Childhood Adversity in The Lake Effect

The effects of childhood adversity are far reaching in the real world – but also in The Lake Effect. For those of you who have read the book, you already know there is an element of mental illness in at least one of the characters. The underlying take-away questions from the book are, “Is mental illness a physical or psychological condition? And how does it present itself? In birth through or DNA? Through our environment? Through our parenting?”

The sub-title of the book is Impulse or Instinct. So, when I stumbled upon Dr. Nadine Burke Harris’ TED Talk on TikTok, I perked up at the research she and her colleagues did on childhood adversity and its long-lasting effects on not only physical ailments such as heart disease and lung cancer later in life, but also the part of the brain that controls impulse control. 

A bell went off because my characters in The Lake Effect have impulse control issues – or is their behavior instinctual?

Dr. Nadine wrote a book about her research conducted in the mid 1990s called The Deepest Well. She does a fascinating job chronicling her research of severe and pervasive childhood trauma and her subsequent development of the ACE exam.

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