- [Announcer] "Your Fantastic Mind," brought to you in part by Sarah and Jim Kennedy.

(electronic contemplative music) - Welcome to "Your Fantastic Mind."

I'm Jaye Watson.

It's known as an intense, romantic, emotional attachment, but most of us know it as love, and most of us know what it feels like to be in love, to want that person on the bench with us.

Well, this week, we're gonna show you what happens to your brain when it's in love, and you'll meet some members of the animal kingdom whose love lives are similar to ours and who are helping researchers working to treat various conditions.

Join us as we fall into this episode on love.

(electronic contemplative music) (soft poignant music) - My name is Julie Golden, and this is my husband, Shaun Golden.

We have been together 10 years in September.

- [Alan] My name is Alan Durham, and this is my wife Angie.

We've been married for 45 years and been together for, what, 50 years.

- My name is Brent Rawls-McQuillan, and this is Brian Rawls-McQuillan, and we have been together for 20 years and married for 17.

- [Jill] I'm Jill, and this is John, and we've been married for 40 years.

- Hi, I'm Megan Holley, and this is Nick Metcalf-Scire, and we've been in love for one month.

(laughs) - That's a lot of time.

- (laughs) That sounds so stupid.

(Nick laughs) - I'm Martha Jo, and this is Jerry, my husband for 60 years.

- A lot of people have even thought it was part of the supernatural, and I thought to myself, "Anger's not part of the supernatural.

Fear's not part of the supernatural.

This must be a brain system."

- Casual sex is really never casual.

Is monogamy natural?

We are a pair bonding species.

- [Jaye] Famed anthropologist and researcher Helen Fisher may be best known as an expert on love.

- I think people are taking their time to love.

(soft bright ethereal music) - [Jaye] More specifically, what happens to the brain in love.

Fisher and her team have put over 100 people in brain scanners to study the brain circuitry of what happens when you're madly in love.

People were shown a photo of their sweetheart and a neutral photo, and then researchers watched which parts of the brain were activated.

- We found activity in all of our people in a tiny little factory near the base of the brain called the ventral tegmental area or the VTA.

And in fact, that is a brain region that actually makes dopamine and then sends dopamine to many brain regions, giving you that focus, the motivation, the craving, even the obsessive thinking to win, really, to win life's greatest prize, which is a main partner.

- So we knew each other at the University of Georgia, where we both graduated from, and we were at a football game here at the dome.

I was in the back of a pickup truck with my buddies because we were organizing a tailgate, going to see some friends.

And on the way back to the tailgate, I saw her walking down the street, and I say, "Hey, that's the girl."

They're like, "No."

I said, "No, that girl right there, I've been trying to connect with her forever," and I literally jumped off the truck, and we started talking, - Started talking - and haven't stopped since- - and haven't stopped.

That day, we talked everyday.

There has not been a day that we have not talked to each other since we've been together.

- We met each other in high school in... Now we got this wrong last time.

Was it French class or biology?

- Both.

We were in both.

- French class, - French and biology.

- biology class.

And I fell for Angie because she was so good looking, and.

- We knew each other as friends.

We were both reporters in Little Rock, Arkansas, reporter and photographer in Little Rock.

- I saw him on the air, and I said, "I really like that.

(Jill laughs) I really like that woman.

She's-" - That?

- "She's pretty sweet."

- [Martha Jo] So Jerry and I met the first week I was at the University of Georgia, and it was right in front of the academic building, and I walked over and I said, "Hi."

- I was attracted terror almost immediately, and that's why I invited her back to fraternity house.

- This is not an emotion.

It's a drive.

It's a basic mating drive that evolved millions of years ago to start the mating process.

In fact, that little factory, the VTA, lies right next to the hypothalamus that orchestrates thirst and hunger.

Thirst, and hunger keep you alive today.

Romantic love enables you to focus and drives you to find a partner and send your DNA into tomorrow.

(birds chirp) - [Jaye] Falling in love is, in many ways, becoming addicted to another person.

(children shout in distance) - [Nick] I thank you for this day.

Thank you for his time that Megan and I get to share.

We'll just pray over this meal.

- We had all of these like baby dates, and then we were slow dancing on my back porch, and that's when he told me that he was falling in love with me.

- I think the fact that I could be with her every single day and not get tired of that feeling, I think I would say that's what catapulted me into this whole idea of being in love with her.

- [Shaun] We've been dating lately.

