WASHINGTON - Mind does matter when it comes to health and healing, says a new research.

Nurse researchers and clinicians at the Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing (JHUSON) and the Johns Hopkins Hospital (JHH) are working at this mind-body intersection.

They are exploring how to prevent the damage excessive stress can do to a child’s development and how the mind can help speed or slow healing and help control pain.

And they’re helping nurses recognise and recover from their own stress-induced behavioural problems.

JHUSON researcher and professor Deborah Gross knows unrelenting stress hurts. For young children that hurt can last a lifetime.

Stress causes excessive secretion of the brain’s “fight-flight” hormone, cortisol, that can damage a child’s growing body and brain.

It’s a hurt Gross’s working to help stop. She has found that some behavioural disorders in young people are preventable, particularly if resilience is taught and risk factors for stress are reduced.

Among the foremost stressors are factors like poverty and unemployment, community violence and family discord — facts of life for millions of children across the country, according to a JHUSON release.

Through her research, Gross has identified a key protective factor that can help reduce the effects of these stressors: parenting. “Parents are a child’s entire world,” notes Gross.

“If parents are preoccupied, or emotionally or physically absent, their child loses out… If a child doesn’t feel safe and protected, the drive toward exploration and to answer the question… may be lost,” says Gross.

The quality of parenting suggests one reason why some children thrive in a challenging environment while others succumb to the environmental stresses.