Childhood trauma leaves a lasting mark on biological systems. Research shows that the more adverse childhood experiences a person experiences, the higher their risk for mental and physical health problems later in life.
Childhood trauma leaves a lasting mark on biological systems, study finds
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>A study of 13-year-olds in Portugal found that children exposed to selected adverse experiences by 10 years of age tend to show increased allostatic burden in adolescence. Additional adverse experiences by age 13 further amplify this association. The paper was published in Brain, Behavior, and Immunity.
>Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are potentially traumatic events that occur during childhood and can have lasting effects on health and well-being. They typically include experiences such as abuse, neglect, and household dysfunction before the age of 18. Examples include physical, emotional, or sexual abuse, emotional or physical neglect, and exposure to domestic violence. They also include growing up in a household with substance abuse, mental illness, parental incarceration, or parental separation.
>Research shows that the more ACEs a person experiences, the higher their risk for mental and physical health problems later in life. High ACE exposure has been associated with depression, anxiety, substance misuse, and increased risk of chronic diseases.
>One key mechanism is chronic activation of the stress response, which can affect brain development and immune functioning. However, not everyone who experiences ACEs develops negative outcomes, because protective factors such as supportive relationships and stable environments can promote resilience.
Experienced trauma as early as 5….I have major depressive disorder, general anxiety disorder, PTSD, and BPD so this article is accurate from lived experiences.
Yippee! 10/10 ACEs score here. I’m about to try emdr therapy, and I’m hopeful! I’ve been self therapizing for a few decades now and have worked through a lot. But some trauma is persistent and the current government triggers a lot.Â
Between the lower life expectancy for significant trauma, also for being autistic, and the lower life expectancy in my zip code I think I’ve lived past my life expectancy already, in my 50s.
Research is beginning to demonstrate that psychological interventions are capable of reversing these biological changes. See for example the following article:
Joss, D., et al. (2020). Effects of a mindfulness based behavioral intervention for young adults with childhood maltreatment history on hippocampal morphometry: a pilot MRI study with voxel-based morphometry. Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging, 111087.
finna have a whole generation of very traumatized people
I can absolutely attest, it is true for me at least. I’m an 8/10 on the ACE. Every single one of my immediate family and 4 generations of my material lineage are all dead by suicide. I even remember the very day, at 5 years and 2 months old ….. when my stress response activated, it felt exactly like a panic/anxiety attack, the type that makes you think you’re about to eminently die, and ….. it never turned back off again after that. And of course because of my ACE childhood, I absolutely wasn’t taken seriously or supported the right way in that moment, or ever after. So, like… how could I have possibly ever had the slightest chance to develop normally in the midst of all that so early on?!
Does anybody else here get every single viral disease cold and flu going around and turn it from a few days into two weeks plus of double pneumonia?
It’s funny because the great figures of history have nearly all had *extreme* “childhood trauma.” They experienced many deaths, especially of siblings and family close to them, and all great men of the past were generally required to have served in wars, often surviving incredible violence of savage fighting. Burning ships, planes shot down, thousands slain in battle from the present day to the earliest records of mankind.
Most people, too, had a relatively short adult lifespan compared to our own world of obese TV-streamers and Doordash-orderers who still somehow live into their 70s. Alexander the Great was gone as a young man, after conquering half the world. Common disease took him, as it took so many others.
My grandmother, growing up, lost half her siblings to the Spanish flu and half her brothers to World War I. *Her* father had fought in the Civil War and lost his right arm to the battlefield surgeons when gangrene set into a bullet wound.