We see each other on the weekend.

(Julie laughs) - I know that every day before I talked to him, I would get giddy, the butterflies in the stomach.

I feel like I smiled the entire time we were on the phone.

- Oh, crazy.

(Brent laughs) When you lose yourself to somebody else, there's a certain amount of craziness that goes with it in the fact that you are no longer in control necessarily of all your emotions.

- I came in that night, and I said to my roommate, "That's who I'm gonna marry," and she said, "You are crazy."

(computer keys clack) - [Jaye] And when love goes wrong, when your heart gets broken, (water laps) Fisher says men are two and a half times more likely to take their own lives.

Fisher researched our brains when we've been dumped.

- My name is Jennifer Allen, and I am here because 11 days ago, my fiance broke off our engagement.

(computer keys clack) - Is romantic love and addiction?

People do the craziest thing when they've been dumped, and so we started to look and sure enough, we found activity in the basic brain region linked with all of the addictions, the nucleus accumbens.

That brain region becomes active with all of the substance addictions, everything from heroin to nicotine to alcohol.

- (sniffles) But it's probably been after midnight.

I just can't sleep.

My mind just won't shut down.

Like I said, a whole lot of tears at night, too.

During the day, I find my mind wandering, going through scenarios.

"Okay, what went wrong?

What did I do?"

- And we found 15 people who had just been rejected in love and put them in the brain scanner using fMRI.

And sure enough, we expected that we would still find activity in the VTA that makes the dopamine that gives you that feeling of intense romance because you don't stop loving somebody when you are dumped.

In fact, you can love the more.

We actually know what's going on in the brain because when you can't get what you want, you just try harder.

(soft melancholy piano music) - I've even called his work phone just so I could hear his voice.

I keep thinking that I'm gonna wake up or that I can just call him (laughs) and then it'll be like it was, that there's been some huge mistake.

(sniffles) How can somebody that you've spent so much time with who, the day before, was proclaiming their love for you and wanting to spend the rest of their life with you, and 24 hours later, it's like you've had a part of you amputated.

It really is that you can feel it in your chest, like a true physical heartbreak.

(electronic contemplative music) (birds chirp) - [Jaye] When we are exploring this addiction to one's partner, let's step away from humans for a moment and instead consider the prairie vole.

- [Larry] prairie vole is a little hamster-sized rodent that lives out in the Midwest, and they're known for their unusual family structure.

Oh, you got babies there.

- [Jaye] These tiny rodents at Yerkes National Primate Research Center are teaching us a lot about ourselves.

- Their family style is very similar to our own.

They're monogamous.

This is a male and a female prairie vole, the mother and the father of these babies.

(soft gentle piano music) - [Jaye] Only 5% of mammals are monogamous.

Prairie voles are in that small group, displaying social traits that are deeply human.

- We're unusual in that we form a partnership and we form a family, and the voles do the very same thing.

- [Jaye] Neuroscientist Dr. Larry Young has been studying prairie voles for 26 years.

- I've been studying these voles because I wanna understand the biochemical and brain mechanisms that help us form social relationships.

As humans, social relationships are so important for us, whether it's our family or our community.

- [Jaye] But why voles, these tiny inhabitants from the Midwest prairie?

Why not mice, which account for 90% of biomedical research?

- Mice do a lot of things, but they don't form bonds.

- [Jaye] Voles do, deep bonds.

- Voles have a pair bond.

There's something irresistible about their partner, and what we found is that those that can form bonds have the receptors for oxytocin and vasopressin in the parts of the brain that are involved in reward, the same areas that are involved in addiction.

And so we think of this pair bond as very much similar to addiction.

The animals are becoming addicted to their partner.

- [Jaye] Part of prairie voles bonding involves mating, a lot.

- Voles, just like many other rodents, mating is actually very quick, but there's many bouts.

So they can mate for several hours at a time many times.

(lid creaks and shuffles) The voles, once they get pregnant, they have their babies in 21 days.

And pretty much immediately after giving birth, they are pregnant again, so every 21 days, they give birth.

So they're quite prolific.

- [Woman] One, two, three, four, five babies.

- [Jaye] Once the babies are born, the fathers are deeply involved in rearing the babies.

- [Larry] The prairie voles have their babies.

The males are really engaged with their babies.

They lick and groom the babies just as much as the mothers do.

- [Jaye] This early life nurturing helps to build the social brain of the voles and influences how they relate to other voles later in life, just like humans, and research on the voles shows how the loss of a parent can impact those bonds.

