Irish Study Links Childhood Stress with Eventual Depression
February 27th, 2010
The modern prevalence of depression, which is quickly emerging as one of the world’s largest health problems, may leave some people wondering how and why the concern emerges. There are many theories focused on explaining the origins of depression, but recently, a study performed at Trinity College Dublin has found that particular experiences in childhood may indicate a significant risk of developing the issue later in life. The study’s team found that stress resulting from emotional neglect had an impact on the structure of the brain, as evidenced through MRI, or Magnetic Resonance Imaging, technology. The work helps strengthen the importance of early treatment of depression as well as the prevention of poor quality of life and abusive relationships in childhood.
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I know many Irish people and several of them grew up in poverty. Not all though have, to my knowledge, developed depression. It’s not always a surefire thing but knowing there’s a marker for it, and knowing you have that marker, could help your physician.
Sad to see that childhood abuse not only changes you emotionally but physically within the brain. This is why we need a zero tolerance approach on childhood abuse. It goes on affecting the victim’s life long after the situation has ceased.
We have seen hundreds of children in our agency which deals with divorce and separation. The children who come to monitored visits fare better than those who are subjected to the negative signals parents are giving about meeting with the other parent.
Granted, parents who are not granted visits through the courts have sometimes been involved in long or short term violence. These scenes are hard for children to forget.
However, the stress the children endure when they are subjected to continual fights for alliances are longer lasting than some of the short term scenes parents endured at the end of the marriage.
It is far better for the parents to directly work out the old resentments and get on with co-parenting, if possible, than to subject children to a parent’s fears and resentments, making them afraid to interact with one of their parents.
We work with the whole family to relieve this one stress the child has to endure. There are so many stressors for children, and especially all the changes that occur after separation, least of which is staying at two houses and spending time traveling between households. Add to that parental debaucles, and the child is easily learning to discount both parents, rather than admire the qualities of their parents like patience, understanding and forgiveness.
It is enough that the love relationship is over. If parents can straighten out their time share arrangements and get through the incidents that caused violence or extremely hard feelings, then the children will see the effects of negotiating difficult relationships.
Many medical studies have shown the biological effects of long term stress on the body. We hope to help parents eliminate that kind of stress from their children’s lives, through mediation and co-parenting sessions.
I think this is wonderful news! Now there’s a solid way of testing that determines the probability of future issues, the doctors can watch for any signs of depression developing sooner rather than later. This is a very useful report!
there have been many studies and reports saying that many problems that a person may experience in his adulthood are actually as a direct result of something that happened in his/her childhood.gives us more reasons to see to it that our children have no such negative experiences and that they are free from such things later on in their lives.
Again just more evidence that things that happen to us during childhood and how those things are treated are bound to affect us as adults.
Children’s minds pick up things very fast and this holds good for negatives things as well. That is exactly why we try not to let our kids be exposed to violence even on television…they are not capable of understanding the things clearly but will pick it up quickly and may even replicate them.
It is important that we do not let our young children to get stressed or be exposed to situations that will eventually stress them out…as this study shows and also as many other studies have said in the past, stress and other negative things in one’s childhood can really disrupt the normal well-being of that person as an adult.
I wonder if in future this determination could become relied upon in court as proof of childhood abuse. I know it’s early days but it’s a possibility.
Even seemingly small things like shouting at a kid can have big repurcasions later on in life… therefore it is very important that little children are taken care of not only materialistically and ohysically but also psychologically…this is more dangerous than a physical injury in my opinion.
We have to make an honest effort to pay more attention to our children and the things thet they are going through. I know that too mnay times in my own personal experience I have even blown things off that my kids may be going through because I doubted how much it was affecting them simply because they are children. But reading things like this teaches me that these issues are important to them no matter the age and that I have to be serious about the issues that they are facing. I would not want my child to turn up later in life suffering from depression and sit around wondering if it is all because I avoided what he or she was going through at a younger age. Mental health and the preservation thereof is so important for our whole society, and the younger we start recognizing when there may be problems ahead the better off we are all going to be as a whole.
The earlier the intervention, the better. Good news indeed!
Don’t get too excited. MRI’s aren’t cheap here. You’ll pay thousands of dollars for a brain scan. Will insurance cover it for that purpose? Who knows. Maybe only to use as an out to deny coverage for the depression treatment by claiming it’s a pre-existing condition.
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