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Mental illness associated with early childhood adversity may be passed from generation to generation, according to a study of adults whose parents evacuated Finland as children during World War II. The study was conducted by researchers at the National Institutes of Health, Uppsala University in Sweden, and Helsinki University in Finland. It appears in JAMA Psychiatry. [...]
A group of researchers say depression would be better treated if it was classified into 12 different disorders. There are calls for a major overhaul of the way depression is diagnosed and treated to better recognise its triggers. A group of international psychologists have challenged the classification of 'major depression' and argue it would be [...]
Exposure to traumatic experiences in childhood can have a negative impact on the development of the brain when it’s most vulnerable. Cases of childhood maltreatment are more common than reported; conservative estimates show over 45,000 Australian children were exposed to maltreatment in 2015 and 2016. Adversity in childhood can include experiences such as emotional, physical, and sexual [...]
The term demoralization was originally coined in the 1970s by a psychiatrist who was seeing patients that didn’t quite meet full criteria for major depression. Nonetheless, they were suffering – in a shared state of emotional distress and sense of incompetence. For many Americans, we are experiencing this now. Events such as the recent terrorist [...]
Boys who grow up in hardship are more than four times as at risk of starting puberty aged 10 than those who grow up in safer, wealthier households. And girls who grow up disadvantaged are twice as likely to start puberty early than others. The startling findings, which may help explain why disadvantaged children are [...]
Thinkstock Images Very stressful events affect the brains of girls and boys in different ways, a Stanford University study suggests. A part of the brain linked to emotions and empathy, called the insula, was found to be particularly small in girls who had suffered trauma. But in traumatised boys, the insula was larger [...]
Flickr Images Children who suffer abuse, violence or other trauma at home are more likely to become seriously ill as adults, a report has concluded. The report, the first nationwide study of its kind produced by a public health body in the UK, argues that the reasons are not simply cyclical – that [...]
Pixabay Images Soon after Nadine Burke Harris opened a pediatrics clinic in a low-income neighborhood in San Francisco, she began grappling with the high rates of asthma and other illnesses that she was diagnosing in her patients. She wanted to understand why so many of the kids she saw were so sick. “They [...]
Pixabay Images When Meg was 12, her mother, Annie, found herself unable to look at her. Seeing her daughter made Annie feel unsettled, at times almost angry. At first, she couldn’t figure out why. “And then, Meg turned 13 and suddenly, everything slid into place for me,” Annie says. “I found myself thinking, [...]
Can children be made more psychologically ‘resilient’ to traumas like 9/11 – as well as the stress of everyday life? Emma Young meets a former school principal who believes they can. - Emma Young Source: Secrets of the strong-minded | Mosaic