- What we found is that if the father is not around, so which means that those pups got less licking and grooming, they got less parental nurturing because they're only when the mother was present, and she had to go get food every day and things like that.

Then those pups that got that less licking and grooming, less attention as babies, when they grew up, they were less likely to form social relationships with a partner themselves.

(soft gentle piano music) - [Jaye] From monogamy to shared parenting to nurturing, the answer to what makes these tiny creatures so similar to us is found in the brain.

- These little voles have essentially all the same parts of the brain as humans do.

Humans have no chemicals in the brain that are different from the voles.

They're the same chemicals.

And so the same rudimentary processes that are involved in human behaviors like love and empathy and compassion and all of these things, the roots of those can be found in these little voles, and then we can learn the secrets of that.

- [Jaye] Humans and prairie voles both have receptors in our brains for oxytocin and vasopressin.

Oxytocin is dubbed the love hormone because levels of this molecule rise when we make physical contact with another human.

It's also the maternal hormone because oxytocin triggers labor and the release of breast milk, creating mother-infant bonding.

- Here's a molecule that basically its function in the brain is to tune us into others.

Whether it's the mother being tuned in like a laser into her baby or partners being tuned into each other.

Looking into the eyes of others releases oxytocin, and in fact, even looking into the eyes of your dog, when your dog looks at you, gazes into your eyes, you release oxytocin, and that makes you want to care for that dog.

It helps build that bond, and the same thing is true for partners.

So you're looking into the eyes of your partner.

Anytime that you feel a connection with someone else, your brain is releasing oxytocin.

(up-tempo riveting music) Politicians have taken advantage of this over the years, and a good politician like Bill Clinton is known for when he shakes your hand, not only does he shake your hand but strokes your arm, and that extra touch releases oxytocin, and oxytocin is known to increase trust.

So this is a pair-bonded family.

- Then there's vasopressin.

- It's the macho molecule.

It makes animals scent mark their territory.

And these voles, even though oxytocin is important for male bonding, the nurturing kind of bond, vasopressin seems to be involved in the territorial aspect of the bond, the mate guarding.

"Hey, this is my territory.

This is my female.

You better stay away."

- [Jaye] Using virus technology, Young and his team can knock out oxytocin or vasopressin receptors, making them no longer want to bond.

They can also enhance the receptors in meadow voles, promiscuous cousins of the prairie vole, making them more monogamous.

- Did you check detect the voles downstairs?

- [Jaye] Young's lab is now using CRISPR and optogenetics to edit the vole genome and manipulate brain circuitry with light pulses to explore how oxytocin promotes bonding with great precision.

- Actually, we were able to transform the brain of those that cannot form a bond by putting the gene for the receptors into those areas.

And then suddenly, those totally promiscuous voles started being able to form bonds, and the powerful nature of that experiment is that it shows you that even something as complex as being able to form a relationship has a chemical nature.

(soft gentle piano music) - [Jaye] Prairie voles also experienced something akin to grief when they lose their partner.

Researchers alleviated this depressed feeling in the voles by giving them oxytocin.

- And this is an area that's involved in addiction, both in voles and in humans.

- [Jaye] Young's research goes far beyond understanding our own connections to one another.

It is showing that these molecules like oxytocin could play an important role in addressing autism and certain mental health disorders.

- The most important aspect of our work is the understanding that this molecule helps us process social information and tunes us into the social world, and that gives us a way to be able to enhance perception of the social world, and that is very useful in disorders like autism.

This molecule that helps these little voles form bonds may be useful in helping people with autism, maybe schizophrenia or other disorders, being able to relate better to others and to be able to navigate their social world in a much more effective way, improving quality of life.

Others around the world in Japan, Australia, Germany, all over the world have been doing clinical trials where they're giving intranasal oxytocin to adults and children with autism and trying to figure out what's the best way to give it and maybe in combination with therapy and to improve social functioning.

- [Jaye] What helps attract us to each other, what helps us stay together could help people around us create connections we take for granted.

(electronic contemplative music) (soft poignant music) - I've always felt like the center of your universe.

That's a great way to feel.

And I think that whether he verbalizes it or not, I think you've taught your boys that.

- Well that and by example.

- Yeah.

- When they come to our house, they see us.

We're sitting next to each other.

We're holding each other, we're laughing, we're dancing.

