Stress fracture
STRESS and its damaging impact on city youth are very much on the mind of the Menino administration after top city officials received a recent briefing from Dr. Jack Shonkoff, a Brandeis University professor and expert on toxic stress. While Shonkoff's research doesn't hold much promise for making the city safer this summer, it could have a long-term impact on both public education and public safety.
Toxic stress describes the adverse effects on a young person's physical and mental health resulting from chronic exposure to dangerous and doleful conditions, including exposure to violence and maltreatment. Frequent activation of the hormonal systems that respond to stress, according to Shonkoff's research, can damage the areas of a child's brain essential for learning and memory.
Emmett Folgert, one of the city's most respected youth workers, sees damaged young people regularly at the Dorchester Youth Collaborative in Fields Corner. He and his counterparts in other neighborhoods suspect that sexual abuse may be at the root of some of the trauma. Street kids, he says, are tempted with drugs, alcohol, and even magic tricks by pimps and molesters. With no protective adult at home, the children become easy prey. Folgert wants to form a task force comprised of police, medical experts, and street workers to find out how widespread the molestation is. It's a sound idea that deserves further investigation by the city's office of human services.
More than 160 nonfatal shootings have occurred in Boston so far this year, nearly double the number over the same period in 2005. Girls, increasingly, are among the victims. Fighting mars proceedings in district courts. City Hall staffers who are accustomed to hearing pleas for more police protection from residents in Boston's dangerous neighborhoods are now starting to field calls from frantic mothers seeking relocation services for their families. It harkens back to the stressful 1960s and '70s when many Bostonians fled the city convinced that their lives were in danger and their neighborhoods beyond repair.
The immediate need is for Boston police to exert control over the neighborhoods where most of the violence occurs. Mayor Thomas Menino pledges to hire 140 additional officers over the next year, but the net gain is likely to be modest due to retirements. If sufficient manpower can't be mustered this summer, then the State Police should be asked to expand their patrol presence in Boston. In metaphorical terms, entire neighborhoods are starting to suffer from toxic stress. And if the authorities can't check the violence and restore peace to the neighborhoods, then the likely response to the stress will be harmful to Boston. Fight or flight.
