Letter: Mid-States Corridor’s unspoken ramifications
“You are being sentimental and emotional; it is just land.” Statements such as these accompanied with languid apologies, have been echoed by representatives and proponents of the Mid-States Corridor. The debates regarding this proposed road have largely focused on landowners, property rights, and reported need for such a road. The behavioral health repercussions of the Mid-States Corridor on those who stand to lose their homes and properties have largely been ignored.
The uncertainty of this road and the threat of losing a home can have severe effects on the emotional functioning and behavioral health of these residents. Threats of home loss and the loss of a home have significant behavioral health impacts on homeowners, their families, and children. Impacts such as chronic stress, depression, increased parental stress, punitive discipline and conflict in the home, and decreased social support have all been linked both to the threat of home loss and actual loss of one’s home. These obstacles may cascade to the development of internalizing and externalizing problems consisting of anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts, health issues, aggression, and rule-breaking, and other disruptive behaviors expressed outwardly through actions. The threat of housing loss and home loss can also rupture social connections further contributing to feelings of insecurity and displacement.
These behavioral health ramifications do not ebb with time but flow from one generation to the next, having profound and lasting negative impacts. Transmitted from one generation to the next, the emotional and psychological traumas, although not directly experienced, potentially arise, expressing themselves once again as lowered stress response, substance misuse, emotional mismanagement, and unhealthy coping and communication strategies and relationships. The legacy passed forward will not be one of land but of possible difficulties with behavioral health, emotional dysregulation, formation of unhealthy relationships, and physical health problems. This is the plausible legacy for current homeowners, their families and children, and their families to come.
Proponents of this road need to consider the homeowners, their families, their children, and the behavioral health outcomes, both short and long-term, on them and their future generations. Representatives and proponents of the Mid-States Corridor are valid in their statements regarding home and property owners’ sentimentality and emotionality of their land. The sentiments and emotions of the home and property owners are just as vital as the environmental and financial impacts as the unspoken ramifications of them will have far reaching effects beyond the present generations.
Dr. Regina Hildenbrand-Moore, HSPP
Dubois County native living in New Albany
