Using The Wire in medical education

Abstract

The television series The Wire originally aired on June 2, 2002 with the pilot episode titled “The Target”. The opening scene depicts a discussion between Baltimore detective Jimmy McNulty and a witness to the murder of a teenager named Omar Betts, otherwise known as “Snot Boogie”. The witness goes into detail about the murder, describing how Snot would join a weekly back-alley dice game and would rob from the cash pot when the bets grew sufficiently large. This occurred until one day a newcomer entered the game and shot and killed Snot for stealing the money. Perplexed, McNulty asked why regulars would allow Snot Boogie to join the game each week knowing that in advance he would rob it. To this the witness responds “Got to. It's America man.” Childhood maltreatment and its role in the development of pain and psychopathologyChildhood maltreatment represents a form of trauma capable of altering fundamental neurobiological properties and negatively impacting neurodevelopmental processes. An outcome of childhood maltreatment is the emergence of psychopathology, which might become evident during childhood or adolescence, but might also project into adulthood. In this Review, we propose a biobehavioural framework in which childhood maltreatment and the associated aberrant neurobiological mechanisms and behavioural processes additionally lead to the onset of altered pain processing and, ultimately, the existence of pain syndromes. Full-Text PDF