The Deepest Well: Healing the Long-Term Effects of Childhood Trauma and Adversity—A Transformative Guide to Understanding Childhood Trauma and Health

by Nadine Burke Harris

My newest patient was at the 50th percentile for height for a four-year-old. Which would have been fine, except that Diego was seven years old.

While they had immediately kicked the man out and filed a police report, the damage was done.

Trying to treat these children felt like jamming unmatched puzzle pieces together; the symptoms, causes, and treatments were close, but not close enough to give that satisfying click.

If one hundred people all drink from the same well and ninety-eight of them develop diarrhea, I can write prescription after prescription for antibiotics, or I can stop and ask, “What the hell is in this well?”

Was the exposure (trauma/adversity) at the bottom of the well making people sick? How? Could I prove it? And most important, what could I do about it medically?

there is a molecular mechanism behind every natural phenomenon—you just have to look for it.