(both laugh) ♪ We did it almost every night ♪ - [Jill] Oh Lord.

- [Brent] All right, pick up your towel, and don't jump in the pool until Mr. Kenny tells you.

(water splashes) I will readily admit that I need more cheerleading than he does, so I need more validation from him than he needs from me.

And we finally realized that after years of being together, that that's just who I am.

- I know when he's fishing for a compliment.

- Right.

(Brian laughs) - The love that Jerry gives me has made me feel so secure in my life.

It didn't matter what I did.

He was proud of me.

- [Alan] Can't remember who took these pictures.

Do you remember?

I had had a heart attack.

I was clinically dead for, they said 10 to 15 minutes.

When they were bringing me out of the medically induced coma after, what was it, six days?

Yeah.

I looked up and...

I looked up and Angie was right there and... (hand pats arm) - [Jaye] So what is the state of love in humans today?

When it comes to marriage, waiting is a good thing.

- All of my data show that the later you marry, the more likely you are to remain married.

(gentle pleasant music) There's new data on 3,000 Americans that shows that compared to people who marry in less than a year of meeting, if you marry during the second year, you're 20% less likely to divorce, and if you marry after three years of courtship, you're 39% less likely to divorce.

I did a study of 1,100 married people, and I asked them a lot of questions, but one of the questions was, "Would you remarry the person that you're currently married to?"

And 81% said yes.

- The question is, are we still in love with each other?

And we are absolutely more in love I think now than we probably ever have been because we know how important each day is that you have to live every day and enjoy it.

- Oh, the best part is when we fight and we get some good ones on each other, - Then we laugh about it.

- we have a good laugh about it later, and we're like, "Man, you got a good one right there."

And we do like a play by play afterwards.

I'm like, "That was really sharp.

You knew exactly how to come after me.

That was-" - Well, I'm quicker than you.

(Brian laughs) - [Jaye] Social media has changed how we interact, how we meet.

Has it changed how we love?

- Technology cannot kill love.

This is a basic brain system like the fear system, the anger system.

It's like hunger and thirst.

It's not gonna change whether you swipe left or right on Tinder.

- [Jaye] When it comes to how to sustain long-term love, the answer, not surprisingly, lies within us.

Fisher and her team did two studies on long-term love in China and the United States.

- These are the three brain regions that remain active in a long-term happy partnership, a brain region linked with empathy, a brain region linked with controlling your own stress and your own emotions, and our brain region linked with what I call positive illusions, the ability to overlook what you don't like about somebody and focus on what you do.

- Oh, so overlooking quirks, yeah.

How am I at that?

- Well.

(laughs) - I'm anal about certain things.

- The toilet seat thing.

- My wife is anal about certain things, and I accept her anilism if that's a word.

- Analism is a new word.

(both laugh) (sheets whoosh) - Okay, we're gonna follow this laundry, Jer.

- She's always going (laughs) behind me and putting things in its place.

I put something here, she moves it over there.

(Martha Jo laughs) And so I say, "Okay, so keep it over there."

- I also think it's a good idea to sustain all three of these basic brain systems, sex drive, feelings of intense romantic love, and feelings of deep attachment.

(waves crash) If you want to sustain the sex drive, have sex.

When you have sex, it can drive up parts of the androgens, the testosterone system, and so you want more sex.

and sex is very good for the body and the mind and the relationship.

- As you grow older, everything changes.

Your body changes, and that includes sex changes.

At some point, it gets better, okay?

Because you're more comfortable, I think, with your partner and you feel like, "Why not?

It's part of life."

- Well, everything doesn't work like it did when you were 19, so.

(both laugh) - I liked when we both get out the shower, and I'm like, I'll just, "Hey, just have a naked hug.

I'm okay with that."

And then I'm hoping the naked love will lead to some love.

- [Jaye] Fisher says, "If you want to sustain feelings of romantic love, novelty drives up the immune system in the brain and triggers feelings of romantic love."

That's why new experiences together and vacations are such a good thing.

And in terms of attachment, stay attached physically.

Touch triggers oxytocin.

- [Nick] It is pretty out here.

- [Jaye] Walk hand in hand, arm in arm.

Sit on the couch together.

- We are very touchy.

When we watch TV, I get mad if he doesn't come over and sit by me, and should we say?

Our children are gonna see this, I guess, but yes, sex is good.

- Yeah.

- That's good, yeah?

(both laugh) - I still slap his butt in the kitchen.

