Maya Ragavan, MD, BMC, pediatrician, spoke to Saheli DV advocates on Saturday April 8th about the Effects of Intimate Partner Violence on Children’s Health and Wellbeing at the monthly meeting in Burlington, MA.
In a thorough review of the latest research Dr. Ragavan, shared information about The Adverse Childhood Experience study and talked about positive, tolerable and toxic stress. She presented information on the most recent research studies on IPV and its impact on young children, talked about resilience and building the mother-child dyad and did a quick review of resources for further study. She presented results of the ACE Study (1998) where 10,000 children participated in research about childhood abuse and dysfunction. She looked at brain structure and function and stressed, “There is no PHYSICAL health or MENTAL health. These studies show that the brain, body, and mind are intimately interwoven.”
Saheli advocates in the room had many questions about what they see in their work with South Asian children and Dr. Ragavan noted that there are not enough studies about children in our own communities. In 2017-2018, Saheli will be taking small steps towards understanding domestic abuse and its impact on children and we invite interested community members to contact us to share their expertise at info@saheliboston.org
