Resilience

When I started hearing about the emerging science of adversity and childhood stress, my mind was blown. High “doses” of stress during childhood get into our bodies, change our brains, and lead to lifelong health and social problems -- everything from domestic violence and substance abuse to heart disease and cancer. Who knew that if your parents got a divorce when you were growing up, you have a significantly higher risk of heart disease? Or that if your mother had a drinking problem, your own risk for depression in adulthood is much higher? The science of “toxic stress” and the major findings that came out of the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) Study should be common knowledge public health information. But the movement is still in its infancy.

We started making Resilience to make this science digestible and relevant to everyone, and to showcase some of the brave and creative individuals who are putting that science into action. There is a growing group of pediatricians, educators and communities who are proving that cycles of disease and adversity can be broken.

In the United States, we spend trillions of dollars every year treating preventable diseases, rather than intervening before a patient is sick and suffering. We have a zero-tolerance, “suck it up” culture that judges and punishes bad behavior, rather than trying to understand and treat the root cause of that behavior. But now, with this new body of scientific knowledge available, we are learning there are better ways of dealing with these seemingly intractable problems.

Resilience has a companion film: Paper Tigers follows a year in the life of an alternative high school in Washington State who radically changed its approach to student discipline, with radically positive results. Our goal with these two projects is to make “toxic stress” and “ACEs” household terms, so that individuals and communities are empowered to improve the health and wellbeing of this and future generations.