ABSTRACT
Secure attachment helps children regulate their emotions so feelings they experience are not overwhelming. Infants have no ability to regulate their own stress apparatus. Mental health is based on the ability to recognize, understand, and regulate emotions. The lack of such capacity can cause physical illness and invoke many psychosomatic problems including eating disorders, panic attacks, and substance abuse all of which are common among youth involved with the High Risk Youth Initiative. Many high-risk youths have burned out placements because foster parents, group home or residential staff, extended family, or other caregivers do not understand trauma, attachment, and brain development, and associated behaviours. Attachment disorders are related to trauma in the life of an infant. Boyd Webb references Terr in discussing two types of traumas. While Type I trauma consists of a single event, it is the Type II trauma that fits with the experiences of high-risk youth.
