Lesson: Time, trust and patience: Telling the story of young lives imperiled by toxic stress in Ferguson
A year after Michael Brown was killed by police in Ferguson, a reporter returned to the neighborhood and spent months talking with families about how they cope with toxic levels of stress and violence.
The Post-Dispatch special report delved into an array of problems that affect the health and well-being of people struggling daily to keep a job, the electricity running and food on the table and resist the ripple effects of violence.
Project: Solutions that work: Positive relationships can counter harmful effects of stress on the brain
We know "toxic stress" can have a devastating impact on the longterm health and well-being of children. But how do we counter its effects? It turns out that strengthening relationships and building resilience is key.
Toxic stress can have a devastating effect on children's health, with consequences stretching out over a lifetime. Nancy Cambria offers a primer on the science behind our emerging understanding of the toll chronic stress is taking on young lives.
The story of Darlene Evans, a 45-year-old single mother of 10 children living on disability without a car, reflects how toxic stress can attack maternal health before moving on to impair prenatal and early childhood well-being.
It has long been known that growing up in impoverished and dangerous neighborhoods such as Ferguson, Missouri dims life prospects. But now a commanding body of medical research presents a disturbing, biological picture of why.