- We like to hold hands.

- Yeah.

- It just feels right.

I just- - I like to just lean on him, just lay on him.

Sometimes, when I have him tell me about his day, I'll just sit like this, and he's like, "Are you good?"

And I'm like, "I'm great, I'm great.

I'm just vibin'."

- Yeah.

- Throughout the night, I feel like we always have to touch each other, like his feet, my legs.

There's always a part of our bodies touching each other throughout the night.

- I love holding hands.

We go off a lot of places.

We hold hands together.

I'm always rubbing on her, kissing her.

- There you go.

- Thank you.

- (laughs) You're welcome.

It's wonderful to have that kind of passion (gentle pleasant music) and love at this stage of our life.

- [Jaye] Finding your person and taking that leap of love is a risk but one that is worth it in the long term.

- Even though I've studied divorce, even though I do think that we've got some predispositions for restlessness in long partnerships, I think that, as a culture, we're moving towards more stable partnerships.

We're built to form pair bonds.

- It's a deeper feeling.

It's something that has grown over the years, but it feels like now that it's always been that way.

I don't know if that makes any sense or not, but I've always loved him deeply.

- It's not always easy.

When you've been together this long, you see your partner go through highs and lows, and either you stick with 'em and because you love them, and that's what happened with us.

There's highs and those lows for both of us.

And once you've reached that point, you feel like you've done something really special.

- Every day I wake up, and I'm happy.

I'm with the person that I wanna be with the rest of my life, and I've been with that person for 40 years and it's all been good.

- [Jerry] I can't imagine being without her.

It's just a good feeling.

- We're built to love.

Love is gonna be with us as long as we survive as a species.

It's primordial, adaptable, and eternal.

- Moving on from love to motherhood.

Well, motherhood certainly involves a lot of love, but as any mother can tell you, it's more complicated than just that.

Traumatic experiences we've gone through in our lives impact ourselves and our mothering.

This week, you'll meet a team of female investigators studying civilian trauma and how it impacts the lives of thousands of African American women.

(electronic contemplative music) (soft poignant music) - Hey Lauren!

Hey Lauren!

Hey Lauren!

- Xylina, thanks for coming.

Today, we're gonna do an interaction looking at emotional connection.

- [Jaye] With cameras rolling, researchers observed the connection between Xylina Anderson and her three-month-old baby girl, Lauren, the connection from Xylina to her baby and from the baby to Xylina.

- Hey, big girl.

Hey mommy, big girl.

- [Jaye] Just a few recorded minutes of this interaction will give researchers deep insight into the connection between Xylina and her baby.

That connection can dramatically impact the development of a child.

- There's research to show that babies and moms that are not connected with each other go on that the babies gonna have problems in the course of their development.

I think having more of that.

- Dr. Abby Lott, a clinical psychologist, is one of the co-directors of the Grady Trauma Project, a longstanding study of civilian trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Over the past 15 years, this female-led team of researchers have recruited over 12,000 people from the waiting rooms of Grady Memorial Hospital, a publicly funded hospital in downtown Atlanta.

- More health problems, the primary thing that was.

- [Jaye] What these researchers have discovered is that PTSD, most often associated with veterans of wars, is very much present in the lives of African American women.

- In the general population, 6 to 7% of individuals will go on to develop chronic PTSD following exposure to a traumatic event.

In military cohorts, PTSD has always traditionally been considered a problem for veterans.

That rate of PTSD is closer to 30%.

What work at GTP has really brought to the forefront is that civilian trauma exposure can increase risk for PTSD.

Up to 46% of individuals that we've talked to have met for PTSD during their lifetime here at GTP.

So general population, 7%, military population, 30%, and GTP population, 46%.

(soft ethereal music) - [Abby] These are individuals who may be living throughout the Atlanta area but generally come from more low socioeconomic communities, are experiencing significant levels of stress, trauma, racial discrimination, and have less access often to receive both physical and behavioral health care.

- [Healthcare Worker] And are you right handed or left handed?

Okay, so I'm just gonna scrub under your eye.

Can you blink a couple times?

(footsteps shuffle) okay, you can have a seat.

- [Jaye] 22 Year-old Kayla Selmer is in what's known as the startle booth today with Dr. Vas Michopoulos observing.

- [Vas] My research interests are really focused on trying to understand how stress and trauma essentially get under the skin biologically.

- [Healthcare Worker] During this experiment, you'll hear some sudden tones and noises and see several colored shapes appear on the screen.

