How trauma in childhood can influence mental health

All children may experience very stressful events that affect how they think and feel. Most of the time, children recover quickly and well. However, sometimes children who experience severe stress, such as from an injury, from the death or threatened death of a close family member or friend, or from violence, will be affected long-term. The child could experience this trauma directly or could witness it happening to someone else. When children develop long term symptoms (longer than one month) from such stress, which are upsetting or interfere with their relationships and activities, they may be diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). 

Suffering psychological trauma during childhood significantly increases the risk of developing a mental disorder in adulthood. The most common childhood traumas are emotional, physical and sexual abuse, as well as emotional or physical neglect and bullying, although there are many others.Suffering one of these situations damages the brain, causing physical as well as psychological consequences in the form of various disorders. In the case of emotional abuse, the most frequent trauma is associated with the most prevalent disorder in the population, that of anxiety.But there is also a relationship between childhood trauma and other pathologies, such as psychosis, which is linked to all traumas, obsessive-compulsive disorder or bipolar disorder. 

It is necessary to guide the patient through their life history, to really review what has happened to them. Currently, we question what isn’t working, but not what has happened in their life, because this requires opening up potentially painful subjects, and it is avoided. Studies also highlights the fact that other traumas such as catastrophes, violent deaths or family abuse can affect people, generating structural and functional changes in the brain that open the door to future mental disorders. These findings highlight the importance of preventing early traumatic events and providing trauma-informed care in early intervention and psychiatric services.

There was highly suggestive evidence of an association between psychological trauma at any time-point and any mental disorder (OR = 2.92) and between childhood trauma and any mental disorder (OR = 2.90). specific trauma types, convincing evidence linked physical abuse (OR = 2.36) and highly suggestive evidence linked sexual abuse (OR = 3.47) with a range of mental disorders, and convincing evidence linked emotional abuse to anxiety disorders (OR = 3.05); there were no data for emotional abuse with other disorders.

Symptoms of traumatic stress in Children 

• Reliving the event over and over in thought or in play
• Nightmares and sleep problems
• Becoming very upset when something causes memories of the event
• Lack of positive emotions
• Intense ongoing fear or sadness
• Irritability and angry outbursts
• Constantly looking for possible threats, being easily startled
• Acting helpless, hopeless or withdrawn
• Denying that the event happened or feeling numb
• Avoiding places or people associated with the event

It is not known exactly why some children develop PTSD after experiencing stressful and traumatic events, and others do not. Many factors may play a role, including biology and temperament.  But preventing risks for trauma, like maltreatment, violence, or injuries, or lessening the impact of unavoidable disasters on children, can help protect a child frommental disorders in their future lifes.