Overview

How sustained disruptions to children's safety have physical, behavioral, and mental health impact that follow them into adulthood. At its heart, polyvagal theory describes how the brain's unconscious sense of safety or danger impacts our emotions and behaviors. In this powerful book, pediatrician and neonatologist Marilyn R. Sanders and child psychiatrist George S. Thompson offer listeners both a meditation on caregiving and a call to action for physicians, educators, and mental health providers. When children don't have safe relationships, or emotional, medical, or physical traumas punctuate their lives, their ability to love, trust, and thrive is damaged. Children who have multiple relationship disruptions may have physical, behavioral, or mental health concerns that follow them into adulthood. By attending to the lessons of polyvagal theory--that adult caregivers must be aware of children's unconscious processing of sensory information--the authors show how professionals can play a critical role in establishing a sense of safety even in the face of dangerous, and sometimes incomprehensibly scary, situations.

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George S. Thompson, MD, is a child psychiatrist who assists healthcare organizations in building emotionally safe, curious, and collaborative cultures. He lives and works in the Kansas City area. Marilyn R. Sanders, MD, is a pediatrician/neonatologist and professor of pediatrics at Connecticut Children's Medical Center in Hartford, Connecticut. Stephen W. Porges is Distinguished University Scientist at Indiana University, where he directs the Trauma Research Center within the Kinsey Institute. He holds the position of professor of psychiatry at the University of North Carolina and Professor Emeritus at the University of Illinois at Chicago and the University of Maryland. He served as president of both the Society for Psychophysiological Research and the Federation of Associations in Behavioral & Brain Sciences and is a former recipient of a National Institute of Mental Health Research Scientist Development Award. He has published more than 250 peer-reviewed scientific papers across several disciplines including anaesthesiology, biomedical engineering, critical care medicine, ergonomics, exercise physiology, gerontology, neurology, neuroscience, obstetrics, pediatrics, psychiatry, psychology, psychometrics, space medicine, and substance abuse. In 1994 he proposed the Polyvagal Theory, a theory that links the evolution of the mammalian autonomic nervous system to social behavior and emphasizes the importance of physiological state in the expression of behavioral problems and psychiatric disorders. The theory is leading to innovative treatments based on insights into the mechanisms mediating symptoms observed in several behavioral, psychiatric, and physical disorders. In 2018, Porges received the Pioneer Award from the United States Association for Body Psychotherapy.

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