So the tones are there, tell us a startle, and will occur every time something occurs.

So some of the shapes will be followed by a blast of air and some will not.

- One cardinal symptom of PTSD is hyper arousal.

(air hisses) - [Jaye] Hyper arousal in someone with PTSD means they are more easily startled, for example, by loud noises.

They might also be hypervigilant, constantly checking to make sure doors are locked or looking behind them.

It can be hard for them to relax and settle down, to feel safe.

- Essentially, when you hear a loud sound, you physically startle, and one of those responses is that you blink your eyes.

You've got a respiration belt.

What we are measuring during the fear potentiated startle is how robust of an eye blink response an individual responds to when they are presented with an aversive stimulus.

(air hisses) - [Jaye] The aversive stimulus is that blast of air.

- I jumped (laughs) and I blinked like I was trying to get away from it.

(air hisses) The air puffing in my face (laughs) was very scary at the first time, and then I started understanding that it's a pattern that I had to go through.

(air hisses) - [Jaye] Although Kayla learned the pattern and her startle response decreased once the air puff went away, - There's less ability to discriminate.

- [Jaye] someone with PTSD would show an exaggerated startle response, even when the aversive stimuli goes away, showing that their body has a hard time learning what is safe and when danger has passed.

- [Healthcare Worker] Okay, we are all done.

- [Jaye] Like most women in this study, Kayla, who has sickle cell and is 36 weeks pregnant with her first child, has endured significant trauma in her life.

- In 2014, I had a stroke and lost 85% of my memory.

I was not able to remember people, some words.

I was back on a second grade level as a 15 year old.

(ambulance siren wails) (soft dramatic music) - Among everyone we've talked to, most people have experienced at least four different types of traumatic events.

We'll ask about whether they've ever been attacked with a weapon, attacked by a romantic partner.

We ask if they've been through a major natural disaster or house fire, something of that nature.

We ask people about whether they've ever been imprisoned.

- I had to see my mom in prison.

She did steal money from her job, so it was a lot of trauma there is seeing her locked behind bars, not being able to come home with us most of the time, well, all the time, missing out on birthdays and Christmases.

(soft dramatic music) - [Jaye] Xylina has also suffered trauma.

- Well, I found my cousin and his son, so a home invasion.

He was murdered in a home invasion.

As a little girl coming up, I really didn't have my father all my life.

So when he came into my life, it was like, "No, I don't want him to leave me again."

- I study the neural circuits that are affected by trauma, and I look at how the function of brain regions involved in responding to threat contributes to post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms.

(machine whirs) Today we are scanning Miss Shipman, and she is somebody who is a mom who came into the Grady Trauma Project, and what we're gonna look at is the function of, in particular, a brain region called the amygdala, which is involved in a variety of different types of responses when somebody is confronted with a threat stimulus.

The parts where we're actually testing new hypotheses.

- [Jaye] Neuroscientist Dr. Jenni Stephens says the threat stimulus is the sound of nails on a chalkboard.

(nails scratch on chalkboard) When this sound is played, the amygdala will activate the fight or flight response, but what happens next will help the study participant's brain adapt.

- All right, for this next part, if you can look at the cross in the middle of the screen.

- [Jaye] Researchers show her neutral images, not scary, while the noise is played again, and gradually, her brain will learn the threat is no longer a threat.

This is called fear extinction.

It's similar to what happens with Kayla in the startle booth when she realizes that the stimulus paired with the blast of air is no longer threatening.

(soft gentle piano music) The years of research at Grady Trauma Project have shown that the amount of trauma African American women are living with and the impact of PTSD puts them at a greater risk for a host of health issues, including cardiovascular disease and diabetes, and pregnant African American women are at even greater risk.

- We know that black pregnant women are at significantly higher risk for maternal morbidity and mortality, and a lot of the data that we've generated here at GTP shows that individuals, one reason that may be underlying that health disparity is the chronic trauma load and the experiences of chronic cycle social stress that these women have been living with and been accumulated over time.

- Exactly.

- And you could hear her resilience.

- What do you do with all of this information?

- [Jaye] The Grady Trauma Project team says women are impacted by PTSD at twice the rate of men, and biology could play a role.

- [Jenni] And we think that there may be something special about the hormonal context for women versus men that might put women at greater risk for PTSD when a trauma comes along.

