Chances are, you know someone whose child has been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. Perhaps your own child has received this diagnosis. In many cases, it’s a legitimate issue, and can require medication, therapy or both.
But in my experience, ADHD is one of the diagnoses that can be given – precipitously – to children whose behavior issues are not really about inattention. Their behavior is just one outward sign of a much larger public health problem that we are still working to fully understand: toxic stress.
I observe its effects every day in the clinic where I practice as a pediatrician in Bayview, one of San Francisco’s poorest neighborhoods.
Prolonged or extreme adversity in childhood can cause damage emotionally, socially and physically.
Caregivers, teachers and health providers often see the impact of toxic stress most clearly in a young child’s behavior. We’ll observe a child who is defiant, loses control a lot, has trouble paying attention or has developmental delays that we can’t attribute to an underlying physical problem.
Confusing Toxic Stress for Other Diagnoses
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