“Hard times” do not make for strong people. Not strong women or strong men. “Hard times” make for damaged people that are in need of healing. What’s more, when someone is damaged and does not receive understanding and support from their community, if the feedback they get is more like “walk it off” and less like “I’m here to help”, that damage is likely to continue to grow and put them in an early grave.

We know this from quite a lot of studies, but let’s look at two of those.

Back in 1998 Dr Felliti gave a questionnaire to thousands of medical patients of all varieties in San Diego that asked the patient two sets of questions. The first was had they experienced any of a set of ‘hard times’ as a child, things like physical abuse, sexual assault, neglect, etc. (later becoming the “ACE score”) And the second asked if they had or were suffering as an adult from things like obesity, addiction, depression, etc. The correlation was so dramatic that they had to double check the results. These ‘hard times’, especially when there were multiple ‘hard times’, put these patients at a 1100% increased risk of these negative health outcomes.

What’s more, they expanded the study. When these patents would come in for their next visit the doctors were given a script that went like “I see here on your chart that you experienced [the hard time they mentioned]. I’m so sorry to hear that happened to you. That never should have happened to you. Would you like to talk about it?” About 60% of people did want to talk about it and on average those conversations lasted 5 mins. And for those people that did talk about it, just those 5 mins led to a significant fall in depression and anxiety. And those that were randomly assigned to a therapist to talk about it further, had an even bigger decrease in depression and anxiety.

In conclusion, hard times fuck you up, and community support heals.