- [Jaye] Estradiol from the family of estrogen hormones is being tested to see if it can help PTSD symptoms during times of month when a woman's estrogen levels are low.

- Changing hospital-wide policy.

- [Jaye] Dr. Abby Lott works with the women in the study to help mothers and mothers to be navigate the effects of stress and trauma and to reduce the intergenerational effects of trauma.

- One of the things that we're doing at the Grady Trauma Project is trying to intervene as early as possible, specifically intervening with pregnant moms and helping to teach them mindfulness and emotion regulation skills to more effectively manage their own stress, anxiety, depression so that they can be better parents and that it has more positive long-term effects on the child.

(soft poignant music) - [Jaye] Dr. Lott also leads dialectical behavior therapy or DBT sessions with the women to help them cope with extreme or unstable emotions and harmful behaviors.

Mindfulness-based approaches like DBT can be helpful to combat stress and improve how you manage your emotions.

Without interventions and treatments, chronic trauma and stress load puts wear on their minds and body, impacting their health and longevity.

- There's a pattern over time that's associated with aging.

In what we see is that in people with PTSD, that pattern is accelerated so that their epigenetic age looks older than their actual chronological age.

- [Jaye] The work of Grady Trauma Project researchers can have a generational impact.

They took MRIs of the brains of mothers and their nine-year-old children, and what they discovered showed the power of good parenting.

- We know that childhood trauma can impact the brain, but moms provide a buffer, and particularly, moms who show warm parenting behaviors can help protect kids against some of the effects of early life stress.

- [Jaye] Quite simply, the research is showing that when you help the mom, you help the child.

The risk of negative outcomes for the child is greatly reduced.

- Hey, mommy.

- Teaching emotion regulation, mindfulness to moms helps them to model and teach those skills to their kids, and that helps promote resilience.

- Hey, big girl.

- [Jaye] For thousands of women in the Grady Trauma Project, their PTSD was largely undiagnosed and unrecognized.

These interventional treatments are often the first time anyone has asked these women what they've gone through in their lives.

- But it helps me for someone to listen and me to cope and me to get through what I'm going through.

- [Jaye] The work done by these moms gives them new tools to understand and navigate their feelings and how to cope with stress, helping them to be the kind of parent they want to be and to be present for their child.

- I wanna be one that is always there, always being supportive and giving my child my best and my all.

(Kobe coos) - [Jaye] Since we first met Kayla, she has given birth to her son.

- Kobe.

His full name is Kobe True Andre Miller, and it means a true warrior protected by God.

I want him to have more.

(lips peck) (Kobe coos) (Kayla laughs) - As you heard, the women who are research participants also receive interventional strategies to help them in their own lives.

But when Grady Trauma Project researchers encounter an African American woman who is suicidal, they refer her to the Nia Project, and for the many women who find their way here, it's the beginning of a whole new life.

(electronic contemplative music) - [Donna] My great-great-grandfather purchased this property in 1882.

(soft gentle music) - [Jaye] Donna Hann McCoy's great-great-grandfather, Reuben Gay, had been raised as slave who used his freedom after the Civil War to prosper.

(birds chirp) - This is the second barn, and my dad helped build this barn.

It was built in 1952.

- [Jaye] Building this home in Fayette County and owning hundreds of acres of farmland.

Generations of Gay's family, including Donna, now 60 years old, were raised here.

- I just submitted to the Georgia State Preservation and the national park and this will be the first African American historical landmark in Fayette County, Georgia.

- [Jaye] And his descendants still inhabit these hundreds of acres, many buried in the same cemetery just up the road where he was laid to rest.

- This is his grave here.

- [Jaye] Donna's passion for her family's history is part of how she has helped to heal her traumatic past, one in which she was kidnapped and raped as an adult, one in which she grew up in an alcoholic home she fled at just 15 years old.

- So I ended up being one of those women that was on the streets.

I was standing on the street corner down by the Fox Theater, and that's where it all began for me trying to survive on my own, looking for love, because it wasn't at home.

I have a safety list.

- [Jaye] Donna tried to take her life three times.

It was one of those times hospitalized at Grady Hospital in downtown Atlanta that she learned of the Nia Project.

- It gave me life, and I took that, and I kept coming and kept coming in the midst of there were things happening along the way, but I just kept coming.

When I start having flashbacks.

- The Nia Project is a program that's culturally responsive where we provide mental health services for African American women who have had a long history of trauma.

- It wasn't even about me calling the police at the time.

