Child hood poverty and stress - Essay Example

As such, the article that this brief analysis will engage with, entitled “Childhood Poverty and Stress Harms Adult Brain Function”, will be concentric upon proving the realities of what psychologists and researchers have been postulating for many years now. The ultimate hypothesis that the researchers made was with regards to the fact that an exposure to stress, specifically at a young age, impacts upon the development level that a brain is able to achieve during the entire life span of the individual.

Although this hypothesis itself is not extreme, the ramifications that it has with regards to the overall potential for success, happiness, and many other factors within the life of the individual is profound. As a function of measuring the specific approach, the researcher set about to test two groups; one that test group and one a control group. The test group as well as the control group were composed of 24-year-olds who had been tested 15 years previously with regards to the childhood situations that already been assessed by the researchers.

The ultimate rubric surrounding the way in which the test was administered was concentric upon showing the individuals pictures and engaging an emotional response based upon the stresses and strains that they had experienced during their childhood. Ultimately, the differential, which was expected, was the fact that certain individuals were more able to control the emotions that they had with regards to the stresses and strains they had experienced previously. As was expected, the correlation between those individuals that were able to control their emotions and overcome the stresses and strains of childhood were invariably those that did not experience a high degree of hardship or poverty within their youth.

Said one of the researchers of the results, “Our findings suggest that the stress-burden of growing up poor may be an underlying mechanism that accounts for the relationship between poverty as a child and how well your brain works as an adult” (Dean 1). Ultimately, the information that is thus far been engaged can definitively be linked back with regards to the information that is thus far been discussed within the course readings and discussions. Whereas environment and heredity play a powerful role in determining the way in which individual integrate with an understanding of self and a relation to others, neither of these is effective in completely determining the future course of life and experiential expectation that will be exhibited within a given individual.

Instead, factors such as heredity have a powerful role in helping to promote and encourage the exhibition of many positive and negative psychological health realities (Anakwenze 149). By much the same token, environmental factors, up to and including poverty, have a detrimental impact upon the way in which an individual integrates with society and those around them. The test in question, serves as proof of the fact that environment continues to have an extraordinarily high level of impact with regards to the way in which psychological identification and health is exhibited