---
title: 'The tragedy of childhood trauma'
published: true
date: '07-06-2019 22:28'
text_class: text-justify
taxonomy:
    category:
        - blog
    tag:
        - depression
        - PTSD
        - psychedelic
        - suicide
        - mdma
visible: false
author: 'Dan Percival'
---

[plugin:youtube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UygZnBTWW0M)
Recently a fake [story](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/teen-noa-pothoven-euthanasia/) of a Dutch teen dying by assisted-suicide went viral . Even though it wasn’t by assisted suicide, the teen did die because of the sexual trauma she had received. The ineffectiveness of treating childhood trauma is made so much more apparent because this happened in a developed country rated highly in the happiness index. If there is one thing that made a big impact on me attending circle time was hearing the occasional story of someone suffering from such childhood trauma, and still being plagued by it many years after. I often wondered how they managed to go through day after day with such a burden.

Sometimes you come across a talk that burns itself into your memory. Such was this [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UygZnBTWW0M) I saw many years ago and can still remember vividly. I really suggest everyone watches this fully.

Ben Sessa is one of the researchers involved in the [MAPS](https://maps.org/) clinical trial of MDMA. The clinical trials are current in Phase 3 and FDA approval of the prescription use of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy as a prescription treatment for PTSD is expected at the end of 2021. Hopefully this comes to Malaysia and we start seeing trauma as treatable.

Note: About the video above. Somewhere around the 16min mark, the speaker said ‘We don’t use the “cure” word in psychiatry’. Had me laughing.