The Results of Untreated PTSD

Chapter 11 of our book speaks about a Child Welfare System that will be confronting emerging social concerns such as obesity and mental health issues particularly in the Latino and African American communities. What I like about this chapter is the thought that we as social service providers must get out in front of these concerns and advocate for more preventative approaches in caring for our children. For example, "Immunization, can and has prevented childhood diseases, while early childhood education and compensatory learning can prevent high school drop out, which also prevents one from becoming possibly unemployable, and dependent upon welfare." These are some great preventative strategies in addressing many of the issues that young Latino and African American men and women have faced and will continue to face in their everyday lives. With that said, I want to delve deeper into the mental health component of this emerging social concern that has continually gone completely ignored but play a significant role in the decimation of families, and cost our communities the lost of many lives. More often than not when we speak of mental health issues and welfare concerns particularly in the lives of African American children, we often think about ADD, ADHD, ODD, etc., and while these psychosis are real and present significant challenges to families, educators, and advocates, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or PTSD, continues to go unrecognized and the residual effects are devastating to our communities. In urban communities such as the one I come from, the issue of PTSD is real. Most of the trauma stems from witnessing gun violence in the streets, violence in the home or school, and this experience goes untreated for years. The residual effects as previously stated is devastating; as we will see in the video above; hurt people hurt people. We have to begin to address the mental health issue of PTSD in our children at a young age, before these children grow up to become what has traumatized them.

HIV/AIDS

HIV/AIDS is a highly advancing disease all over the world. According to reports since 1981, there are more than 1.8 million people in the U.S. are estimated to have been infected with HIV; today, more than 1.1 million people are living with HIV. Over the years medical experts have been and still are trying to find a core for this epidemic. Although, the numbers have gone down since then, but there are still new infections that remain at about 50,000.

There are programs that are provided in the prevention of this disease. Also not only government programs provide prevention, churches also. 

According to the article “HIV/AIDS Policy initiative” written by Geoff Foster, 

“The main providers of health services were religious organizations, a situation that continues today in some countries with severe HIV/AIDS epidemics. Religious health networks are the second largest entity of health care providers in the developing world after government programs."

I came across interesting information regarding a treatment drug called “the Sondashi formula HIV/AIDS treatment drug” out of Zambia, Africa. Dr. Ludwig Sondashi, is the inventor of the Sondashi Formula 2000 HIV herbal remedy which he claims has cured over 400 people suffering from HIV after taking his medicine.

As of last year one man has claimed to have been cured from taking this medication. He stated he tested HIV+ on July 1, 2005 and now he’s cured. The man stated:

“I am so happy because I think I have broken a record for Dr. Sondashi's drug. I only took it for four months because I started taking it on January 21 this year and I doubt if there is anyone else who has been cured in such a short period of time. I hear others have to take the drug for at least six months and above for them to get positive results."

Do you think the U.S. should invest in Dr. Sondashi medication and if so why? Also, would you recommend this medication to someone you know that’s living with this disease (only after you have done your research).