resource, high-need city.

Crusto also will present information from an evaluation of an Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention-funded project that addressed violence in the home for children age 6 and younger. In addition, Crusto will consider a study funded by the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities to evaluate the impact of multiple social processes on young children’s health. One aspect of the study evaluated the impact of indirect trauma exposure, in the form of parental racial/ethnic discrimination, on their young children’s mental health.

The presentation will conclude with the implications of these study findings for supporting a public health approach to children’s mental health, including attention to health promotion and to vulnerable populations.