- They feel like there's no way out but to their lives, and so they attempt suicide, and the program aims to help them find a sense of purpose in their lives, to build meaning, to find a community where they can connect with other women with similar stories.

Know that it's not your fault.

- [Jaye] Chief psychologist at Grady Health System, Dr. Nadine Kaslow, founded the Nia Project at Grady Hospital over 20 years ago and has worked with over 2,000 suicidal African American women.

Nia is the Kwanzaa principle of purpose.

- Suicidal behavior has been on the rise in that community, and so that's increasingly concerning, and maybe most importantly, there's just been tremendous stigma about getting mental health services in general within the African American community.

African American women pride themselves, rightly so, on being strong black women, and that often means they are wonderful at taking care of everybody else but struggle to take care of themselves.

- [Jaye] Nia research has found that African American women are more at risk for suicide if they are survivors of intimate partner violence, have a history of childhood abuse and neglect, experienced negative life events and have mental health issues such as overall psychological distress, depression, PTSD, or substance misuses.

The greater the number of risk factors, the higher the risk of suicide.

Nia research has also found that what is protective and makes African American women resilient include having positive social support and a sense of belonging, feeling close to their family and accepted, being a mother, having adaptive coping skills, being confident in their abilities, being spiritual and having a sense of meaning and purpose in life.

- It's very much of an empowerment-oriented program.

All of our clinical and research services are designed to be empowerment oriented and very culturally competent.

So in the research program, for example, all of the groups are co-led by at least one therapist who is African American or black.

- [Donna] This test hard?

- [Jaye] The Nia Project is a free program that provides all of the women individual, group, couples, and family therapy, along with crisis services 24 hours a day.

The women become part of a tight-knit community, supporting each other, learning practical strategies for day-to-day life, and finding their purpose in their lives.

For many of these women, participating in the Nia Project marks the first time they've ever truly been helped or felt seen or heard.

The women who find Nia find their will to live again.

- I believe in God that I can get pregnant naturally.

- [Deborah] My child molestation started when I was eight years old.

(water runs) When I was 11 years old, all I wanted to do was just die, and by the time I turned 12, he got me pregnant.

- [Jaye] Deborah Gay was repeatedly and impregnated by her stepfather until she became an adult.

At 50 years old, she no longer wanted to live.

- I actually took the pills, and it was a young lady in the bathroom with me, and she heard me in there crying, and she said, "Ma'am, you okay?"

I was like, "No, I just took a bunch of pills."

Working through everything was really hard.

- [Jaye] And then she was referred to Nia.

- Nia had gave me a voice.

It made me recognize that everything that happened to me in my life was not my fault, and it gave me courage to stand up and speak out and tell my story.

(soft poignant music) - [Jaye] Deborah found an artistic outlet for feelings that had been buried most of her life.

- Oh, it was amazing.

It was unbelievable 'cause I didn't think I had the skill to do it.

- [Jaye] Deborah and Donna's artwork and writing are published by Nia in annual books now sold on Amazon, part of giving a voice to women in the project.

- "That's my sunflower I grew on my patio, and I look at the sun shining through."

- [Jaye] Nia creates big change, "but it's the small thing says," Dr. Kaslow, like seeing women smile for the first time or the story of one woman they sent to a literacy program.

- After she completed the program, she came and knocked on my office door and had her certificate, and she was so proud of herself.

And she said to me, "Dr. Kaslow, do you have any idea what it's like to be able to go to the grocery store and look at the soup can and buy the one you want that you like because you can read the labels?"

- [Jaye] Donna's purpose has only grown, beyond her great-great grandfather's home to the church he was taken to by his slave owner.

- [Donna] I discovered over 300 slave graves there, and my grandfather is buried there.

- [Jaye] In the woods behind the church, she discovered these slave graves filled with families.

- [Donna] The Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, the Latter-day Saints.

We have all placed crosses at at least 150 graves.

- [Jaye] She has become an historian and an excavator of her past, of herself.

- I look around and I said, "I can't stop now."

(gentle pleasant music) I found a reason to live 'cause now, I have to take care of my ancestors.

(laughs) Yes.

- Thank you to Donna and Deborah and all the researchers and participants working together to find answers that will change and improve lives.

That's gonna do it for us.

See you next time on "Your Fantastic Mind."

(electronic contemplative music) - [Announcer] "Your Fantastic Mind" brought to you in part by Sarah and Jim Kennedy.