Originally published May 17 2014
Living in the 'hood now a disease, says CDC: 'Hood Disease' caused by urban stress
by J. D. Heyes
(NaturalNews) Is it real or is it another politically correct attempt by a federal government entity to provide an excuse for poor choices, poor performances or poor government education practices and standards?
It's hard to say at this stage, but nevertheless, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has declared that life in the inner city can create a health problem which then makes it tougher for young people there to learn.
The health problem? "Post-traumatic stress disorder," the same condition that a number of soldiers returning from battle and victims of physical harm from crime have developed.
The CDC says that many of these children live in virtual war zones in the inner city. As such, according to doctors at Harvard University -- which is well-known for its left-wing bias in research and the sciences -- kids in the inner city are suffering from an even more complex form of PTSD that some of them have labeled "hood disease."
You just can't make this stuff up.
More dangerous than Afghanistan or Iraq?
These "experts" say that, unlike soldiers, children in the inner city never leave the combat zone, and that they often experience trauma repeatedly (Author's note: I spent a year in Afghanistan on a remote Forward Operating Base, and while we weren't fighting on a daily basis, fighting was around us on a daily basis. So we never left the combat zone, either.).
"You could take anyone who is experiencing the symptoms of PTSD, and the things we are currently emphasizing in school will fall off their radar. Because frankly it does not matter in our biology if we don't survive the walk home," said Jeff Duncan-Andrade, Ph.D., of San Francisco State University, as reported by CBS San Francisco.
In Oakland, for example, Duncan-Andrade noted, about two-thirds of the city's murders were actually clustered in East Oakland, were 59 people were killed.
CBS San Francisco further reported:
Teachers and administrators who graduated from Fremont High School in East Oakland and have gone back to work there spoke with KPIX 5.
"These cards that (students) are suddenly wearing around their neck that say 'Rest in peace.' You have some kids that are walking around with six of them. Laminated cards that are tributes to their slain friends," said teacher Jasmene Miranda.
Another Fremont teacher, Jaliza Collins, added, "It's depression, it's stress, it's withdrawal, it's denial. It's so many things that is encompassed and embodied in them. And when somebody pushes that one button where it can be like, 'please go have a seat,' and that can be the one thing that just sets them off."
How does naming another 'official government affliction' help solve the problem?
In 2013, the report said, there were 47 lockdowns of Oakland public schools, and again, most of those were in East and West Oakland. And students at Fremont High showed the news crew where one classmate had been shot.
"If someone got shot that they knew or that they cared about... they're going to be numb," one student said. "If someone else in their family got shot and killed they will be sad, they will be isolated because I have been through that."
The report said that gun violence is just one of the traumas or stressors in concentrated areas of deep poverty.
"Its kids are unsafe, they're not well fed," Duncan-Andrade said. "And when you start stacking those kids of stressors on top of each other, that's when you get these kinds of negative health outcomes that seriously disrupt school performance."
Granted, there are parts of just about every major and mid-sized city where life can be dangerous and miserable, but how does adding another "disease" or "condition" to the government's official affliction list really help? It's like a hashtag campaign: You might bring attention to a problem, but what does that actually do to eliminate solve it?
We've become a society where merely pointing something out or providing groups with excuses (instead of solutions) counts as "action." That's why many of the same problems and issues never really go away.
Sources:
http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com
http://www.ar15.com
http://news.yahoo.com
http://www.naturalnews.com
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