A possible link between childhood trauma and Alzheimer disease
I&#x27;d like to share a perspective that I can&#x27;t reconcile. I&#x27;ll start with a quick list of personal childhood(6-16 year old?) trauma: sexual abuse at 12 by a sadistic man 3 times my size that I feared, getting hit with a baseball bat in two separate incidents the second time fracturing a vertebrae, at 12 having an adult hit me so hard it fractured my sternum (to this day my chest has a bony ridge), losing 3 close childhood friends starting at age 10, watching a woman&#x27;s head get run over by a city bus at age 6. Getting beaten so badly by a gang that my eyelid has a permanent droop (the girls mocked my new asymmetry) Watching a neighbor who I liked get stabbed in the neck and then beg for mercy (he had gambling debts) when I was 10. I could go on.<p>Oddly, at the time none of the above &quot;traumatized&quot; me because the media, movies about NYC and the mob, Catholic school (lots of torture pictures in our study book), other friends experiences, etc. set my expectations that violence and sadism against boys&#x2F;men is normal and that I am lucky to not have gotten worse.<p>I didn&#x27;t start to feel anger or trauma until I went away to college in the early 90&#x27;s  and no one seemed to have similar stories. Not even close. Oddly living somewhere safe with decent people made me bitter and resentful.<p>What I can&#x27;t reconcile is that my new friends genuinely felt bad for me in a way that my NYC buddies didn&#x27;t. And that somehow created the trauma. Is that typical ? And does that imply that an avoidance strategy, or a wise-cracking support group, might have better mental health outcomes than time with an empathetic therapist ?<p>&quot;Overall, education seems the most important mediator.&quot; according the article.<p>Good thing I got that Masters degree.